Finding Home 3: Livermore
Dispatches from our search for the right place to spend the rest of our lives
This third article in the Finding Home series takes us to the East San Francisco Bay Area, where decades of smart suburban planning have transformed the small agricultural town of Livermore into a California wine country gem. We spent three weeks there in September and got the full range, from a blazing hot moonscape covered in smoke from the Caldor fire to the north to the temperate, breezy, and clear.
The Scorecard
In the series introduction article, we broke our requirements for a new place to live down into five categories: Proximity, Affordability, Community, Amenities, and Weather. This is how Livermore fared in each of these categories:
Proximity: As a reminder, our plan is to buy a permanent house away from the Santa Clara Valley, and to then secure a modest condo we can use for frequent return visits. With this in mind, Livermore, an hour from Silicon Valley at low traffic and an hour-and-a-half when the traffic heavy — which is often — is still a reasonably good location. As with many places just outside the Bay Area proper, there is a maddening bottleneck — in this case on Route 84 headed east from Interstate 680 — that just always brings you to a near standstill. Nonetheless, the roads from Livermore to the valley are pretty safe and straight, and since we’ll have the flexibility of retirement working to our advantage, we’ll be able to avoid traffic on our frequent trips to and from. Livermore gets an 8/10 for proximity, one point better than Santa Cruz.
Affordability: Houses in Livermore offer affordability you don’t see in cities and towns closer to Silicon Valley. Large new developments have been built in recent decades, offering a surprising amount of space, both inside and out, at prices well within our range. There are also restored older homes closer to Livermore’s quaint downtown that we found intriguing. Of course, prices are going up, as they are everywhere in California, but Livermore still gets a 9/10 on affordability.
Community: Downtown Livermore was perhaps the most pleasant surprise we encountered during our stay. We rented a studio just blocks away, and always found something new to do to entertain ourselves. There are twice-weekly farmer’s markets with plenty of fresh offerings, takeout trailers, and live music. Speaking of live music, Livermore has the most active live music scene we’ve seen in a town that size. From Thursday to Sunday, one can find free live music of varying genres available at seven or eight different locations downtown, including Monica’s, Blacksmith Square, and Casa Orozco, and at many of the area’s fine wineries. Add to that the Bankhead Theater, which brings in musical and comedy headliners and thought-provoking lectures, and the Vine Cinema, where you can see first-run movies while dining or sipping a glass of fine ale. Finally, Livermore is close to the Dublin/Pleasanton Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) station, which provides quick access to larger sports and entertainment venues in Oakland and San Francisco. Livermore also struck us as a warm, friendly community, where things move at a languid pace — pretty much ideal for retirees like us. On Community, Livermore gets a 9/10.
Amenities: Livermore has terrific amenities for active people like us — if the weather and air quality cooperate, that is. (See Weather below.) The crown jewel is the Robert Livermore Community Center, which has an Olympic-size pool, four tennis courts, and a basketball/pickleball gym all surrounded by a huge public park. We made several trips to the pool to swim laps and were always able to get an empty lane, and we played tennis one morning and were pleased to find the locals who were dominating the courts to be friendly and accommodating. In addition to that, the entire Livermore area is surrounded and intersected by miles of biking, hiking, and multi-use trails, allowing easy cycling or walking access to everything from wineries to the Del Valle Regional Park southeast of town. Serious road cycling options are limited, but if you’re ready to put in the miles, Mines Road, Collier Canyon, and points beyond can get you to some big mountains, including Mt. Diablo and Mt. Hamilton. For core, stretching, and weight workouts, there are few options beyond some boutique-style gyms — for instance, there is no YMCA in Livermore — but given the affordability of housing space, it would be entirely feasible to set up everything you need along these lines in your home. On Amenities, Livermore gets a 9/10.
Weather: This is the biggest knock on Livermore, unfortunately. When we arrived in early September, the temperatures were hovering around 105°F and the air quality index was pushing 170 because of smoke drifting down from the Caldor Fire that was burning — and is still burning — far to the northeast. These conditions lasted most of the first week we were there, preventing us from doing any rigorous exercise outdoors or enjoying many outdoor activities at all. One might think a massive wildfire and scalding temperatures might be an anomaly, but unfortunately, that’s not the case. Wildfires in that part of Northern California are an annual event and will most likely continue. And with climate change, Livermore and areas like it are likely to have hotter summers as the years pass, as opposed to cooler ones. In our case, we would always have the option to escape to the valley when things got really bad, but nonetheless, we’re giving Livermore a 5/10 on weather.
Conclusion: Livermore Stays on the List
As we acknowledged after our stay in Santa Cruz, this is really about what we’re learning about ourselves as much as the places we’re exploring. Livermore has a lot of wonderful intangibles going for it, as well as terrific amenities, smart urban planning, and a plentiful supply of one of our favorite things: California wine. In addition to that, this is the one place where we’ve seen multiple houses that could meet our needs within what we want to spend. The big question will be whether we can hack weeks or months of 100+° weather, and whether being in dry country under threat of wildfires will outweigh the majesty of the beautiful open landscapes.
At this point, with the holidays approaching, we’ll settle back and ponder what we’ve learned before exploring any other places. Finding Home will therefore be on hiatus at least until next spring, when we just might venture out to some other attractive areas of Northern California that might sustain us for the rest of our lives.
