When I first went to La Jolla, I found it enchanting. My friend took classes at UCSD. We had just been graduated from the University of Georgia less than a year earlier. I had a crush on her, I think that she had one on me for about five minutes once.
I attended some classes at UCSD in philosophy and physics. I was not impressed. TAs taught too many of the classes. The TAs for the philosophy classes were Hegalian-Marxists--not very bright but highly ideological. I can say that because I was a Romantic Marxist myself (for a few weeks) at the time and even less intelligent than the TAs. I admired the hatred of imperial America that some of the students voiced. Their theoritical stuff was foolish, however.
Students at UCSD seemed overly impressed with their intelligence and overly impressed that they attended that university. I wasn't impressed. Students at UCSD considered Elridge Clever a thoughtful intellectual. He wasn't. He was a spousal abuser.
I knew the wife of a retired Naval officer who was one of Herbert Marcuse's graduate students. Marcuse impressed me, though his mode of thinking emerged from a profound mistake in logic. Stuff like Zen and Hegalism seemed dead ends. However, Marcuse said prohetic things but from a flawed theoretical point-of-view.
Several times, I spent the night on Black's Beach. It is exciting to sleep between a cliff and an incoming tide. Also, I used to walk from La Jolla to Cardiff by the Sea along that beach. It was not a nudist beach in 1968. It was a beautiful, wild place at night. In moonlight it was enchanting. La Jolla itself quickly became oppressive.
San Francisco was dirty, loud, cold, and ugly. I liked some aspects of it. It seemed limited and limiting. Not many interesting buildings exist in that Bay area.
UC Berkeley was not the great university it was supposed to be. Well, it is, but it was oppressive. Pete Seeger's father had to leave it because of red baiting.The hippie shit was--well shit. It allowed creepy men to rape vulnerable young women.
Still, I enjoyed the people whom I met. They treated me well. Most of them were gay. I am in their debt. Most died later because of AIDS.
I loved ACT, but SF is, at best, a mini New York. I recall meeting a rock performer who had studied at the Curtis Insitute under Rudolf Serkin. He had not made it as a classical musician. He lived in a super clean house in the Mission area, but roaches ran up and down the walls. San Francisco had more roaches than New Orleans. Anyway, the guy was really depressed. I met many depressed people in that city. The natives I met wanted to move East.
I worked for an advertising company in San Francisco. That is really dull work. It is full of pretense and self-importance. Just awful. That probably ruined my memory of the city. The friend in La Jolla dumped me. That is also one of the bad memories.
I think that La Jolla must have been a fine place during the Second World and Korean Wars, but it was not much in the sixites. It was full of self-righteous Republicans.The Methodist Church built an awful building for a retirement home. The building ruined the skyline.
Watching boys become Marines who would risk and sometimes throw away their lives in Vietnam hurt. I met several young men who had completed college who enlisted in the Marines. Their lives seemed wasted in that damm war.
Anyway, my response to California is a personal one. It is not rational or one that I could defend.
When I think about the state, I think about people like Ronald Reagan and Pet Wilson and worst of all--that bastard Nixon. I admit that I forget about the good people like Pat Brown. I have very bad memories of the state.
Someone told me that the woman whom I adored became a clinical psychologist and a marriage counselor. I probably taught her how to deal with abusive and over possessive creeps.
The last time I visited La Jolla was in 1972. It was already dreadful. Of course it rained! I last visited San Francisco in 1987. I enjoyed the Exploratorium with my then wife. I enjoyed Big Sur much more than the city.
In 1968, airfares from San Diego to San Francisco were eleven dollars one-way. That was cheaper than busfare. The damm planes stopped at John Wayne Airport on the way but no one had to look out the window. The flights diverted over Big Sur were amazing. The glimmer that Todd Gitlin noted was there! Amazing.
I am being a bit over the top in my compliants about California. I really had a crush on my (long ago) friend. I did not respond well or with any maturity to her lack of interest. She treated me kindly. Unfortunately, I did not deserve her kindness and lost her friendship many years ago. Behind my divorce that is the next greatest disappointment of my life. Learn to forgive people changing their minds, my friends.
What any of this has to do with Peterson is beyond me, except that he was even more abusive than I was toward my former friend. Whether he killed his wife, he is a creep.
I am mostly kidding about California. However, there are better places to live. Joan Didion writes perceptively about being from there. Kevin Starr's histories still fasciante me. John McPhee's fourth volume of his long essay on geology also intrigues me. Flying over the Central Valley thrills me. I love Big Sur for the shere beauty of the place.
Boy, an airplane. I envy you.
Now he's going to San Quentin "Pound him in the ass" 
prison.Now he's going to San Quentin "Pound him in the ass"
prison.
A-1 