December 23, 2019
Film festival
We’re feeling very good about our decision to stay in San Diego for another four nights. It’s pouring when I walk across the street to a coffee shop this morning - the hardest rain I’ve seen since the great flood in San Juan on the Almeria coast a few weeks back. It’s difficult to believe that we were just there a few weeks ago.
It’s due to rain off and on all day, so no bike ride is in the works. Instead, we plan to take in a movie: Parasite, the new Korean film we’ve wanted to see ever since it came out. It’s playing up in the Hillcrest District, so our big question for the day is whether we’ll get enough of a break in the weather to walk up there.
At the coffee shop, I overhear my neighbor’s phone conversation - he’s apparently calling a film house and reserving tickets for a film he’s just been reading about in his hardcopy New Yorker. I ask him about it after he gets off the phone, and he tells me of another small independent theater in town I didn’t know of, Digital Gym Cinema. we have a nice chat about the film scene here - it’s so different being back in the English speaking world again - and back in the room I bring up Digital Gym’s website. they’re showing Pain and Glory, Pedro Almodóvar’s new film that we’ve also been aching for a chance to see before it leaves the theaters.
So we have a plan for the day. We head to an Italian restaurant around the corner for our main meal for the day (we love staying here in Little Italy!), and when we come out are happy to get a break in the weather, enough to walk the two plus miles up to Hillcrest to see Parasite. My only regret is that I forgot my camera when we stepped out the door, and there were a few things I wanted to take a photo of along the way. Still, the phone is good enough to remind us.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echinocactus_grusonii
4 years ago
4 years ago
Two and a half hours later we walk out of Parasite, exhausted and addled. It’s another two plus miles to Digital Gym and it feel like it could start raining again, so we walk at a brisk pace, feeling just a bit insecure walking in the dark in an unfamiliar neighborhood in a city we don’t really know all that well yet. As we walk it starts misting; and a few hundred yards from the theater it finally starts raining in earnest. We dash inside a drive-in (and it’s literally a drive in, the old fashioned type where you order from the call box at your parking space), wait for a break, and then make a dash for it the rest of the way. Our coats are soaked when we arrive, and we sit in the cold lobby for an hour waiting for the film to start, dining on a bag of popcorn, licorice, and a bag of trail mix for our evening meal.
When we come out again, it’s about ten. With our hotel over three hours away and with it raining, we aren’t about to walk it. Rachael orders a ride with Lyft, a new experience for us; and in the two minutes it takes for our ride to arrive, the roof really does fall in. The rain is intense, and the streets quickly flood. When our car arrives we can’t get in from the curb because the river is too wide - the driver has to round the corner at the intersection, we make a dash for it, and by stretching can just make it into the car without wading. The intersection is flooded curb to curb. All within about five minutes time.
Ten minutes and an enjoyable and informative conversation later, we’re dropped off in Little Italy again. The rain has stopped, the streets are drying out already. Amazing.
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4 years ago
We went to the same movie on the same day. If we had it do over again we would have seen Pain and Glory for the second time.
Your rain is on its way to making a white Christmas for us.
David and Maun
4 years ago
4 years ago
https://www.succulentsandsunshine.com/types-of-succulents/aeonium-sunburst/
4 years ago
4 years ago
4 years ago