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Old 12-09-2012, 02:26 AM
 
2,174 posts, read 4,373,596 times
Reputation: 3547

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(San Phlegmatico was the original author in 2007...I came across this while researching some back threads...this guy nails San Diego and articulates better than anything I have ever read. This is a masterpiece!)


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The short version of this post would be a one-liner. It would read: "If it's California you want, do not move to SD; move to SF -- miles ahead in every way." But I am taking liberties to elucidate the horrors of San Diego in gory detail. Please don't bowdlerize me Sassberto.

My wife and I, like many others in this forum, liquidated our assests, sold our souls, and made the monumental trek across the country to Paradiso, aka San Diego; we did so having done our research -- heck, we even visited numerous times when we had lived in San Francisco years before. But, seven months in and I'm already crafting an escape plan from San Stupidity. Hell, I was ready to eject via rocketship two months in.

The euphoria of sun, bodies of water, and Baja-style tacos wears thin in a few weeks (the three best qualities of SD). Then you begin to realize: THERE'S NOTHING ELSE HERE! THE PEOPLE ARE REPREHENSIBLE! THERE IS NO SEMBLANCE OF CULTURE!

Then the sad sets in (not to be confused with SAD, the acronym: Seasonal Affective Disorder).

To kick things off, let's begin with a thumbnail history of San Diego:

Once upon a time... The Mexicans and the Spanish and Whitey and the Injuns duked it out up and down Baja and Alta California for centuries. Missions were built. Pueblos were built. Rich guys defected from the established bastions of East Coast wealth in this country and flooded in. Men of leisure swooped in and parceled the lands up amongst themselves, built crap, and basked in the sun. (They're still basking.). Riff-raff poured in to build the palacial estates and serve burritos. Porn, gays, and counter-culture invaded from LA. Real estate went BOOM; meanwhile, the sun keeps on shining over THE FINEST CITY IN THE WORLD! -- Ha! The Applewhite compound offs itself wearing Nikes, lying supine in purple robes in Rancho Santa Fe (so much for nice gated neighborhood). Todos hablan espanol. Retirement estates galore and bio tech o'plenty drives prices up and draws corporate zombies in like flies. Carpet Baggers from back east drive prices up again. Skaters, surfers, fake boobs proliferate. Surfer chick runs for mayor. Pro skaters and surfers form elite niches and rule the roost. Intellectualism is banned and replaced with "spiritual meditation" and the cult of diversity crowd. The Padres build a new park but still stink. The Chargers refuse to wear the most excellently singular color combo uniform -- baby blue and yellow -- in all of sports.

Allow me to now launch the litany portion of this polemic.

1. SD is bereft of culture -- by anyone's standards. No original music, theater, art, or anything originates from here -- anything beyond pop kitsch and tripe. Santana is from TJ, but that doesn't count for squat.

2. SoCallers are a phlegmatic, self-centered, ruthlessly ruggedly individual, mypoic, culture-less lot. To wit:

Something between a shuffle, a loaf, and a stumble -- the characters of San Diego mostly bum around in boardshorts, hoodies, and flip-flops, aimlessly wandering through life -- trust funds and ill-gained monies padding their way. Few exceptions to this rule. There they go: shleppin their surf boards, sometimes riding golf-cartish "Vespas" to their beloved breaks. Always cracking wise and smoking "J-sticks." Mouths constantly agape. Stoned out of their gourds so bad they make Jerry Garcia look like a teetotaller. Empty heads, empty souls. Great surfers. But one-trick ponies, these people. Heaven forbid they miss their beloved waves -- believe me, you'll hear about it. They jones for those waves like a junkie to smack....

Most youth and twenty-, even thirty-somethings act like low class dirtbags. (many women here wear a label of clothing called 'Dirtbag' -- they wear it with pride. So ass-backwards and nihilistic. Played out and tired, this whole urban Nietzsche thing.)

Punk skaters run you over on the sidewalks and take your head off when you round the corner and they're bounding off a railing...

Wanna-be gangsters lurk in every alley-way, streetcorner, bar, mall, wherever they can find to infest, deal, tag, wear ridiculous garb and squawk at "the hos"; the nicer the neighborhood, the greater the chance they can jack someone up for dinero, hombre...

Real-deal gangstas -- "OGs" -- skulk and slink about in the shadows -- in the parks and streets, in your nice little high-priced neighborhood. Or in your surf ghetto. Take your pick: same difference. Better not cross em: you'll be capped quicker than you can count to 13. If you're lucky, they'll rap a few bars and excrete all over your tombstone after they shoot you execution-style whilst raping your girlfriend.

Beaucoup New Money poseurs driving the latest model cars but speakin like "Dude this, dude that," yakking on cell phones and driving 85 mph up the 5 and 108 out the 8...

You will meet people that "know" Paris Hilton/ work for her and are PROUD of it...

Everywhere you go, and especially in La Jolla, the Beaches, and other so-called "nice places": homeless bums, panhandlers, and drug dealers camping out in your back yard, on your front stoop, hanging out on the boardwalks, hitting you up while you're trying to whoof down a sandwich on your way to BE SOMEBODY.

You spoke of researching "San Diego-type things" in one of your posts... I almost died from laughing at this! What an oxymoron: 'researching' and 'SD things'! San Diegans don't do anything that requires a whit of knowledge, creativity, intellect, accomplishment, or anything of great depth that would require an iota of research -- other than surfing and outdoors stuff. And again, if its the water and mountains you crave, and crave these things to the point of sole disregard for all else, then stop reading this and go on ahead. The waves are first-class here -- no joke. The mountains are spectacular, formidable hiking and gaming challenges, nice-sized. Also very remote and often in dangerous climes, often swelling up out of high deserts: snow-packed, windy, sometime scalding hot. Hell, the Mojave isn't far off: that place IS hell on Earth. Many border runners scoot through these passages and lay waste to any dangers they encounter -- incl. the occasional average hiker. It all makes for a quintessential experience if you're an ace at that kind of endeavor. So you better be Laird freaking Hamilton, John Muir, and Jon Krakauer all rolled into one badass mother. And you better have much free time from your job, because getting to these primo locales will require mucho driving. And drive times are huge in these parts. It can take an hour to get 10 miles on the interstate at times.
Oh, and gas is the highest in the country out here. Be ready to pawn your Rolex for a full tank. I'm not sure what costs more: my monthly car note or my monthly gas for a ten mile commute per day -- round trip!

3. There is no respectable architecture here, save a few isolated structures (some churches in La Jolla, Balboa Park, a few homes in Kensington, Banker's Hill, some nice modern structures in the universities). Not to be expected -- where there isn't culture, there usually isn't any fine architecture.

4. Sprawl for days; and thus, a Car Culture like you've never seen before. Only surpassed by L.A. Zoom, zoom, zoom.

5. People, generally speaking, have the personality of brick walls -- 'high' ones, that is. You'll be lucky to get a three-word response to any question from Joe-on- the-Street. Most everyone is high on either pot or pills. They're ethos/ mantra is "no worries." No depth, no conversational skills, no care whatsover for humanity: this describes the average San Diegan quite accurately. And when you do get one talking, you find that they know NOTHING about ANYTHING. They don't know Middle America, only the coast. They don't know fine art, roots music, classical music, theater, history, or fashion other than they're own. Now they DO know a "hella lot" about Quiksilver and Volcom (any type of over-priced nihilistic-reppin' clothing label), the breaks and peak times, Espanol this-n-that, marijuana, fish tacos, graffiti, Sublime, and party all the time / party all the time, like Eddie Murphy.

The people speak only when spoken to. Or when they want something from you. Even then, they grunt. If they're feeling spicy, you might elicit a protracted "Duuuuuuude." Followed by an under-the-breath Butthead laugh. Then it's back to the faraway glazed gaze. You will be astounded at how no one speaks in passing on the street. Forget about innocuous small talk or impromptu gab sessions. No one will look you in the eye: they look askance at anyone whom they think might have some depth or culture about them -- especially Easterners and Southerners (these are the ones with the most culture and wit, generally). No, check that, I don't think they know the difference. They're just dim bulbs. That askance look is actually dazed confusion with hashish-induced watery eye. I think I'll open up a Visine franchise.

Diegans use the most banal and illiterate vocabulary; a peculiar venacular:

Everything is "Soooper!"; everything is "rad"; everyone's a "dude."

Here's a strange quirk of diction I hear a lot: "Can I get those ones over there?" THOSE ONES??? And "these ones." THESE ONES???

Everything is "Perfect!" (head tilt to the right)

Everything is "No worries." (until there's a disaster; then, I suspect the non-natives flee the coup and you never see em again)

"Hella" this, "Hella" that.

People really do talk like Valley Girls here too. "Like... yah, ya know???" "Like, like, like..."

6. Intellectually, this is the dimmest set of people I've ever lived amongst. I have lived in New Orleans, Birmingham (Ala.), and San Francisco. SD is miles behind SF, slightly dumber than New Orleans, and about on par with Birmingham, Ala. UCSD is a great tech, bio, and sciences school: many uniquely gifted scholars and professional aspirants inhabit this idyllic campus on a hill in North La Jolla. But you will not see these people; they will not climb down from their ivory towers to rub shoulders with the John Q San Diego. UCSD is an enclave of enlightenment that might as well exist on the moon. The downtowners are smarter than the most, but they are generally drones and diversity-mongers. The "free thinkers" are goofballs and San Fran/ New York rejects. There are professionals out here that actually have their cell ring tones STILL set to play the theme from "Sex and the City."

7. The weather: The reason we all move here, initially. Well, I ain't gonna lie. It's beautiful and great and healthy beyond your wildest dreams -- the palms, the pines, the blue blue sky, the dry, pleasant sea breezes... THEN you realize that most all homes and buildings, especially west of I-5, do not have A/C units. And it gets fairly hot from about May until (they say) October. "That's ok, I'll open the windows, buy fans, drink lots of fluids." Nope. Ain't happenin. I'm doing all of that right now and I am sweating my nuts off. My wife is so unbearably hot that she and I are on the verge of a divorce strictly based on this heat misery factor alone. She wants to quit her job and move back East just to stand next to an A/C. Mind you, I lived in New Orleans -- oh so hot and humid NOLA -- and we never broached a heat problem because we had A/C. And too, I guess culture and genuineness may inoculate you: render you immune to the trivialities.

8. On the coast is the WORST place to live here. I live ON THE BEACH and it sucks royally. The beaches suck in the motherlode of freaks, gang bangers, yuppies, nitwits, "homeless" (actually drug-using con men), tramps, hookers, dealers, and mental ward escapees. You will live under CONSTANT THREAT of a break in or a shooting on your block (in Mission Beach, since I have been here, there have been three murders within a quarter mile of my home, and one homicide recently up by where I walk and shop daily -- in PB). Things disappear off our porch all the time. I have been mugged once, and nearly-mugged three other times (saved by various graces of God) in seven months. You will see people walk by your home talking to themselves -- these are the super-crazies. Everyone out here dresses like they're going trick-or-treating as a hobo or like they're an extra from a low-budget Stooges-during-their-salad-days video: no shirt, ratty shoes, loud-colored shorts or cut-offs, hair mangled/ dyed/ spiked/ Rasta-ed-out, droopy eyeballs, every protrusion and vital organ pierced, always draggin a six pack by its flimsy cardboard handles.

This place has no dignity: it is strictly Party Central -- tourists, locals, and students alike. Just Saturday night, my neighbor began a party at 6 pm. They partied through the night, through the next day and ended at midnight Sunday night. Nonstop. And for no apparent 'reason' -- no holiday, no event, no birthday. Just because they wanted to "get baked and hella rage." Now, when I lived in NOLA, we partied. But there was a pacing and decorum about it all. Not the pointless and reckless rollicking, Skynard-blasting boomboxes, kegs spewing suds over balconies, low-riding their shorts (crack is whack!), lower with every level of buzz, juveniles screaming and shouting like they were at a Beatles concert circa 1965. (Yes, I know Bourbon St. is a dumb drunk-fest 24-7; I speak not of that vulgar tourist trap scene.)

The puerile antics here at the beach are unnerving and make me want to commit Harry Carry off my balcony almost every night, listening to the ravings of arrested adolsecents and common scum:
All the WOOOO-HOOOOs!!! hailing from seemingly every shack and flat... sirens wailing up and down the main drags constantly, day and night: police cars and fire trucks racing to the scene of drunk shenanigans, shootings, and bonfires run-amuk all over the beaches... DUUUUDE I'M SOOOO WASTED! OH MY GAWD BECKY HE WAS LIKE SOOOO HITTING ON ME! DUUUDE, WHERE'S THE PARTY??!!?? SOOOO HELLA WASTED! Rottweilers and pit bulls barking to beat the band all up and down the street (I think the neighborhood is all jacked up on the dog fighting craze -- I'm not kidding.)

9. SD is the Ninth Circle of Dante's Inferno; it just lacks the proper signage: Abandon hope all ye who enter...

Once entered, and ignorant of aforementioned caveat, it's instantly apparent that this place has a genuine natural beauty (HAD a natural beauty, is more like it). But it has been overrun and tainted by tract homes, beach shanties, concrete-blocked mansionettes sans yards, dilapidated apartamentos, Volkswagon Vans-as-luxury-homes-on-wheels, rotting yachts. Everywhere garbage is strewn all about, neon signs paint a perfect purplish-pinkish stripe across the formless amoebish jungles of **** and buildings and excrement. Trashed are all the streets and sidewalks, bland are the strip malls, and amidst it all lay scrap heaps of plastic, metal, and crap-ola, seemingly everywhere, tossed about town like 3 million two-year-olds just got hold of a Tijuana junkyard and dragged its wares about the town.

The best explanation is that the whole city of San Diego, especially the pockets where you least expect vulgarity and destructiveness, looks like a war zone. I mean Baghdad must be a veritable Garden of Eden compared to this sesspool. You will immediately detect a likeness to Sanford and Sons' salvage yard. Though I'm pretty sure South Central had a vibe and a culture of sorts, which made it, though a ghetto of the highest order, a bastion of creative impetus and black heritage. The whole city of San Diego is a perpetual construction zone as well as being a scrap heap/ war zone -- Now there's a trifecta for ya! La Jolla is THE ONLY decent neighborhood in the metro, on a whole. There are decent pockets peppered about, but it all boils down to this: you'd better be a multi-millionaire to afford the type of home you'll need to buffer yourself from the cocophony, delapidatedness, makeshift "architecture" and over-priced cement enclaves featuring the basest of all pretentious smart-ass retard human waste.

10. SD is NOT a peace-loving, spiritual place. It is a money-loving, sun-worshipping, fake tit-centered Dystopia. There are hippie holdovers everywhere preaching peace and love, but usually they own the head shops and hemp stores where you can "be like Jesus" and spend 75 bones for a hemp shirt or a small fortune for a hand-painted waterbong. As long as you're spending money and hooking them up with drugs, they'll love you. Right on, brother! No worries! Don't forget to Save the Earth while you're marring the land with your Big Box stores, cul-de-sac layouts, endless webs of junk-strewn, sinewy, snarled-up highways (i.e. pollution factories), and toxic waste dumps. And it is far from relaxing, unless you're on a remote stretch of beach like Coronado or Black's.

11. The women... They flaunt their T&A like common whores on the street, take lewd pics of themselves on their cells and show them off, and basically parade around like it's been a slow night in the Red Light District. Sex is just a bodily function to these folks, like crapping and eating.

12. Cost of Living. Certainly not the deal breaker (1-11 are much more disuasive factors), but the Cost of Living in SD County is REE-DICK-U-LOUS. SF, NY, and Boston all have much higher qualities of life that offset and rationalize the high cost of living. Diego does not.

You will pay out the nose (there are no starter homes for < 750k or so) for what? -- for lewd, loud, ignoble neighbors, a culture-less morass of a neighborhood and city, to zombie-walk knock-kneed through the Grateful graveyard (be careful, don't trip over the ossified remains!) -- a deathmarch of bone-rattling -- clavicle grinding on clavicle; to stare long into their blank, black-socketed skelet-holes: infernal portals shucked from hollowed husks of humanity; to be dumbed-down every step of the way in every woeful day of your existence in this trash-bin of a "Mediterranean" city. (Yeah, it's Mediterranean in geography and climate; but then the dozers took over, and the concrete jungle grew over the lovely terrain like silver kudzu, and the hordes of (mostly illiterate) people infested every nook like the very cucarachas that they now beat away with brooms and insecticides in barrios and garbage-heaped high-rent beach bungalows alike.) How ironic.

Do not move there. Your Shangri-La is Shangri-Sh*t.

San Francisco is nice, and I could sing its praises if you're interested (it does have its drawbacks, like every city). At least SF has a sense of culture, a fairly educated populace, and a strong city-grid framework and aesthetic for all things urban and urbane. San Francisco IS California; or, at least the best California has to offer.

Thanks for reading my first post. I promise my next missives will be more laconic and postive.

Stay Phlegmatic, San Diego! Your lamentable city's woes are far greater than the circu****ence of a whale's vagina in relation to the needle peters of your most lauded surfrats. Nah, you'll just go graffiti a palm tree or deface your face with ink-blots sprayed on by a gutterpunk hack. You'll call it "art."


Sincerely,

San Phlegmatico

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Old 12-09-2012, 03:26 AM
 
100 posts, read 426,349 times
Reputation: 150
i've not lived here for long, and I come from the land that the OP considers cultured, so i'm not going to address each point. i do think it's pretty evident that san diego is going to be less cosmopolitan and more provincial than LA, SF, NY, DC, BOS, etc, but this just reeks of butthurt about a failed dream or personal issues. i mean the idea that all the kids at ucsd or people working at qualcomm and all the biotech companies are just a bunch of surf bums without intellect or drive is laughable. obviously it's hyperbole, but expensive and wealthy places do not get that way because a bunch of trust funders and retirees decide to move there...
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Old 12-09-2012, 07:56 AM
 
Location: Tijuana Exurbs
4,525 posts, read 12,334,726 times
Reputation: 6268
It was hyperbole and it wasn't accurate, but it was brilliantly, and entertainingly written and I told San Phlegmatico so.
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Old 12-09-2012, 09:42 AM
 
Location: San Diego
50,057 posts, read 46,562,994 times
Reputation: 33895
I still want to know why, especially back in the day of legal drinking, someone would pick S Mission and call it home? His description of S Mission was spot on. If he would have picked about any other part of the City, and bought an AC (LOL) he would have been fine.

That was quite an entertaining read though.
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Old 12-09-2012, 10:28 AM
 
7,340 posts, read 12,557,569 times
Reputation: 9878
I get it! The post is a finely crafted triple-layered piece of irony. The OP loves SD and wants potential newcomers to stay away.
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Old 12-09-2012, 10:43 AM
 
Location: SoCal
6,418 posts, read 11,541,547 times
Reputation: 7093
I wondered how I had missed that. Then about a third of the way through reading it, when it became "second verse, same as the first" (yawn), I concluded that I simply hadn't bothered to read it.

Read it through now (well, to be honest I was just skimming at the end). Funny for the first few paragraphs. Waste of time for the rest.

And yeah, it might be a spot-on description of Mission Beach. But it describes the author - not San Diego.
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Old 12-09-2012, 10:45 AM
 
Location: San Diego
50,057 posts, read 46,562,994 times
Reputation: 33895
Well, they've been banned so we'll never know
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Old 12-09-2012, 10:53 AM
 
Location: San Diego
110 posts, read 376,048 times
Reputation: 67
At least the whole Bro flatbiller black rimmed lifted truck thing has died down. I think things have gotten better since this was first posted.
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Old 12-09-2012, 11:06 AM
 
Location: San Diego
50,057 posts, read 46,562,994 times
Reputation: 33895
Quote:
Originally Posted by Palmer Eldritch View Post
At least the whole Bro flatbiller black rimmed lifted truck thing has died down. I think things have gotten better since this was first posted.
Ya, that's what I think of when I read about taggings, store hold ups and drive by shootings. Flatbillers with lifted trucks.
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Old 12-09-2012, 11:21 AM
 
7,340 posts, read 12,557,569 times
Reputation: 9878
Quote:
Originally Posted by 1AngryTaxPayer View Post
Well, they've been banned so we'll never know
Not really sure what the rules are for posting links to other CF posts, but it appears from this heated exchange http://www.city-data.com/forum/birmi...ml#post3661696 that San Phleg moved back to his home town and didn't like it much, either. That doesn't mean he wasn't eloquent. But I think Oddstray is right--it's more about the poster than the city.

But I have to say that the line about San Diego surfers I heard when I moved to SD a long time ago from a bustling, vibrant, crowded, intellectually hopping NE place (which I was happy to leave), "They gaze out over the blue ocean with eyes that have never been clouded by a profound thought" (quoted from memory), is spot on...but so what? To each his/her own...
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