I moved out in 1979 from the Midwest when San Diego was still a sleepy little touristy town.
Lived there for some 13 years.
Yes it was truly fantastic.
Blacks beach. Hang gliders. Julian just minutes away. L.A. just two hours away. TJ just a short drive away. Balboa Park. UTC. And the occasional weekend getaway to Palm Springs.
Oh, and how can I forget, that Laguna beach holiday.
I was lucky to have a great job, just needed one, with plenty of money, and lots of free time to enjoy living in paradise.
But watching others work three and four jobs just to make ends meet, was very sad.
People wanted to move there, but found employment hard to find and housing extremely costly.
San Diego is a weird place, in that it is like the melting pot of the wealthy.
You could be in your 30's, working three jobs, driving a 15 year old car, just trying to survive San Diego.
Then you pull up to a stop light and look to the side, and there you notice some 20 year old kid in a brand new $80,000 Mercedes, dressed like a million dollars, and you wonder what the hell am I doing wrong???????????
Then you have the weather. And the forecast that never changed.
"Night and morning fog along the coast, followed by a high of 72."
Sounds great?
But day after day after day after day? Forever? Seemingly forever?
If you miss the seasonal changes and like a little variety in your weather, living in constant paradise can get a little nerve racking.
I lured several friends and relatives to San Diego, and sadly watched them become very distraught with scraping to make a living, fighting to survive, working several jobs, living in dumps in the worst areas of town, and still with little if any free time or money to enjoy paradise.
I was both extremely blessed and lucky. But that was my situation. Few others experienced that joy.
And more often than not, end up with having to work themselves to death just to scrape by.
My advice to anyone moving to San Diego is to have a solid plan i.e. enough money to get by for a full year, high employ-ability, a strong education, and a lot of luck.
And also, have an exit plan just in case things do not work out.
I actually had one friend from New Jersey living in my garage, homeless, for weeks before he realized San Diego just was not going to work out. No job. No hope. No money.
I paid for his airplane ticket back to N.J.
Yes, San Diego is and can be your paradise. But also your nightmare.
And the San Diego of today is not the San Diego of 1979 by a long shot.
Traffic is awful. Housing very expensive. Crime is pretty bad. And new construction is way out of control.
Living in San Diego is a lot like living in Hawaii.
Great, possibly, for a year or two, but then it can get to you.
Especially if you find yourself working three and four jobs just to get by.
At some point you have to wonder, is it all worth it?
The idea is to live foot lose and fancy free in paradise, with the time and money to enjoy.
That, sadly, seldom is the reality.
You end up working your ass off, with having no time or money to enjoy life.
And if you decide to give it a shot, and actually do move to paradise, try to resist the knee jerk temptation to live in the beach areas.
Every new comer wants to live at the beach. BAD IDEA !!!!
Traffic is terrible in and out, crime is unbelievable, and the housing value you get for the cost is nutz. I've actually seen several beach-area home owners put carpet down in their garage, call it a efficiency apartment, and expect $800-$1000 for rent.
$1000 a month to live in someones garage, just to live at the beach?
Well, at least within 15 blocks of...
I was extremely lucky with San Diego.
An once in a lifetime experience.
But I do not miss it.
I experienced it to its fullest. And that was enough.
Not too little, not too much. Just enough.