San Diego

I recently went to San Diego to meet with some of my clients – mainly to make sure they remember me, but more importantly to talk with some of them about current projects. I had a really good time, played a little golf, went sailing, took some of my clients on a coastal cruise from Mission Beach to Del Mar and back. I’ll post some photos when I get a chance, but just wanted to say that I was shocked at all the development there. It really is growing at a remarkable rate and I was most surprised with how much downtown has developed. The skyline was dramatically different and the number of condo’s has exploded. It’s still nothing like Chicago, but it’s a lot nicer than in the days boefore Horton Plaza was built.

Anyway the food was tremendous as always, as were the prices of everything, except one thing – wine. It was so nice to be able to buy a bottle of good wine for under $8. I do miss it, but it’s not the place that I grew up with anymore.

Here is a linky to the full-screen version

Posted in Beach, San Diego, Wine | No Comments »

My Endless Summer

With apologies to Bruce Brown, John Van Hamersveld and Bob, I mashed up my own Wordpress theme. Nothing fancy, but I wanted something that i could identify with.

Back in the the summer of 1990 after I got out of the Navy I lived in Pacific Beach in the 900 block of Tourmaline, two blocks away from the famed longboard haunt Tourmaline Surf Park. I had a 9′6″ Prodonovich longboard that I rode there and at Wilbur & Law streets. It was a summer of joblessness, surfing, sleeping in, getting drunk at Kahuna’s and general slackerness. Everyone should have at least one summer of complete irresponsibility I think. A lot of kids today are taking a gap year and I took a gap summer.

I had three friends as roommates in a one bedroom crash pad and there were at least three or four more guys who would come over on the weekend and sleep on the floor. In fact there was so little room in that apt that we had to strap our surfboards to teh ceiling. How my wife Samantha (only my girl friend for 6 months) stood it I’ll never know.

We all obsessed over the movie Endless Summer and think that we wore out two VHS tapes of it. Every once in a while someone would have a joint and we would just melt into the couch while we watched it and the sea breeze cooled the evening air. It is a great movie, complete with the Hang Ten clothing and 60’s haircuts. Some of the antics were corny, but those two guys Mike Hynson and Robert August (as well as Bruce) sure must have enjoyed living that adventure as much as we loved watching them do it.

Michael hung out in PB and I remember reading an article in the Reader about him. He didn’t fair so well in life. Kinda like my friend Dan I guess.

Mike Hynson is still alive, still shaping great surfboards. He was the one that went way druggie and spent time in jail. He has a reputation for being a jerk.

Robert August went the other direction and is highly regarded as a decent fellow.

Both are still surfing.

*Snaps to my friend JWL for that tidbit

No matter. Times like that only need the positive reflections and that summer of mine did seem endless.

Posted in Dan Haywood, Samantha, San Diego, Surfing | No Comments »