CALIFORNIA NOSE BLIDNESS

An observational study of southern California’s urban ecosystem and its most prevalent species.

There is a crossroads in America’s Finest City that presents the gravitas of San Diego’s historic heart; the Gaslamp Quarter. Marking its entrance on Fifth Street is a grand sign arching over the main strip, bordered in yellow lights and neon. Many San Diego neighborhoods boast their own massive street signs but are underwhelming compared to the pull of the Gaslamp’s nightlife. The elongated convention center strategically placed outside that grand entrance on Fifth Street churns out tourists and locals alike, with hefty wallets ready to spend on an expensive dinner or a night of debauchery. This part of downtown receives a lot of love with routine cleanings and extra “security consultants” in the form of blue-vested bike riders.

Underneath that same entrance on Fifth Street, there is a swanky restaurant by the name of Lou’s & Mickey’s. Across the street, there is also a man standing under the vibrating hum of an exhaust fan and a poster advocating healthy living. He takes a drag from a cigarette and basks in the yellow glow of vintage light bulbs, watching rich folks chat as plates of hors d'oeuvres are scarfed down and wine is poured out. The man cracks a smile as if he can hear the conversations playing around him. Something twinkles in his distant eyes that would tell you he is detached from himself. There is no one to acknowledge his existence as the same locals perform a practiced technique of California nose blindness passing by. Unaccustomed out-of-towners exchange worried glances. They see his unkempt beard and torn clothing matted with layers of scum. His ribcage is wrought with ringworm and peeling scabs. He wears torn gray sweatpants that reveal a pungent smell that wafts, suggesting a type of decay commonly associated with a corpse. The only outlier is a blue-vested “security consultant” equipped with Narcan, a radio, and a bicycle standing thirty feet away. Security is not too concerned as this man has stood in the same spot for at least a month. Yet this is not the only person the city has tabs on today.

The ultra-rich passing by the most destitute of America is a scene that has become too common in an otherwise heavenly region. Sheltered from the desert by the Peninsular Range and cooled by the Pacific, the city exists in America’s most forgiving climate. A person only needs to catch the scent of miasma and follow its trail to discover a managed lagoon dominated by not the young, but geriatric peacocks.

Within this lagoon, they are the dominant species – ornamental and long-lived. They do not originate here and only arrived in earlier decades while abundance remained. Though they claim to be hippies, they embody the materialistic sell outs yuppies always lived up to be. The enclaves of Coronado, South Park, Mission Beach, Point Loma, and La Jolla. Parcels of this environment start at a million dollars - a reasonable asking price for a mansion anywhere else. In this part of the world, that is called a “one-bed, one-bath" fixer upper. The only bidders are ultra-wealthy, private equity, and other migrating peacocks. With a deep inhalation of miasma, it almost makes sense. However, an obnoxious dose of this substance is required to live here.

They prance within these clusters, all the while relying on an invisible force of immigrant labor to uphold their environment. These immigrants understand the limits of their employer's benevolence; the people who maintain this environment would never be allowed to live in it. The type of immigrant they want is washed, speaks good English, and is Americanized enough to remain undisruptive.

Rest assured they will still support you and the social cause of the day from within the lagoon, and picket for you in places that never matter to begin with, and design their homes in social-justice regalia without having a single minority living on the block. The lack of diversity is made up in the form of ethical virtue signaling of a status quo that only works for them, against the rest of the bumpkins from beyond the mountains. Behind the guise of shades, they will smile at you with an unknowable irritation.

They blame some nebulous federal or state government for their bad attitude and tragically mistake their own offspring for parasites because they do not provide goods or services. The young born here are stepped upon with indignance; so, they dye their hair in technicolor, and their thoughts are bided by the sweetened words of affordability by the likes of Communists and Socialists. There is some truth about the lagoon’s wealth.

Priced out of the California dream, people here make a living by catering to the death beds of retirees who do not understand they are on the way out of it. In the meantime, the peacocks spend their golden years accosting neighbors and city employees with mundanities such as paint schemes, parking, and how tall buildings are instead of repairing the region’s wealth disposition. An abhorrent greed envelops their emotions to protect their slices of paradise against all others, and especially against a creature they fear outside of the lagoon's confines.

It is a strange society that relies too much on pundits intending to uphold failing conditions and keep cryptids out. The suspected animal is all but driven out to the likes of Texas and Florida. They are described as a near extinct species called the California Republicans whose numbers are so diminished they provide no real checks or balances to the political ecosystem. The geriatric are the only ones left to feign over a boogieman so dislodged from their everyday lives, when the real threat of discontent arrives to San Diego, it's not going to be Republicans burning down the city – it's going to be their sons and daughters who never had a piece of the lagoon.

A contradiction on the grandest scale with the pleasant weather keeping everyone sedated in the dream that it all adds up. You too can dip yourself into the dream, but only if you sink into the lagoon and inhale the miasma bubbling from its depths – let it seep into your pores and smear it into your skin - this develops California nose blindness and affords you the ability to live with your values in paradise.

Kaleb Mantela is a San Diego County resident and a freelance writer who focuses on transportation and community issues across the United States.