No place like home in the other Brisbane

Welcome to Brisbane, the letters spell out on a modest, rustic sign in a garden bed off the main street. “City of the Stars.”

The air is crisp and clear.

Families walk the streets, their footsteps in rhythm with the charming city. Fog creeps drowsily over the San Bruno Mountain as the sun sets, offering a cosy reception for a lone traveller.

Indeed, we are in Brisbane.

Brisbane, California. Home to just 4800 people.

It’s some 11,000 kilometres from the Australian capital city of the same name, and at first glance, you’re given about 11,000 reasons to pack your things and move in.

The city is precisely what Australians envisage when they think of quintessential, small-town America.

Brisbane is home to just 4800 people. Credit: Cloe Read

And Australians have made the move here. They, like the other Brisbanites, truly want to be here – for you can’t travel through Brisbane, only into it, given the layout of San Bruno Mountain.

There’s a main drag – which leads to homes further up on the mountain – through the “City of the Stars”, its moniker coined for the stars stuck to the walls of the properties.

About 20 minutes’ drive south of San Francisco and close to the Bayshore Freeway, the city provides all the desires of community lifestyle.

One can walk right into Brisbane – pronounced “Bris-bain” by locals – and feel as if they have stepped back in time.

Yet, the city makes you feel like you’re in the right place, at the right time. You’re exactly where you’re supposed to be.

It was this character that prompted young unionist and businessman Cliff Lentz, from South San Francisco, to fight to preserve the past – and secure a future here.

“It’s kind of like a trap in time. A slower, more gentle experience,” Lentz explains of his home.

“Because we live next to San Francisco ... we definitely have a lot of pride in who we are, and we have been this city that has kind of stood up to – I want to be polite here – some heavy hitters in our area,” Lentz laughs.

“We always seem to punch above our weight. I think that’s why we’ve been able to retain our identity.”

---

In 2008, Lentz was in the US Midwest in Missouri, where he was working on the campaign to win the White House for Barack Obama.

But despite helping make history by securing the first African American US presidency, Lentz felt he could create change back home.

A year later, Lentz would forge his own political career, joining Brisbane’s city council, where he’s “been ever since”.

“That experience [on the Obama campaign] motivated me to run for office,” Lentz says. “It was a cool experience.”

Cliff Lentz, Mayor Pro Tempore of Brisbane, California.

Compared with other cities, and even its Australian namesake, the Californian city somehow seems untouched by the more objectionable face of modernity.

“San Francisco is vibrant and has all these cultural attractions and world-class restaurants and incredible architecture. And then here’s little Brisbane right next door,” Lentz says.

“Brisbane is probably smaller than every neighbourhood in San Francisco.”

Lentz meets me outside the new library, which has replaced an older library higher up on Brisbane’s hill.

It’s Halloween. In tow is Lentz’s mother, in her 90s, who could easily pass for 60. She’s preparing to wander the town with her son to “stuff her pockets full of candy”. Lentz jokes there’s something in the water in Brisbane that explains her young disposition.

The city and its people have soul, much like San Francisco to the north, but it’s a different kind. The Golden State as a whole tells a story of cultured history and a future full of liberalism.

As one expects, in San Francisco, known for its freedom, (public nudity has been a long-held debate), many residents appear free-spirited.

Moving around is easy on cable cars and buses, and almost futuristic compared with Australia, with the Muni app for tickets.

Tourists use the City Pass to cruise under the Golden Gate Bridge or visit major attractions such as Alcatraz Island.

But many locals claim they’ve never visited the iconic 1930s prison in the bay.

After all, the area doesn’t lack for attractions.

In Union Square, the central shopping district in downtown San Francisco, the city is relatively quiet, with doormen from Beacon Grand, a storied heritage hotel on iconic Powell Street, whistling down cabs from blocks away.

Further north, dozens of people run along the Marina Boulevard on the northern coast near the Golden Gate Bridge and Fisherman’s Wharf – famous for its clam chowder – with a backdrop of brightly coloured art deco apartments.

Housing remains a problem, much like in Australia, with apartment prices soaring in recent times.

Homelessness in San Francisco is rampant, while a local says rent for a small apartment in the city is about $US5000 a month, pushing many out past Brisbane, then the San Francisco Airport, and to San Mateo County in the hopes of finding affordable housing.

Lentz says Brisbane is pushing for a new development, the Brisbane Baylands, to help a growing population struggling under the pressure of rising rent.

The project, 600 acres of land bordered on the west by Bayshore Boulevard, north by San Francisco city, east by the US Highway 101, and south by Brisbane Lagoon, is expected to be a hub for sustainable development, including housing, commercial property and parks.

The region is not that dissimilar to Queensland’s capital, according to Lentz and fellow council member Karen Cunningham – who happens to be a former Sydneysider.

---

Cunningham is one of the many Aussies who made the move to Brisbane in search of a different life.

In the 1980s, as her friends moved to Queensland, she moved to San Francisco on the back of a recurring dream she had as a child that suddenly became a reality: a farm in the city.

Reminders of Australia still surround Cunningham, including a Tasmanian man who lives across from her dream farm.

“I moved to Brisbane in 1994,” Cunningham says, and then, echoing the sentiment of so many others, “and I have been there ever since”.

“At some point I just decided I needed to get more involved and became a planning commissioner and then was elected to the Brisbane City Council in 2016.”

It is a city, she says, as multicultural as Sydney.

“Sydney is like walking around the San Francisco Bay area. Everybody is represented and we fly the rainbow flag, we fly the Black Lives Matter flag,” she says.

“Sometimes people say to me, ‘When are you going to take those flags down?’ And I say, ‘When the people for whom they represent come and tell me we don’t need those flags up any more’.”

It’s the country support many have fallen in love with.

“I ended up, you know, with my little farm. I have a quarter acre in Brisbane and I have my little farm and my chickens and my cats and I grow everything myself,” Cunningham says.

“I have a beautiful green house and at some point shortly after moving I became very involved with the community because I had a little kid and have been involved in just about everything - the fundraising for the school, the conversations about a high school, which our little town doesn’t have, and everything you can imagine relative to, you know, living in a country town.

Life’s small pleasures for Brisbanites remain the same, even half a world away.

The author travelled as the guest of San Francisco Travel Association.