Moving Day, Millionaire Style

PUTTING THE NEW PLACE IN ORDER, ONE WAY OR ANOTHER

Home delivery underway on the fifth floor (Author photo)

Oh well, folks have got to get settled in somehow.

Newcomers in my neighborhood are slowly getting their Stuff in place. (When I say ‘my neighborhood’ I mean six blocks and quite a few million dollars uphill from my place; but still . . .) As is demonstrated by the silhouetted dog-walker, everything is downhill, and steeply so, from here; sweeping views of Alcatraz, San Francisco Bay, the Golden Gate Bridge etc come with the pricey territory of this apartment. 

When you buy a fifth floor residence in a posh, historic building on Washington Street you then face the issue of how to get everything settled into its new surroundings. For a century or so, hefty moving guys presumably hauled stuff up the freight elevator. Today, though, the solution is to hire a giant truck with a crane, several other giant trucks and (by my count) upwards of a dozen workers to load, supervise and direct traffic.

For openers you take out the fair-sized corner window. Three sturdy guys could be seen stationed in its gaping hole to guide stuff inwards — a job I would not find wonderful. But then, watching the whole work crew for 15 or 20 minutes made me grateful for this desk job.

The mystery object rises to its destination (Author photo)

Once the new load is wrestled (cautiously, I might add) into the traveling container, it swings slowly upward. Crane operators, I guess, factor for things like the wind that was swirling around the park across the street, but if they were as nervous as I about the thing crashing into the wrong window it did not show.

On-time delivery (Author photo)

I watched as the loading box descended from one delivery to pick up the next item (rising above.) It was just one giant, bulky something wrapped in layers of felted cloth. When I inquired of the workers about the cargo, I got a deadpanned reply, “They have a lot of statues.” 

Presumably, if you can afford a home-with-a-view in San Francisco, your art collection might as well include a few works by Rodin or Ai Weiwei for the family room. That, at least, was my imagined package being hauled aloft. It helped to look up at another noise and spot a helicopter hovering above which I further imagined to be a few private eyes keeping an eye on the transaction below.

(I am only reporting what I see here. Details have not been verified.)

Seen overhead (Author photo)

Back on planet earth, there was more than a little irony in finding, parked in the small courtyard of my building, a couple of trucks ushering in one of my actual neighbors. The old-fashioned way, with hand-propelled dollies moving from truck to garage entry to elevators hung with padded cloths.

Not a single helicopter could be spotted overhead.