Originally Posted: 2005-04-28 23:08 (no longer live)
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I hate you

Why I probably hate you.

I’ve been here in SD for about one year. It’s been long enough to agree with my first impressions of this place, which were negative, but offset by my rising property value, weather, fish tacos, a decent local video store, the ability to wear flip flops in Dec, and alcohol.

The positives are still there, but you San Diego people continue to irritate me, and there is a very high chance that I hate you.

Why do I probably hate you?

Let’s start with what you drive. During my long commute each morning and afternoon I believe that about one out of three vehicles on the road is an SUV or oversized truck. Obviously, if you drive one of these, you are evil and I hate you.

Since you drive a SUV, you use more gas, which supports tyranny and theocracy of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iran, UAE (because you are from SD, you probably don’t know what or where that is, but I don’t want to teach you anything, I want to bitch at you). Because you drive these monster cars, you also may be making the world unsafe for our grandchildren, by producing more greenhouse gases, and you obviously do not care. Nor do you care about the fact that the bumper of your monster truck is raised up to skull crushing level, should you ever run into my child’s car seat. I therefore hate 1/3 of San Diego, by my rough poll, because based on what you drive, you are evil. I reserve special hatred for hummer drivers: you are going straight to hell.

High culture. San Diego has almost none. I met one person, other than myself, who has been to a cultural event more significant than a movie or rock concert. That person was from Boston. The only art museum worth driving to is in LA, it’s called the Getty, and it’s only worth going to for the views. Next to East Coast museums it contains random cast offs. The art galleries that dot places like La Jolla must sell the unsightly to the unwitting.

There is little literature. There are a few readers, and many watchers of every banal TV show created. People in San Diego are those for whom TV advertisements are designed, like SUV commercials. For those who’s last true cultural event, play, museum, symphony was never, I hate you. For those who’s last great book was along the lines of ‘Wind in the Willows,’ (or even, shudder, Dr. Seuss) I have pity for you. I have met exactly no-one who considers literature as an important part of their life. Spookier, very few people have a similar replacement for an internal, personal, cultural and intellectual life. And no, TV doesn’t count for that.

Beach ‘culture.’ This is an odd sort of culture, in that it is almost illiterate, but I suppose illiterate cultures do exist. This culture seems to exist primarily to sell plastic things to tourists, who confuse San Diego’s beaches and their 40 degree waters with the great beaches in tropical locales. The beaches also serve as a social structure for addicts of various types, and any stroll on the beaches is likely to turn up as many alcoholics, addicts, and insane homeless people as seashells. To the guy who broke into my car at PB: I really hate you. If I could find you, I’d start by breaking your ankles, then, when you’re not going anywhere, I’d teach you to be nice. Another secondary purpose of the beach seems to drive up home prices to ever more silly levels. A glimpse of blue means many tens of thousands of dollars for those lucky 70 year olds and their families. What ‘beach culture’ does not mean is anything productive whatsoever.

People who are part of the San Diego beach culture, I hate you. Stop taking yourself seriously; beach culture is mostly sloth and wasted human potential with some criminal accomplishments and tourist traps, nothing more.

Furthermore, the people out here have the delusion that SD is the most perfect place to live. Any words to the contrary are followed by, “But this is the most perfect place, isn’t it nice out?” Are you all on Soma? Your eternal happiness: I hate it.

Work. San Diegans crowd the highways from 7:30 to 10 AM. I’m sure they’re off to work. Most seem to work in real estate. I don’t. I did come out here for a job, which I thought would be challenging, fun, and would bring me to a lovely part of the world and which I’m happily leaving. I’m going to make almost 50% more on the East coast on salary level, but I’ll probably do even better with bonuses and options. Why are San Diegans' so cheap? Taking a salary hit so you can rent an apartment in PB and surf every day? I don’t know. I just hate you for being cheap.

To the guys over at Salk: I don’t hate you, I want a cure for the diseases I’ll eventually get. So keep it up. I wish you could get to work faster though. Like most people who live in San Diego, it’s highly unlikely that you’re actually from San Diego. (Especially if you’re a brilliant researcher). The only people I like in SD are people who just moved from somewhere else, and confess to me that people here have nothing interesting to say. After about 5 years these expats go native and turn banal and throw out their books.

Where do you go over weekends? You go to malls, usually strip malls, where you buy shit, and may even rarely buy a mass consumption book and consume soulless coffee and sugar in mass quantities. I hate strip malls. The only people who go to malls should be old people.

I generally like old people, who actually suffered through their lives before SUVs and made the world a better place. San Diego contains more retirement homes than good bistros. Old people are everywhere in this city of sprawl and density. I see more medical supply stores than your revolting In&Out stands. And I do not hate the old people, unless they drive SUVs (rare, SUVs appear to be owned by fat white men and sometimes driven by their fat wives).

Sports: I hate paying taxes into this city who then allows a ridiculous football team to bend them over and fuck them while taking my money and any roids they can bring across the border. San Diego football, I hate you (and I have met exactly two Chargers fans, whom I obviously hate).

Which of course, leads to the government the San Diegans chose. Corruption vs. incompetence is the rule, as is re-election of all guilty parties, the general public neither cares nor has other options. They owe millions to a pension plan that they wanted to ignore and make go away, except it didn’t. This appears to be the city government’s general plan: ignore any problem and hope it goes away. It’s worked so far for pollution (out to sea, over the border), traffic (I hate 5, 8, 805, 52 – no good public transportation, of course, because that was just a pretend promise), immigration (Sponge Bob is less porous than our borders), and lack of attention to schools, which rank low (want your kid to learn how to play a musical instrument: pony up some cash). San Diego government big wigs who are corrupt, incompetent, and lazy, I hate you.

The mayor just quit, which speaks volumes about the character of the people out here: the going gets tough, the San Diegan retires (to their million dollar house they got for 2000 bucks in 1980). The next person in line for mayor is a guy who is fighting a federal corruption charge, and who may go to jail while mayor. The person who really won the last election is part of the beach ‘culture,’ and speaks about as slowly as someone with Parkinson’s after three Xanax and five joints. Her vocabulary and apparent intelligence is on par with the best public education San Diego provides. She appears to have been part of SD’s beach ‘culture’ long enough to have a case of skin leather that could block anything N. Korea could throw at us. Seriously, could the military people take a look at Fry’s face? She may provide materials that could make America’s missile defense unnecessary. All these people and who-ever I’m not mentioning: just go away like the mayor did. Please. You’re from San Diego, you know you have it in you to quit. Please do so tomorrow. You are all so shitty and worthless that you’re not worth hating.

Overall you might think I’m filled with hate. But that’s not true. I just hate San Diego. And most of the people who live here.

I’m leaving. Goodbye.




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