La Jolla Beach. surfers & seals. Point Yuma.
Gaslamp District. craps with Gay Cowboys.
Friday, 9.21.01
Landed at San Diego International Airport, emptier than usual, since not many people are flying - the date... check out the date. It's noon; I'm early. Picked up shiny red Ford Explorer at rental place and drove through San Diego in search of Mission Valley and the Marriott therein.
San Diego isn't the easiest to navigate; lots of one way streets that take you other places than where you think you're going. Got used to it after accidental repeat visits to the same bits. If you visit San Diego bring a good map; wish I had. On my way to the hotel I drove through Balboa Park (twice), home to the famous San Diego Zoo, several museums, and a middle-aged guy in a flashy convertible cruising either me or my car. Maybe both.
San Diego looks like LA without the glitz, the glamour, and the attitude - whether that's a good thing or a bad thing depends on who you are. For what it's worth my favorite part is the stretch of University Avenue with funky shops and restaurants and the more interesting people.
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Checked in, had lunch in the hotel restaurant, and for a hotel restaurant it didn't suck. Determined that I did not, after all, want to participate in the Beach Ball Bash Pool Party even though it involved synchronized swimming. Got in the car to see more of the town.
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La Jolla Beach is one of the main attractions in San Diego. Drove out there first, cruising along the coast. Passed a small cozy community of young surfer dudes.
Me: "Hey, can I can park here?"
Dude: "Sure. No worries."
They're so cute.
Passed restaurants and strip malls, condos and houses. Lots of little public grassy areas along the low cliffs overlooking the ocean. Nice, cute, but not spectacular. It is, however, a refreshing change from New York -- especially the last couple weeks.
Took pictures of surfers struggling to catch a wave, walked along the shore to the seal cove and watched them flop around in the sun. Got back in the car, found Jamba Juice, I love California.
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By 5:30 got to Point Yuma, a small park on the tip of a long, high peninsula that overlooks the city on one side and the ocean on the other. You have to drive through a large naval base to get to the Point, and you can watch helicopters from the aircraft carriers perform maneuvers over the ocean. This is supposed to be the best place to watch the sun set over the ocean - odd because the park closes at 6:30. So depending on the time of the year you can either get kicked out before the sun sets or you can barely catch the sunset before immediately being kicked out. I was fortunate to experience the latter.
Point Yuma is a nice enough place to visit and very peaceful and the view of San Diego is okay but it's really not the prettiest city from a distance. Surprised at the amount of pollution; from here it's not so bad, like a layer of smog. From an airplane it was smothering under a cushiony blanket of brown air. Like it was drowning in fluffy, dirty sheep.
Point Yuma offers the visitor a couple of very short trails to some uninspired viewing stands, a very small lighthouse museum, and a couple of military exhibits. I suppose if anyone hard pressed for San Diegan activities could spend an afternoon here but that would be a stretch for even the most zealous tourist.
At 7:30 drove into the the Gaslamp District, San Diego's popular restaurant and nightlife destination. It's an interesting mix of the usual major national theme restaurants, upscale overpriced eateries, and inexpensive burger n' brew pubs. Ate at Alambre's, a super-cheap Mexican joint on the strip. It's as good Mexican food as you can expect to find anywhere outside of Mexico. The dishes are intended to be Mexican, and kind of vaguely resemble Mexican food, but don't have that real flavor you can only get there. I was disappointed that the Mexican food in the Southwest wasn't better. Decent Mexican food in New York is hard to come by, and I'd been looking forward to the real thing, but unfortunately almost all the Mexican food I had was a similar pale substitute. And the coffee was kinda weak. I fucking hate weak coffee.
It's 9 I'm back at the hotel to catch tonight's official gay rodeo activities, the Hoe-Down Dance and Diamond Spur Casino Night, which were both well underway. Paid small cover, got carded, received sympathy about the home town situation, and dove in. The crowd was definitely cowboy. The age range was roughly 35 to 65, two thirds men and one third women, and did I mention definitely cowboy. Most wore cowboy hats. Almost all wore boots.
The hotel ballroom transformed into a saloon and casino, with tables for craps, roulette, and blackjack. Stage was thick with country & western singers, Mae West-style drag queens, and what could only be described as a cowboy boy band dance number. Out through the back doors people swarmed around a couple of bars, a barbecue area, and an inflatable toe-tappin' cowboy boot the size of an up-ended Chevy Blazer.
An enormous white tent served as a backdrop to the outdoors activities, and housed the dancing. Yes and I kind of assumed that "Hoe-Down Dance" was a euphemism for the heavy bass-thumping, semi-naked, drug-infused, sex-on-the-dance floor club scene that I've been conditioned to expect everywhere one finds the gays. Instead the tent was filled with about 500 lesbians and gay men, most of which were two-steppin' to country & western. The music changed to Lady Marmalade and 100 couples immediately split up and broke into line dancing. One of the most fascinatingly bizarre things I've seen, and I must have slackjawed by the door for at least an hour.
No one was itching to meet me, in fact nobody noticed me at all. I was invisible, the only person not wearing jeans - tight Wranglers at that - and definitely the only person in cargo pants. Also I'm the only one whose shirt isn't tucked in. And the only one in sneakers. And with longish hair, and without a cowboy hat. Guess I'll never be the star-bellied Sneetch.
I was watching cowboys play craps in the casino, when Bob - that's Bob the Cowboy - well, Bob was only sort of a vistin' cowboy and not a practicin' cowboy - so Bob The Cowboy invited me in the game and tried to teach me the rules. Actually Bob The Cowboy tried explaining the game several times but it just wasn't taking. When the croupier, who was clearly frustrated with my idiocy, jumped in to explain I thought it would be best to politely pretend I understood. So I stopped asking questions and repeatedly bet on the two items I found least confusing. They passed me the dice and I embarked on a very long winning streak for the table, each throw resulting in "Yee-hah!"s from everyone until eventually, perhaps inevitably, I threw something bad and people lost. Such is life.
There's only so much excitement a guy can take in a day. Twenty-four hours earlier I was drinking overpriced cosmos at New York's trendy Bowery Bar, now I'm drinking Buds and playing craps with middle-aged gay cowboys. Everyone's life should be so random. It's some time after midnight. Time to hit the hay, y'all.
Click here for Day Two, San Diego:
a day at the gay rodeo.
