Here's something you might be interested in.
Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed
Big Screen — Movie commentary
Blurt — Music's inside track
Booze News — San Diego spirits
Classical Music — Immortal beauty
Classifieds — Free and easy
Close to Home — What it’s like on the street where you live
Cover Stories — Front-page features
Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes
Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts
Feast! — Food & drink reviews
Feature Stories — Local news & stories
Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore
From the Archives — Spotlight on the past
Golden Dreams — Talk of the town
The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it
Letters — Our inbox
Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites
Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans
Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists
Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news
News Ticker — News & politics
Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated
Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna
Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated
Poetry — The old and the new
Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers
Reading — The hunt for intellectuals
Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails
San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds
SD on the QT — Almost factual news
Sheep and Goats — Places of worship
Special Issues — The best of
Street Style — San Diego streets have style
Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves
Theater — On stage in San Diego this week
Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative
Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work
Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego
Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads
Your Week — Daily event picks
Nextdoor Wars: Del Cerro defends its vista
But not necessarily its Vista Del Cerro
The horror.
Perched high above San Diego with Lake Murray at its feet, Del Cerro (“of the hill”) has always had a reputation for being tidy, tight-knit, and a tad territorial. The mid-century hillside enclave began selling off lots in 1955, parcel by parcel. In the ’60s and ’70s it picked up the nickname Hanukkah Hill, thanks to a wave of Jewish families who built their dream homes here. Today, its winding streets climb toward Cowles Mountain, offering some of the best sunset views in the county.
Residents take defending the hilltop very seriously: they’ve fought off SDSU’s expansion into Adobe Falls, swatted down a proposed 900-seat megachurch, and funded a $200K rebuild of the Lake Murray playground. With a median household income of $144K and virtually no child poverty, Del Cerro somehow manages to be both exclusive and deeply community-minded.
Fun fact: it has one of the highest concentrations of British and Danish ancestry in the U.S., plus more Persian speakers than 96% of neighborhoods nationwide.
But this week, the battle was not against academia or Christianity. It was against something far more menacing: a Walmart shopping cart.
The original post
It all started when John Good posted, “Not trying to be judgy but what’s happening in Del Cerro? I’m noticing more trash left on the streets and now a Walmart shopping cart?” John even attached a photo of said Walmart cart and a pic of the cross streets it was discovered on.
Comments/Observations
1. “They’ve done studies. Stray shopping carts lead to more stray shopping carts. It’s science! Return your carts to the corrals, everyone!” Shopping carts and feral cats: is there a difference? Actually, this sounds more like a synecdoche, in which shopping carts stand in for those who tend to use them for purposes other than shopping.
2. “It’s the broken windows theory. One Walmart cart today, a Mattress Firm tomorrow.” Poor Mattress Firm, thrown under the cart, er, bus. Is it their fault their fine products sometimes get left outside?
3. Then things turned territorial. “Those cross streets are San Carlos, not Del Cerro.” And really, what would you expect from those degenerate San Carlosians?
4. But original Poster John was having none of it. “The Neighborhood is Vista Del Cerro.”
5. Says you, John: “I grew up on Amberly. We’ve never called it Vista Del Cerro.” Who you gonna believe: some local who grew up there or Cartspotter John?
6. There are those who complain on the internet, and there are those who make angry phone calls and get things done. “I actually called Walmart and they said they’d pick up the cart. Still waiting. I’ll follow up tomorrow if they haven’t picked it up.”
7. Emily not in Paris took the news especially hard: “This is very bad. One would expect a Tiffany’s or MAYBE a Zales cart… but a WALMART cart? Eww.”
8. But John may have suspected that Emily was less than sincere, given that Tiffany's is not known for their shopping carts. In lieu of a scolding, he invoked the ultimate neighborhood panic button: “You might not care about property values, but I do.”
Final thought
Poor John. There goes the neighborhood. This is what happens when you let undesirable neighborhoods move in next door.
For more on this and other Nextdoor Wars stories, check out the podcast!
Here's something you might be interested in.
Nextdoor Wars: Del Cerro defends its vista
But not necessarily its Vista Del Cerro
Nextdoor Wars: Del Cerro defends its vista
But not necessarily its Vista Del Cerro
The horror.
Perched high above San Diego with Lake Murray at its feet, Del Cerro (“of the hill”) has always had a reputation for being tidy, tight-knit, and a tad territorial. The mid-century hillside enclave began selling off lots in 1955, parcel by parcel. In the ’60s and ’70s it picked up the nickname Hanukkah Hill, thanks to a wave of Jewish families who built their dream homes here. Today, its winding streets climb toward Cowles Mountain, offering some of the best sunset views in the county.
Residents take defending the hilltop very seriously: they’ve fought off SDSU’s expansion into Adobe Falls, swatted down a proposed 900-seat megachurch, and funded a $200K rebuild of the Lake Murray playground. With a median household income of $144K and virtually no child poverty, Del Cerro somehow manages to be both exclusive and deeply community-minded.
Fun fact: it has one of the highest concentrations of British and Danish ancestry in the U.S., plus more Persian speakers than 96% of neighborhoods nationwide.
But this week, the battle was not against academia or Christianity. It was against something far more menacing: a Walmart shopping cart.
The original post
It all started when John Good posted, “Not trying to be judgy but what’s happening in Del Cerro? I’m noticing more trash left on the streets and now a Walmart shopping cart?” John even attached a photo of said Walmart cart and a pic of the cross streets it was discovered on.
Comments/Observations
1. “They’ve done studies. Stray shopping carts lead to more stray shopping carts. It’s science! Return your carts to the corrals, everyone!” Shopping carts and feral cats: is there a difference? Actually, this sounds more like a synecdoche, in which shopping carts stand in for those who tend to use them for purposes other than shopping.
2. “It’s the broken windows theory. One Walmart cart today, a Mattress Firm tomorrow.” Poor Mattress Firm, thrown under the cart, er, bus. Is it their fault their fine products sometimes get left outside?
3. Then things turned territorial. “Those cross streets are San Carlos, not Del Cerro.” And really, what would you expect from those degenerate San Carlosians?
4. But original Poster John was having none of it. “The Neighborhood is Vista Del Cerro.”
5. Says you, John: “I grew up on Amberly. We’ve never called it Vista Del Cerro.” Who you gonna believe: some local who grew up there or Cartspotter John?
6. There are those who complain on the internet, and there are those who make angry phone calls and get things done. “I actually called Walmart and they said they’d pick up the cart. Still waiting. I’ll follow up tomorrow if they haven’t picked it up.”
7. Emily not in Paris took the news especially hard: “This is very bad. One would expect a Tiffany’s or MAYBE a Zales cart… but a WALMART cart? Eww.”
8. But John may have suspected that Emily was less than sincere, given that Tiffany's is not known for their shopping carts. In lieu of a scolding, he invoked the ultimate neighborhood panic button: “You might not care about property values, but I do.”
Final thought
Poor John. There goes the neighborhood. This is what happens when you let undesirable neighborhoods move in next door.
For more on this and other Nextdoor Wars stories, check out the podcast!