Innocent Bystander

Now is the season of our political discontent...

As spring turns into summer here in San Diego, we are embroiled in a primary election, which will occur on June 5. San Diego has four totally uninspiring candidates for mayor this time around; three Republicans (oh, scratch that...one became "independent") and one Democrat. Obviously the one Democrat is going to move ahead to the general election in November.

The Lone Demo is Bob Fillner, a US congressman, and quite frankly, one of the ugliest politicians I've ever seen. Oh, I know...politics shouldn't be about looks, and when you look back in history, some of those guys look they stepped out of a Monogram horror movie from the 1940s, co-starring Rondo Hatton. But beyond his looks, Fillner strikes me as a pretty much do-nothing congressman, and I have every bit of faith that he will be just as dull and boring in the role of mayor here in San Diego.

The two Republicans are District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis and City Council member Carl DeMaio. Dumanis moved from Brockton, MA decades ago but still has the Bahston accent; every time she speaks she sounds like a barmaid from Southie, and there's no way I can sit through at least four years of that crap. In addition, she is colossally stupid enough to run a self-congratulatory campaign ad on TV which talks about a case that is pending in court, and her campaign mangager is arrogant enough to say they won't pull or change the ad, even though the presiding judge has said it could have a possible bearing on the case. In other words, the ad will be changed or dropped in the next few days, and the campaign manager will be the sacrificial lamb.

DeMaio, who pronounces his name De-MY-o, instead of De-MAY-o (I'm guessing so no rival politico can run ads proclaiming "HOLD DE MAYO!"),  is running on the platform of pension reform which is sorely needed in San Diego. But I can't see this chipmunk-cheeked councilman on TV without thinking of him as "Creepy Carl DeMaio," because that's what he is to me: a self-aggrandizing creep. Leading up to the election, he's been on more morning TV news shows than I can shake a stick at (if that's your idea of a good time) and it seems like he's been running for mayor FOREVER. He's also running major ads denouncing his opponent Nathan Fletcher and the ads are big-time negative ones, the kind you see on a national level. Four years of DeMayo and I'll move to Tijuana and start ducking a lot.

Finally, there's veteran Nathan Fletcher, a California state assemblyman who's main claim to fame is authoring Chelsea's Law, which is named after a local murder victim who was just 17 years old. I can't figure Fletcher out. He recently turned independent, which makes me question his alleigance to anything. I hate partisan politics. I think it's the bane of the political system in America. But switching party affiliation--or dropping it altogether--this close to an election is a major red flag for me.

So in the end, what do we have? Four extrememly unappealing candidates (is this the best San Diego can muster?) looking for a shot at righting a city that has been sinking for years. And a ton of phone calls. The other night, my phone rang 8 times between 6:00 and 9:00 pm, all of them robo-calls for local elections. Want to get my vote? STOP CALLING ME! And stop killing trees and filling my mailbox with glossy cardstock one-sheets that proclaim your worthiness. You're not worthy. None of you are.

Live man walkin'...

I am continuing my walks, even if the time change and (slight) seasonal change has slowed me down a bit. Yesterday was a summer-like day in San Diego (I know..."When is it NOT?" you ask, but we have had a cool and rainy stretch), so I left the house early and got out and about. I ended up walking longer and farther than I intended...in fact, I set a new record (for me) at least, at 8.39 miles. Yes, it took me over 3 hours to walk that, so I'm not winning any marathons, and double yes: I'm paying the price today as my legs are sore and tight as hell.

Since mid-April, when this whole walking thing started after a "Come to Jesus" talk with my doctor about my ongoing battle with diabetes, I've walked over 360 miles. My goal these days is to walk at least 2 hours each time I go out. That roughly translates to about 5 miles for me. My secondary goal is 40 miles a month, which is 10 miles a week. I just made that in November, but I have had a few extraordinary months, like July where I walked 86.45 miles (hmmm....what happened in July to make me walk so much, I wonder?). October also was a banner month, with just under 60 miles.

I've learned--and seen--some interesting things on my walk, like the sight above from a bridge overpass on First Avenue. That's Point Loma off in the distance (on a clear day you can see forever, indeed). I've even found some money (13 bucks on one walk!). I think what fascinates me most though are the dogs on my walks. There are always people walking their dogs. The dogs seem to have one of two thoughts in mind when they see me: 1. Do I have to protect my master? (although no dog has threatened me) and 2. Does this guy have food for me? I think they're more concerned about the latter, and it seems like the little dogs--thankfully--are more the type to challenge my encroachment. I also have somehow developed a sixth sense for dog poop. I never step in it, but I always SEE it (some days, like today, I also unfortunately smell it). I'm amazed at the amount of people who don't clean up after their dogs and how many also don't see it and step in it.

But there are more pleasant things to discover along the sidewalks of San Diego than the leftover dinners of our canine friends. Occasionally I find something that just literally calls out my name, like this curb on Laurel Street (yes, Laurel...Laurel Street).

Aww...I love you, too, stranger.

 

Goodbye neighborhood porn store...

What is there to say when the porn store across the street--a literal institution in downtown San Diego--suddenly turns off its red neon sign and fades away quietly into the night?

The view from my window is slightly dimmed these dark-earlier November nights, even though the festive holiday lights are once again adorning the neighborhood trees. F Street, a ubiquitous part of San Diego's Gaslamp Quarter, has shuttered its doors, packed up its stroke mags and porn DVDs and inflatable "girls" and larger than life sex "toys" and vanished into the night. It's hard to imagine the street without the bright neon sign, the lights behind the blinded windows, the giggling couples in and out of the door, and the nightly entourages who stop to have their photo taken in front of the window's sign, including coteries of drunken young--and not so young--women, usually with a leader in a bridal veil. It called itself "San Diego's Ultimate Sensual Well-being Adult Store," a new-agey take on man's age-old quest for over-stimulation, but it was really just plain ol' porn, with most of the accoutrements.

When I first came to the Gaslamp almost 20 years ago, there were still a couple of porn theaters on Fifth Avenue and at least three porn stores in the neighborhood, of which F Street was one. From what I hear, the place was once teeming with them. Over the years, the porn stores have dwindled to just F Street and that supermarket of questionable taste, the Hustler Hollywood store over on Sixth Avenue. When I first moved into my building, the nights were punctuated with the hushed beep of a door buzzer, the dead giveaway that someone had entered the porn store across the street. Since in those days porn was a 24-hour a day business, I heard it all night, at least until I moved down the hall to an apartment not directly across the street from the store. The buzzer has been gone for a while now, at least since I moved again, back to an apartment in closer proximity.

I guess you can blame the economy for the demise of the great American porn store (if such a thing ever existed), but you have to equally blame the home computer. There is more porn literally in my lap at this moment--as I type this on my laptop computer--than in all of the porn stores in the world combined. Any sexual fetish or whim is just a Google search away, and even the act of searching on the Internet for anything or anybody ("I Googled her.") sounds like a sexual act. But porn itself has become part of the mainstream of America, at least to those of us who grew up in the quaint TV era of the sixties. Can you imagine Andy Taylor and Barney Fife sitting around the Mayberry police station talking about sex and women the way Charlie and Alan Harper do in their Malibu beach house? Laverne and Shirley talking about penises and vaginas the way Max and Caroline did last night on Two Broke Girls? And Whitney Cummings--her own last name a double entendre--and her titular "sitcom" would have been burned at the stake, but no doubt not before the star made some kind of joke about being hoisted on a stiff stick.

Yes, F Street is gone. The Hustler store is probably not far behind. The Gaslamp is a rent nightmare for businesses. The hole-in-the-wall space at the corner of G Street and Fourth Avenue reportedly rents for $12,000 a month (triple net). It was a yogurt place then a yogurt/Brazilian meat place (seriously...why that concept failed is beyond me), and is about to become the world's tiniest IHOP Express, undoubtedly treating all of us local residents to blueberry-pancake flecked vomit on Saturday and Sunday mornings. Is it any wonder that a good old-fashioned porn shop can't survive downtown? Or maybe, finally, those giant D-cell batteries just ran out and the lights went out.

Shelf life...

I spent most of this past weekend doing a "home improvement" project that involved bookshelves. My main set of bookshelves have been slowly dying over the past couple of years, victims of an over-zealous book collector who kept loading them down with heavy books and other paraphernalia. (That would be ME.) One day last week I woke up to a top shelf at an extreme downward angle, with the books perilously close to sliding off, which, I imagined, would have a domino effect with the shelves below. It was time.

I've had these shelves for almost 28 years. I bought them when I moved upstairs in my Academy Ave. apartment in Mt. Lebanon, PA, back near Pittsburgh. That was 1984. They made the trip west with me in '98 (yes, via covered wagon, smart-ass), but at some point--when I downsized into a smaller apartment in my current building--I got rid of two of them, so I was down to four from six. Those four bore the brunt of my book collection for the past 10 years or so.

Say what you will about city living, but all you have to do--most times--is stick something outside your door and put a FREE! sign on it and it'll disappear pretty quick. I became the gift that kept on giving for a few nights as, one-by-one, I placed my old shelves outside in the hall, and--abra cadabra!--they disappeared. I trust they found a good home.

So on Friday I ventured out to the magical land of IKEA (thank god I didn't run into that Salander bitch) and bought six new big bookshelves and here is where life got at least a little interesting (you were praying for that to happen while reading this, weren't you, dear reader?). IKEA delivers for a fee and it was totally worth it this time out, since the shelves were way too big to fit into my car. Best of all, I bought them at 1:00pm and they were at my door at 5:00pm delivering them. And that's when I started building.

All five shelves built. Now comes the hard part...putting all the damn books back on 'em!

But disaster struck with shelf #5...when I opened the box, one of the side-pieces had a huge crack in it. My friend Kimberly--who I was having lunch with that day--gallantly stepped up to the plate and helped me load the heavy MF of a box in her SUV (that's my favorite Law & Order show, by the way) and we took it back, and lo and behold, here's where fate lent a hand and the story gets its semi-happy ending: I underestimated the size--and monolithic effect--of the shelves while at IKEA (plus the amount of shelf-space I actually needed for books). So having one out of the six bookshelves turn out to be damaged was actually a small kindness bestowed on me by the book gods.

So, four days later--and three more trips to IKEA (I gotta buy stock in that store)--I'm pretty much done. The total effect actually makes the apartment seem bigger to me (I thought the opposite would be true), I think because of the long stretch of uninterrupted shelf space now. I have some room to grow. I also invested in a new bedside shelf unit and a new table lamp. All in all, I came in under budget, too, so I think it's high time I get one of them TV shows on HG or some such cable netlet.

The bottom line? Besides keeping me off the streets and away from drugs and hookers (my normal weekend pasttimes), you mean? It's just another small (well, not so small, I guess) home improvement that makes me like the place more and more. Here's what it looks like in its finished form:

I still have a little tweaking to do (no, that's not a drug reference), but I'm pretty happy with it. And you know me...happy is my middle f*cking name.

Happy anniversary new apartment...

One year ago today I moved into my new apartment, the third apartment in the same building in which I've lived since 1998, when I first moved to San Diego. As apartments go I'm still kind of getting used to it. It took me about 8 years to view the last one--which I lived in for 10 years--as "home." But then again the concept of home has always been a strange one for me.

When I dream of home, I almost always dream of the house I spent my youngest years in. I lived there from birth through about the beginning of high school, when my grandparents died and we moved into their house. My parents lived in that house until they both died (about 9 years apart), and I often visited them there. But my dreams of home are almost always of that first house. I don't know why.

I do like this new apartment, but I wonder if somewhere, deep in the dark and cobwebbed recesses of my mind, if I just look at any apartment I've lived in as just a locker where I keep my stuff and sleep and eat. I have never had the urge to own a home. It's just too much work, and probably too much responsibility for me (that explains the whole lack of family, kids, and wife thing, too, probably, if we're going to take the time to bargain-basement psychoanalyize me...and really, I wish we wouldn't. There are far more fun things to do.). So maybe the very transient nature of just renting an apartment has taken its toll on my fragile psyche. Still...I have lived in the same building for over 12 years now. That must make me some kind of common-law resident, right?

I suppose at some point I'll come around and view this place as home. After all, all my stuff is here, right? And I do enjoy coming home and settling in for the night and just closing the blinds and shutting the world out. And I guess that's what home is, isn't it? A little port in the storm, a place to hang your hat, a refuge from the outside world. All those things describe this still kinda-sorta "new" apartment for me, thankfully. Which is good, since I just signed on for another one-year "tour of duty."

This week's epic walk...

You're probably getting sick of reading about this, but I kept my unbroken streak of Saturday morning long walks going today with a 5.61-mile hike to Hillcrest and back via Little Italy. With that walk my June total goes to just about 31 miles (30.76 to be exact) over the past 4 weeks. And there's still a little of June left.

Today I did the Hillcrest walk in reverse. No, I didn't walk backwards, silly. I went up to Park Avenue from my place, up past Balboa Park and the San Diego Zoo to University Avenue, where I hung a left and walked up to First Avenue. By my pedometer, I felt I wouldn't quite make 5 miles (my goal) if I walked down First to home, so I went down Laurel Street into Little Italy and grabbed some take-out lunch.

There's a sweet-spot on Laurel Street that overlooks the aiport's runway. You can see it off in the distance and the view offers a great look at the exact point on the runway where the airplanes first take off. It's only there for a minute or two, since Laurel is a descending hill as you walk towards the airport, but it's pretty breath-taking.

I keep discovering cool little things about San Diego on these walks. The Laurel-end of India Street has some great bars and restaurants, and one block over on Kettner is a thriving arts area with galleries and stores. I knew that, but driving through it you never really see it like you do when you're hoofin' it.

I'm slowly building to 6-mile walks, although my feet were protesting the 5.61 miles today, and still are about 7 hours later. Calm down, dogs...we've got a lot of walking coming up in the near future.

Today's epic walk...

...wasn't as epic as I intended. I started with a haircut (which, if you know me, takes 7.3 seconds flat most times) and from there I walked up Pacific Highway (not to be confused with Pacific COAST Highway) to Washington Street. My goal today was to walk up the big hill on Washington Street to Hillcrest, but as I suspected, there aren't any sidewalks (at least none that I could see from the corner of India Street), and I didn't want to walk up an active highway.

So instead I walked back down India as far as I could, before it, too, became more of an off-ramp for Interstate 5 and then cut up to Columbia Street, which led me to Laurel Street. From there I walked up Laurel to Balboa Park, through the park on its main drag and then down Park Avenue to home. It was a beautiful San Diego day, with temps in the mid-60s and a not-too-light, not-too-breezy breeze. Total walk time was about 2.5 hours and I managed to walk 5.6 miles, which takes this week's total up to just under 8 miles in the past 4 days (almost 14 if you add in last Saturday's 5.87 mile walk). Best of all: when I got home and weighed myself I weighed exactly one pound less than when I left the house. Yes...I know. We all weigh in differently at different times of the day. But I can dream that I walked off a pound, can't I?

Winding down from winding down...

I took a little time off for my birthday and am now just getting into some alone time on a sunny Sunday afternoon. San Diego has been filled with June gloom the last week or so, and I kinda dig it...it's a nice change from the typical weather fare here and it keeps the temps low and the air conditioning off. And while I love the fact that I have air conditioning, the cheap part of my dual Gemini nature sees dollars blowing out of the vents every time I have it on.

I had a really nice birthday weekend, with dinners with 3 of my closest and dearest friends (close because they are, dear because they paid--there's that cheapskate again), and a good movie thrown in to boot. So now after cleaning, laundry, grocery shopping and lunch, I'm going to make this an official lazy Sunday and just veg on the couch: reading, napping, watching TV, napping, and...oh, yeah, napping. I'm going to milk this birthday weekend thing for every ounce it's worth.

San Diego City Council and Police Chief waste time filming a movie parody...

I have yet to live in a city where the City Council has even a remote clue about how they look to the general public. San Diego is no different.

Each city I've lived in has had city councils which seemed to be largely made up of equal parts Three Stooges and Keystone Cops. The current council in San Diego is dealing with the largest fiscal crisis the city has ever faced (a deficit of $130 million). They seem to have no clue on how to solve this, while at the same time spending massive amounts of money on bullshit projects such as the conversion of the west end of G Street to be a one way street, something that was approved in 2007, but that they're just getting around to NOW.

But none of that matters, because in the middle of all of this, the city council of San Diego had the time to film a parody of the movie The Hangover for an upcoming business meeting. Council member Carl DeMaio--who just appeared on Fox 5 News this morning--proudly talked about the film and how it took a whole day to film. (Evidently taking a whole day away from city council business is okay in San Diego. Your tax dollars at work.) One of the scenes they showed was San Diego Police Chief William Lansdowne tasering DeMaio in the testicles. Keep in mind that the San Diego Police Department has been rocked by scandals in the past few months, with at least 8 policemen up on charges that (separately) involve accusations of rape, stalking, drunk driving, and demanding sexual favors at traffic stops.

So it's great to have this video of the police chief tasering a city council member in the nuts. It's probably something all of us have wanted to do at some point. It also shows Chief Lansdowne doesn't have a clue as to how this looks to the public.

DeMaio himself said, "You have to be able to poke fun at yourself. It put things in perspective, and I think this video puts things in perspective." Yep, it sure does. The perspective I get from it is none of you belong in office, and in particular Mr. DeMaio shouldn't run for mayor, something he's obviously gearing up for. If I was running against you, I'd use the video of the police chief tasering you in all my ads.

My very own city council member, Kevin Faulconer said, "I had a lot of fun, but when you do these things you're always worried about it. You're like, 'Oh man, did I just do that?'"

Yes, councilman, you did. And we'll remember that you did.

 

Off the books...

With Borders finally sighing its last gasp of 80-90% off book-selling frenzy, downtown San Diego is left with the harsh reality that it no longer has a bookstore.

When I first started visiting San Diego in 1992, downtown was full of bookstores. There was a whole gathering of them up near and off Broadway, including Wahrenbrock's Book House, the used bookstore that held out the longest. The side streets near its Broadway location where dotted with smaller stores and there was even--for a couple of years, at least--a comic book store in the same general vicinity. All of them are gone now.

Horton Plaza had two major bookstores (three, if you count Le Travel Store, which had a large travel book selection, and was also in HP back then; it currently exists on Fourth Ave, and still has a nice section of books), a Doubleday (which is also sadly gone from New York City...one of my favorite Fifth Ave. bookstores there) and a B. Dalton. After a while, I believe the Doubleday turned into a Waldens, which went away when Borders (the corporate parent of Waldens) opened downtown in 2004 or so, in a building they built at the corner of G Street and Sixth Avenue. That building--which I drive past every day on my way to the freeway that takes me to work--is now sadly--forlornly--empty. A narrow Borders sign hangs from its G Street side, marking a kind of bookstore ghost town, or ghost building at least. It's a shame, both from the standpoint of no bookstores downtown, but also because it's a beautiful building.

B. Dalton closed in Horton Plaza a year or two ago, to be replaced by a Crown Books. Someone evidently bought the Crown name, which was a chain of bookstores here in California (and possibly elsewhere, for all I know) when I first moved out here back in 1998. There were at least three I frequented, because they had huge discounts at that point in time. The new incarnation of Crown can also be categorized as a discount bookstore, but it unfortunately only features remaindered editions (if you need a copy of Frommer's Unofficial Guide to Disney World, 2005, they have you covered) and books that probably should not have been published in the first place. (Seriously...one of the 2011 calendars they had on display pre-Christmas was titled "Rats." I'm assuming it wasn't a best seller, but I was shocked enough to grab a photo of it, since I figured no one would believe me. Maybe it's big with research scientists. Or cats.) 

There is one small bookstore in the touristy enclave of Seaport Village, down behind the waterfront hotels and the Convention Center. It's called Upstart Crow, and while it has a small but nice selection of books, it also has a large amount of tourist claptrap. The nearest big bookstores to downtown is the still-existing (but don't blink) Borders in Mission Valley, the Booksmart in Point Loma, and a few remaining used bookstores in Hillcrest, along Fifth Avenue, between University and Pennsylvania. There's also a Barnes & Noble in Hazard Center in Mission Valley.

And that's all folks. The world of books in downtown San Diego has dwindled away to nothing. Some may call it poetic justice (pun intended) that the chains have fallen apart. I call it just plain sad.