11/25/2022
Happy Thanksgiving, San Diego.
We’re grateful for Convoy District and its noodles and karaoke and strip-mall oases of pan-Asian life. Even grateful for its lack of parking, because if we weren’t forced to hunt for spots we’d lose the ability to hunt altogether and be useless during the apocalypse.
Grateful for North Park and its stores that sell candles and vinyl records and bottled oxygen captured at Patti Smith shows, for its people with free-range facial hair and free-range thinking.
Grateful for Little Italy, for the silver-chested men in shiny tracksuits, for the hallowed porch-sitters, those history-holders. Grateful for Mona Lisa’s deli case and the magic and health-department ambivalence of Waterfront’s popcorn machine.
Grateful for Barrio Logan and all its Milpas, how when the city built a freeway through the neighborhood those neighbors turned it into an globally famous art park.
Grateful for La Jolla and the city’s most accessible beach, all big-flat sand where generations learned what an ocean was and to get safely baptized and bonfired at its edges.
Grateful for Del Mar and its fairgrounds, where a city comes together to deep-fry itself, playing silly games knowing if we defy the carnival gods and somehow win, the giant stuffed animal will become a burden for the rest of our days.
Grateful for Cardiff and its kook, how that awkward fumbler became the toy doll of a city, and we get to play dress-up with it whenever we’re happy or mad or just half-drunk and creative.
Grateful for City Heights and Oak Park and Chula Vista and Carlsbad and South Park and Lincoln Park and all the parks. Grateful for National City and I.B. and San Ysidro and all the Sans. For Rancho Bernardo, Penasquitos, Poway, Mira Mesa, Scripps Ranch and 4S Ranch and all the ranches. For the topside quintet of OSide-Vista-San Marcos-Escondido-Fallbrook. Not grateful for Instagram’s word limit but grateful for all the hoods that didn’t fit into this spree of gratitude.
Grateful to you for supporting the creative minds who work at SDM as they scour the streets for stories about this wonderful and at times maddening city.
Thanks.
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