Debbie Does Drivel

A Self-Professed Hypocrite's Point of View

Sometimes (translation: a lot), I feel something's wrong with San Diego.
When I first moved here from Chicago in 1986, I hated this place more than my dad hates small cars.
It was so artificial -- the palm trees looked plastic, the people too blonde, the ocean too sparkly. I wanted my environment cold and forbidding, like the Midwest in winter.
San Diego was all sizzle, but no steak.
I discovered this quickly.
Everyone seemed so concerned with appearances, they forgot the soul.
I'd go to a concert -- the silence from the crowd deafened me. No one was rocking! No one whooped and hollered. Same went for sporting events. It was like the San Diego Stepford Wives. Pretty faces. No emotion.
Or a parfait. The damn thing looks so good, but it's really just a bunch of tasteless air-tossed Cool Whip.

The people who subscribe to the notion of worthiness by virtue of car, house, hair, bod seem so vacant. And in San Diego, it's concentrated: it's a communal assurance that all it takes to make it is appearances, and it really doesn't matter what's inside.

Back then, I'd run around disappointed a lot. I couldn't locate anyone who thought beyond the day at the beach. Seemed like everyone my age I talked to were "going back to school at the community college, for the fourth time," or "taking some time off to play."

Why? My theory: it's too nice here. If the weather is perfect everyday, it breeds a sense of immediate gratification. A "it's so nice out, I can put off college another year while I hang with my friends at the beach/outdoor bar/boardwalk." It's a nice feeling of "all is right with the world," that eclipses uncomfortable thoughts of "I have to work toward a future." Why think of attending school for four years now? Let's enjoy today and think about that tomorrow!"
[ed. note: this is my everyday non-San-Diego-native line of thinking, but you are now getting very very sleepy, your eyelids are droopy, you do not remember anything said within brackets.]

In other parts of the country, it's freaking freezing, your ubiquitous butt has long ago froze and cracked off and sits on an icy sidewalk amidst other people's frost-bitten, frozen-off butts. You have no choice. What else are you going to do? You study. You plan for the future. You go to church. You develop things like family values. There's nothing else to do around these God-forsaken places. It's too sub-zero. Long wind-torn days are broken only by a three-month humid summer respite where we're all so happy to be warm we drink in pubs and have drunken street festivals and oh...are you people still here?

But like with anything, it's not all or nothing. A move back to Chicago, and a two-year stint in L.A. later, I'm back in San Diego. I've located some down-to-earth friends (and some not so much, but I try not to be too hard on them), realized San Diego is more involved with arts and culture these days, and mostly: that there are enough people from other parts of the country here now to take the Sand out of San Diego.