Posted on 05/19/2023 12:17:45 PM PDT by Scott from the Left Coast
I took my weekly trip to San Diego this week. This is something I have done for more than a decade, just to get a change of scenery, look at the ocean take in a ballgame and just relax for a short spell…it’s a manageable drive from where I live, in a state without an ocean.
I have, over the years, noticed a degradation in San Diego, mostly downtown, but the obvious destruction and malaise in California, while present, was actually somewhat muted in the once fair and relatively conservative city of San Diego.
But this week I witnessed things that are beyond anything I can imagine in a society that even has a modest chance at survival. This is beyond economic decay and poverty, beyond the lack of infrastructure maintenance, beyond environmental concerns (which seems, in tremendous irony, to be the only thing the people there care about). But the environment there is one of human destruction at a level that is simply unimaginable to someone born in mid-20th century America. It is human hopelessness everywhere you cast your eyes.
My experiences included watching people - on city streets, on the walkway to the ballpark, on the corner by the gas station, on the beach - openly smoking drugs (meth or heroin, I guess) out of glass pipes, once in the sight of police that did nothing (on orders from the city, I presume). Marijuana could be whiffed on the beach (expected) as well as inside Petco Park (not expected).
But really, the rampant drug culture was the least of it. Homeless encampments stretched on downtown streets as far as you could see in every direction. Even in tourist districts like Mission, homeless encampments lined the streets and parks. Garbage and drug refuse were littered everywhere…even on the beach walk. But that wasn’t even the worst of it.
While driving to a store we saw an obviously mentally ill man ranting and raving and kicking a bag of something on the sidewalk, screaming at the top of his lungs. He grabbed the bag and chucked it at my car (I suppose he saw me looking at him), it hit with a thunk (no damage)…knowing there was no recourse, I drove on. In the parking lot of the store there was blaring announcement that lot was monitored by security…well, that’s supposed to relive you but one look at the one really scrawny female security guard pretty much put the lie to that.
Later, asI parked in the Tailgate Lot next to Petco Park, there were obviously mentally ill people camping there. One had a broad knife and was whacking away at the shrubbery near his squatting place as we walked past. Not ten steps later we saw a young man sleeping as if dead on the sidewalk, all his belongings piled around him. He actually looked decently dressed, though the many people walking past him, inches away, heading to the ballpark, didn’t rouse him at all from his death-like sleep. Across the street were more drugpipe smokers “partying” it up before they went comatose. The police and security did nothing. And even that wasn’t the worst of it.
The worst was when leaving the beach being held up by police cordons and fire trucks…the police actually shied up! That was when I saw two bodies laying covered right at an entrance to Mission Bay park.
All this in just a few day’s time in a place that had none of it, or at least none noticeable everywhere you turned, 10 years ago. All of these various people I witnessed were white people in their 20s and 30s, male and female, the people that some years ago would be getting careers and families started. It isn’t that these things were just witnessed once or twice - it was everywhere in unimaginable numbers. It was noticeably more than four years ago - a LOT more.
This is a dying society, and from everything I witnessed I’d say it needs to die - the sooner the better.
General Dynamics shut down in 1992 and we were forced to move because of my job, along with about 16,000 other people affected by the shutdown. We now live in Arizona but always, like you, made many nostalgia runs to San Diego.
Last year we saw the same decay you described. it was shockingly depressing to see the decline. It has all been given up to the druggies. It was so bad, even at the Embarcadero, we did not want to leave the car unoccupied to watch the harbor Christmas parade of lights as we had done for 30 or so years.
It is beyond a shame, it is a crime what the politicians have done there. Yet, you know, they got voted in by the people that live there. I guess you can fool most of the people most of the time.
100%
Yep. The most important thing we should take from this first-hand report of the reality of San Diego, is that there is a couple of typos is the report. I wish the spelling and grammar police would just over-look those errors and respond to the actual posted article, and in this case the despair in the writer’s experience.
San Diego used to be such a vibrant and economically sound city. It’s a shame to see that it has fallen to such a point. The fact that the drug-addled population, who are literally dying on the streets are the ones at the age where their entire lives should be in front of them with endless possibilities as to what they can do and achieve, just makes the situation more heart-breaking. Our tax-dollars subsidize the behavior which is why more and more are ending up in such a state.
Rather than spending tax dollars on organizations that meet monthly to drink coffee and count the increase in the number of homeless in the city, money should be spent on treatment centers where these people can be involuntarily committed for the help they so desperately need.
but the ruination of all of our beautiful areas is across the nation....I hear even in Hawaii....
its purposeful...allowing these bums and druggies to take over our cities...
You should see what drug use has done to Portland and SF.
San Diego is nothing compared to those cities.
Coming to the rest of America sooner than you expect.
We used to drive from Tucson to San Diego every summer for vacation. In the mid sixties, it was quite a beautiful place.
What else can one expect from democrat politics?
Sorry, doing this on an iPad in my crazy house today was trying!
No, sorry…I have gone yearly, or twice yearly some times.
You couldn’t build enough asylums and mental health clinics to keep up with the promiscuous drug use.
Just trying to spare subsequent readers the trouble of puzzling over what the author was actually trying to say.
I, myself, was stumped by the mention that the police had "shied up." Was thinking, "Well, horses can shy... But what does it mean when the police shy?!" Then it dawned on me...
Regards,
Bookmark
It’s already there. I will no longer to go downtown Denver for any reason
Lived there 85-92, the I5/805 insanity finally got to me.
Brother lived there a lot longer before leaving, told me of some of the changes before the current bum epidemic, and it was sad.
Great town mid-80’s.
Back in the late 60s, when we’d go to San Diego, we’d go down to Tijuana to look at what the Third-world was like…San Diego was beautiful, safe an fun…to live dangerously you’d go Tijuana.
I haven’t been to Tijuana in decades, but San Diego today is far worse than Tijuana was back then…far worse. It is not a good feeling to live in a country that has fallen this far.
San Diego used to be my absolutely favorite place to visit. We always stayed in a hotel by the harbor and fell asleep to the sounds of the rigging on the masts. I’m very glad I can’t go back to see those dreams replaced by the behavior that is taking down the country that I knew and loved.
I’m in a tiny town of about 10,000 people in MA. It’s a conservative town with a square, summer concerts and a creche for Christmas. At patriotic celebrations like Memorial Day, there’s still a ceremony in the town cemetery. We don’t see evidence of the deterioration that’s happening elsewhere. I fervently hope we won’t lose this island of peace to the destruction we read about everywhere.
You are correct. America is collapsing, bankrupt and embracing Satanism & insanity. Only divine intervention can save it at this point, and that is highly doubtful.
Same where I am in another Southern state. Areas are now filled with drug-addicted and mentally ill “no go” zones. Breakins occurring in suburbs.
And we’re supposed to worry about China & Russia?
Our nation is DYING here and how, from the inside.
That won’t happen. Our nation is bankrupt, wasting trillion on wars abroad and people don’t want to work hard and do what it takes to have a good nation again.
I’m a CA native, born in North County, now an expatriate for over two decades. I left shortly after the electricity “deregulation” debacle, a good decision for sure. That said, one thing I’ve missed some is the natural beauty that’s so abundant and varied there.
I traveled to San Diego a few years ago, but didn’t have time for much sightseeing and didn’t see too much decay. Sorry to hear things have gone downhill so much, I’m likely headed that way again soon...
One can only hope sanity and common sense prevail across this great country sooner rather than later!
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