Ocean Beach, California

Your typical southern California beach scene, with a layer of pollution faintly visible on the horizon, overpriced condominiums, expensive parking, and for some reason an agave in full bloom growing wild on the sand.

It seemed like a pleasant picture, so I thought I would use it.  The title is the location of the beach.  Like many coastal towns, everything is densely packed in and almost no one has a private stretch of ocean front.  Most of the small yards get paved over, and those that do not get planted with palm trees, mostly the tall-growing, salt-tolerant Mexican Fan Palm (Washingtonia Robusta).

The neighboring community of Sunset Cliffs features slightly larger yards, some houses even having pools.  For the most part, however, things are packed as tight as sardines in a can.  Ironically, things here in the seaside high rent district are just as packed here as they are across the border in the slums of Tijuana.  In contrast, densely populated seaside Miami and Fort Lauderdale feature your average size yards and free parking lots, despite space also being a premium in a southern Florida that is otherwise largely too wet and spongy to support much in the way of a city.

The median house price in Fort Lauderdale and Miami closer to the ocean and intercoastal waterway is around $250,000 U.S. currency.  The median house price in San Diego and affiliated towns such as Ocean Beach is $520,000 and more.  Florida, it seems, is the place to get a vacation home, whereas California is the place to live.  Both places have pleasant climates, southern Florida being largely tropical and coastal southern California being what can best be described as "eternal spring", never much deviating from 60-70 year round.  Both places get tons of sunshine.  Florida can present hurricanes, which used to be dealt with by having homes constructed of concrete (it worked).  Coastal southern California can present earthquakes and tsunamis.  Things in general are far more expensive in California than they are in Florida, and yet still the demand for real estate is so much higher in the land of the easy going sunset.  Maybe it is something in the name... people have been attracted to her so strongly for nearly 250 years now.  Southern Florida?  Maybe for the past 70 years or so, once they started cutting down the mangroves.

I happen to like mangroves.  And coconut palms.  And fun Caribbean sea shells.  Still, that crisp Pacific water does feel pretty amazing, and it has a lack of dangerous jellyfish near the beaches in Cali, along with fun things like kelp and sea lions.  To each their own!