used to be nice
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10/17/2017
moved here in 1994, left in 2015. the town used to be pretty nice - not much on culture (still isn't), but great weather year round, great beaches. people are not very bright or cultured - there's a great gallery scene in LA but people move to Bland Diego to live a vacation, not to go to museums - they're much more likely to live at the gym. it more or less had a small town feel, with pretty vapid people (plus ex navy conservatives and mexican communities nearer the border, but people didn't mix much - you had the gung ho aging navy republicans on coranado, the meth heads in santee, gays in hillcrest, college kids in pacific beach, aging hippies in ocean beach, etc. - but it's not like they commingled) - plus it was much cheaper than LA, as the jobs just weren't there
what really screwed Bland Diego up, well a few things - first, they "revitalized downtown" which essentially consisted of dropping huge condo towers and a ballpark on the areas which had been mainly homeless and poor people, without actually doing anything to help those people, which forced the huge homeless population who had pretty much kept to themselves into tent camps in the many ravines and under bridges, mainly around balboa park and hillcrest/ bankers hill. the other thing affecting all of california is climate change and drought - Bland Diego isn't constantly on fire like northern california and oregon, but the summers are hotter and drier than they used to be - Bland Diego is essentially an irrigated desert which you realize the moment you leave the city and if they don't work out their water issues FAST it's going to become much less livable. plus the population BOOMED and housing prices went through the ceiling and then crashed (don't plan on buying in there, you'll never make your money back) - not as bad as LA but you better not need to get anywhere during rush hour. so, all that plus a highly transient and unreliable population means it's just not a great place to settle down - there's a lot of people aging out there who can no longer hold it together at the gym, wondering what the hell happened and killing time in coffee shops watching the homeless root through the trash while wishing they were 20 again - I'm never going back, not even to visit, it's gotten worse quickly and I'll bet that just accelerates as LA becomes uninhabitable
zach | San Diego, CA