www.chulavistaca.gov

The City of Chula Vista built the Loma Verde Recreation Center. Now, we really had a cool place to hang. We pretty much ran the place. One year, at Christmas time, we actually hung joints from the tree.

On January 13, 2009, Forbes magazine declared Chula Vista the most boring city in the continental United States. I beg to differ. I doth protest. No way, Jose. My parents’ home was exactly five miles from the Mexican border. It still is. At night, you can see all the lights from Tijuana. “Like a beautiful sea of jewels,” as Mom would say…

Eddie Leiser

Photograph by Matthew Suárez

In 1968 we headed out west when my dad, who was in the navy, got transferred from Norfolk, Virginia. Mom, Dad, my sister, my grandmother, myself, three cats, and nine G.I. Joes all piled into our Chevy station wagon and hit the road. California, here we come! We landed in south Chula Vista, near Hilltop and Main St.

There were no tracks to grow up on the wrong side of, but there was the Otay River bottom. Illegal aliens, missing children, and worse kept the sheriffs pretty busy. A friend I grew up with was murdered in the river bottom. With an axe. Horrific? Definitely. Boring? Not so much.

About 20 yards over the hill behind our house was a partially demolished house. The Shack, as we called it, was like a gift from the gods to my group of friends. No adult supervision meant hours of illicit fun. Smoking, drinking, etc. Goodbye G. I. Joes. Another 50 yards further down the hill was a lake that had a 30-by-70-foot-long spillway. We’d take cardboard and slide down, crashing into the curved wall at the bottom. This led to three of us using the hood of a truck to slide down a hillside full of barrel cactus. Dangerous? Yep. Foolhardy? Uh-huh. Boring? Nope.

After a year or so, the Shack, the lake, and the spillway were gone, replaced by new houses. But the city of Chula Vista had built the Loma Verde Recreation Center just down the block. Olympic-sized pool, basketball courts, ping-pong tables, and music room. Now, we really had a cool place to hang. We pretty much ran the place. One year at Christmas time, we actually hung joints from the tree. No one noticed. No one except our new pal Little Chucky. We made his acquaintance when he walked over a mile to the Rec Center after observing us through his telescope and thinking, “They look like they’re having fun.”

One night, we put his smaller stature to “good” use. Four or five of us walked into 7-11 at the same time. Chucky, who was on his hands and knees, slipped by the clerk and into the storage room unnoticed. Two minutes later we had a case of beer. Each. Thanks, Chucky. Cheers. Illegal? Absolutely. Hilarious? To us, yes. Boring? No.

Chula Vista is also home to, according to the Guinness Book of World Records, the largest free-standing flagpole in the world. It’s just off the 5 south and Main Street. Off that same exit was the Big Sky Drive-In and the go-cart place where Mojo Nixon got married. Country Dick from the Beat Farmers presided over the ceremony.

We all went to Castle Park High School. The C.P.H. Trojans — yeah, yeah, very funny. It was in my senior year that I decided to be a musician. A year of five-hours-a-day practice got me into a rock ‘n roll band. That’s when the fun really started. We played schools, military bases, and seedy biker bars. By seedy, I mean dangerous. How dangerous? My 9th grade algebra teacher was murdered in the bathroom of one of them. There were bullet holes in the wall by the stage at another. At one club, I had to play “Johnny B. Goode” five times in a row. When I say “had to,” I mean there was a loaded .45 pointed at my head. I love Chuck Berry, but come on, dude. On another night, I got knocked out with an upper-cut on stage for not playing Aerosmith. Deadly? Yep. Boring? No way.

The most fun we had was playing parties. One year, we threw our own kegger out at Otay Lakes. Thousands of people showed up. There were cars backed up for miles. The sheriffs used both their helicopters to break it up, declaring it an “illegal assembly.” Twenty-one kegs and $800 profit. Fun? You betcha. Rock and roll? F**K YEAH. No boredom here, thank you.

By the time Forbes published their story, Chula Vista had grown tenfold. Here are some of the fun, and exciting things Chula Vista has to offer now: there are four different golf courses, four different libraries, a huge water park, The Chula Vista Nature Center, 24 miles of bayfront bikeways, the J St. Marina, the world class Coors Amphitheatre, and the South Bay Salt Works (where you can marvel at a pile of salt over 100 ft. high).

Laughing, eating, crying, cheating, walking, talking, running, stalking, jumping, dumping, pumping, and humping...It’s ALL here, baby. If nothing else, just wait for nightfall and take in that “beautiful sea of jewels,” as Mom would say.