Lovely San Diego

  • There’s an old song I’ve heard in bar­ber­shop called “Lovely San Diego,” and I wish I could think of the lyrics now. Google search­ing hasn’t worked, and Greg-the-husband wouldn’t be any help, since he prob­a­bly only remem­bers the off-color ver­sion of the lyrics that he came up with. (Don’t know why he always does that. And us good Chris­t­ian folks, too.)

    I’m here just till Mon­day night, and I’ve been impressed again with the beauty of it and the charm that it man­aged to hold onto. Big cities are always throwng phrases around like “The big city with a small-town feel” or “the big city with a heart.” I’m not say­ing I could quite get myself to say them spon­ta­neously about San Diego, but I’ll con­cede that those slo­gans seem more plau­si­ble here. I love the sweep­ing hills that you get here, which keep you from notic­ing quite as much that there are just bajil­lions of peo­ple going any­where you want to go. It doesn’t take more that an unblink­ing look at the I-15 at rush hour (or at any other hour, for that mat­ter) to end all the illu­sions. But it’s the com­mon sit­u­a­tion these days — any­place beau­ti­ful enough to be a desir­able place to live is already besieged with so many masses of peo­ple that it’s not all that desir­able a place to live.

    Ah yes, another big-picture point. How this brac­ing coastal atmos­phere affects my attic wit and makes it, I don’t know,… attic-er? I make myself some tea to sip in the hopes that it will ten­der­ize my brain for my next morsel of sagac­ity. Or even my first. You never know. Plus, mak­ing the tea gives me an excuse to break out a cou­ple of those lovely lit­tle chocolate-covered bis­cuits I bought yes­ter­day and treat it all as an Inter­na­tional Foods moment, rather than just me pig­ging out in a bet­ter neigh­bor­hood than usual.

    The house Greg is house-sitting — with me here for the week­end just to make it fun — is in Del Mar Heights, a foo-foo sub­urb of San Diego, and I feel like I’m giv­ing off sub­tle waves of the lack of self-confidence I feel in being here. I can’t help think­ing that if this were all one big gated com­mu­nity, I’d prob­a­bly get turned away for not hav­ing a match­ing belt and hand­bag (or in fact, any belt or hand­bag at all). But I try not to be a reverse-snob. Nobody here is turn­ing up their nose at me — I’m turn­ing it up at myself. I don’t think I have any more right to be in a $750,000 home than I would to pitch a tent in the Lin­coln Memo­r­ial. I try to remem­ber that the hous­ing mar­ket in South­ern Cal­i­for­nia is so unbe­liev­ably inflated that $750,000 doesn’t mean what it does in Mis­souri, where it would mean you could make an offer on the state of Nebraska. But it still seems a bit much, and I still feel like I’m cer­tainly doing all kinds of lit­tle things to tell every­one that I’m not from here, with all that that entails.

    Never mind. What are you going to do? The old sen­si­bil­i­ties of who’s who don’t mean as much as they used to in the new econ­omy. The seedy down-and-outers may turn out to be cyber-millionaires, and the gaudy, osten­tious, Old Money types may be all flash and no cash. I’ll go on a bit of a drive-about while Greg is work­ing and see if a lit­tle sketch­ing and people-watching help with my lit­tle bout of para­noia about being class-challenged.


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    August 21st, 2005 | Grace | 3 Comments |

3 Responses and Counting...

  • Greg 08.21.2005

    Lyrics:

    Your grace­ful hills caress the Strand.
    I love each grain of sparkling sand.
    God in His wis­dom must have planned,
    Lovely San Diego!

    (sorry, can’t remem­ber the rest — at least, not the clean version!)

  • steven paul

    I feel your pain. I work in Par­adise Val­ley, Scotts­dale (Snotts­dale, as it is called by Phoenicians)…hillside homes, gated com­mu­ni­ties. 750,000? chump change in these parts, pard­ner. Its hard to not be “reverse snob­bish”. I recall talk­ing to one woman who was new-agey and spout­ing all the “the uni­verse is evolv­ing into cos­mic love and peace and eter­nal cos­mic wis­dom” and I asked her if she and the uni­verse is so evolved into shar­ing and car­ing, how come she lives behind a gate and alarms on all her stuff? For­tu­nately I could talk with her like that…

    I’ve actu­ally met some VERY grounded VERY rich peo­ple. Its usu­ally the nuevo dinero that are pre­ten­tious and stingy and sus­pi­cious and only spend if they think you are impressed by it. There’s a whole soci­ol­ogy there that I should write a book about some day.

    By the way…my daugh­ter works for a “slum lawyer” in Tucson…did you know that dou­ble wide trail­ers have TWO VIN num­bers? Makes sense, I guess.…

  • Greg

    Eeeek — I worked in Tuc­son (as the say­ing goes) for sev­eral years one month. ;) Can we all just agree that adobe is ugly, no mat­ter how much rich her­itage it might embody? Oh, and cac­tuses aren’t all that and a bag o’ chips, either.

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