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The Wrong Side of the Chain Link
By Neil Ransom | September 15, 2008
Last night Kate and I went downtown to the Gas Lap District for some gelato, from possible the best gelato shop in the USA, Chocolate, and so Kate could look for a new hat, i.e. a corn hat by Kangol. We arrived in the district around 8:30, parked and hit the streets. At this point downtown was more than pleasant. People were enjoying tasty restaurants, all the small boutiques were open and everyone seemed to be having a good time. We looked trough a couple of hat shops and sadly none had the hat Kate was looking for. Around 10 we decided to walk to Seaport Village, a small ocean side shopping district to look at a small hat shop we had seen a few weeks ago.
Anyway by the time we got there (a bad distance calculation error on our part) everything was closed and we were pooped. We decided on the romantic way back to the car via a board walk. Unfortunately said board walk ended up taking us through an abandoned dark alley industrial park…i.e. a vampire trap. I think to date every romantic thing I’ve done with Kate had ended up in a vampire trap. Luckily we made it out alive, but were far away from where we wanted to be. As we walked back to the Gas Lap District we used a sidewalk that apparently is also used by many homeless people as a bed. Walking past what must have been 40 homeless men and women sleeping on cardboard was about the saddest thing I’ve ever endured. Unfortunately for us, it was just the beginning.
Back at the Gas Lap, what had just an hour before been such a pleasant happy place, had deteriorated to a nightmarish, throbbing, club scene where most women, no joke, were wearing an outfit identical to the one pictured here. Just a normal outfit for a teen out on the town, apparently. I guess the depressing part was that most of the club hoppers looked as sad and lonely as the homeless people we had just passed asleep on the sidewalk. It turns out the only thing separating the misery of the Haves and the wretchedness of the Have-Not’s is a five foot chain link fence.
Tagged with: affluence • chain link • poverty • San Diego
September 16th, 2008 at 8:28 pm
If I had to choose between the two groups of “have-nots,” considering ONLY their eternal souls’ welfare, I would choose to be among the number who “have not” money, as opposed to the group who “have not” purpose/or meaning/or souls.
Such a sad commentary on modern society is that most people WANT to live the Gas Lamp District life.
I remember Pres Hinckley coming upon a billboard of a half-naked woman and he paused and stared and commented “How sad!”