Six years ago this weekend, I moved across the bay from downtown San Diego to Coronado. It was one of the best things I’ve done in my life.
I loved downtown San Diego … for a time. It was always my ambition to live in an apartment in the center of a major city. I wanted floor-to-ceiling windows and tall, full bookshelves, and walls filled with original comic book art, and all of that happened for me. When I moved to San Diego in December 1998, I lucked upon a great building in the heart of the Gaslamp Quarter. The rent was three times what I was paying in Pittsburgh (I had a clueless landlord back there that never raised the rent, for which I am eternally grateful), and I was jobless, but hey … I had taken a major step to change my life. At one point, one of the only people I knew in San Diego asked me, “So what’s your Plan B?” “I don’t have one,” I replied. “I didn’t move out here to fail.” And even though it took some time, I didn’t fail. I prospered.
Downtown San Diego then—and for the first, oh, I’d say ten years of living there, was great. I was on the eastern side of Horton Plaza, which was still a bustling mall then. There was a vibrant mix of restaurants and shops and I felt relatively safe. My building eventually added a security guard in the lobby on weekends, and that’s kind of the demarcation line for me. The Gaslamp got noisier and rowdier; downtown events like St. Patrick’s Day and Cinco de Mayo, with their live music and tumultuous crowds, rattled my windows and shook the artwork on my walls. It became increasingly difficult to go outside and avoid the homeless, either in person or by something they had left behind (use your imagination). Restaurants and shops opened and closed with alarming speed and Horton Plaza deteriorated. It was clearly time to get out.
And I did. In late 2016 I took the ferry over to Coronado to see if it was a viable means of transportation to work each day. By this time, my employer had moved its offices to downtown San Diego, and my apartment at the time was just steps away from my place of work. The downtown rent was reasonable, too. But the noise level and safety concerns had gotten to the point that I knew I had to leave. So I downsized into a much smaller apartment—selling a lot of my collected stuff, which actually financed the move and got me out of credit card debt (yes, I had some nice stuff). I took the plunge and moved across the Big Bay. My rent was almost double what I was paying downtown, but it was a good trade: I felt safe and content. Still do. The ferry became my means of commuting from August 2017 through March 2020, when the world changed forever.
After 18 months in the studio apartment, I moved into a one-bedroom (even pricier), but I love this place and hope to stay much, much longer. The rent increases over the past few years are a bit obscene (9.25% last time … I’m anticipating something similar by the end of the year), but the alternative—moving—is out of the question. I love Coronado, and want to stay here and there are simply no apartment rentals available other than in the complex in which I live … and the current “market-value” rents for this place are absolutely ridiculous. Being a long-time renter here means I’m actually paying much less than a newbie, even with an almost 10% rent increase.
So, I soldier on, reasonably safe and secure in my island lair, surrounded by my books and things (yes, a lot of stuff has returned: see my Tales From My Spinner Rack! posts for corroboration) and loving my balcony and the usually quiet little courtyard it overlooks. Out back, in what I refer to as my backyard, is San Diego Bay and an expansive view of the Coronado Bridge. I walk there every day—in fact, I’m about to head out once I finish writing this—and feel very lucky to live here, cost notwithstanding. I will stay here as long as I can, and track my weeks with the arrival and departure of the big, yellow Dole banana boat, which moors itself just across from the bay from me, arriving every Saturday evening and departing every Tuesday night. It’s a weekly constant that tells me that just about everything is fine in this small corner of the world that I call home. Happy anniversary to me.
@innocent-bystander.com 
Leave a comment