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La Jolla – a shoreline and a mountain

Tom Wolfe, Sealab II, sea lions, D.G. Wills, La Jolla High, hike up Mt. Soledad, Mormon temple

La Jolla
La Jolla
  • What Windansea surfers said about Tom Wolfe

  • Eight summers have drifted by since Tom Wolfe (author of The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test) traveled to California to write a series on “The New Life Out There” for New York Magazine, a Sunday supplement to the now-defunct New York Herald Tribune. It was after dirtying his white, vested suits in East Los Angeles interviewing greasers and custom car freaks that Wolfe was told about this strange group of wealthy La Jolla teenagers who were living in a garage.
  • By Jane Weisman, July 19, 1973
The Pump House Gang in 1965. “It sort of began in December when Leonard Anderson came down to the beach and shot his girlfriend Donna because she wouldn’t marry him. We all watched as he shot her and then shot himself.”
  • 50th anniversary of Sealab II

  • The Sealab project had three vessels, the first of which was sunk off of Florida in 1964. Then came Sealab II in 1965, built in San Francisco and submerged three quarters of a mile off shore near Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Sealab II was a 9-foot high, 57-foot-long submersible habitat that plunged to 205 feet into Scripps Submarine Canyon off La Jolla.
  • By Leorah Gavidor, Oct. 12, 2015
Tuffy delivered supplies to the aquanauts
  • La Jolla Cove is becoming a sea lion cesspool

  • About a year ago at the La Jolla Cove, longtime marathon swimmer Claudia Rose was making her way toward La Jolla Shores with a friend when a group of sea lions charged at them. Startled into a fight-or-flight reaction, the swimmers veered to the south, toward the caves, to get away from the pinnipeds. Rose’s friend panicked, cramped up, and couldn’t swim very well, but his wetsuit kept him buoyant until he could recover.
  • By Caitlin Rother, Jan. 15, 2014
The colony “hauling out” on the rocks and swimming around the waters of the Cove has grown logarithmically.
  • La Jolla

  • Which La Jolla? Old La Jolla or New La Jolla? The distinction is chronological, but also a matter of attitude. You can see the contrast along a few yards of Girard Avenue, in what used to be fondly called “the Village.” D.G. Wills’ bookstore is Old LJ, crowded, disorderly, friendly, and host to a gang of the owner’s buddies who watch Monday night football there. The Pannikin, next door, has a charming shabbiness and an atmosphere of casual amateurism, along with coffee to dwell over at the outside tables. But then comes the cold, spotless Ferrari store, often proudly empty, but occasionally visited by sleek thirtysomethings who themselves look like Ferraris. That is New LJ.
  • By Jonathan Saville, Dec. 24, 2003
Dennis Wills: "I really identified with Larry Darrell, that character in W. Somerset Maugham’s novel The Razor’s Edge. I was rather inspired by Darrell’s remarkable curiosity — someone who went through World War I, whose best friend was killed, and he’s still alive. The arbitrariness of this puzzles him."
  • The bookseller who came in from the cold

  • I asked Dennis Wills, proprietor of D.G. Wills Books in La Jolla, how he came to be a bookseller. “That’s a very long story,” he said. “It involves espionage, intrigue, years working for the National Security Agency and for Zbigniew Brzezinski — right before he became Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser — encounters in Europe with great bookstores like Blackwell’s in London, and, especially, two books that made a deep impression on me, Somerset Maugham’s Razor’s Edge and James Hilton’s Lost Horizon.
  • By Fred Moramarco, Sept. 21, 2000
  • La Jolla Then and Now

  • Stand at the Torrey Pines Glider Point and face south. If you squint, La Jolla looks like a quaint Mediterranean fishing village. But boat masts don’t rock back and forth in the gentle tide, and drying nets don’t sprawl across the pure white sand. And picturesque little villages don’t have boutiques where years ago, legend still has it, Oprah bought a $25,000 gown to wear once.
  • By Jeff Smith, Jan. 26, 2014
  • The demise of privilege at La Jolla High

  • There's a lot riding on Dana Shelburne's shoulders. He's principal of La Jolla High School, the only public high school in one of San Diego's most prestigious communities. Nestled in the shadows of the La Jolla Country Club and minutes from Windansea Beach, the high school's location smacks of privilege. But privilege has become a bad word at La Jolla High.
  • By Doug Generoli, Sept. 25, 1997
  • Walk the curvy hillside streets and emerge atop Soledad Mountain

  • For a unique look at La Jolla – bottom to top – climaxed by the conventionally famous yet still fabulous view of the city from Soledad Park, try this unconventional six-mile (round trip) walking or bicycling route. Cyclists beware: there are some tough uphill stretches here, suitable only for bikes with very low gears.
  • By Jerry Schad, July 30, 1998
  • Schoolboy charm

  • 'What do you make of the whole Cunanan story?" I asked. The bartender at the Whaling Bar in the big pink La Valencia Hotel leaned toward me. "I'm glad he's dead. That way, we won't have to pay millions of dollars and watch him walk free."
  • By Matthew Lickona, July 31, 1997
The Bishop's School. Three of the main buildings were designed by Irving Gill. A colonnade of arches rings the courtyard.
  • I wanted to get as far as I could from my father

  • I could bear seeing that place, endure an interview with the police who knew him too well, with his parole officer, with merchants he’d stiffed and neighbors he’d bullshitted. But till now I'd kept my distance from pretty l.a Jolla and from San Diego and from up close and personal memories of my terminal pileup with my dad.
  • By Geoffrey Wolff, May 9, 1996
Duke, Geoffrey, Tobias Wolff. "Where, during these humiliating hours after work, was Toby?"
  • Where the surf was roughest

  • The first time I went to La Jolla was the summer of 1957. I was 15. Mama had remarried that spring to a man we all thought was beneath her. My brother Jimmy had left home shortly afterward, calling her an adulteress for remarrying. He had become a holy roller not long before that out of sexual guilt and fear of burning in hell.
  • By Mary Kathryn Vernon, Sept. 16, 1993
I took the bus to the Naval Recruitment Center. On the way, I imagined myself driving a convertible along the coast at sunset with the top down.
  • The mothership has landed

  • Perhaps the most striking and imposing new monument to be built in the San Diego area in recent years is the Mormon Temple currently nearing completion at the junction of Interstate 5 and La Jolla Village Drive. The two icy-white towers, surmounted by a gold effigy of the Angel Moroni and surrounded by neo-Gothic stalagmites, have already become a city landmark.
  • By Lawrence Osborne, Nov. 25, 1992
Sponsored
Sponsored
"We wanted it to stand out like the government buildings in Washington, the cathedrals in Europe."

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For nutty pies at Pizza by Aromi in La Mesa

Sicilian cousins add to the Italian goodness they dish out around Lake Murray
La Jolla
La Jolla
  • What Windansea surfers said about Tom Wolfe

  • Eight summers have drifted by since Tom Wolfe (author of The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test) traveled to California to write a series on “The New Life Out There” for New York Magazine, a Sunday supplement to the now-defunct New York Herald Tribune. It was after dirtying his white, vested suits in East Los Angeles interviewing greasers and custom car freaks that Wolfe was told about this strange group of wealthy La Jolla teenagers who were living in a garage.
  • By Jane Weisman, July 19, 1973
The Pump House Gang in 1965. “It sort of began in December when Leonard Anderson came down to the beach and shot his girlfriend Donna because she wouldn’t marry him. We all watched as he shot her and then shot himself.”
  • 50th anniversary of Sealab II

  • The Sealab project had three vessels, the first of which was sunk off of Florida in 1964. Then came Sealab II in 1965, built in San Francisco and submerged three quarters of a mile off shore near Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Sealab II was a 9-foot high, 57-foot-long submersible habitat that plunged to 205 feet into Scripps Submarine Canyon off La Jolla.
  • By Leorah Gavidor, Oct. 12, 2015
Tuffy delivered supplies to the aquanauts
  • La Jolla Cove is becoming a sea lion cesspool

  • About a year ago at the La Jolla Cove, longtime marathon swimmer Claudia Rose was making her way toward La Jolla Shores with a friend when a group of sea lions charged at them. Startled into a fight-or-flight reaction, the swimmers veered to the south, toward the caves, to get away from the pinnipeds. Rose’s friend panicked, cramped up, and couldn’t swim very well, but his wetsuit kept him buoyant until he could recover.
  • By Caitlin Rother, Jan. 15, 2014
The colony “hauling out” on the rocks and swimming around the waters of the Cove has grown logarithmically.
  • La Jolla

  • Which La Jolla? Old La Jolla or New La Jolla? The distinction is chronological, but also a matter of attitude. You can see the contrast along a few yards of Girard Avenue, in what used to be fondly called “the Village.” D.G. Wills’ bookstore is Old LJ, crowded, disorderly, friendly, and host to a gang of the owner’s buddies who watch Monday night football there. The Pannikin, next door, has a charming shabbiness and an atmosphere of casual amateurism, along with coffee to dwell over at the outside tables. But then comes the cold, spotless Ferrari store, often proudly empty, but occasionally visited by sleek thirtysomethings who themselves look like Ferraris. That is New LJ.
  • By Jonathan Saville, Dec. 24, 2003
Dennis Wills: "I really identified with Larry Darrell, that character in W. Somerset Maugham’s novel The Razor’s Edge. I was rather inspired by Darrell’s remarkable curiosity — someone who went through World War I, whose best friend was killed, and he’s still alive. The arbitrariness of this puzzles him."
  • The bookseller who came in from the cold

  • I asked Dennis Wills, proprietor of D.G. Wills Books in La Jolla, how he came to be a bookseller. “That’s a very long story,” he said. “It involves espionage, intrigue, years working for the National Security Agency and for Zbigniew Brzezinski — right before he became Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser — encounters in Europe with great bookstores like Blackwell’s in London, and, especially, two books that made a deep impression on me, Somerset Maugham’s Razor’s Edge and James Hilton’s Lost Horizon.
  • By Fred Moramarco, Sept. 21, 2000
  • La Jolla Then and Now

  • Stand at the Torrey Pines Glider Point and face south. If you squint, La Jolla looks like a quaint Mediterranean fishing village. But boat masts don’t rock back and forth in the gentle tide, and drying nets don’t sprawl across the pure white sand. And picturesque little villages don’t have boutiques where years ago, legend still has it, Oprah bought a $25,000 gown to wear once.
  • By Jeff Smith, Jan. 26, 2014
  • The demise of privilege at La Jolla High

  • There's a lot riding on Dana Shelburne's shoulders. He's principal of La Jolla High School, the only public high school in one of San Diego's most prestigious communities. Nestled in the shadows of the La Jolla Country Club and minutes from Windansea Beach, the high school's location smacks of privilege. But privilege has become a bad word at La Jolla High.
  • By Doug Generoli, Sept. 25, 1997
  • Walk the curvy hillside streets and emerge atop Soledad Mountain

  • For a unique look at La Jolla – bottom to top – climaxed by the conventionally famous yet still fabulous view of the city from Soledad Park, try this unconventional six-mile (round trip) walking or bicycling route. Cyclists beware: there are some tough uphill stretches here, suitable only for bikes with very low gears.
  • By Jerry Schad, July 30, 1998
  • Schoolboy charm

  • 'What do you make of the whole Cunanan story?" I asked. The bartender at the Whaling Bar in the big pink La Valencia Hotel leaned toward me. "I'm glad he's dead. That way, we won't have to pay millions of dollars and watch him walk free."
  • By Matthew Lickona, July 31, 1997
The Bishop's School. Three of the main buildings were designed by Irving Gill. A colonnade of arches rings the courtyard.
  • I wanted to get as far as I could from my father

  • I could bear seeing that place, endure an interview with the police who knew him too well, with his parole officer, with merchants he’d stiffed and neighbors he’d bullshitted. But till now I'd kept my distance from pretty l.a Jolla and from San Diego and from up close and personal memories of my terminal pileup with my dad.
  • By Geoffrey Wolff, May 9, 1996
Duke, Geoffrey, Tobias Wolff. "Where, during these humiliating hours after work, was Toby?"
  • Where the surf was roughest

  • The first time I went to La Jolla was the summer of 1957. I was 15. Mama had remarried that spring to a man we all thought was beneath her. My brother Jimmy had left home shortly afterward, calling her an adulteress for remarrying. He had become a holy roller not long before that out of sexual guilt and fear of burning in hell.
  • By Mary Kathryn Vernon, Sept. 16, 1993
I took the bus to the Naval Recruitment Center. On the way, I imagined myself driving a convertible along the coast at sunset with the top down.
  • The mothership has landed

  • Perhaps the most striking and imposing new monument to be built in the San Diego area in recent years is the Mormon Temple currently nearing completion at the junction of Interstate 5 and La Jolla Village Drive. The two icy-white towers, surmounted by a gold effigy of the Angel Moroni and surrounded by neo-Gothic stalagmites, have already become a city landmark.
  • By Lawrence Osborne, Nov. 25, 1992
Sponsored
Sponsored
"We wanted it to stand out like the government buildings in Washington, the cathedrals in Europe."
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Sponsored

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