globalgrlSometimes I think we no longer see older people and this is significant to me as I find myself careening more and more toward that age of invisibility. I always remember the old adage ‘if only we knew then what we know now’. It could not be anymore true. And I am sure I was also guilty of young arrogance.
I arrived in San Diego in 1979 in my 1969 Cutlass 442 that I had bought for $300 from someone who worked for my Dad. I am sure I got a deal but it was kinda beat up, it was drab olive green with light green vinyl seats and the roof was peeling. It was very loud but hey it got me to SD with my 2 boxes and 1 American Tourister red suitcase and matching overnight bag that I got for high school graduation from my parents.
And no fear of anything.
San Diego in 1979 was a different time not only because a person could work A Job, I will repeat that, A JOB, any job and still have enough to support themselves. A SRO (Single room Occupancy) was not high flying, in fact it was seedy and low class to most but I had fun. It was called the Gordon and was at 1334 7th Ave, near 7th and Ash and just down from the Hotel Cortez which had just closed the year before. The Cortez had a Travolator that was a moving flat escalator that carried guests to the Holiday Inn across the street. Once the hotel closed bums often slept on the Travolator. I thought that hotel, even shuttered was the coolest building I had ever seen and I dreamed about living there.
Broadway was full of Sailors on leave, tattoo parlors and bars and pawn shops and not much else after dark. There was no redeveloped Gas Lamp Quarter and no one went much past Broadway after dark, certainly not past Market and we never ventured to Island.
Seaport Village opened in 1980 and it seemed way far out there, in the middle of nothing—no convention center or towering hotels.
When I lived at the Gordon, (and I would give anything to see a photo, but I remember it had this cool green subway tile on the outside). I think it was about 3 floors with maybe 36 rooms, so it was rather small compared to the St. James or Plaza, Hotel San Diego or Churchill.
We had a TV in the lobby and we all knew each other from meeting in this tiny area. I don’t really remember actually watching much TV but I do remember the plane crash at Chicago O’Hare in May of 1979. It was the most horrific thing most of us had known and we gathered around that old black and white TV set, united in our shock and grief.
Mainly, we sat in this little lobby if we were waiting on a phone call or just wanting to meet people. Just behind the little seating area with the TV was a genuine phone booth where whoever answered yelled out the names if they knew you or took a message and tacked it up on the wall if they didn’t.
The Gordon has been torn down now and nothing sits on the lot which is pretty sad and also amazing considering how there are very few vacant places left in downtown San Diego.
I worked for Manpower Temp Agency which was just across the street, most people did this when first arriving in the city without a job lined up. Manpower was always a sure thing if you could just type 40 words per minute and show some basic clerical aptitude. I believe they had another side for assembly line/factory work but I only did clerical. I worked at Solar and General Dynamics which were the big employers. I was offered a full time job at both and I am sure it would have been a good blue collar job but I had a newly minted college degree and wanted a job in human services which of course takes time to find.
Most of the people who lived at the Gordon were young and newly arrived like me but there were about 10 older guys who were Vietnam Vets and even a Korean Vet. They were down on their luck, victims mostly of divorce and PTSD but they had a disability check which allowed them to live decently, modestly but they were OK. They often seemed to go to family things on weekends and brought us back lots of leftover food, otherwise I only remember eating peanut butter with jelly from the jar or potted meat.
I made friends with a woman about my age who was from Canada and in the same boat as me. She got a job at a sandwich shop down the hill and sometimes brought us sandwiches to share. Then there was the rich guy, also our age, I am not sure why he lived there and he wasn’t really rich, just compared to us, but he drove a laundry truck, like fresh sheets and towels for hotels and diapers and he made $400 a week. This was unheard of in 1979 and he once took me on a date to the fanciest place, a French Restaurant and I thought I had died and gone to heaven. Having grown up in the Midwest I had not been exposed to very many cultural dining experiences outside of Italian and German. I took to all the new food introductions like a duck to water. I honestly can’t think of a food I did not love. But during that timeframe, I especially loved FREE FOOD.
We walked everywhere, up and down all the hills, I rarely remember driving and in fact my car was a problem with regards to parking. That is one downtown SD situation that is pretty much the same from 1979 to 2019. No free parking and if you find some you must move it every three days so as not to get chalked then towed. It often would not start because I drove it so little and one day I was at Ocean Beach with a friend and I had on some Daisy Dukes. I don’t think they called them that yet but they were cut off jeans with pockets hanging down. I had my keys in the pocket and who knew a wave could be strong enough to turn me upside down and steal my keys!?! I had to pay $10 for my room key and that was the day I decided I had had it with that nuisance of a car so I sold it for $350 to a Navy guy who was dating my sandwich shop friend. In my 22 year old mind I did well because I made $50. What I would not give today to have that car!
After the Gordon, I lived with a few different friends in forgettable apartments for a few months at a time. The coolest was on Brant Street just off of I-5 in Banker’s Hill and only a handful of apartments in a U-shape owned by Angie, one of the first female cops in San Diego. It had been her and her husband’s home and when he died she said her therapy was tearing it apart and having it made into several apartments. We could see the Rueben E. Lee, an iconic steamboat restaurant, from our deck and inbound planes came over so close that sometimes jet fuel dripped off. From our deck we could also see the boats floating in the harbor and and it was then that I decided I must own one.
Free anchorage was where poor people had boats and they rowed in to shore. I think it is still here or something similar but I believe they have cleared out all the really circumspect boats (bizarre old beloved klunkers to me) and it now seems regulated. But I have not been able to find out much information yet on the current free anchorage situation.
In 1982, thru a friend of a friend I found an old late 60’s TollyCraft, 32 ft. that was pretty torn up on the inside and had one engine maybe missing and one maybe fixable. I paid $350 down and $100 a month for $850 total. I decided to live on it and save money and so I spent 3 crazy fun months. By this time, I worked as an Eligibility Technician for the San Diego County Social Services. I could row in and go to the County Administration building, take a shower and hop on the bus to work. Pretty simple and easy at the time.
There was this guy who had a huge boat, like an old steel hulled, maybe retired tuna fishing boat, probably 50 ft and it was black and scary looking, his name was Shooter and it was painted on his boat. Another guy had a trimaran and they both helped me scrape barnacles and work on my boat. Mostly we blew off the work and went sailing on the trimaran down to Baja. We took Marlboro and M and M’s candy and traded for lobster at Puerto Nuevo before it became overrun with tourists. Good times!
Then my sister graduated college back at University of Arkansas. She had her newly minted Architecture Degree and wanted to come live with me and make it in San Diego. Well, she was my baby sister and I always felt like I had to take care of her even when she didn’t need it, so I gave up the boat life.
This sister, Laurie, did become a very successful architect here in San Diego and in the way that I find life strange by things twisting and turning and yet always coming back around, I now go by the same Country Administration building that I showered in and see the outside, Waterfront Park, a 17 acre Civic Park, that was my sister’s project. I see kids playing in the beautiful fountains and find myself really moved to know that my sister created this.
The same sister who I am sure became an architect because back in our little hometown in the 1960’s, where horses and the woods and Indian lore were our life, I had been in love with Little Kiddle dolls and my favorite was Sissy Sailboat. Laurie and I would build a dam in the creek then blow it up so that Sissy could go faster in her little boat. As all kids do, we kept trying to make the dam better and the explosion bigger, Laurie would lie in bed and design them to blow up the next day. A star is born.
Later I moved to Golden Hill and it was considered truly seedy even then but I loved it.
I loved the Turf Club beginning in 1985. I found out since moving back that it is now considered a true Hipster joint and so I visited. The grill in the middle of room was the same and the steaks were the same and they still have black and white TV but that is all part of the act now. The lights are brighter, the drinks are fancy and at $10 a pop there are no shots in the dark and cheap bills. No dirty curtain to part as you enter, now they have a real bouncer, probably for the people who complain about the price of watered down drinks.
One of the best surprises I got was to see my corner mom-and-pop store still there– Jaroco’s but then I went in and now it is mostly a liquor store with high priced convenience store items. Sigh.
My old place there, a Victorian on A street that was converted into a duplex, cost me $600 a month that I split with a roommate in order to afford. I found out it now rents for $3000 a month. But it looks mostly the same.
My first real job (I mean obtained with a college degree) was down at the San Diego County Welfare Office in Logan Heights, at 25th and Imperial in an old Safeway building. I drove by there and it is now a new fire station. I would say quite an improvement.
By 1989 we had the SD Trolley, but it only went to Popular Market on 12th Street. The Gas Lamp was humming along and Horton Plaza had opened in 1985. By this time, I was working on Beech Street and we walked down there often at lunchtime. It was such a radical departure for mall architecture and people loved it, the crazy levels and outdoor concept. Before Horton Plaza there was a small park fronting Broadway called Horton Plaza Park and that is where almost all the homeless of San Diego hung out, it was about the size of a football field.
I left San Diego in 1989 but because my sister and family still lived here, I visited and still kept up with the development although nothing like being immersed in it as I am now. The homeless population has exploded, my conservative guess would be 10 times. Gaslamp was 1st to 6th south of Broadway and downtown ended the east to west part at 12th (also called Park Blvd.) Now the streets 7th -12th are called East Village which really is just like Gas Lamp only less touristy and as of very recently they have added the next 4 blocks to 16th and call it Maker’s Quarter. All very trendy with the restaurants, brew pubs and the like and the reverse migration is something to behold.
The further east you go the more homeless you must walk thru in order to get anywhere at night. Gone are the days that a person could have A JOB and support themselves. I mean an Average Jane or Joe, I won’t even go into homeless Vets who return having served their country and are unable to work and become homeless, that is a separate blog post or book would be more fitting and decent.
At any rate, now I live in East Village with all my trendy little fellow Idea 1 dwellers and I look out at my spectacular view and see the sign for the Hotel Cortez or Hotel St. James or Churchill, all swanky and redone and I remember who lived there back in 1979 that I knew and I remember that they paid even less than my $35 a week because they were on the wrong side of Broadway afterall. Always a caste system! I once had a sociology professor who loved to pontificate on this, he called it Social Stratification and being from the Midwest we all knew rodeos, he spent one entire class lecturing us about how even a rodeo had a caste system. It somehow revolved around people who paid simple entry fees to ride a bull vs. people who owned and trailered their animals and lots more, pretty silly it seemed at the time but cool beans to this hipster now and 40 years later I see it everywhere and in everything.
But I look back at my younger life in San Diego, I was a Social Worker and I guess I would be called lower middle class or working class, I know that I was 1-2 paychecks away from dire straights and we all talked about this even then. It seems to be a popular talking point now but it was then too. Nevertheless, we could afford what we needed and going out to eat or drinks sometimes (if we didn’t have kids, then you probably needed two incomes for sure). But in 1989 B street was kind of a cool street with lots of great restaurants and just like Hillcrest the sidewalk cafes were always full of people with disposable income and fun on their minds instead of bills. Now I see so much money in new buildings here in East Village, but I do not see the restaurants as crowded as I think they should be by correlation. I hear a lot of talk about people barely making it and on the local news, Channel 10 they even have a daily segment called “Making it in SD”.
All in all, San Diego is truly the finest city in the US but the cost of living here is prohibitive to so many. I see the stress and toll it takes in restaurants that fail, in the road rage, in our numbness to the homeless.
And yet people seem to be willing to do almost anything to call San Diego home and that brings me a smile because in that respect nothing has changed from 1979.