La Jolla

Imagine Marbella, Cap D’Antibes, and San Remo, with a laid-back, Southern California vibe, and you have La Jolla, about twenty minutes north of San Diego, and just south, along the iconic Highway One, of Del Mar, Encinitas, and the Solana Beach. La Jolla, the jewel, is my favorite spot in California, and you will soon see why.

During the summer, a shallow marine layer envelops La Jolla, at least west of Highway 5.

As morning turns into afternoon, June Gloom passes, to abundant, glorious, soft sunshine, a comfortably warm breeze, before the sun drops below the horizon, the marine layer slowly returns, before dinner, perhaps at the La Jolla Beach and Tennis Club, on La Jolla Shores Beach, just north of La Jolla Cove. While not quite the Hotel Belles Rives, where F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote Tender is the Night (and where I had the privilege of staying nearly twenty years ago on a business trip), the feeling is much the same, the air mild and heavy, the water lazy, but purposeful, one day ending, and the promises of the next, beginning with the typical low clouds, not too far away. 

I first visited La Jolla in 1987, during the summer between eighth and nineth grade. It was warm.  I recall, faintly, the cottage we had rented by La Jolla Cove, just down the hill from downtown La Jolla. I recall swimming in La Jolla Cove, lazy afternoons on La Jolla Shores, and a visit, of course, to the San Diego Zoo. 

My second visit to La Jolla was in 1991. I had been accepted to the University of California, San 
Diego and was visiting the campus for the first time. The impression was a positive one, and in September, I drove five hundred or so miles with my father, from my home in San Francisco, to start my undergraduate career. I recall dropping off my father at the airport, before driving to La Jolla Shores for a new student “orientation,” for Warren College. This was my first time really away from home. I was ecstatic. 

Freshman year was great, and besides a few hiccups academically during my sophomore and junior years, I have no complaints. During my junior and senior years, I lived off campus, in a duplex, with friends, on La Jolla Boulevard, a few blocks from Wind and Sea Beach. It was the best of both worlds, close to downtown La Jolla, and its various dining and other options (although I preferred Los Dos Pedros down the street and its inimitable fish burritos over practically anything else), but not so far from campus, just a relatively short drive up Torrey Pines Road.

Graduation came and went, in June 1995, and I packed up, and drove back to San Francisco, to work for a few years, before enrolling in graduate school.  Some friends moved north as well, and, fast forward, social media has helped to maintain the connection to this distant past, at least on a superficial level. I have visited La Jolla a few times, most recently in 2013. Doubtless, the past is long gone, but warm memories remain, and while the optimism and boundless horizons of youth are very much in the rear view mirror, I have a hunch that there may be another chapter in the La Jolla story, teaching perhaps, and coming full circle.