San Diego
I went to 'Dago this weekend (as they call it in the Raymond Chandler books :) for my buddy Carlton's wedding. I was half looking forward to it, and half not - spending a bunch of money I don't have to do a bunch of stuff that I didn't particularly want to do, but as it turned out, I had a shockingly excellent time!
I went as part of a foursome, with Mathew and Rob and Jeff. We arrived Thurs night and I got to show off my North County expertise by taking them to Las Olas on Cardiff Beach for an excellent mexican dinner and too many margaritas. Friday Rob and Jeff played golf with wedding boy while Mathew and I ate at another of my faves from the 80's, the Little Moore Cafe in Leucadia and then got sunburned at Cardiff beach.
The general observation is that since I left in 1991 things haven't really changed all that much along the beach (the PCH corridor) but go 2 miles inland to the I-5 corridor or god forbid, 20 miles inland to the I-15 corridor, and the place is growing and mutating like an effing tumor. All the way from Encinitas Blvd to La Costa has in-filled with tile-roofed SoCal dream homes, the lovely valley east of Del Mar has replaced its jackrabbits and sagebrush with 90's modern (yuck!) office parks. And the traffic - don't get me started!
It's not so bad to visit it, but to live there, and watch the hills and canyons get raped by the bulldozers is to me deeply spiritually demoralizing, and I anm so happy not to live there to witness it anymore.
Oh yeah, the wedding trip -- I volunteered to be the sober one on Friday night so the boys could try to get in trouble in Pacific Beach. Mathew it turns out, is by far the most skilled of us at getting into trouble -- it's that Brit accent, he could make a whole comedy routine out of saying the word buttocks. But he kept it to pretend trouble, and we made it back with some mighty funny bar stories.
Saturday, beaching it in Mission Beach, wedding late afternoon-late evening, apres wedding party in room til 3:30. Sunday, bad breakfast in La Jolla, watch the US mens bball team embarrass themselves against Puerto Rico, cruise the Cove, get to the airport way too early, car-bus-plane-bus-car-sleep.
The wedding was very nice. Carlton and Heather were married by their yoga instructor (California enough for ya??), who was verbose but gave one of the better ceremonies I've ever heard as it turned out. It was very cool meeting his family - he got his smart-assedness from his stepdad, those kind of central asian features from his dad, but he's good-looking like his mom -- weddings are GREAT for that kind of stuff!
I went as part of a foursome, with Mathew and Rob and Jeff. We arrived Thurs night and I got to show off my North County expertise by taking them to Las Olas on Cardiff Beach for an excellent mexican dinner and too many margaritas. Friday Rob and Jeff played golf with wedding boy while Mathew and I ate at another of my faves from the 80's, the Little Moore Cafe in Leucadia and then got sunburned at Cardiff beach.
The general observation is that since I left in 1991 things haven't really changed all that much along the beach (the PCH corridor) but go 2 miles inland to the I-5 corridor or god forbid, 20 miles inland to the I-15 corridor, and the place is growing and mutating like an effing tumor. All the way from Encinitas Blvd to La Costa has in-filled with tile-roofed SoCal dream homes, the lovely valley east of Del Mar has replaced its jackrabbits and sagebrush with 90's modern (yuck!) office parks. And the traffic - don't get me started!
It's not so bad to visit it, but to live there, and watch the hills and canyons get raped by the bulldozers is to me deeply spiritually demoralizing, and I anm so happy not to live there to witness it anymore.
Oh yeah, the wedding trip -- I volunteered to be the sober one on Friday night so the boys could try to get in trouble in Pacific Beach. Mathew it turns out, is by far the most skilled of us at getting into trouble -- it's that Brit accent, he could make a whole comedy routine out of saying the word buttocks. But he kept it to pretend trouble, and we made it back with some mighty funny bar stories.
Saturday, beaching it in Mission Beach, wedding late afternoon-late evening, apres wedding party in room til 3:30. Sunday, bad breakfast in La Jolla, watch the US mens bball team embarrass themselves against Puerto Rico, cruise the Cove, get to the airport way too early, car-bus-plane-bus-car-sleep.
The wedding was very nice. Carlton and Heather were married by their yoga instructor (California enough for ya??), who was verbose but gave one of the better ceremonies I've ever heard as it turned out. It was very cool meeting his family - he got his smart-assedness from his stepdad, those kind of central asian features from his dad, but he's good-looking like his mom -- weddings are GREAT for that kind of stuff!