SAN DIEGO 🇺🇸: Where Calm Is a Current [Episode 6.0]

San Diego gives you perfect days, but perfection comes with a trap: nothing pushes you.

After two years in paradise, I learned how calm can feel like drift, and how comfort becomes its own undertow.

This episode is about what a city teaches you when the real challenge is learning to move without being forced.

THANK YOU

Gary, Kasumi, Chris, Zaine, Jimmy, Reub, Kristen, Mizuki...and the incredible r/sandiegan community — for your time, your thoughts, your voices.

And to the artists below for helping me tell the story of San Diego. I thought it was only alternative and ska from SD, but there's plenty of other stuff too!

TRACK LIST (in order)

1. Goin' Out West - Tom Waits

2. Tijuana Taxi - Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass

3. 2am - Slightly Stoopid

4. Do You Compute - Drive Like Jehu

5. Still I Complain - Lucy's Fur Coat

6. Seein' Red - Unwritten Law

7. Can't Wait - Chon

8. I Wanna Make You Scream - Battalion Of Saints

9. HOT DEMON B!TCHES NEAR U ! ! ! - CORPSE, Night Lovell

10. Fortress - Pinback

11. San Diego Super Chargers Theme Song - San Diego Chargers Band

12. Summer Nights - Lil Rob

13. Alive - P.O.D.

14. Watermelon In Easter Hay - Frank Zappa

15. On A Rope - Rocket From The Crypt

16. King of the Beach - Wavves

17. Honeybee - Steam Powered Giraffe

18. FAUDA - Westside Gravy

19. Momentum Rising - Tina Guo, Samuel Safa, Kaptain

20. Get Crunk Shorty - Nick Cannon, Yin Yang Twins, Fatman Scoop

21. Love Is The Way - Thee Sacred Souls

22. Nissim - The Gaslamp Killer, Amir Yaghmai

23. All The Small Things - blink-182

24. AOTKPTA - The Locust

25. Plush - Stone Temple Pilots

26. My Town - Buck-O-Nine

27. Get 'Em Outta Here - Sprung Monkey

(Full transcript below photos)

We were down two with 10 seconds left. I swear it felt like the NBA Finals. Except half the guys were in board shorts and the guy at the free throw line rocked a jersey that said “Sunday Funday.” I needed this win, like it would make right everything that was wrong in the world.

The sneakers squeaking on the courts around me felt like hecklers. The echo of the rafters a taunt…even the AC vent hummed like it was mocking me. Mr. Funday tossed up his shot, and I yelled “Box out!” so loud it startled the guy guarding me — he wasn’t texting between plays, but he might as well have been. He looked up at me with a smile and said “bro, it’s intramurals.”

And somehow that made it worse—because he was right.

I’d been in San Diego about 3 months. Hardly made a friend. Still hadn’t figured out what I was really doing here, hadn’t started to appreciate the opportunity I was given at school. So this…this stupid Tuesday-night intramural playoff game… had become my championship for self-respect.

Funday misses the foul shot, I grab the rebound, race down the court, and brick a jumper. We lose by two.

Nobody cares. They’re talking about tacos.

And that’s when I realize something’s seriously wrong with me, because I can’t even lose casually. I didn’t know it then, but those final 10 seconds were my first real conversation with San Diego. It told me, “you can keep fighting if you want to, but we’re not keeping score.”

I walked out of the gym—RIMAC—still replaying the loss in my head. Like ESPN might call for commentary that night. Outside it was perfect, around 70 degrees, basically the same it had been every night since I had arrived. That sameness started to feel personal, like the city was refusing to rise or fall with me.

I’m from the East Coast, where weather and people both have moods. Storms, cold snaps, bus lines, crowded Metro trains. Everything pushed you somewhere. In San Diego, nothing pushed. I was waiting for when it was going to start to demand something from me, and, well…I kept waiting.

I was still finding my way around, and one night, I drove aimlessly down the 5, past downtown, past all the aircraft carriers over there on the right, past the Tacos El Gordo in Chula Vista. I’d hit the point where the freeway turns bilingual: Tijuana–10 miles.

My chest tightened up, just a bit, and if I’m honest, I remember exactly why. It wasn’t traffic, though I wish it was, to save myself the humiliation. But, no. I was afraid of Mexico. Not of Mexicans. Of proximity.

Where I grew up in Virginia was super diverse, and I’m grateful for that…I don’t think too many people in the world grow up with the mix of people I had around me. But that was diversity with bumpers; different people, same rules. Here, it was the real world, just beyond a line I could actually cross. And I wasn’t ready.

Hindsight is always 20/20, and it took awhile, but I finally started to understand…that was the real question San Diego was asking me. If nothing pushes you, will you still move?

Because peace and stagnation can feel identical while you’re in them.

This is EveryCity Whispers, where we uncover the quiet messages cities send. The things you learn from living in a place. I’m Steven, I’ve lived in 5 countries on 5 continents, and before I ever lived in New York and Dubai and Amsterdam and Sao Paulo and Tokyo, for two years I called San Diego home. And over those two years, I’d learn what happens when you finally stop fighting calm…and it starts fighting back.

***

"I’ve lived here almost 20 years (despite being born at Camp Pendleton and moving when I was 6 weeks old to the East Coast). I somehow found my way back like a salmon swimming upstream to die 😆. What has living here taught me? I feel like living here has been more of a full circle moment and confirmation of what I had dreamed it might be (all the years that I didn’t live here): 1)That we have some of the absolute best weather in the entire world (I moved here from Boston 🫠). 2) And how that makes life easier especially as you age. 3) That slowing down to appreciate nature and our physical world around us is possible and actually improves your health. 4)That meeting “real” people here is harder so when you find them, you hang onto them tightly. 5) Realizing how very lucky I have been to have worked in tech here for 20 years and to be to stay and retire here - finally❤️."

"It’s taught me that possibilities are endless. I’ve been here for about 15 years. Lots of good times, lots of bad times. The city just is as beautiful during the bad times for me. Even when certain places revive bad memories, there is an energy here that makes it ok and feels magnetic to me. No matter how far I go away or travel, I don’t want to be anywhere else."

"Two big things that are so incredibly less apparent in most cities are how massive a role the military has in American life, and how truly interconnected we are in the global community with sitting right on the border with Mexico. We see all sides of both of those unique things about our city that most in the country won't really experience in the same way at all."

***

I spent my first year in San Diego fighting the city. Like if I relaxed, the city would win.

I lived in La Jolla, right by the UCSD campus. They actually sold postcards of the view from where I’d park my 2001 Mitsubishi Galant, Dr. Platinum. Every morning when I’d pull up to school, the light would be hitting the bluffs like a painting. For a few seconds, every day, I’d stare at the glider port, at people literally running off the side of cliffs…for fun? They’d hoist these nylon wings over their heads, sprint, catch wind, and lift into the sky like it was nothing.

Me? Still on solid ground, staring with a smug look on my face, judging them for being reckless…and also kind of wishing I could trust the air like that.

That’s what judgment is: envy wearing a mask of superiority.

By about 10 the clouds would vanish, the ocean smell would roll in, and everyone seemed perfectly calibrated to the weather. I mean, it was hard not to be.

On paper, it was paradise, but it didn’t feel that way to me. I felt more like the butt of a practical joke. Where I’m from, the weather had moods: summer thunderheads that cracked open sweaty, soggy afternoons. Picturesque Autumns that smelled like rakes and gasoline. Here, it was 70-something every day, like God got lazy and hit copy-paste.

I’d walk through the eucalyptus grove on my way to class, earbuds in…always earbuds in…listening to Common and T.I. and Wu-Tang….anything to keep my engine running hot. I told myself I missed seasons, but what I really missed was friction.

I’d send those same postcards to my girlfriend back in Virginia and write that it was beautiful, but what I’d really mean was suffocating.

UCSD felt like a campus for people who already knew what they were doing. I’d look around the library and think that everyone else already had their thesis, and by extension their entire life, in order. Tan, balanced. Post-therapy. I had classmates who surfed before lectures, and an Econ professor who’d occasionally end a lecture early if the tide charts looked good. Meanwhile, I’m in the same spin cycle — Robinson Building for class, RIMAC for gym, and the little field next to it for laps. Rinse and repeat. In hindsight, it’s like I was trying to outrun serenity.

I wouldn’t even cross Turquoise Street — into Pacific Beach — for like six months. The idea of being surrounded by people who were that happy…that oblivious…who showed their funky-ass toes in public…made me — I don’t know — itchy. I was chasing a Master’s degree — and any hint of what the hell I should do with my life — and they were chasing better waves.

I’d spend half my day reading and writing papers, do my laps around the field and hit the gym, and be on calls back home the rest of the day. Sprint was the cheapest plan I could find, and when the call would disconnect, which it always did, they had this thing where you could press *2 and say “dropped call” for a few–cent credit. I called so often it might as well have been my side hustle. For a grand prize of $6 bucks off my bill at the end of the month.

Everyone else was barefoot on the beach. I was inside, keeping receipts on the universe.

It was all students around me, and still I hardly did anything at night. I’d hear the basslines of parties I never went to, and stand on the balcony watching headlights snake down 5 Freeway with a weird mix of envy and superiority. The arrogance of thinking I was the one doing life correctly, while really wanting what they all had.

One Friday night, I finally took the plunge…after six months of pretending to be busy for fun, guilt finally got to me.

I followed a few classmates down the trail to Black’s Beach for a bonfire…though I had no idea what it was or why anyone would do it. The guy from Orange County (quick aside: why is Orange County the only county in the US where people don’t say the town they are from, just the county? Anaheim isn’t Garden Grove isn’t Irvine isn’t Mission Viejo, but still, all those people are just from “Orange County”...). Anyway, that guy (who was whiter than white but we lovingly called “Mateo”) brought a guitar. Everyone was sitting there, singing off-key Jack Johnson songs and passing around coronas.

I lasted about 20 minutes. Someone asked what I listened to, and I said “Clipse.” Everyone just kind of nodded politely and went back to Banana Pancakes.

Paradise?

Nah, I didn’t deserve that. San Diego was showing me, in real time, that you can be surrounded by perfection and still feel like you’re flunking it.

***

"I'm a homebody, stick me in a room with Internet, a big TV, food and gadgets, and I'll never leave. Don't even need a window. I feel I need motivation to get out more and San Diego just offers that. I mean just taking half a day to go eat near the beach and take a long walk along it really energizes you."

“Even though the job market is extremely competitive here, I’m happy to be broke in San Diego than having a better paying job living miserably in Ohio or something.”

“That you can be happy and live well without being stressed.Having lived in NYC and Chicago all my life, I wasn’t aware how tightly wound I was. About everything. Stress kills. San Diegans are laid back and seem to enjoy life.”

“San Diego is seductive. My grandfather first arrived in San Diego in 1919. My mother was born there in the 20s. And I came along in the 60s and was raised there. Though they call San Diego ‘America’s Finest City,’ I think it’s America’s most seductive city. The weather is near perfect. The people are generally nice. And no matter what you’re into, you can find your people, as it’s such a melting pot from all over the US and the world. And the food keeps getting better and better. San Diego certainly taught me to be tolerant and to be chill. And of course to surf. Though I first escaped in the late 80s, the seductive siren song of San Diego keeps calling me back. Like the Hotel California, I may have checked out, but I can never leave.”

***

I moved away from school my second year — to North Park — and it was like stepping out of a screensaver into a city that actually breathed.

My new apartment, just off the 805 at Adams, had cracked tile, a ceiling fan that made noise but didn’t blow anything, and a faint view of the loading dock of the Fiesta Market. But compared to La Jolla, it felt…I don’t know… alive.

Up until this point in life, I had never eaten an avocado. Can you believe that? But while Ralph’s across the freeway sold them at like 3 dollars apiece, Fiesta Market would days where they’d be three for a buck. I was trying to get by on about $50 a week for food, so that checked a box, and…

LIFE CHANGER.

I’d see the special was on, jump inside, and walk home with a brown paper bag full of avocados. Sometimes they’d all be like, too ripe, and I’d be forced to eat guac for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. There was a cashier there who’d shake her head: “demasiado guacamole”...and laugh. I’d pretend I understood her and laugh back — which I didn’t know at the time would become a critical adult skill.

That was my first real connection to the other side of San Diego. The one behind the yoga studios and surf shops. Now, I didn’t run so many laps around the RIMAC field, but I’d circle Balboa Park. I’d breathe in the smog of the 163 Freeway, run past a guy who was always fixing a green VW bus, and I’d always see this one lady walking a pitbull in a baby stroller. It was weird and I liked it.

I learned how to be social, too. A few classmates would sometimes show up at my place on weekends (it didn’t hurt that I lived a block away from Air Conditioned lounge — the still-underground but soon-to-be hipster hangout. I’d drag my coffee table to the side and we’d watch NFL Sundays…that’s if the Chargers were away.

Because if they were home, we were at the game. I didn’t give a shit about the Chargers, but my friend from high school in Virginia had just jumped from Green Bay to San Diego as a free agent. It had nothing to do with me and everything to do with the numbers on the contract, but man, what a win for me, too. He’d always set aside a ticket for me, and sometimes he’d toss me a few others to give away.

The Chargers were really good that year. I don’t remember most of the games, but I do remember the charade of parking before them. For some reason, he got two parking passes, so he’d pass me one of those, too. In the player’s lot. So while the players would be there 4 or more hours before kickoff, I’d pull up to Qualcomm Stadium 20 minutes before, and once security saw the tag hanging on Dr. P, they’d stop the parade of tailgaters marching into the stadium and carve a path into the lot for me.

I can remember the mix of excitement and confusion of those folks, wondering who this VIP was, in a car that looked way out of place. No tints, no chrome…semi-compact. One game I parked, I’d find out later, in between LaDainian Tomlinson and Drew Brees. Basically the franchise. Two hall-of-famers. You can imagine me, carefully backing Dr. P into the space in between, trying not to nick anything.

And that made nights more fun, too. I was still a broke grad student, but partying with NFL players. I’d get the nod from the bouncer and skip the line, then someone would hand me a bottle I wouldn’t be paying for. Now I know how short “pro athlete” money can last if you don’t manage it, but at that time, it felt limitless. So it’s a good thing my actual NFL friend was way more responsible than I was, and he always kept his stuff straight.

That was the first year I ever really had fun in clubs, and to be honest, probably the only. My favorite place wasn’t a club, but the one I mentioned two blocks away–Air Conditioned. I just remember purple and pinkish lights and old soul music mixed with West Coast rap…and unlike the Gaslamp scene, nobody was angling for attention. The room had already agreed to take it easy. People were just chilling without an agenda.

It was rare energy, to me anyway. Not lazy, but not like …urgent…either. The lounge wasn’t telling me to stop caring, but showing me how to care just a little. I took that lesson.

I also never drank coffee until that point, when I started grading papers from my TA job at the cafes along University Avenue. I got to know a few neighbors…the lady a few doors down ran an antiques business and said she moved to San Diego because the rent was cheap and sunsets were reliable. I laughed, but she wasn’t wrong… San Diego’s reliability is a kind of wealth.

That made me see the sameness, the 70-degree, cloudless days, that frustrated me a year earlier in a different light. I had always been sprinting toward every next thing, and I was finally starting to sync with a place that refused to hurry.

I’d still park at the cliffs for school, but instead of judging the people running off the edge, I’d grab a burrito after class and watch them glide off into the sky. They didn’t conquer gravity. They partnered with it.

That’s what the city had been trying to show me until now: movement doesn’t always mean fight. Sometimes it’s lift.

San Diego wasn’t asking me to let go of ambition. It was asking me to see that not every climb requires a struggle. By the end of that year, I’d stopped equating stress levels with progress. My metric became lighter: friends made, sunsets admired…guacamole consumed. I mean, I was making mean avo toast before that was really a thing.

The city that once felt to me like detention with palm trees had turned into the world’s most patient mentor — one that teaches you how to float without feeling lost.

***

“There is just a lower sense of urgency here. People walk slower, take their time. It can be nice or annoying depending on your own state of mind. When you’re wandering around a farmer’s market, it’s nice that other people are chill. When you’ve been waiting in a line for 20 minutes and the people at the front still don’t know what they want…very annoying.”

“The city taught me a few different things. The first of which is new beginnings. My family came here as refugees and San Diego accepted us into the city. It was the first place that felt like home to us after we had to flee a war torn homeland, and we all still consider it home, even if most of us no longer live there. I was also the first person in my family born in the US, and San Diego is where we not only started over, but I got my start in life. It also taught us about hope, as you have to have it to begin again.”

“San Diego teaches you work-life balance, and to enjoy life every day. Our friends in other cities seem so focused on career, promotions, and advancement. Unfortunately, in my field, there are not a lot of big companies in San Diego so you have to be flexible and crafty to find employment and when you do, you stay and make the best of it. It's more of a work to enjoy life mindset vs. a rat race always chasing the next promotion. I realize this may not be great for those early in their careers though.”

“Also how “hot” or attractive people are here. Whenever I travel for work to other places in the country for a few days and I come home, it’s like damn! What’s in our water here!? The only place that I can say has more attractive people is LA. You don’t see a lot of lazy eyed or snagged tooth people here.”

***

A few weeks before I left San Diego, I decided I couldn’t move without at least trying to surf. My boy DP had been asking me basically for two years, and I’d always decline with some snarky ass comment.

I’d spent two years looking at the Pacific Ocean, hardly ever actually touching it. I still didn’t own a pair of flip flops. But I had finally crossed Turquoise Street into PB…actually, I found one of my favorite places to eat there — Leilani’s Cafe.

So anyway, it’s a Tuesday morning, we walk down to the beach. DP tosses me a faded blue longboard with half the wax scraped off and a crack down one fin. He gives me a 5-minute tutorial, I paddle out a bit, and the first wave folds me instantly. The second, too. And the next. I’d try to pop up again and again and end up with saltwater up my nose and howls coming from the shore.

I must have been at it for an hour when I finally stopped trying to stand. I just lay flat on the board and let the water decide where I go. I stopped fighting the sea. I’m just floating there, frustrated as hell but also asking myself why I hadn’t even tried this until now.

Around me, real surfers rose and fell with the tide, never straining, never forcing. Nobody was trying to ‘conquer’ a wave, they were just moving with it.

I paddled back in, crooked and slow, and at one point, I managed to get myself halfway upright for a half second, just before the wave disappeared underneath me. DP, who had been laughing his ass off until this point, throws both arms in the air like I’d just scored a touchdown. While I’m face planting into the water I hear him yelling: "you did it!"

"What?!? I’m choking on salt!"

"You stood up!"

"Yeah, for like half a second."

"That’s still standing!"

I drag the board up onto the sand, collapse on the beach, and for once, I am out of snarky replies. My chest is burning, my arms are dead…and I can’t stop laughing. It wasn’t the victory…it was the surrender.

We grab lunch and after, I went back to the beach by myself. I remember just sitting there, staring. I was sure I’d be moving to New York in a few weeks. I wasn’t sure I was ready to.

The light seemed to hit the ocean differently… a soft, late-afternoon gold that made every reflection look intentional. The tide rolling up and erasing footprints as fast as people could make them.

I get home and get a text from DP. “So, you finally touched the ocean….worth it?”

“Yeah, I should’ve done it sooner.”

“You weren’t ready to fall yet.”

***

“Things here are definitely slower on the west coast. No one is in a rush to do anything except sit in traffic. I was kind of shocked seeing people sitting at check out registers. Even waiters seem to take their time. Anyone in any service industry, they’re way slower than where I'm from. It's taken an adjustment to realize I moved from the fast-paced South to a slower timezone. And now that I have to spend more time flying to other parts of the country, I spend a lot more time on planes and flight days. I guess in short, San Diego has taught me a different kind of patience. Houston taught me patience in things I couldn't control like huge crowds, horrible traffic, bad weather. San Diego has taught me to expect things to go at a slower pace than I'm used to because no one is in a rush here.”

"I grew up on the East Coast, and San Diego has taught me to appreciate bad weather in a weird way. Rain used to be an inconvenience back there. Out here it's an excuse to stay inside and veg out, and somehow a bit of welcome variety from the constant sunshine.”

"It also taught me about pride, as I'm proud to be from the city and to tell everyone I'm from there. It also taught me faith and resilience. I've learned quite a few different lessons, and I don't think I could be the person I am today had I been born somewhere else.”

***

I wasn’t ready to fall yet.

When I look back, every version of me that San Diego met was learning that lesson in slow motion.

The first one — the guy in the RIMAC gym, barking “box out!” like an intramural championship really mattered — was terrified of losing control. If I could keep score, I could prove I mattered.

The second one — in North Park, eating three-for-a-dollar avocados with salt and starting to appreciate…messiness, quirkiness — was loosening his grip, learning that life doesn’t need a scoreboard.

And the last one — floating off Pacific Beach, half upright for half a second — finally understood that running doesn’t always mean you’re getting anywhere, and stillness doesn’t always mean you’re stuck.

And that was it. That’s what the city had been trying to show me the whole time, in sunshine and sameness and silence: You don’t have to fight everything to move forward.

San Diego doesn’t care if you conquer anything. It just wants to see if you can trust something to hold you up — to stop fighting long enough to stay upright, even for half a second.

It never asks you to stand tall. It just tests whether you can float.

San Diego will hold you steady if you let it — but it won’t push you.

Because peace will hold you, but it won’t move you.

Maybe that’s the real test this city hands out — not whether you can keep up with its perfection, but whether you can live inside it without needing turbulence to feel alive.

Some cities teach ambition by lighting fires under you. San Diego teaches it by taking the match away.

It gives you two years of perfect days to figure out that comfort can be its own current — soft, slow, but still hard to swim against. It’s waiting to see if you’ll build something inside the calm, or just drift on it.

But if you’re willing to stop fighting long enough to float, you might just realize: that’s still movement, too.

***

“San Diego teaches me to be laid back and just enjoy the now.”

“Smiling when making eye contact with someone and talking to strangers is not weird at all. Literally never happened until I moved here, and I feel like people think I’m a psycho when I do it anywhere else.”

"San Diego showed me that tacos, the sea, and the beach will always make a day better.”

"The ability and value of diversity and community to keep us all safe. Lived here for a long time, been here through earthquakes, days long power outages, multiple wildfires that burn down the North and Eastern suburbs, Covid and the riots in 2020. The thing I have always seen San Diego do well is during crisis and coming together to help each other.”

"I’ve learned that the price of good weather is one I’m willing to pay. I will take a smaller house and an outdoor life over a huge house and staying indoors for months at a time any day.”

“That you’ll miss it every damn day if you have to leave.”

***

Hi friends, Steven here, with a few ‘end credits’ and such.

First, let me tell you that yes…I know this can sound a little self-indulgent, maybe borderline cringe. Like, who does this guy think he is, to just ramble on with his life story, and think we’ll actually care?!?

Trust me, I feel that, probably more than you think.

But what I’ve tried to do in these early episodes is use my own experiences as a way into something bigger. To find a wider truth about each city.

And soon, I’m gonna run out of cities that I’ve lived in. So, by both necessity and design, EveryCity Whispers is going to shift…to become a lot less about me.

When I started this, I didn’t want to go looking for handouts or shortcuts. I wanted to prove — maybe mostly to myself — that I was serious about this idea. And if I was going to ask people to open up about their lives, I had to be willing to do the same first.

So, that’s how I’ve approached these first episodes: open, a little vulnerable, and definitely out of my comfort zone. But I just feel it’s important to acknowledge that I am aware of how self-indulgent this could sound, expecting you to be so interested in my path here, and that I really appreciate you riding with me so far.

Once I finish this “Season 1” — the cities that have shaped me — the show will expand. We’ll start exploring places I haven’t lived, hearing from people who have, comparing what we imagine about a city, or what I’ve experienced traveling in a city, with what it actually teaches the people inside it.

So here’s a small call-to-action:

If you’ve got a story about how your city has shaped you — or a friend who does — I wanna hear it. I’m already mapping out future episodes, and I want them to be about you.

***

Now, a thank you and acknowledgement to each of you who shared a reflection on San Diego, and as always, to the artists who added texture to the episode. You know the theme by now, but every song here is from a San Diego artist. I’ll share a tracklist in the show notes and website, and also a link to a Spotify playlist with all of the songs I used. I guess there is a dominant theme to the musical culture of San Diego that’s pretty obvious….

If you enjoyed this episode, or any other, show some love. Share the link with a friend. Leave a comment or review. Please please, if you haven’t yet. This is the part I feel most cringe about asking, but it helps.

You can find more information at everycity whispers dot com, and check out the YouTube, TikTok or Instagram (all with the everycitywhispers handle). I’ve been posting short little clips everyday, and I think they’d be a nice 15 or 20 second ray of inspiration in your day. And I welcome feedback—bad as well as good—steven @ everycitywhispers.

Thank you, thank you, thank you for listening to the San Diego episode of EveryCity Whispers. I’m still working out next month’s episode, but I’m thinking about sticking on this academic track and going to my college town, in North Carolina. But it will go beyond that, more of like a “college in America” deep dive. Let’s see though, I may change course. You won’t miss it if you’re subscribed.

Until then, remember: you don’t have to move cities to move yourself forward. Cities don’t shout, they whisper. If you stay curious and listen closely, you’ll hear them.

***

(Fade out -- scenes from "The Anchorman" film:)

“Discovered by the Germans in 1904, they named it ‘San Diago’, which of course in German means 'a whale’s vagina.'”

“No, there’s no way that’s correct.”

“I’m sorry, I was trying to impress you. I don’t know what it means. I’ll be honest, I don’t think anyone knows what it means anymore. Scholars maintain that the translation was lost hundreds of years ago.”

“Doesn’t it mean ‘Saint Diego?’”

“No.”

“Ladies and gentlemen. Could I please have your attention. I’ve just been handed an urgent and horrifying news story, and I need all of you to stop what you’re doing and listen. Cannonball!”

“Do you know who I am?”

“No, I can’t say that I do.”

“I don’t know how to put this, but, I’m kind of a big deal.”

“Really?”

“People know me.”

“I’m very happy for you.”

“I’m very important. I have many leatherbound books and my apartment smells of rich mahogany.”

“Sixty percent of the time, it works every time.”

“That doesn’t make sense.”

“From the entire Channel 4 news team, I’m Veronica Corningstone.”

“And I’m Ron Burgundy. Go fuck yourself San Diego. (Scream!)”

TRANSCRIPT