Smorg's Bits of San Diego

It's hard to be 'off the beaten path' when you're in Downtown San Diego, CA. There seems to be more tourists around here than there are locals! Not that I am really a 'local'... though I'd like to kid myself that I've relocated here long enough to sort of qualify. So... what follow are not tourists' attractions, but a few San Diego things that keeps me from moving back to the good old Show Me State for good.

1. The dry climate... Yes, yes, it comes accompanied by too much sun for most of the year, but it is still dry and pretty darn temperate, which keeps the size of my wardrobe manageable. It is actually nice to be able to wear the same clothes for most of the year rather than having to change every few months like I would have to do in St Louis, MO. I can leave cans of soda pops in the car overnight in December without waking up to see the car's interior looking like a mammoth ice cave after a below-freezing night (drip...drip...). No need to store a shovel, tire-chains, or umbrella in the trunk. No need to check the weather forecast a few times a day during the tornadic spring and autumn. Granted, the sun here is too bright for someone with lupus photo-sensitivity... but then the abundance of high rises also means abundance of shades to walk under. Besides, if one gets bored by such a reliable climate, there's also the very unreliable ..or rather, unpredictable... seismic events to keep one amused. Nothing wakes you up in quite as refreshingly quaky manner as a Californian morning tremor!

2. Hide-away hang outs.... There are a few semi-secluded old courtyards around town that I like to hang out at. The cobbled stoned and tree-covered courtyard at William Heath Davis House is nice and quiet except when one or two of the local street musicians decide to give us a free concert. Quite a few friendly pigeons and stand-offish sparrows hang there... along with Bum, San Diego's official town St. Bernard-Spaniel mix, and Greyfriar's Bobby, a permanently visiting Skye terrier from our sister city of Edinburgh, Scotland. They are friendly and quite tolerant of gawker (like me).... even by bronze statues' standard.

Another good hide-out (in plain sight) around Downtown is the cobbled stoned (see a pattern?) and mostly tree-covered courtyard in front of old Santa Fe Depot on Broadway and Kettner Blvd. There's a nice fountain up front and so a lot of birds (of various degrees of friendliness) hang out there. They're quite used to the trains... which really don't come around all that often at all. The trolleys pass by every 8 minutes or so, but they aren't very loud in that courtyard either. There are a few other little places around Downtown that I haunt, but I won't tell you more.... since I like to haunt them in peace. These places are special to me, being tiny faux sanctuaries from the fast pace life in a big city. In the courtyards and the little parks, people even seem to walk slower and actually look around more... and some even seem to be aware of their surrounding! To tell the truth, I both love and hate these spots. I like haunting them, but they remind me of St. Louis' Central West End and its little corners...

3. San Diego Opera. The season is short and they only do 5 different operas a year, but they make every show count. Granted, it isn't the Met or San Francisco Opera or Chicago Lyric or Houston Grand, but it is a little community-oriented house that could. I've been to the symphony many times and also to the Broadway plays. They are good here, too, but so are the St. Louis Symphony and Fox Theater on Grand Avenue... all being just down the road from my alma mater and a Metrolink hop away. It is the opera here that has a pull on me with its laid-back staff and its amazing ability to attract A-list singers seasons after seasons.... along with up and coming singers worth keeping an eye on. After a very successful run of Cavalleria Rusticana/I Pagliacci last month, they are now having a good run of Verdi's Aida. And next month we're getting to hear a the very rarely staged Bizet opera, The Pearl Fishers, with its famous tenor-baritone duet and exotic story set in ancient Ceylon. Guilty pleasure, guilty pleasure!

4. Oh yeah, the beaches... We sure don't have any of that in Missouri... at least not ones that actually line an ocean! Of course, with the beaches come the stinky honking sea gulls. Don't get me wrong, I admire their wing span, long curvy beak, and sleek predatory built tremendously. Though that still doesn't stop them from smelling like 4 day old fish that's been rotting long before it was snatched out of the ocean and eaten by these wind-surfing avian. And they are magnificent bunch of snobs! They hover around the streets of Downtown in the wee hours of the morning playing scavenger football with various things they dug up from the trash bins around town, never allowing a pigeon to join in... And when they get bored, they amuse themselves by pretending to dive bomb at you. I simply can't get enough of them!

At any rate, there are many good beaches in San Diego area. Most of them now ban smoking on the beach (which I don't agree with, since the main complaint about smokers is really about how they leave the cigarette butts everywhere, and we already had anti-littering law in place)... and most also ban alcohol during major holiday weekends. The beaches are rather specialized these days, though. Sunset Cliffs offers some really spectacular sunset and color display on its (crumbling) cliffs on the ocean-facing side of the Pt. Loma Peninsula. The surfers are up in Pacific Beach area to the north of the San Diego River. Further north is the La Jolla area where Children's Pool Beach is mostly occupied by not so child-like seals and their pups. It's a hotly contested piece of land where some people want to kick the seals out and 'restore the beach to the children'... as if the children don't have all the other beaches to choose from but this one... But now I'm being unpersonably left-ish... So sue me.

The beach I like most is to the north of that, still, at beautiful (though dog-free) Torrey Pines State Beach.... and not just because of its nudist section (the (in)famous Black's Beach), but it is lined with those wonderful Torrey Pines and features a pretty cool hiking trail up to the top of the Torrey Pines State Reserve where there is a neat little museum manned by cute park rangers who are there to protect you from rattle snakes and black widow spiders (though, sadly, not from strayed golf balls). The family-oriented folks are probably better off going south to Coronado City Beach on Coronado Island, however. It's always getting voted the best all-around beach around... and for good reasons. Lots of sand, friendly waves, picnic areas, and that gorgeous little red-roofed Hotel Del Coronado manning the beach head.

5. Catching Christy Erb giving golf lessons (euphemism for 'teaching the Californian amateurs how to give the dimpled little white ball a permanent concussion while having a good spoiled walk on the freshly mowed fairways') at shady Bonita Golf Club just north and east of Chula Vista (the city to the south of San Diego). I first ran into Christy back in 1994 and somehow the gal doesn't seem to have aged at all in 14 years (and so is a living antithesis to the old wife's tale of how golf is a major cause of premature aging). She is a nicest gal around until she grabs a golf club and a ball... that's when the word mercy completely drops off from her vocabulary as she goes around bagging birdies as if she is on a personal crusade to add birds to the endangered species list as soon as possible (get this, I once witnessed her holing a thirty something footer downhill putt for an eagle to win a professional tournament on the 5th play-off hole up in San Bernardino, CA. How preposterous is that?).

Being quite a lover of birds that I am, I was relieved to hear that she retired from the LPGA Tour a few years ago... that was... until I found out that she is now busy grooming the weekend golfers in San Diego area into a bunch of birdies-shooting studs. So now I've gotta stick around and witness this next great extinction event. Though I freely confess that I find Bonita Golf Club's Outta Bound Bar & Grill quite an attraction in and of itself, I'd still say that it is even cooler to sip their cold beer from the comfortable seat in the shade while watching that miracle-worker of a golf professional turns bogeymen into bird-stuffers on the driving range.... Why aren't I on the range? I did tell you that the Californian sun gives me the headache, didn't I?

Aside from these personal (and rather lame) attractions, you can pile on all those local attractions everyone knows about... One of these days I might manage to leave this place.... But at the moment it is just too attractive to say good-bye to.