San Diego, CA
4
For about 10 years or so, I had a friend living and working in California, and I'd travel out there at least once a year to hang out rent-free and travel to different esoteric locations that interested me (the Bugsy Siegel death-house, the Sharon Tate mansion, the Black Dahlia gravesite, the Peoples Temple, movie star cemeteries, bookstores, old-time restaurants, etc.). I never wanted to live in California (too many earthquakes, rampaging fires, riots, landslides, weird serial killers, etc.), but I grew to love the state as a visitor, just in terms of its natural beauty and sometimes kitschy history. At various times, my friend lived in L.A., La Jolla, Pacific Palisades, the city of San Diego, and then a rural area about a half hour outside San Diego named Valley Center. Initially, in San Diego, he lived in an apartment on Grape Street (I think that was the name of it) with his then-girlfriend, later-wife. Nice location (he did mention that crime could be a problem in the area), although planes from the nearby airport flew by...perilously close, in my opinion...constantly. The waterfront was lovely, although he mentioned it probably wasn't a good idea to go swimming, thanks to the water coming up from nearby Mexico. I don't know whether that was true or he was having some fun at my expense, but considering what I remembered from my time in Mexico as a child, I stayed far, far away from the water. We had a delicious brunch at the historic Hotel Del Coronado, where they filmed "Some Like It Hot". We drank at an English-themed bar (it was the first time I had "Black-and-Tans" and, after consuming several of them, I was nearly transformed from an Anglophobe into an Anglophile...at least as long as the buzz lasted), ate several times at a wonderful, small French restaurant, and had a filling meal at a Sicilian restaurant, that...while it didn't taste like any Sicilian food I had eaten back in NY/NJ...still hit the spot, in its own unique way. When my friend worked, I rented a car and drove up the coast to L.A., a drive of several hours, but do-able. Once, we flew to San Francisco for a few days. More than once, we drove a half hour south to Tijuana, where, the first time we went, I got hellaciously drunk. Naturally, my friend and his girlfriend had an explosive argument while we were there-- he went one way, she another, leaving me, a total stranger to Tijuana, swaying in the breeze. Somehow or other, I found my way back (I was tempted to buy some of the easily obtainable pharmacy pain-killers while there, but didn't want to tempt fate trying to get them across the border). As my friend moved up in his business, he bought a very nice home in Valley Center, about a half hour outside San Diego. Valley Center is a dry, rural landscape, but quite beautiful, in its own bleak fashion. San Diego was still readily accessible. I remember the one section where there were a lot of bookstores was the Hillcrest section, which was also the city's "gay" section. I can't say San Diego was the best city I've ever been in, or even the best city in California that I've been in, but I had a lot of fun there, and do miss it (my friend and his wife moved back to the East Coast some years ago).