How we ended up in downtown los angeles

In 2003, Pam and I were still living in Berkeley. I spent much of that summer working on a massive data migration at 20th Century Fox. During a late night drive back from the Fox lot to my hotel, I was scanning the radio until I heard some Hawaiian music on KCSN 88.5 FM; The program was called Hawaiian Eye. Naturally, I followed the link to the DJ, Mike Schneider's blog -- Franklin Avenue -- and made it a regular stop on my web browsing.

Anyway, while I was spending my summer at Fox, I was told that I would be spending more time in southern California. With that news, I asked to be relocated. The next year, Pam and I moved to Anaheim. After two years, we decided that it was time to move. At first, we were looking at some places in and around the North Hollywood Arts District, as they had good access to public transportation, and were closer to most of customers' sites.

In June 2006, Mike announced that for his 100th Rate-a-Restaurant he wanted to have a special gathering. Pamela and I had a good time at the gathering. One of the other bloggers at the gathering, Eric Richardson, who contributes to blogdowntown, suggested that we take the Downtown LA Housing Tour. We signed up, and toured several properties. We have photos from the tour here. We enjoyed our visit to The Packard Lofts enough that we returned a week later. When they offered us a nice move-in special, we signed a year-long lease for our current apartment. Since then, we have extended our lease for six months.

Still, while we like the location (it's one block from the downtown Ralphs), the rent is a bit on the high side and while we have a nice patio, we don't use it, and we get very little natural light. As such, we'll be moving. More on that later.