Just Flew Back From North San Diego and...

[offshore1]

...boy are my arms tired.
Very attractive part of the US. Incredible number of surf spots,... and surfers.
Trestles is my favourite and worth the effort.

[Natho]

Yeh great place.Spent plenty of time there myself and the people are good value.Did ya surf Blacks?

[Rustt]

Surfed Trestles in 86, very fun wave. probably less crowded then, only 70 out. South swell, over 20 waves in a set.

[offshore1]

Nah Natho i didn't surf Blacks. That's where the glider port is isn't it?
Only there four days.
Did surf Scripps Pier, D Street in Encinitas, and Cardiff Reef.
Trestles was my favourite by a country mile....soo many breaks , from Cottons to the north all the way down to Lowers.
Crowd was astoundingly mellow too. Plenty of waves to be had.
Stopped into the Stewart shop and was stoked to have a nice long chat with Mr. Bill Stewart himself. He's still got the stoke of a grommet and was keen to spruik his new longboard shape, the Redline 11.

[Rustt]

Lowers was the one I surfed, long right short left, all pretty gutless though good fun.

[offshore1]

I jogged on down to Lowers to have a look at why the peak was so crowded.
Every wave coming in had twenty surfers scrapping madly for it, with two ultimately winning out, one going right , one left. No thanks.
Uppers was more spread out.

[alakaboo]

Lived over there for a while Offshore, it was great. Often offshore, too.
Planning to go back at some stage.
My wife learnt to surf at Scripps pier, was great before they pulled down Surfside and you could get a hot shower.
Surfed a fair bit at Blacks and Cardiff Reef.
(Blacks is a little south of the glider port, past the nude beach).

[offshore1]

There may be a fair bit of disagreeement but I found San Diego more like Sydney than any place I've ever been: about the same though antipodal latitude, most everything being relatively new and sparkling except for the small older historic sections. Lots of parks, similar weather and similar cold >><< water. Good harbour, tidy neighbourhoods perched comfortably on the high ground. Expensive as hell.
Dunno that I'll be going back anytime soon. Though rich in surf and surf culture, for surf trips i prefer South and Central America, which would be similar to a Sydneysider preferring Indo I suppose.

[alakaboo]

yeah, I can see the similarity. For mine it's more like a mix between Sydney and Brisbane.
Sprawl, car-centric, patches of nice older stuff replaced by cookie-cutter crap. But then it has the harbour.

Whereabouts in North County were you? Differs greatly by suburb. La Jolla is full of 1%ers, big pharma and tech companies. People who buy Porsche Boxsters as their shopping car.
Solana Beach is like going back to the mid 90s. Lots of cool places to catch a band, get a beer or some good food. I'd live up that way if I go back.

It's an easy place to live, once you sort out your housing situation. Cheap good quality food, particularly mexican, vietnamese and japanese. Ribs and burgers for a bit of variety.
But I agree, it's not at the top of the holiday destination list.
Weird mix of people, very large right wing military population, lots of uber-wealthy, lots of entitled middle class, then a (largely) mexican underclass. Also a large wealthy, educated pro-environment and philanthropic sector that is largely missing in Australia.

Was there pre-GFC and while I'm certainly not claiming to have had any premonitions (didn't even know what a collateralised debt obligation was back then...) the amount of wealth and wastage was astounding. I got offered home loans of up to a mill, at 1.5% interest, with no job and not much deposit. And people were spending it on stuff that was built so badly you could literally punch a hole through a structural wall.

[offshore1]

hey boo , I 'camped' (30 foot camper so it can hardly be called camping) with four other blokes on the cliff overlooking the ocean in San Elijo State Park, between Cardiff and Swami's -- interestingly, as you probably know and i just discovered, true to its unusual moniker, Swami's really does have gold turbans adorning the New Age navel-gazing joint It's really pretty too.
One of my fellow 'adventurers' was a doctor (my wife's boss), the other three were pharma rep/sales dudes so they go out there regularly for conventions, meetings and all.. Being an instructor at a small North Carolina College, I was a little out of my depth in the dosh department. They're used to expense accounts and bottomless bins of plastic money -- I spent twice as much there in four days as I did in my nine days in Nicaragua.
The people were really nice though, and went out of their way to be friendly. One fellow at Lowers, an older local born and raised, trying to talk me into going out , gave me tips on how best to score a wave in the pack -- locate the shit-hottest surfer who goes the opposite of your preferred direction and get next to him -- that way in the mad scramble at the peak he'll very often get his way, , leaving you(me) deepest for the other. Elegant simplicity . As he left on his pushy he said, almost apologetically, "We Californians aren't that bad."

gotta agree.

[Natho]

Bit of trivia. La Jolla is the bird poo capital of USA.Head down the waters edge and the whole rock front is covered in bird sh/t. It faarkn stinks.

[Nick Carroll]

Jeez mate don't let the San Clemente Mafia catch you calling Lowers "North San Diego"

I've had some crazy surfs at Lower Trestles, in 180 south swells or hurricane swells, especially late season in Sept and Oct when the June gloom is gone and it's fresh and clear early in the morning. Never really cared about the crowd; made a lot of friends in the area and after all, if you surfed in Sydney in the 70s and 80s, you can laugh off any crowd other than Pipeline. It's a strange coastline, with its dusty perimeter and desert foliage and air of protection from the elements, but it's got its own kind of beauty eh.

[offshore1]

Jeez mate don't let the San Clemente Mafia catch you calling Lowers "North San Diego"

I've had some crazy surfs at Lower Trestles, in 180 south swells or hurricane swells, especially late season in Sept and Oct when the June gloom is gone and it's fresh and clear early in the morning. Never really cared about the crowd; made a lot of friends in the area and after all, if you surfed in Sydney in the 70s and 80s, you can laugh off any crowd other than Pipeline. It's a strange coastline, with its dusty perimeter and desert foliage and air of protection from the elements, but it's got its own kind of beauty eh.

Ha, I reckon San Clemente locals are jealous of their break. And after going through Camp Pendleton it doesn't feel like San Diego anymore.
Isn't Newport considered a "Northern Sydney Beach"?

We were enjoying what they were calling the first south swell of the season, although it didn't look that south to me. What would a 180 swell be like, barrelling rights, longer lefts?
I'm pretty sure that if I was keen and not already surfed out from Uppers I could have waded out into the mix and snagged a couple over an extended period of time without upsetting too many frothing rippers' pro ambition apple carts......but i liked my wave catching ratio chances better farther up.

The massive amounts of kelp was also something to behold. literally. easy to get tangled in but useful in glassing off the surface.

did somebody say "nude beach"?

[Slowman]

Surfed trestles and down near San Onofre power plant for a month during the 1984 Olympics. Back then there was no internet and I had little idea about the place so I just followed my nose to the coast with some general directions from the host family I was staying with. I didn't have a clue which was upper and lower but recall climbing down the cliffs from the state park next to Camp Pendleton to see these wonderful a-frames and not that crowded, during the week at least. I think that is was lowers? And Uppers seemed more crowded because it was just a walk in from the car park by the freeway. Weekends it got a bit crowded but the vibe was pretty mellow in both places it seemed. And girl's pants just used to fall offf when they heard the accent, I couldn't have felt more welcome!

I found places like Huntington and Malibu aggressive at times. The yanks back then sure liked to call each other "punk" as an insult, it used to make me laugh (back then punk was cool), the f-word didn't get dropped very often. I thought I should at least tutor them in how to drop a decent "f***en cnut"! I guess that's all changed with the crowds today.