For some time, I have been bothered by the sign outside the Hillcrest church with the rainbow-colored doors. Seeing as this is Christmas Day and Christian churches are supposed to celebrate Christ, I take this opportunity to correct the record.
“Love is love is all you need” is not true. Correction: it is a lie.
What a terrible coincidence. Tonight, I planned to share the Featured Image, taken yesterday using Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra. Beforehand, I peeked at my inbox, where there were two random emails about Nextdoor posts. Someone from another San Diego neighborhood also puts out treats for delivery drivers. Last night, there was an, ah, incident.
The poster writes: “Just before 10:30 p.m., these two awful people stole the entire box of treats (bin included) that I had left out for the deliveries. Usually, we bring them in much earlier, but we were out visiting a friend we haven’t seen in ages, so it was left out past 9 p.m.” She includes a 20-second video of the thieves in action.
I avoid walking through Hillcrest, unless need presses. The neighborhood is atmospherically and physically filthy. Strange how people don’t know that they live in Hell. But the same could be applied to most of California, expanding Dante’s nine circles of Hell to the 21 missions around which major cities were built. San Diego was the first, in 1769.
Franciscans sought to bring Heaven to native populations, rightly or wrongly (you decide which). Centuries later, the fire of Hades burns across the state, by many measures.
Dec. 9, 2023, as I stopped to photograph someone’s life belongings heaped onto four shopping carts, suddenly, and rapidly, riders roared by along University Ave. in Hillcrest. San Diego’s panache for tearing up parking spaces and replacing them with kilometers-upon-kilometers of bike lanes is controversial among businesses and many residents but unapologetic policy public.
On any normal day, bikers are few, and their numbers are next to meaningless compared to the volume of buses, cars, SUVs, and trucks, among other vehicles. So I was rather surprised seeing such mass of riders, who vastly spilled out of the bike lane into traffic.
For Dec. 9, 2023—before encountering the problem delaying new posts—I had planned to share some sightings in Hillcrest that same day. I had ventured there to drop off at FedEx a box containing my wife’s Galaxy Tab S8. For holiday sales, Samsung offered insanely generous $600 trade-in against the S9 Ultra, which I ordered for me and Annie happily inherited my S8 Plus. Expect a future first-impression about the larger tablet.
The homeless are prominent fixtures along University Avenue in, ah, Hellcrest. Used to be that street dwellers had crusty, weathered appearances; many had problems with alcohol, drugs, or mental illness—perhaps all three. But during the past 12 months or so, particularly, more of San Diego’s homeless appear to be new to the streets, older in age, or both. Many of them cart along more belongings—shopping carts carrying real possessions, not the debris collected hunter-gather style by long-time wanderers.
On the way to Smart & Final, today, my wife and I detoured to the renovated and reopened Lafayette. The Christmas decorations had always been so festive and inviting. What would the new owners do to celebrate the season? We wondered.
Answer: Absolutely nothing. No lights. No tree. No wreathes. Instead, we beheld the Hotel’s new interior design, which decor is meant to be retro-something but really is garish gay. I know men whose flamboyant clothing would make them fit in nicely with the furniture. Say, any of you guys need a job as a living mannequin?
If I walk where there are stoplights, someone surely will cross the street against traffic. Nowhere else have I seen such consistently stupid, arrogant behavior. Is it only San Diego? All California? I do wonder. This type of jaywalking isn’t occasional. Every time I venture out, someone strolls into oncoming traffic.
The gentleman in the Featured Image is an offender seen today. He and I walked along 30th Street in North Park—he ahead of me and later behind. Oddly, we would both arrive at Target, but by different routes. At either Lincoln or Polk (not sure which), I crossed to the other side of 30th with a walk sign. That meant green light for the cars going in the same direction as me. Continuing along 30th, he ignored the don’t walk sign and brazenly crossed into oncoming traffic, meaning cars proceeding on a green light.
The third weekend each month, the book sale room opens at the University Heights branch of San Diego Public Library. Of course, I would forget and come happenstance while walking somewhere else on Sunday about 90 minutes before closure. Inside I went, searching for older titles to take home.
Current cultural, progressive values are imposed all about us, with the greatest casualty being history and how the past is revised and censored to match these same norms. The Telegraph gives good example with Nov. 20, 2023 story (headline and dek): “Roman emperor was trans, says museum. Elagabalus will be referred to as she after claims in classical texts that the emperor asked to be called ‘lady’. Except: “Some historians believe these accounts may simply have been a Roman attempt at character assassination”.
If elected, she would be the youngest President-elect in the history of the United States. She also would be ineligible to serve, at time of the election next year, being then 34 and 35 is the Constitutionally-mandated minimum age. However, Taylor Swift was born on Dec. 13, 1989, which means she would be of age to take the oath of office on Jan. 20, 2025.
Despite insane popularity, the singer sure looks like a longshot at this juncture, particularly with no real political experience—although navigating the complicated contractual craziness of the music business and self-managing a multi-million dollar entertainment career isn’t that far removed from taking on Washington.
Belated topic time: Few months ago, I changed copyright on this blogsite and my Flickr from a Creative Commons non-commercial variant to All Rights Reserved. I did this in response to so-called artificial intelligence algorithms scraping content from websites for various purposes—improving learning models being one of them.
Some of that content can and likely will be repurposed for profit and in manner outside my artistic control. Software developers, many of them large tech companies—think Apple, Google, and Microsoft, for starters—can claim plausible deniability. “Hey, we didn’t know that would happen”.
For years, we have infrequently heard the playing of drums from a garage off the alley behind our apartment building. I’m a fan, who enjoyed listening to the practice. Has that era come to an end? I ask, because of an awfully nice-looking set of shells stacked behind the aforementioned garage—sans skins—as if being discarded. I know nothing about the percussion instrument. Does that look like a good kit to you?
I spotted the set during an impromptu walk today and used Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra to mark the moment. But returning home, and looking over the shots, I decided that black and white would be better. About a half-hour later, I returned with Leica Q2 Monochrom, from which comes the Featured Image. Vitals, aperture manually set: f/7, ISO 200, 1/5000 sec. 9:32 a.m. PST.
I shot the Featured Image using Leica Q2, today, as my wife and I returned to University Heights from grocery shopping in Hillcrest. Vitals, aperture manually set: f/5.6, ISO 100, 1/250 sec, 28mm; 11:39 a.m. PDT.
Spiders hold a special place in my heart, and something about the giant fake one demanded photographic attention. I considered close-cropping but the entire holiday decoration display deserved showcasing. So here we are.