kz does San Diego and LA

[kz1000ps]

The lovely girlfriend and I went on our first vacation since 2019, hooray! I've spent about two months out in Southern California over the years and I always have a good time out there, plus the lady has a best friend out there but has never been, so it became a no brainer.

There were many highlights, one major lowlight (a friend still dealing with personal issues and isolated in LA = no bueno) and then a good amount of mixed bag... namely that clouds of May Gray were in pretty heavy effect and that we stayed at an admittedly nice hotel in the touristy convention center area; not my choice but I didn't have to foot the whole bill ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The lovely Salton Sea and Salton City

My gf says "I had no idea California was so brown"

I like that funky '80s thing

My hotel

 

[kz1000ps]

Definitely glad we went to the San Diego Zoo. It's legit

Afternoon siesta

LA pics and more San Diego/La Jolla/Encinitas coming up....

 

[Arlington]

That "Summer is Brown" thing always amazes.

The inverse is that friends visiting Boston (or really anything on the Acela Corridor) marvel at how green it is here, including my nephew who'd grown up here but had moved to Texas 10 years ago. And climate change portends that as the rest of the country gets drier (California, Texas, even Georgia) the Northeast will get wetter still.

 

[kz1000ps]

That "Summer is Brown" thing always amazes.

Thing is, with the ongoing drought even the winters have looked brown up and down the state. Above Redding things are a bit more green, but pretty much everything from the Bay Area south have been in a perpetual state of b r o w n for nearly a decade now.

 

[393b40]

Yea CA is surprisingly brown compared to what people think. I remember being surprising by it the first time I went to SF around 2012.

 

[ra84970]

Southern California is much less brown when the poppies bloom. But, mostly brown most of the year. The NWS's Bay Area office posted a year-over-year comparison which shows how bad the 2021 drought season is. This year is particularly brown all up and down the Left coast.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1398474379214802951

 

[kz1000ps]

Time to go visit Loss Anguh-leeees

Pendleton

Hazy day.... couldn't see the San Gabriel mountains at all

Rando residences

Rando dude on a wall

Showing the girl LA's full weirdness

Roller skating dance class

Can't be a tourist in Venice and not check out the skatepark

Sunset struggling through the May Gray

And finally the drive down the 405

 

[Blackbird]

Man. Being a penguin in an outdoor enclosure in SoCal sounds not fun.

 

[kz1000ps]

^ Yeah, almost all other animals make sense in the desert/mediterranean/coastal climate, but penguins....?

These are for czervik.construction who asked that I take pics of the Harbor Club condo towers, a twin-ish tower development built in the late '80s. They certainly don't lack in their eighties-ness.

There's that lovely May Gray/June Gloom

 

[kz1000ps]

Time for some excellent tacos and burritos

La Jolla

Beautiful.

Full carfax report in the back of this E39 M5

Moonlight Beach in Encinitas

GLORIOUS

Mormon Temple

Downtown Ralph's and Horton Plaza (obligatory 1980s "downtown revitalization" mall) being redeveloped into glass box offices

And then off we go

Bye bye West Coast

 

[ra84970]

If you didn't have carne asada fries, did you really go to San Diego?

 

[Czervik.Construction]

Awesome!!! So glad you got the Harbor Club. Makes me want to listen to some smooth jazz, wear linen pants and eat pasta salad.

Those La Jolla photos were fantastic, too.

 

[kz1000ps]

Fire up the Cuisinart, throw some Kenny G on your brand new compact disc player, and pop open your preferred wine spritzer... it's 1989 baby!

 

[xec]

Awesome!!! So glad you got the Harbor Club. Makes me want to listen to some smooth jazz, wear linen pants and eat pasta salad.

I take it people don't do that anymore?

The transience of consumer culture is so depressing...

I'm sure in 1989 people thought wine spritzers, linen pants and pasta salad were what made life worth living.

I guess for the moment it's artisanal beer and avocado toast (if that's still a thing).

Soon the be replaced by...?

Oh well, at least I live in my own private Idaho as far as that sort of thing goes...but still depressing though...