Hey, Dylan here. You have reached the Atlas Obscura podcast line. I'm not home right now,

but leave me a message about the first time you left home to live away on your own, to live

away from your parents to experience what it was like to be an adult for the first time. Maybe you were leaving a small

town. Maybe you were moving from one big city to a different one. Tell me about your adventures.

After the beep. Hello, my name is Jane Zimmerman.

The first time I left home was when I graduated college early in December of 1983, and I went to college in Minnesota.

And the first big blizzard and sub-zero trills was coming down from

the Arctic, just as a friend of mine who had graduated in spring, said, hey, I need a roommate in San Francisco,

California. So I flew from the Twin Cities all the way to San Francisco, California.

I was enchanted.

And I loved San Francisco from the very beginning.

I came in as my first time away from home because I did find temp work, but I also was covering all my own rent,

my health insurance.

I was a fully fledged adult.

I was off my mom's payroll, my single mom who really didn't have a whole lot to keep us going.

I woke up to strange smells I couldn't identify.

It turned out to be roasting coffee from all the little Italian coffee roasteries that were

on Telegraph Hill and in North Beach at that time.

I would walk down the hill to the financial district where I had a bunch of temp jobs until

I finally did land a permanent job that came with health insurance and benefits.

And on my way down the hill, I would stop at a

little Italian bakery. When I was feeling sad about not being able to find a job, the owner,

...