You can walk from our house to San Francisco Bay in less than half an hour, by following our street up three blocks to Monte Diablo Street, and then following Monte Diablo east to the bay. I walked to the bay this afternoon to look at whimbrels, willets, egrets, sandpipers, gulls, terns, grebes, and blackbirds. Then I walked back home.

The stretch of Monte Diablo closest to the bay goes through a suburban tract that was probably built on filled-in land. I walked past single story houses a few decades old with small lawns. A black girl came skipping up the sidewalk followed by a white woman; they turned in at a house where they were greeted by someone inside. “I’ll bet you wondered where she was,” said the white woman.

I stopped at M&H Market, just before the foot bridge over the freeway, to get something to drink. An older white man with a pencil-thin mustache waited on a hispanic man and a little girl. “Put it up on the counter,” said the man to the little girl, and she did. The man behind the counter was wearing a dime-store sombrero.

On the other side of the footbridge, Monte Diablo Street becomes shady and more attractive, with a mix of older houses and other buildings. I passed Pilgrim Baptist Church, currently advertising their vacation Bible school, and St. James A.M.E. Zion Church, and then the Hari Mandir Hindu Temple, and an anonymous gray building with a sign that said, “Church of Christ Meets Here.” I passed the M. L. King Community Center, and the King Swim Center.

When I got to our street, I turned right towards our house. An ice cream man pushed his cart down the sidewalk ahead of me, the bells on the cart jingling. A boy stopped him, and when I passed them they were deep in conversation; the man was saying, “Like how long ago? Lotsa years ago?” A group of people sat on a couple of cars parked on the street, listening to some quiet salsa while they talked idly. A white man wearing a broad-brimmed white hat and shorts went in the driveway of a big old house almost hidden by a fence and trees; I looked up the driveway and saw that it must be a party, for there were about thirty people, all of whom were white, milling around on the driveway and yard of the old house.

A small box truck was parked across the street from our house. The back was open, and a man was in the truck selling produce and bread. A short middle-aged hispanic woman stood looking up at and talking to the man in the truck. A young white man came around the corner and walked up to the truck to wait his turn. On the other side of the street, I turned in our front gate and walked upstairs to our apartment.

San Mateo City Hall just threw us a curve ball.

We shipped our belongings to California via a “PODS” temporary storage container. Last week, Carol went to San Mateo City Hall to get a permit to place the Pod on the street near our building (there’s no other place to put the Pod because the yard is completely fenced in).

The people at City Hall told Carol there was a brand new requirement that we get an insurance certificate absolving the city of all liability. We were not surprised by this, since New Bedford had recently instituted a similar requirement. But they also said they were going to charge us $800 for the permit.

I called Brian, the manager of the local PODS franchise, and told him the story. “Eight hundred dollars?! I can’t believe that,” he said. “I’ll drive down to San Mateo tomorrow and talk with them about this.”

Brian called me this morning. It turns out that it’s worse than we all thought. They city of San Mateo has banned all placement of temporary storage containers on the street, and they told Brian that if they find a temporary storage container on the street they will fine the company that owns it $1,000 a day. The fire chief has said that temporary storage containers interfere with firefighting, and cannot be allowed any longer, as of a week ago. Apparently, then, City Hall gave incorrect information to Carol — this is not about insurance, this is about firefighting.

Brian has gone out of his way to accommodate us. He is going to dispatch a truck with our belongings first thing Monday morning. The truck driver will wait while we unload the contents of the Pod into the garage and driveway. Now we are gathering a crew together to help us unload as quickly as possible. (If you’re in the area and want to help, send me email — I’ll buy you lunch!)

I’d feel better about this if the city’s new requirement made sense to me. But our building is on a street corner with about 150 feet of street access, and one 16-foot storage container is not going to create a significant problem for firefighters. This is the sort of thing that makes people cynical about City Hall.

Sigh. Just what we need. More stress in our lives.