My move to the big city

I've been in the Bay Area now for 2 weeks, exactly. It's been enlightening, broadening, frustrating, triggering, happy, sad, giddy, and scary experience. Finding a place to live has been one of the most difficult experiences I've been through lately. A lot of that is the varied parts of me that feel drawn to different things. I've been mostly looking at studios and one bedroom apartments in Oakland, Berkeley, and surroundings. I toyed with living in SF, although it feels much more costly. I've thought about living in a cooperative household again (which I'm moving more toward right now.) I also came right smack up against my own naivete this last few days, when I gave a check, signed a lease, and was given the keys to an apartment (an interesting, funky apartment that I liked,) only to find out that the landlord decided not to rent to me after all, for reasons that made no sense at all (they were basically just excuses - I imagine he decided to give the place to a friend, or some such.) The way it happened all seemed kind of strange, but I figured that he was just one of those laid back, somewhat disorganized people (like me.) He might indeed be like that, but add a streak of dishonesty and lack of straightforwardness to it. It means I have to start all over again, which is not the worst thing in the world. Perhaps, what's true, is that it provided an opening for the exact right situation to appear.