Elevating Substance…

I finally had to head back to NYC from sunny SoCal on Monday afternoon, but suffice it to say I had an absolutely wonderful time in L.A. and San Diego. As chance would have it, one of my best friends from college, who now lives in DC, was in San Diego beginning on Saturday; another friend from school, who lives in NYC but whose family lives in San Diego, was also in town; a third friend from Boston was out visiting; a fourth was having a birthday party on Saturday… The posse was in full effect.

The trip got off to a rather inauspicious start when I showed up to the American ticket counter at JFK at around 9:30am to check my bag — a scant few minutes after checking the status of my flight — and finding that my direct to LAX had been unceremoniously canceled. Rather than sit seven hours at the airport and hope for the best on the 4:30pm, I had them stick me in a car service up to LGA and grab an 11:20am through DFW (one of my least favorite airports, not the least reason for which being that it’s near impossible to find much more than junk food in the terminal). It ended up working out, but seriously… No fun.

I’d never really spent much time in downtown Los Angeles to speak of, and, in fact, the last time I’d even passed through I got a distinctly ghetto impression of it. Admittedly, I’d flown out for a job interview from NC (on a flight that I believe was delayed that time, rather than outright canceled) a day after interviewing in NYC for the job I have now, arriving somewhere around midnight rather tired only to realize there’d been some sort of mix-up with the friend I’d planned on staying with and was, therefore,  sitting at LAX around 11:30 the night before the meeting with nowhere to stay. I ended up on some weird shuttle thing to civilization and landed a room not too far from the office I was supposed to head to in the morning, but only after driving up what felt like the total tailpipe of the city… Garbage in the streets, riff-raff and hooligans out on every street corner, everything looking rather run down. Not an area I wanted to be wandering with my garment bag late at night seeking accommodation.

Anyway, things seem to have changed quite a bit. The friend whose loft I stayed at near 6th and Main is, as chance would have it, a mere stone’s throw from a total of four other friends’ two respective lofts and a smattering of bars and restaurants that folks  have informed me is only increasing in size.  Based on some of the ones I saw and how crowded, it seemed like the influx of both residents and cool bars/restaurants/etc.  may have reached enough of a critical mass to tip the development scales, so to speak, and keep up the momentum for building things up around there. Sweet.

When we weren’t out and about in the neighborhood, though, I had the chance to see a some friends I hadn’t seen in a while; bum around Hollywood and Beverly Hills munching; hit the beach in Santa Monica; etc. Another friend was having a birthday party in Cardiff by the Sea on Saturday night, so we made the (three hours with traffic) drive down to San Diego that evening and, not having thought to try booking a room for the Saturday night over Memorial Day weekend until that afternoon — stayed at he spa /resort my buddy in town from DC had arranged a room at across the street from Mission Beach. Good times.

I’m glad to have gone back.  Despite having grown up in San Diego until I was around 12, I hadn’t actually been  in 18 years or so, and was mildly surprised to see a lot of things — signs, buildings — that I still felt like I recognized.  Sense memory, perhaps.  And certain features — physical landmarks and the like, distances between places I recalled — definitely seemed smaller and shorter than I’d remembered… A function of being, well, bigger and older now, I suppose.

We ended up dragging out our San Diego stint an extra night after a morning of imbibing on Sunday and deciding to rent a boat for the afternoon. I never thought I’d be on a boat.

But now? Back to work…