On the same day—May 20, 2020—that I captured the official Boulevard sign near where El Cajon begins in San Diego’s University Heights neighborhood, my Leica Q2 also pointed along the comically named BLVD North Park. In real estate, location is everything, and if you can’t get the one you want, pretend and hope no one cares. The apartment complex emphatically is located in UH. But, hey, don’t tell the residents paying as much as $4,295 monthly for the birds-eye view of the graffiti art on abandoned commercial real estate, pandemic-lockdown zombified unemployed, or the ever-perennial homeless.
But from the tidy Featured Image (warning: 23MB file), with manicured sidewalk, big b, l, v, d, letters, and trendy corner brewery, you wouldn’t know what’s across El Cajon or up the way going towards Texas Street. This is my community, and I don’t really mean to diss it so much as croak some snark for people paying exorbitantly for the wrong neighborhood and when doing so driving up rental prices all across UH.
Not sure why I chose to skip sharing the photo last year but do recall taking it for perspective of the BLVD lettering. Vitals, aperture manually set: f/8, ISO 100, 1/250 sec, 28mm; 2 p.m. PDT.