San Diego Noir

Brandon “Legacy” Penter is that kid every big city has who you just hate. Tall and athletic with spiky brown hair with blond tips and an I-just-got-away-with-something grin. He’s the son of a former San Diego lawyer turned judge, his mother a real estate mogul, his brother a councilman, and his uncle is CIA. Legacy is a junior at USD where his entire family went and is part of a snooty frat. Legacy is so dumb that he wouldn’t be able to find a seashell on the beach he lives twenty feet from. Daddy has to pay off the right people so he can pull off Gentleman’s Cs. If San Diego has royalty, the Penters are it, living in their mansion at the top of the very exclusive Soledad Mountain in La Jolla.

Moses goes to Mission Boulevard, the heart of Mission Beach.

In Mission Beach, every foot of space counts and is bitterly fought for and protected. Five surf shops, four bars, a handful of restaurants, a resort hotel, a Turkish-style coffee house, and a small amusement park named Belmont Park with the last wooden roller coaster in California are packed in tight here, wedged in and amongst the beachside homes. At North Jetty Road, the southwestern cap of Mission Beach, there is a well-known localsonly spot where Moses surfs with a group of middle-aged professionals called the Gentleman’s Hour; at the north end is the Catamaran Hotel, a ritzy vacation spot with suites costing up to eight hundred bucks a night and worth every penny. Compared to its sisters Pacific Beach and Ocean Beach, Mission Beach is a baby in age and much smaller than both.

Pacific Beach is losing to gentrification and crime spurred by alcohol, and Ocean Beach tries way too hard to be funky and pretend it’s still 1975. Hanging on to a true beach-town feel amid the commercialism of the age is no easy task for those who live there, but Mission Beach keeps it real. Fourteen streets and forty-six walkways cross Mission Boulevard, emptying out onto the brown mud banks of the bay on the east and the sand of the Pacific Ocean on the west. Delicious views of blue sky peek out from between the rows of homes; clouds pass slowly overhead. Here, boxy stucco houses with neatly manicured lawns sit next to fading wooden shacks whose gardens sprawl on their small front yards like they don’t have a care in the world. Towels sway lazily on clotheslines; wet suits hang over balcony rails to dry; surfboards lie piled on porches and on top of cars and in garages, still wet and slippery from morning sessions. Paint has peeled, façades dulled, and cars rusted, but this only adds to the funk of the place. Neighbors gather on the sidewalk to talk about the weather. For a city where the sun shines three hundred days a year, its citizens are obsessed with the weather and act betrayed and more than a little scared when it’s cloudy or, God forbid, raining. Moses doesn’t judge, he’s had his share of weather conversations.

Several people can be seen walking their dogs. People nod and wave at each other from the windows of cars. Surfers wax and hose their boards, talking story about the mythical perfect wave, and the height and ferocity of the wave gets bigger the more they drink. Shop owners linger outside storefronts, smoking and chatting and watching the street traffic. Restaurants don’t dare have dress codes (No shirts, no shoes? You can come in!) and more often than not have outdoor seating. Beach-front condos have every variety of life. You can see what looks like an MTV beach party on one patio, next to a group of retirees drinking red wine while enjoying their golden years, and a happy middle-aged gay couple holding hands as they absorb the sunset.

Houses face the streets and walkways, few blocked from view by trees or hedges, which gives the area a casual and friendly look. A puppy eager to please. Street performers like jugglers or reggae bands do their thing on the boardwalk. The whoosh! of the Giant Dipper roller coaster can be heard every few minutes and Moses remembers the huge block party thrown when it was reopened in 1990. If you didn’t know the locals, very few appeared to have a care in the world; for Moses, it’s everything a beach town should be and the fact that scum like Teddy and Legacy infect it makes him sick.

Legacy lives with some other trust-fund California kids in a nice stucco house and when Moses gets there, he finds the guy washing down his obnoxious yellow humvee with Creed blasting on the stereo. The awful, crime-against-humanity music only worsens Moses’s month.

“Hey, Legacy. You and I need to have a Come to Jesus meeting. You free?” Moses turns off the stereo; Legacy is lucky he doesn’t hurl it into the ocean.