roaming_kate23

Flying into San Diego, with the view of the bay and North Island just beyond it. And Balboa Park.

I may be a little biased because this is the city that I have lived in all but 6 months(the first 6 months) of my life!

San Diego Zoo circa 1968

Sea World pearl divers(I remember this from school field trips.)

The Strand/Ken theatres

OG Del Taco

Kit Carson Park

Horton Plaza was confusing(YES!!) and a picture with the Broadway department store.

Fashion Valley circa 1974(I remember the OG Fashion Valley Mall before they up and redid it. There was a Woolworth’s there up until 1995(and yes,I remember shopping there) also the way it used to look(it was also one of several places in San Diego that had a Farrells.I could do a whole post on Farrells .That place was great!(IIRC there was also a Farrells at UTC for a while and what I recall was when you walked in there was a old school candy store. Gotta love a place that sells specialty candy(Horton Plaza had a candy store that had bulk candy in barrels, including a zillion flavours of salt water taffy!

San Diego chicken(I remember him well!)

Hotel Del under construction(fun fact:The Hotel Del was the first hotel in the U.S. to be wired for electricity,It’s undergone a few redos since.)

Ken theater)a very old school theater..there used to be a similar theater-and I can’t remember the name-in downtown La Jolla.

Flooding in Mission Valley(the reason that land-and Fashion Valley-were so cheap?It’s a flood plain and gets flooded when there is a significant amount of rain.)

The Almost Famous musical is now on Broadway.It debuted at the Old Globe and was a big deal especially since it was based on the movie.

Said movie was written by Cameron Crowe who grew up in San Diego(and there are several San Diego-centric moments, including his mom(played by Frances McDormand) talking about going to the Old Globe-the first time I saw the movie I was like “OMG!” and also a shot of the Campanile(bell tower) in Balboa Park.)

BUT..it’s the scene at the San Diego Sports Arena that is the most San Diego thing about it.(and it has not been the San Diego Sports Arena for a while but a lot of people still call it that-like the San Diego County Fair-I -and a lot of other people-call it the Del Mar Fair because that’s what it was when they were kids.)

*The heat wave finally broke and we are now having seasonally appropriate weather for the time of year.

But THEN we had rain and our weather people were freaking out because there was a chance of flash flooding.Only in the mountains and deserts .With all the freaking out you would think it was a county wide thing by how the weather was being reported on.

*On the Vintage San Diego Facebook there was a “guess where this is?” post, a picture from 1971.One of the guesses was Seaport Village.Really?All the way back then?(and I just looked on their Wikipedia page; they broke ground in 1978 and it opened in 1980. Really? It’s always been there since I can remember.

A while back there were a bunch of posts with pictures of Horton Plaza(R.I.P.)whilst it was being built.

As I’ve said before I have lived in San Diego 99% of my life, and in the 70’s and 80’s, too.So I remember a lot of places that are long gone.

There was a place near my parents’ house that had something that was like a bloomin’ onion..or a large onion ring..You had me at large onion rings, lol.

Pt. Loma Seafoods has always been good,..when they remodeled and expanded it it didn’t change the quality of anything else!

Only went there once but it gave retro vibes, and that’s the Red Fox Room. It closed, but opened in another location.Thing of it was that it was attached to a hotel that was giving retro vibes. Rather apropos if you ask me!

I just looked to see if the moving walkway at the zoo is still there(it’s not.)That was thrilling for me as a kid.

Whilst we’re talking about Balboa Park.. my favourite field trip when I was a kid was the Fleet Space Centre. Informational and all hands on and occasionally they would change what was in there but there are things that have been there since I was a kid and I was a kid some years ago.

I have lived in San Diego for the vast majority of my life and *points at subject line*.

There is a lot of history in this here city and we have several shows on our local PBS station about the history of San Diego and all of the places that you have wondered about..

Growing up, we always went to the usual places of historic significance(the Missions, Old Town, and some other unusual suspects(Sea World which isn’t even a specifically San Diego thing.I just went to Sea World for the first time in a LONG time and yeah..I remembered why I never was very impressed by it, to be honest.

And then you have the experiences that I put off for a LOT of years-like going on the Giant Dipper coaster in Mission Beach. A friend of mine bought me a ticket to go on there and I was THRILLED. I’ve always been a bit intimidated by the Giant Dipper but boy was it a thrill-in the best kind of way-and also the view-the view is amazing-probably one of the best in San Diego.

The new season of Animal Kingdom started on Sunday. It’s filmed in Oceanside and it’s fun to try and figure out “where in Oceanside was that filmed?”(though I do know some scenes are NOT filmed in Oceanside ) and being “OMG, they’re down by the harbour”, or “that’s on Oceanside Boulevard!”

I asked my brother about the place we went to-the marine antiques store.The place he went with my nephew was NOT it. As my brother remembers the store we went to was in Pacific Beach. My comment about the store owner not minding having kids in his store stands.

Secondly, I was watching an old 20/20 episode about Andrew Cunanan the guy who killed Gianni Versace . Yeah the action happened in Miami but Cunanan was from San Diego and it was a big deal here the whole time he was on then lam.

Seen also:The TV series The Assasination Of Gianni Versace which got it pretty right.

I randomly had a memory jogged(if you have to know it was jogged by something that I saw..) in any case I WAS going to talk about the Museum Of Man in Balboa Park. But then I decided to cover all of the park!

But we’ll start at Museum Of Man and work from there.One of my favourite things about the Museum Of Man was the lady who made fresh tortillas-with lots of butter-over in one corner.LOVED those-if we we went there for a field trip we’d always bring extra money -yeah, they were THAT good!

If you like views, park at the Hillcrest-adjacent side of the park and walk across the Cabrillo bridge-there’s a view out to downtown and the Coronado bridge.Also if you’re on the right hand side of the street, you go right by the dog park where there are always dogs running around (especially in the summer when my dad and I go to plays at the Old Globe..also on the route is the campanile(bell tower) which was open for tours for a while and which, when you got to the top had a view in every direction.I didn’t get the chance to do that-they have been retrofitting so it’s closed now-for good, unfortunately. The park dates back to the early 20th century so they’ve had to go through and retrofit.

Keep walking and you pass the Museum Of Art(which is amazing) and the Museum Of Modern Art(their sculpture garden is right next to the Old Globe.) Speaking of things I could do whole other posts on..The Old Globe is one.

Then there’s the Prado, which has really good food(and if you don’t want to wait for a table you can go to the bar.They have a limited menu but you should be able to find *something*)

Fleet Science Centre was a popular field trip when I was a kid-they have an IMAX theatre(for field trips it was always a combination of the science centre and IMAX which, being a nerdy child,I loved.They’ve redone it a LOT over the years (the better for future generations of school kids or even people who are just visiting from out of town.It’s someplace I would highly recommend.

Just briefly I’m going to mention a few things:
The carousel and the train ride(closer to the zoo than the Science Centre). I LOVED the carousel as a kid-it was pretty fast (so is the one at Seaport Village IIRC) and it was THRILLING to young me. So was the train ride.

Ashamed to admit I had never been to the Japanese friendship garden until quite recently.It’s a nice walk down a path and even on a hot day(like it was when we were there) it was plenty shady.