Victor Davis Hanson has been writing about the collapse of civilization in California for decades. It has fallen incredibly far from what it once was. I moved there in 84 and stayed for a while between deployments overseas.
As I read Hanson's last column it's like reading Tolkien's Lord of the Rings and the Scouring of the Shire at the end. That's basically what happened to the state. When I moved there in 1984 for the Navy it was still a very nice place to live. I lived in downtown and uptown San Diego, Encinitas, Solana Beach and Emeryville and it was all good. It was coastal to be sure.
The 5 was still quite drivable and I used to commute to San Jose and Berkeley from San Diego on the road just because it was a nice drive, I like to drive at night, I had a convertible and I drove with the top down and just enjoyed the open road. The last 10 years it all went totally to hell and I moved out of the state in 2011. It was nice while it lasted. When I go back there for visits the 5 is a disaster and sucks and I haven't been on 152 in ages although I used to drive it twice a month for years. 101 and 1 were still passable except Big Sur which keeps sliding into the sea and driving through Malibu always sucked even on weekends.
The place was wrecked by the ruiners, i.e, the Democrats. They turned San Francisco into slime and they have done all they can to wreck the economy for everybody except big Democrats living on the coast. They are deeply unlikeable people. I used to watch them approve each others palaces by the sea and then turn around and use the California Coastal Commission which they own lock stock and barrel to deny palaces by the sea to anybody not in good standing with the Clintons.
I have to admit that the place I lived on 65th Street in Emeryville is still there. I paid $600/month to live there. The entire neighborhood except for those 3 little houses and the weird building next door has changed completely from what it was like when I left there for good back in '98. It looks very nice now but I imagine the rent for that little house tops $4000//month now. The owner slathered it with solar panels back when the state was subsidizing their installation. I wonder how they work now.
That was the thing about California that makes it little different in many respects from any other state or venue in the US. There are some really nice places to live and work and then there is the ugly side that we all ignore. Hard. We don't gloss over the dismal gory parts of the major metropolis to our northwest and west and south. We try to avoid it altogether.
I used to give some thought to getting a concealed carry permit but after a great deal of reflection decided to continue on as I have been. There were a couple of reasons for coming down on that side of the issue. Firstly, I was concerned that shooting anybody will instantly result in lawsuits that will drain money away to no purpose and second that I should just carry on as I have been which is to say, staying out of the kind of places where people need shooting. Lastly, I've carried a gun and they are a pain in the ass to carry around even in a war zone.
It's really too bad about California. You should have seen it in the old days back before Wilson stepped down as governor.
2 comments:
I was in Sacramento back in the 1970s when not tdy go foreign lands on behalf of the country while wearing the blue suit. I lived off base in Sacramento county. It was wonderful weather(sunshine and rain often not at the same time) and the women were a great entertainment value. The Busch brewery on the American river crafted very tasty brews. roads were nice and traffic not bad for a young man in a MGB.
I will never go back. not even to visit. the California of my youth is gone forever. any time I fly over CA I feel the urge to dump the crapper in order to create at least one clean spot on the blighted land
I was single and I used to sometimes take the BART over to the City and sit at the Drake Hotel and hit Borders at Union Square and simply sit there and drink coffee and watch the slashing nines. Not a horndog, simply a man who appreciated beauty on display every day and the Financial district was stuffed with them but the shade made it colder than it had to be. Tall buildings have some drawbacks. The Marina made up for that and so did Crissy Field. Long ago lost days.
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