*I have been asking my... fellow kin to contribute to my ever expanding blog. Uhhh... he didn't send any pictures (which WOULD HAVE BEEN PERFECT, but the reading is as always, splendid. Enjoy!)
02/15/11
Dear Sir,
I would like to take issue with your recent characterization of Downtown San Diego as, “nothing more than a sprawling hobo camp set at the base of luxury hotels.” This description is neither fair nor accurate.
While I can appreciate the emotional basis for the sentiment, coming as it does from someone more familiar with the East Coast, I regard it as premature, and feel it necessary to clarify a few key issues.
San Diego is a city of opportunity. Be it enjoying the works of Classical composers in our Symphony Hall (a world-renowned institution that just celebrated its centennial anniversary), participating in the urban aesthetic of an up-and-coming generation, or just getting in some great shopping, our city has something for every taste.
Our climate, considered by many to be almost perfect, is regularly sunny and warm. Visitors can count on pleasant ocean breezes and low humidity throughout the year. Many people are surprised when, leaving the depths of their winters back home, they arrive in our fair city only to find bicycle tours and walking groups crisscrossing the streets!
In addition to our art-house cinemas, spoken-word cafes, modern art galleries and many museums, we here in San Diego are proud to call ourselves home to Balboa Park, the West Coast’s answer to New York’s Central Park, and perhaps some of the cleanest, most scenic and most biologically diverse acres of municipal land anywhere in California.
Thanks to a thriving technological sector and a vibrant Convention Center, Downtown San Diego attracts some of our nation’s best and brightest. The whole world comes here for the commercial and leisure opportunities that we offer. Simply walk down Fifth Avenue, the heart of the Historic Gaslamp Neighborhood, and you will find restaurants, bars, clubs and, yes, luxury hotels, all making for an unparalleled social experience.
Like any major metropolitan area, we are no strangers to the phenomena of homelessness and vagrancy. Yet I ask that you rid yourself of any preconceived notions and try to understand that, far from being a largely unsavory underclass, the street people of our city can in no small way contribute to your overall cultural experience.
Where else in America can you be serenaded by the bittersweet sounds of a broken harmonica first thing in the morning? What other city provides you the constant opportunity to be rid of all that pesky spare change jingling in your pocket, or all those extra cigarettes you wouldn’t normally have smoked?
When I stand on the corner of Broadway and Fifth Avenue and see groups of people standing idly about, I don’t see a mob of lewd, filthy, belligerently drunk and possibly schizophrenic degenerates.
I see lively discussions and animated debates.
I see the civic discourse that is the hallmark of our great nation. This is a city where a man, though he has no home and no pressing social engagements, let alone the sufficient fare, can feel himself the equal to any bus driver, and not be afraid to board that bus and explain his grievances. Never mind the raised voices and the profanity, the jostling of shopping carts and the spilling of empty aluminum cans; intellectual debate is never a tidy affair.
When I go for a stroll in this fine city, I don’t see an obstacle course of reeking flesh that I am loathe to have to cross. I see committed social activism.
At the height of the business day men in wheelchairs will push themselves backwards and hold signs in their laps on which they’ve recorded their socially-conscious and politically incisive thoughts, thoughts they will share with you as you pass. Morbidly obese women with faces made up like rodeo clowns will pause their scooters before shop windows and stare inside, blocking off all pedestrian traffic and making the dual point of our government’s inability to provide affordable healthcare to its citizens and our culture’s shallow preoccupation with physical appearance.
When I walk down the street at night and see row upon row of tent shelters from which emanate a dozen different radio stations, I can’t help but feel a swelling of pride in my chest. Inevitably I am reminded of the student sit-ins and the numerous campaigns of civil disobedience that have provided so much freedom to so many, and always at the expense of the brave few.
In keeping with our state’s noble heritage of frontier-survival and personal grit, our homeless population is of a hardy, resilient stock. When an entire life is fit into only a shopping cart and a couple of duffel bags, it is a subtle reminder against extravagant lifestyles and an eloquent censure of materialistic tendencies. When trash cans are scavenged and the excess of our gluttonous appetites is shown to be perfectly sufficient for more frugal souls, it promotes sustainable consumption patterns.
Is it any coincidence, I wonder, that these same sentiments have been voiced by no less than such eminent thinkers as Henry David Thoreau and Benjamin Franklin?
When we talk of art, we allow for the concept of discomfort. Groundbreaking art shocks, it awakens normally jaded sensibilities. Therefore the constant reek of urine that emanates from doorways and chain-link fences, the fecal matter that is streaked across pavement squares and sometimes even down the legs of jeans, the hysterical crying on the trolleys and the tirades aimed at the government, the White Man and the mind-control experiments of the CIA are all part and parcel of the same city-wide exhibition of art in its most modern incarnation.
San Diego is a city where you come to learn something new about the world, and, in the process, yourself. It is precisely for this reason that, far from wishing animosity between us, I would elect to extend the olive branch, and with it a renewed invitation to come and visit our fine city.
Just, please, this time bring an open mind.
Sincerely Yours,
One-Legged Pete
Chairman, The City of San Diego Board of Tourism,
455 7th Avenue, behind the 7-11
(it’s the green dumpster, not the blue one)
