Part One: Why I Left San Diego—And Why I Wasn’t Supposed to Be There in The First Place... Or The Second place..

I’ve lived in San Diego twice now both times completely unintentional, honestly.

Let’s start from the beginning. I’m originally from Orange County, California.

In 2015, I moved to Portland, Oregon for the first time my first real move out of my childhood home and into adulthood. I moved with an ex, who isn’t especially important to this story except for one detail: I told him I was leaving Orange County with or without him. Not because I didn’t care I did but because I already knew my next chapter had only two possible settings: Portland or Los angeles Unsurprisingly, Los angeles was not an option for him.

To me, though, it was the dream. I felt most like myself there anonymous, yet completely alive. Even during short day trips, I felt present in a way I couldn’t explain. Still, Portland won.

I had only been to Portland once before, on a club soccer trip when I was ten years old, but when we arrived to Portland as adults, we fell in love immediately. I described it as a city that felt like I had invented it myself. It was almost too perfect: beer, wine, trees, casual hikes, old architecture, seasons, thrifting everything I loved, neatly packaged into one place. Everything except one thing.

That feeling.That anonymous, electric sense of being the center of your own movie the thing people now call “main character energy.” Portland never quite gave me that. As charming and aligned as it was, it couldn’t touch me the way Los Angeles did.

Eventually, my ex and I broke up not devastating, just inevitable. I stayed in Portland another year and a half on my own before deciding it was time for something bigger. Bigger meant Los Angeles.

I arrived hopeful, living out of an Airbnb, convinced things were finally lining up. And then they didn’t. I couldn’t find an apartment to save my life. I couldn’t land a serving job which, frankly, is my specialty. I get hired everywhere. Until suddenly, I didn’t.

That’s when my sister stepped in and said, “Just come to San Diego for a year. Be near me. Be near the cousins.” She was a longtime bartender there and promised she could help me get a job easily. So I packed up my life, my French bulldog Lola, and moved south. True to her word, I interviewed at Barley Mash in downtown San Diego and got the job. Then I got my apartment second floor, of course.

I really tried. I gave it everything I had.

But San Diego wasnt.....me.

People couldn’t understand it. The sun! The beach! The parties! Everyone’s so friendly—how could you not like it here? I never knew how to answer without offending someone or bruising their pride. The truth is, San Diego is wonderful if you’re from there, or if you’re not from California at all.

To me, it had no seasons. No built-in history. No real grit. No soul unless you count a kind of forced surfer aesthetic. Ironically, Orange County, where I’m from, has a far more authentic surf culture. And yes, I know I’m being judgmental now. But clarity matters.

Barbieland just wasn’t for me.

So the plan was simple: move to Los Angeles as soon as my one-year lease ended.

Finally my dream city at my finger tips.

And then… COVID happened.

2012 2021

Oh, COVID.

What a time.

I don’t have any profound stories from it, other than the fact that I took it very seriously. For three full months, I didn’t see a single person—not one. Los Angeles was put on the back burner yet again, and honestly, that felt like the least of the world’s problems. Terrible things were happening everywhere.

So I stayed put. I bunkered down in San Diego for an extra six months, until I couldn’t take it anymore. I told myself the truth: I couldn’t go to Los Angeles. A dense, overpopulated city while being terrified of COVID sounded like the worst-case scenario. So instead of making the two-hour drive from San Diego to Los Angeles like a normal person, I did the opposite and took the 17hr 1,000 mile drive back, yes back to Portland. I had my reasons. My reasons being, they were taking COVID seriously, and there were plenty of outdoor activities.

 Maybe not many reasons, but two solid ones.

Mostly, though, I just couldn’t be in San Diego anymore. If Los Angeles wasn’t an option, I needed to be somewhere that felt safe. So I sold everything and drove up to Portland, knowing it was only temporary.

That chapter of Portland was anticlimactic. I lived, I worked, and time passed. Same old, same old. After a year, COVID felt less scary to me. I still never had it—and to this day, I haven’t. Then, finally, I packed my things, rented a U-Haul, and moved to Los Angeles. After all those years, I made it. And it was everything I had dreamed of—until it wasn’t. But let’s stay in the moment a little longer.

I arrived in Los Angeles and stayed at a hotel called the Hollywood Hotel for two weeks. I landed a waitressing job at Osteria La Buca off Melrose. And best of all, I got my dream apartment in Silver Lake. When I say dream, I truly mean it.

Ten years earlier, in high school, I had taken a photo of this very building. I was obsessed with it—the location, the architecture, the charm. Back in 2011, there had been a For Rent sign out front: $850 for a studio. I remember thinking that was an impossible amount of money, something I could only dream of affording one day.

Then came 2021. I drove past the building again. Another For Rent sign this time, $1,650 for a studio. That was a lot to me in 2021, and if I’m being honest, it still is. My absolute maximum budget was $1,300 for any apartment. Any apartment at all. But I said fuck it and applied. It was Silver Lake, for crying out loud.

The landlord was, and still is, a character straight out of a movie voice like Raymond from Everybody Loves Raymond, always wearing a bowling hat, assertive and to the point but somehow friendly. Suddenly, I was approved.

I moved in mid-November. Everything was perfect. Truly. A dream job off Melrose. A Silver Lake studio right next to Hyperion Street, where the Silver Lake Jubilee festival used to be held now replaced by an Erewhon.

Silver Lake Jubilee was a festival where I personally ‘discovered’ Los Angeles, back when you had to print out MapQuest directions just to arrive.

Fast forward, to whoever said "it was the best of times, it was the worst of times"

 I’m pretty sure they were living in Los Angeles.

to be continued........ Part two here.