It's How You Look at It...

Inside

TIMES ARE TOUGH. No denying it. Unemployment is rising faster than helium. Retirement accounts are dropping like lead. With our country facing its worst economic crisis in 80 years, even our wealthiest citizens have taken some nasty blows to the money clip. No one seems to be immune——save, perhaps, for a handful of recently retired Wall Street executives.

Still, a few among us are doing better than most of us. That’s always been the case; always will be. We visit some of those folks this month in “Life on the A-List,” Julia Beeson Polloreno’s odyssey into the world of San Diego’s social elite. From betting on the bangtails from a box at the Del Mar Thoroughbred Club to soaking up the sun on a private beach at La Jolla Beach & Tennis Club, these A-Listers have it pretty good. Do we envy them? Pretty much. Do we know them? Just a little. Do we want to join the party? Maybe for a few hundred words.

But while we read about them, we should remember this: A considerable amount of the A-List activity in San Diego revolves around giving——to our charitable institutions and our arts, from Rady Children’s Hospital to the Old Globe Theatre. Without these folks, and their selfless largess, all of San Diego would be a lot poorer.

NOW, WHILE WE’RE ON THE SUBJECT of economic clouds, we offer another silver lining. The tanking economy has clearly taken its toll on a certain segment of the home-buying public——mostly those of us who overextended. But one man’s loss is another man’s gain. Ned Randolph, a new contributor to San Diego Magazine, provides a primer for San Diegans poised to take advantage of some of the best home deals in our region in many a year.

It’s a buyer’s market, he tells us, but it’s also a market that can be fraught with pitfalls. It takes strategy, cash, resourcefulness and homework. It’s all about what you’re looking for and where you look.

ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: s.d. liddick profiles ex-cop Manny Lopez, the one-time sergeant of SDPD’s rough-and-tumble Border Area Robbery Force and one of the best storytellers ever to wear the uniform. In Dialogue, new San Diego City Council president Ben Hueso talks about the political shift at City Hall and his own political career, past, present and future. And we take you to our desert neighbor, Palm Springs, where Beeson Polloreno uncovers another sort of renaissance——the return of the resort town to the swanky splendor of its mid-century heyday.

In these trying times, it’s good to find an escape.

TOM BLAIR
Editor-in-Chief

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