Erika’s brother, Spencer, is in town and we’ve taken him around the area for the past couple days. This weekend has been a good example of the mixed bag that San Diego has to offer.
On Saturday, La Jolla cove was beautiful as always. Large flocks of sea birds and a colony of seals were playing in the surf with lots of people enjoying the ever-present sun. Of course, someone had to go and spoil it. Despite numerous signs and requests from a local advocacy group (http://www.lajollafriendsoftheseals.org/about.html) some idiot decided he should go and plant his chair and beach blanket on Casa Beach where the seals come ashore to rest. Of course, this agitated the seals and scared them away. It is always upsetting to see someone with such blatant disregard for nature, but that doesn’t seem too uncommon in SoCal. If you are this guy in the below picture, President Obama put it nicely –you’re a “jackass.”
Everything else about Saturday was straight out of the Southern California stereotype playbook. Pacific Beach, Mission Bay and the East Village were full of people who you would expect to see in SoCal. Fake boobs, lots of tattoos and fedoras are the style of the day, as is the “the nerdy rockstar.” This makes for fantastic people watching and not a whole lot of intellectual stimulation. While walking around Mission Bay, we were almost killed while crossing the street in a marked crosswalk. A bleached-blonde soccer mom in an SUV, accelerated, swerved around cars that had slowed down to allow us to cross, and blew right by us at 50 mph. Could that driver have been any more SoCal? We’ve learned to expect the terrible drivers… seriously, the worst drivers we have EVER encountered in the USA live in SoCal! We did enjoy a fun dinner and drinks at Classic Pizza downtown with some friends but the late-night crowd was really not our scene.
Just as we were about to write a blog about San Diego being shallow as a puddle, it goes and redeems itself.
Today we went to the farmers market in Hillcrest. It is a great place. If you are in San Diego on a Sunday, take an hour between 9am and 2pm to go and check it out (http://www.hillquest.com/hba/farmersmarket.htm). There is plenty of fresh food and good people. The produce is mostly locally grown and organic, and it tastes delish (see pics above). There were some funky arts and crafts booths and a decent band playing some acoustic tunes; they featured a drummer that used an old plastic suitcase as a bass drum. The people were on the granola side, down to earth and incredibly friendly. We had fun, ate some cheap and delicious fresh Mexican food, and enjoyed being around like-minded people in a Carborro, NC/Glebe, Sydney-type atmosphere. We then strolled around Hillcrest and Spencer, a man with a very discerning palette for coffee, found a cup he enjoyed. Altogether it was a good morning. We were happy to find a neighborhood that is open-minded with people who care about their impact on the world and a great market featuring locally grown produce. It would be nice to see more of this around.
I am sure we will start to figure this place out soon.
You stay classy San Diego…
