You might start seeing this picture of me around the Internet. San Diegans, I beseech thee: become a member of Voice of San Diego. It’s a great way to meet other kind, thoughtful, interesting San Diegans who make things happen. It’s also cheap. Also, they’re cool.

ucsdspecialcollections:

Views of San Diego and Pacific Beach, 1907

Promotional pamphlet issued by Asher & Littlefield, “exclusive Tent City agents for Folsom Bros. Company’s Pacific Beach properties.

“Illustrations of homes, churches and beach scenes in Pacific Beach. Also a panoramic view of San Diego Bay” Pacific Beach is a beautiful seaside section of San Diego, and is destined to become its most popular and largest residence suburb. Its natural advantages are far greater than those possessed by all the other sections of San Diego combined”—p. [2] of cover

More gold from the pamphlet:

It is well-nigh impossible to enumerate the many natural and material advantages possessed by Pacific Beach, but the following will give you some idea of what is there today:

PACIFIC BEACH has a very fertile soil, perfectly free from stone or adobe, easily cultivated, and producing everything luxuriantly.

PACIFIC BEACH has the best climate of this wonderful bay region, which is shown by U.S. Government reports, extending over a long period of years, to possess the most equable climate in the world, so far as is known.

PACIFIC BEACH consists of the most sightly body of land in San Diego, with beautiful sunny southern exposure.

PACIFIC BEACH possesses the advantage of a situation on both ocean and bay, the ocean frontage consisting of its famous beach, four miles long, very wide and gentle, absolutely free from undertow, and said to be the finest beach on the Pacific Coast.

PACIFIC BEACH has churches, stores, schools, one of the finest and best appointed hotels in the southwest, graded and oiled streets, concrete sidewalks, an abundant supply of the purest water, the best of railway transportation, with electric systems now under construction.

Our soil isn’t that great, but I’m also a lousy gardener. I wish we still had “the best of railway transportation.”

ryangraves:

Best city in the world.

I find it deeply demoralizing that these seals, who didn’t build that wall, have moved into the beach.

— Hugh Davies, director of the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, on the seals who live at the Children’s Pool in La Jolla.

ucsdspecialcollections:

Hotel del Coronado, Coronado Beach, California, 1904

A relic from the brief moorish occupation of Coronado.

Home.

ucsdspecialcollections:

Aerial view of La Jolla, 1967, Robert Glasheen Photograph Collection MSS 154

mimiandjack:

Spent the day by the ocean talking about how we live in the best city in the world. (Taken with Instagram at La Jolla Cove)

The best day.