When I think of Concord, I think of yellow hills and black trees. Berkeley is a girl in $700 pants, the whispering of a schizophrenic in her ears. In the evening, I see Oakland with a New Yorker tote bag, a line of offspring following her brunette ponytail like ducklings. San Francisco is old, ancient, angry, ground blessed and cursed by six generations of busts and booms. San Jose is a hundred miles of strip malls, strip malls, Chuck-E-Cheese in between.