I would rather live in Imperial Beach than any other place in the United States. I’m serious. It may very well be the best and the last of the “real” Southern California beach towns.

I’ve heard it all . . . . “Venereal Beach, where the syph meets the surf and the crabs all clap together.”

“Home of the three foot wave, and the twenty dollar bag of weed.”

“Where the sores meet the shores.”

Once, in a P.B. bar, a cute girl from La Jolla simply said “Ew” when I told her where I lived.

I had a girlfriend who thought about buying property here. She lived in Coronado at the time. Her sixteen year old son said, “Great. Now I have to buy a knife.”

Imperial Beach is the Rodney Dangerfield of the San Diego beach cities. No respect I tell ya.

But listen. Go out into the estuary some late night during a full moon. Feel the surprising pockets of warm air on your face as you walk, and have a seat on the bench at the end of the nature trail. Take a discrete sip from your flask or a hit off the pot pipe. It’s likely no one will bother you. Look south at the lights of Playas de Tijuana, all red and white and green, lit up like Christmas. Unseen to the north, San Diego’s reflection sparkles on the waters of the big bay. East is Chula Vista, sprawling its way to the mountains. You can almost Feel the millions of people crushing in. A megalopolis spreading up the coast to Los Angeles.

And here you are alone in the dark, the only person on this entire hopeless planet who decided to come to this particular place at this particular time. If the ubiquitous navy helicopters are not chopping up the sky, there is a surreal peace and quiet. Like you should be able to Hear all those people. But the only sounds are your thoughts, the lonely clatter of clapper rails hiding in the reeds, and the boom of ocean waves a quarter mile away.

Imperial Beach has a small town force field around it, resisting the pressures of development and gentrification. It’s one of the few places deep in the Belly of the Beast that is Coastal Southern California where you can be in the middle of so many people and still feel like you have just a bit of space and solitude and even sanity to yourself.

And some degree of freedom. More so than in other places. If you want to swim around the pier, go ahead. Nobody does it, but the lifeguards aren’t going to stop you if you try. They might ask if you know what you are doing, but if you showed some competence, they wouldn’t say anything. Whatever. Swim out to the islands if you want.

Same thing if you want to surf in polluted water right after a rain. Go head on, Buddy. It’s your life. Ride it!

The people here are real. You know your neighbors. The vibe is truly mellow. There is not much violent crime compared to other places in San Diego. I would guess way less than most other California beach towns.

Even during the Wild Times, before what I like to call the ongoing Temeculization of I.B., things were never totally out of hand. Close, but not totally. Motorcycle gangs used to congregate here, and a lot of meth and drunkenness, and all of the violence and bigotry and general douchebaggitry that goes with it, but that is mostly gone now it seems. Some funny things have happened while I’ve lived here though.

I can’t remember what year it was, but Brian Bilbray was our mayor, and he was trying to bring attention to what is now the Wildlife Sanctuary. It was nasty, I’ll admit. People used to just throw their junked washer and dryers into the swamp. Bilbray wanted the whole thing cleaned up, dredged, and turned into a fancy marina.

He had the idea to close the river mouth. He got a bulldozer and drove it down the beach. He may have publicized the stunt, because a bunch of environmentalists showed up to protest.

Bilbray drove the bulldozer right into the mouth of the river and started pushing sand around. “You can’t do that Brian,” someone shouted. “It’s an estuary.”

“It’s a dump!” Bilbray shouted back. I think there were some news guys there. It was a long time ago, but it was great political theater.

Now there are bird watching groups, and a visitor center. People take weekend nature walks, and it’s beautiful. There is a junior ranger program for kids, and the whole estuary has been turned into an asset for the city.

People used to hunt ducks out there way back when, and I’ve heard that once there was even a racetrack. All the sewage that spilled from T.J. and the whole river bottom would pile up at high tide. Nobody cleaned it up. There was so much garbage, you couldn’t believe it. A lot of it would end up in the surf. Once I saw a car buried in the sand at the mouth of the river.

In the evening, dozens of desperate people from Latin America would wade across the river and spread out, seeking a better situation. Dogs would bark late at night, and groups of quiet people ran down the dark alleys, whispering like shadows.

I.B.’s heart and soul is the pier. Back in the “old days” there used to be a “T” shaped end on it, and a charter boat would take people to the Coronado Islands to fish for yellow tail and white sea bass.

You could drink on the pier, and walk your dog out on it. All sorts of wacky stuff happened. My brother from the mid-west came to visit, and we walked past a drunken bum lying on his side smoking a big stinky cigar. My brother saw the usual line of brown haze hanging in the sky over San Diego. “What’s that brown stuff?” he asked, pointing at the city. I answered him in sort of a sing-song way, “Air pol-lu-tion.”

The bum thought we were talking about him smoking. “Fuck you,” he drooled.

A friend got mugged out on the pier late at night for not giving a guy smoke. Bashed over the head with a piece of re-bar by a homeless guy. But I.B. takes care of its own, and the guy who did it discovered that living in another part of the world was better for his health and moved away.

Then a big winter storm came in from Alaska and knocked the pier down. The essence of I.B. had washed into the surf.

They got busy real quick and fixed it. I guess they figured I.B. without the pier was like a hooker without makeup. Then another storm came and knocked that one down too. Some of my friends and I went down there to watch it fall. The wind was howling, and the stinging rain blew sideways. We went out on the pier, drunk as lords, dancing around and hooting as the giant waves shot up through the planks like blow holes all around us. Finally the cops came and closed it down. It fell into the ocean later that night.

They finally built the current one, and in a stroke of pure genius, someone decided to make it higher about half way out so the big waves of winter can pass under it. There is a restaurant at the end, The Tin Fish, and they have pretty good food. You can buy a beer, and have a fish sandwich at one of the outdoor tables. Watch your food though, because a sea gull might steal it.

During the last pier remodel they put a colored acrylic sculpture at the foot of the pier. Entitled “Surfhenge,” the sun shines through the pink, orange, yellow, and purple symbols and lights them up, but they also resemble the iconic arches of a fast food hamburger chain. It didn’t take long for people to start calling it the McPier.

A few shops are located there, and there’s Cowabunga ice cream, ran by Nellie and Fabrice, a super nice couple from France, who make the best and the hottest coffee in town. Folks sit at tables out on the patio, enjoy the sun, and people watch. Oh, it’s all quite cosmopolitan. There is even a guerrilla chess club that meets every evening at five to challenge each other and do battle. No one has been hit over the head with a piece of re-bar for at least a couple of weeks now.

Each Friday, the I.B. farmers market sets up, with all the usual hum and prattle that goes with it. You can buy organic vegetables, dips, chips, flowers and any number of tasty treats.

During the last few years, I.B. has been adding artwork throughout the city. Outlines of surfboards made out of steel tubing and painted red stand on end along Palm Avenue. They are different shapes, from various times in surfing history. The bus benches are shaped and painted like surfboards, and there is a giant sculpture of a surfer at the end of Palm holding his long board and standing right on top of a sand castle. He looks east, away from the ocean, longing for that perfect wave to form in the mountains. At his feet are two little kids riding happily on the backs of what look to be giant blue gill while holding onto a sand bucket. Um. Okay.

Perhaps the surfer should face north, in glorious profile, toward the Port of San Diego, and the source of the money that made his existence possible.

I.B. is a strapped for cash beach town, with very little business, and would probably be a complete ghetto if it weren’t for money from the Port.

Another big deal of this town is the Sand Castle competition, dreaded now-a-days by most locals, when far too many people descend like hungry locusts upon this small berg to wander around aimlessly, gawk at sand sculptures, and buy stuff they don’t need. I want to yell at them. Go away you fools! We don’t need an extra hundred thousand slack jawed tourists clogging up this town for an entire weekend and dropping trash everywhere. Jeesh!

This is what happens in San Diego. Something cool, small, and local that people love is grown into a giant horrible canker worm by the need to make a buck, until it becomes so bloated and fake, that it collapses under its own weight. Think Street Scene.

Against all odds though, I.B. is becoming better. There are plans for a new hotel where the Seacoast Inn used to be, and even the venerable old Plank has tidied up its act. All this place really needs is a community garden, an artisan bread shop, and a micro brewery to complete the picture, and to turn I.B. into the next coastal utopia,or completely ruin it forever depending on which rung of the socio-economic ladder you hang from.

As far as any entertainment or night life, there is not much at all. A couple of local bars come to mind. Mickey’s Suds Room, The Plank, and The Forum. Not much happening in any of them compared to other parts of San Diego. Who cares really? I love the fact that this place is quiet and on the down low.

We have both kinds of food too. Mexican, and Pizza. But we have Great Mexican food and Pizza. There’s also a sushi place, and Thai food, and Greek. All of them have pretty good fare, and there is no place in I.B. that is too expensive to eat.

We have sports parks, the new skateboard park, a cute tiny library, perfect weather, and the waves are usually uncrowded.

It’s a great place for peace, quiet, and exercise. Surfing is obviously popular, and we’ve had our share of notable watermen. I’ve only surfed here and in Mexico, but there seems to be very little attitude out in the surf. I’m not a great surfer at all, and I stay out of people’s way. It’s easy because the waves break all over the place. It’s not very hard to surf almost by yourself if you go at the right time.

Sometimes it can be a free for all out there though. If the waves are good during a south swell, and the water is not too polluted, there are people lined up the length of the town. I don’t know where they all come from. Stand up surfers, boogie boarders, short boarders, long boarders, body surfers; you might even see a kayak guy in the mix.

Things can get testy. But mostly, everyone gets along okay.

If you follow the shore line of the Pacific Ocean north from I.B., there is a beautiful crescent ribbon of sand stretching to Coronado, unknown to most people, called the Silver Strand.

It sometimes feels like you are walking on a beach in some exotic post card because it is so empty. You can run barefoot for miles and miles while watching the waves and feeling the sun on your body. I chatted briefly with a beautiful topless German tourist there one summer, as she walked exquisitely along.

But there is always that South County compromise. Like nothing can ever be truly pure and beautiful. Tainted somehow, like sand in the potato salad. You might find a bloated seal above high tide mark with its head blown open by a shotgun blast from some fisherman, or maybe a pile of dog shit or a waterlogged diaper at the water’s edge. These things are not unheard of.

I once went there for an early morning run, and up ahead I saw a green canvas duffel bag sloshing around in the shallow water. A guy stood there looking at it, but he had shoes on, and didn’t want to wade in to find out what it was.

We were both hoping for the same thing: A large quantity of free high quality drugs, perhaps thrown overboard by desperate smugglers in the night.

“Is that my shipment of weed?” I asked him when I got there.

“I don’t know. I thought it was my bale of coke.” We laughed at the joke, but clearly there was something heavy inside.

I drug the bag from the surf. “Now,” I remember thinking to myself, “Is this something wonderful, or horrible?” There was a good possibility of either, and I found myself hesitant to unclasp the opening.

I opened the bag and looked inside. Spasms of fear and disgust hit me like a cold wave from the deep. Inside was a drowned collie dog, its fur matted and its eyes open and staring at nothing.

I dropped the bag and almost retched. It ruined my day actually. I didn’t have the energy to run anymore. I just walked home dejected, and thought about how basically shitty the human race can be.

I.B. can be a weird place sometimes, and the experience is different for every person who lives here. There are good parts and bad, nice people and people who you don’t want anything to do with. Great things happen here, and so do the horrible. But it’s my corner of Planet Earth.