As a non-native San Diegan, I’ve had both the outsider and insider views of the city and its community. I grew up in a small cow town in Washington State, so to me community was all the kids I had been going to school with since kindergarten. It was knowing all the neighbors, cat-sitting for them, being the cool kid who had a pool and hot tub, riding bikes to the library or to the park. The first I heard of San Diego was when my aunt moved there while I was in middle school. We heard about all the sun and surf, but nothing about the people. Her presence in the city was actually one of the reasons I chose UCSD for my undergrad. So I moved here, lived on campus for the first two years. That was my community, the people I lived with, fellow Tritons — and very few of them were San Diegans because all of them still lived at home. I didn’t get a taste of the community here until very recently.

During my fourth and final year at UCSD, I lived off campus and had a job and a car (three things that make a big difference in your social life). At this point I became at least aware that there are all these little pockets of civilization dotting the mesas and skirting the canyons. Most of the beaches and areas of downtown were already (in)famous in my mind — I knew about the reputations PB (Pacific Beach) and Gaslamp have from my friends who would go out in these neighborhoods. My then-boyfriend and I would try new restaurants every couple weeks — we ended up in the neighborhoods like Hillcrest, North Park, Normal Heights, Kensington, Tierrasanta, City Heights, and the list goes on. The way San Diegans describe where they live is usually by neighborhood, but not neighborhood in the suburbia sense of the word; a neighborhood of San Diego is a fairly congruous and contiguous area that is bounded by main streets or freeways. For example, “I live in UTC area, which is east of the 805, north of the 52, and west of the 5.” Many neighborhoods are associated with stereotypes, both positive and negative, and I don’t even know them yet.

San Diego, to me, is not so much a melting pot, but more a mosaic. What makes a San Diegan is that you live in San Diego, whether it’s just for a few years or your entire life. The San Diego community can be any of the communities you’re involved in; your church, your school, your work, your clubs. Each of these things, and all of these things together, are San Diego.