San Diego is supposed to have perfect weather, except when it doesn't and it certainly was raining cats and dogs yesterday which meant a night at the movies ("
Slumdog Millionaire" if you must know).
But late night movies are not all the San Diego nightlife has to offer. There's
Pecs on University Avenue, a local bearish gay bar, in which I stumbled into former National Gay and Lesbian Task Force ED
Matt Foreman (ok, I didn't stumble upon him, let's say we were taken there). At Pecs, I was regaled with bud lights and was witness to some bearish cruising (sorry, no pics). Weird, it was only once I got there that I realized that I had never visited a gay bar in San Diego during my past visits which shows you how much I hang out at gay bars anywhere, including New York.
You could do worse than heading a little bit outside the San Diego city limits and head over to the casinos at some local indian reservations. Just make sure you take a specific amount of money and leave the bank cards and credit cards at home. If we had stayed longer, I am sure I'd be a slumdog millionaire by now as well. As it was, I won fortunes and lost fortunes but came up almost even plus or minus $30 bucks. The giggles came when I noticed the place was called "Viejas" which in Colombia is what the horny kids call women when they are boasting about their conquests (the literal translation is 'old women' although I'm pretty sure those who chose the name were unaware of what the word means in Spanish).
A more intimate nightlife venture would be to schedule a night to play card games with friends. Except this was a 'card-game-slash-board-game' I had never heard of called Joker which originated in Missouri. I almost got the point of it. Perhaps one more time at the table will make me a Joker expert. The good thing? It's not a betting game so no money lost. Or at least I don't think it was a betting game.
Last night, after the storm had passed and before the flick, we headed to the Ocean Beach burger joint
Hodad's. Yum. From the OB dictionary:
ho·dad [
hö'dád] A person who does not surf, but who spends time at surfing beaches pretending to be a surfer. That's me!
TRNQILO said one of the old license plates hung on the wall and it was. Apparently San Diegoans (San Dieguites? San Diegans?) treat rain storms just like big snow storms up north: Nobody dares to go out! They might slip on a puddle! So the place was eerily TRNQILO or peaceful. That's not natural for Hodad's. The place has always been packed when I've been there before.
Then it was a hop and a skip across the street to get some ice cream.
Rex got a cup and spoon...
...I got a sugar cone. Then, half-way through the cookies'n'cream, it hit me: I could have done with only one scoop! The choco-caramel swirl could have waited for another day!!
...hold that thought...
Previously:
Last night in San Diego and Christmas Eve approaching, Rex suggested we do the San Diego Zoo's Wild Animal Park at night. Mind you, I had already been at the perfectly nice zoo at Balboa Park on a previous trip (pandas!) so who knew there was another zoo a few miles away? Plus there was a 'Festival of Lights' going on in honor of the holidays so on to the park it was...
San Diego has been unusually cold and rainy during my two-week stay and since the wild animal park is inland it was certainly a bit chilly. So it might have been Southern California but the cold spell certainly went with the holiday spirit.
We got there in time to take a night safari where we were warned about the wilderness surrounding us, but the most dangerous thing that happened was the safari bus almost toppling off the road when the driver took a curve a bit too fast. Other than that, the tour started off on a down note when we learned this is one of only ten rhinos of this breed and that they might very well be extinct within the next fifty years - and this one, at least, is too old to mate.
It was dark so I couldn't capture many other images but it seemed we were disturbing a lot of them from nappy time, including this giraffe. Still, our guide kept making sure we knew that the park is a happening place, with gazelles, okapis, giraffes and zebras boinking all day long and producing hundreds of offspring (ok, he didn't use the word 'boinking', he said 'mating').
All in all, a very nice outing for my last night in San Diego, although I was disappointed the balloon ride was closed at night.
Not the best picture, but here's Rex (right) and I (left) after the tour. Rex blogged the wildlife outing here. He has way more pictures of pretty Christmas lights than I do.
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