Oakland hydrogeologist Michael Taffet, 49, spends his days at Lawrence Livermore Labs, devising ways to clean up ground water. His nights vary. Long a social scenester, with reams of friends from his 16-year stint as an apartment dweller in San Francisco’s Mission District, he still crosses the Bay for R&R. At least a couple of times a week, you’ll find Taffet toting one of his bikes on BART or driving into the city to hang out with cohorts at a bar, play softball, or watch a baseball game. Home is a study in bachelor pad minimalism—albeit in a grand, 19th-century, Italianate mansion—with a wine collection casually stashed beneath a chaise lounge in the basement. Taffet is now president of his neighborhood association.

On becoming a geologist:
I wanted to be a doctor, but all the other people who wanted to be doctors made it less fun, if you know what I mean. So then I ended up wanting to be an earth doctor. I don’t have a worm box, I’ll admit. I don’t walk around politicizing things. I do my little bit behind the scenes.

Ambition:
I could’ve been a better scientist than I am. I’m smart enough. I’m just not disciplined enough. One of the reasons I got into geology, back when I was in college: geology teas where we’d drink beer.

Money:
I never wanted to be wealthy.

The house:
I bought it in 2000. [It was] a wedding gift from a Supreme Court justice to his daughter in 1876. In the 1970s, it was the Better Housing Bureau. After that, it was boarded up. The back was caving in, the roof leaked. There was a dead squirrel in the walls that smelled bad. I got a bug in my bonnet about taking this on. I don’t know why. Who would need a house this big? I offered the city $30,000. [Later], I had to drag my project to all these contractors until I found one I could afford.

The neighborhood:
Single parents, blue collar, poorly educated, majority black, some Latino, with hipsters coming in to buy houses now that they’re in foreclosure. Of course, people get popped around here, but they’re usually people that know each other, so I try not to get to know those people.

Spare change:
After I quit smoking, I put all my money that I would’ve spent on cigarettes into old baseball caps and jackets. Baseball . . . it’s the only sport I pay attention to. It’s such an elegant game, unencumbered by time. There’s no clock. It goes until someone wins.

Health:
I had testicular cancer, back in February of 2008. It was scary, but it was happy scary because it truly made me happy to be alive and to feel the rippling pleasure of my heart beating in my chest. Sometimes we forget that, because we get so wrapped up in wanting something we don’t have. The something-missing thing is a common feeling for the modern person, right? Oh, if we only lived in that neighborhood, had that girlfriend, had that car.

Religious views:
Oh, I don’t know. I believe in hell on earth. I believe that all the beauty of the world isn’t an accident but I don’t believe in intelligent design. I appreciate that I was born a Jew but I’m embarrassed that I don’t understand the history and the rituals more. I host Passover and cook a lot of briskets and Matzoh balls. I had 60 people over once. I had this confusion that somehow it was praiseworthy to not turn anyone away.

Living alone:
It’s nice. I can run around here naked. I just like to not have to deal with people. It’s a responsibility, you know, you have to give people attention. There was a time when I first moved in when I was like, I’m so isolated, why did I exile myself to this place? I can’t walk anywhere, I have to get in the car. But then I realized it’s kind of like living in the country, it’s kind of crickety. I enjoy getting away from the maddening crowd.

——————————————
Amy Moon is a writer, editor, and content strategist living in Berkeley.