Letters to the Editor
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Sara Robinson and AJCalhoun
Sara, write a book! or at least an article. that, "There's California, and there's California. You're in the beach-and-sun good-life Republican surburban military California, big time." was great! (and i've never even been there! (you'll find your BEST audience has never been anywhere!)). AJCalhoun, sorry if i'm being personal, but you wrote it! "recent divorce after 24 years of mostly a very happy marriage" - how can *that* happen!!?? i admit it worried me, i'm in a 24 year happy marriage! but mine has been getting better and better for the past 10 years. i thought that was true of everybody!
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Frustrated
I am a born-and-raised New Yorker and I still have yet to wittness a juicy crime of any kind, much less something dramatic like a shooting. Maybe you just needed to move to the burbs and commute like me instead of going all the way across the country.
And ambition is overrated. The moment my family life allows I'd love to move to a mellow place where no one has any ambition and are non-confrontational. Who needs this rat race shit anyway? And, trust me, it's colder here than you remember.
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Why do you want to live in San Diego
Dear New Yorker,
I have never been to San Diego, but know several people from San Diego. I recently went on a trip to India and met a guy from San Diego, watching him fall apart during the trip due to his lack of understanding about anyone outside of suburbia.
I don't think the real question is why you came to California, but rather: Why you ended up in San Diego?? I live in the Bay Area (Oakland), and have always lived in the Bay Area, and would never dream of living in San Diego. I would strongly suggest you get out of San Diego and get into the Bay Area.
I meet a lot of different people in my job, and many people from New York swear I am from NY, even though I have only spent a few days there. I think people say this because I am pretty concious of the way many parts of Californian culture try to stay on the surface of things in a way that can drive people from NY (and others)crazy. I prefer to cut to the chase. Your stories about work are perfect examples, and I don't think you are going to be happy if you remain in California Suburbia. So check out the Bay Area and you may find the California that you came for.
Kevin in Oakland
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Good idea, wrong city
There's California, and there's California. You're in the beach-and-sun good-life Republican surburban military California, big time.
Gotta jump on the bandwagon about S.D. being an alternate reality. My girlfriend moved there six months ago, from San Francisco, so I've been seeing some of it. Preliminary thoughts- there's a strong Southwestern connection, more like Arizona/New Mexico, with a population subset that swings between, say, Phoenix and Del Mar. People seem excessively happy there, which is fun till you find out that it covers passive-aggressive behavior like you've never seen. The quantity of development and apparent money for huge cookie-cutter houses on the ridges (and huge freeways to serve them) can be startling.
A business guy I talked to on the way to the airport commented that, while he really liked living there and probably retiring there, everyone seemed kinda the same. That's certainly been my impression of the restaurants so far.
S.D. has to be the major population center in California least like NYC. Into biking or surfing? Cool place. Into city life? Not there.
Cary's advice to the LW might be OK, especially if the purpose of the letter was to get permission to go back, but I think they seriously need to consider that their first try just landed them in the wrong part of the state.
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Go North!
Having been born and raised in San Diego until the age of 18, living many years in San Francisco, then LA, and now back to SD, I feel quite qualified in suggesting that you don't leave California yet- but try LA or SF. It's very true what others are saying about those wonderful cities. SD just happens to be particulary boring, unless you really really dig the ocean sports scene. It's great for ocean living- surfing, boating, fishing, sunbathing, etc. But otherwise, I find it lacking in true culture for young progressive types. It has no sharp "edge" like LA or SF. Now that I'm old(er) I don't mind the slower pace of life. But I could have never have handled this as a 23 year old with a restless wandering spirit hungry for life experiences. Go north young warrior!
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Try another country
You're young and presumably employable. Grow a pair and move abroad while you still can. Spend a year or two in a completely alien, foreign culture, then come back to the US.
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Me too! Me too!
I left NYC for San Diego back in 1989 after my husband (at the time) got stationed here. While my life is obviously here (I'm remarried now and have had another baby since then), my HOME is there, as is my heart.
I always joke that moving to San Diego was the furthest I could get without either (a) swimming or (b) learning another language... the "native" San Diegans laugh uproariously, and the transplants just kinda stare at me incredulously.
And as for "them" not getting where YOU'RE coming from? hehehe... I don't get where THEY are coming from! I have been in situations where I have been completely vilified for speaking my mind (as if I could do anything ELSE?) - my own husband told me some time back that I have no tact. TACT? WTF?
I often think about going back, and have many good friends back home... but let's be honest, after 18+ years, I'd freeze SOLID the first time the temp dipped below 40 degrees. LOL!
EXCELLENT ARTICLE, sent it to ALL my friends and family. :)
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New Yorker, go home
Re: I left New York for San Diego and now I don't know where I am
Oh-oh, Cary, I think your anti-New York bias is showing! Your response, shorn of its thoughtful rhetoric, essentially boils down to: "Go back to New York, creep." I wonder, if the writer had not specified his origins, would your advice be the same?
I'm a New Yorker who lived in southern California for ten years, and I found the animosity toward New Yorkers both puzzling and pervasive. Just as residents of Washington and Oregon despise the relocated Californians in their midst, Californians love to hate New Yorkers.
Allow me to illustrate with an anecdote: I was standing in line at a sporting goods store checkout when a pushy woman barged in right in front of me. I turned to the person behind me in line, another woman, and shrugged, as if to say, "What do you think about that?" She nodded in sympathy and added loudly: "She must be from New York. " The woman in front overheard and took offense. She turned and yelled angrily at the woman behind me, "I was born and raised in Southern California!" Then the two of them had a good old shouting match. I kept quiet; there was no point telling them where I was from.