Just got back from San Diego where I was speaking at a conference on digital visualization of city models. My presentation went quite well, but the city was an interesting surprise, since the last time I was there was in the mid seventies, visiting as a kid with my parents. The city has grown up a lot since then, but at least in the limited downtown area I hung out in, the beach town vibe still seemed to hold. The weather was perfect, so perhaps the next time I end up over there, I could spend a bit more time at the beach.
When I first went visited, back in 1975, it was right when Jaws had been released and a White shark fever was gripping the nation. A week or two before we arrived at the beach hotel, someone had caught a small great white on the pier in front of the hotel. So by the time we got there, no one could go into the ocean, because the entire pier was covered with people dangling large chunks of bloody red meat into the water in the hopes of catching another shark. It was quite disappointing being a small kid on their first visit to the ocean, not being allowed to step more than an inch into the water, since the entire beach had been turned into Chum Soup.
