Gold Country

Bittersweet is probably the best word for it. I was born and raised in Southern California and Lisa has been here for the majority of her life (she was born in Northern Ca and moved here when she was four) but, the cost of living here has finally pushed us out. It’s become nearly impossible to purchase a home in the area, not just due to cost but competition. We’re nowhere in the ballpark of competing but we hear this constantly so I’m relaying it. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard realtors and lenders tell me about bidding wars over “million dollar homes”. I put that in quotes because these aren’t million dollar homes. When I was a kid they were 100k-250k homes. The bigger question we always have is, “who is buying these home?!”. I’ll leave that for the conspiracy theorist in you but it’s moot. The reality is that the majority of the people I know couldn’t afford to buy their own home today and the only way they are able to stick around is because they purchased their home years ago. We are at a point that if we want to own our home, we need to move away from family and a lifetime of friends. Waaa.

We closed escrow a week ago on the perfect place for us up north. It’s a small town from the days of the gold rush but I’ll save the detail for later with some amazing photos. The home is perfect and, most importantly for me, a perfect size shop. We have 1.5 acres of usable land which is nothing to some of you and a stadium to someone from So Cal. If you’re not from California, you probably don’t know that we pretty much consider North and South to be two different states. Not in a Civil War fashion, we are just two completely different regions. Hard to explain I guess. The great news is that So Cal isn’t what it was in the 70’s, 80’s, 90’s and we’re pretty much burned out on it. The only reason we’ve stayed as long as we have is because of family and friends who we are now trying to recruit. My brother in law moved up to this ideallic town around five years ago and has been trying to recruit us since. Mission accomplished Glenn.

As I write this, I’m realizing that it may come across a bit egocentric but I don’t mean it that way. You folks that have been around for awhile seem to be interested in the goings on with the shop so wanted to share. I also wanted to let you know that we are in the middle of that big move which is why shipments are taking a bit longer to get out and less product is available. Our goal is to have the majority moved by the end of October so bear with us!

Anthony & Lisa