A quick anecdote. When I was growing up on the east coast no one I knew ever came to visit San Diego and few visited California. People went to the Carribean, Florida, Europe and even Hawaii but no one to San Diego. The people I knew who came to CA , flew into LA spent several days there including a couple a Disneyland and then headed north wrapping up the trip in SF. SD was never on anyone’s agenda. When I was in 3rd grade my family made that very same 2 week trip. Despite the fact that my Dad loved SD and had a goal of retiring here since he was in the Navy during WW2 it was never even mentioned as desrving us spend some time here.
As much as all the long term Californians want to claim the rich and famous were coming here and the Coronado Hotel was celebrated in movies, back east we heard very little about SD growing up. The only thing we knew was the Padres wore ugly brown & yellow uniforms, Dan Fouts could throw the ball like few others and some lady from the zoo would bring animals onto Johnny Carson’s show. Maybe we were sheletered but that’s all we knew.
Today SD is on the map bigtime. Across the country people have seen SD in political conventions, TV shows, super bowls, MLB playoffs, Sea World/Zoo are much higher profile now, Legoland, the rise of biotech has brought scientists to us from the midwest and east, telecomm has brought us employees from all over the world. In my travels I rarely meet someone whose eyes dont light up at the mention of SD. Most people I grew up with have made it out here at least once in the last 15 years for business or a family vacation. Some even visited me though that was not why they came here. Something has defintely changed and I’m glad someone found a way to quantify that.
