“Living In The City” is The San Diego Sun’s feature Q&A with downtown San Diego residents. It’s a way to get to know the city by meeting the people who live here. This is number 53 in an ongoing series.
Name: Carl Bosland
Neighborhood: Sapphire Tower in Core-Columbia
Personal deets: Born in New Jersey and grew up in Old Bridge and Bridgewater, Jersey suburbs 30 miles from New York City. Lived in Colorado, Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Florida, Idaho, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, Utah, and Virginia. In 2020. My wife, Dr. Sharon Cornelius, and I have been married for 23 years. We moved to downtown San Diego in 2020. We’d been wintering in Little Italy/Gaslamp for 10 years.
Work deets: Retired after 25 years working as an attorney for the U.S. Postal Service. During my Postal employment I held multiple titles. During a 10-year break in my Postal employment I worked for myself as a labor and employment arbitrator.
Post-retirement: Since my federal retirement, I work from home as with my arbitration practice. I preside like a judge over informal hearings involving workplace disputes between labor unions and management; non-union employee adverse action; or discrimination claims against an employer.
Working from home: Prior to COVID, hearings were overwhelmingly in-person. During COVID, most hearings were conducted over ZOOM or similar virtual platforms. During this time, I worked out of my home office. Now, my arbitration practice is national in scope. To attend in-person hearings, I travel extensively throughout the United States. But I review cases from home and I have plenty of free time to enjoy the city.
Pets: Bug, my wife’s neurotic jet black rescue cat lives under the bed. When she does come out, if she sees or hears me or anyone else (or even a loud noise) she races back under the bed. Our ghost pet.
Why move downtown: To be close to friends. Over the many winters we stayed here before permanently moving to downtown we made lots of friends who live or work downtown.
Best aspects of living downtown: Convenient access to all that the city has to offer: restaurants, entertainment, sports, parks and recreation, the Zoo, music venues, clubs and community events, the bay and nearby beaches. The close proximity to the airport and rail from downtown is also very convenient.
Worst aspects of living downtown: The scale of the broader homeless situation and the resulting numbness to it as we go about taking care of the things we need to do in our lives.
Describe Downtown SD in 3 words: Home. Friends. Sunshine.
Most surprising part of living downtown: The overall laid back feel of downtown. Compared to the workweek hustle and bustle of other cities, downtown San Diego gets its business done at a more relaxed pace. Of course, downtown perks up considerably when the Padres, Comic-Con, festivals or big musical acts are in town!
Transportation breakdown: 90% walking, 5% driving, 5% Uber or public transportation. I’m a prolific walker regularly clocking up to 10 miles a day.
Best breakfast: Frost Me in Little Italy. My usual order is a regular coffee and a (delicious) pastry. They have a few indoor and outdoor tables. I love to eat at the adjacent Piazza della Famiglia.
Fave coffee shop: James Coffee. A little off the beaten path on the outer edge of Little Italy in a funky building with other cool shops.
Fave dinner spots: Vinarius Wine Bar & Restaurant (Little Italy) is a small neighborhood gem that I should not even tell you about so that it does not get overrun. The service and food are excellent.
- Bencotto is a Little Italy institution with excellent service and food. In season, the pumpkin ravioli and squash blossoms are superb.
- Athens Market Taverna (Marina District) serves excellent Greek food. Try the Tiropita and Stifatho!
- Finally, the Glass Door Restaurant (Little Italy), recently did a fantastic job hosting my wife’s surprise birthday party. The food, service, drinks and the outdoor deck looking toward the Bay on a perfect San Diego night could not have been better.
Best bar: For convenience, Burgeon at the Arbor. It’s a sports bar with good craft beer and bar food and is a 50-foot walk from my building.
Tops for take-out: Shino Sushi (Little Italy). Good quality sushi a short walk from home. And, Filippi’s has Little Italy’s best pizza.
Let’s do lunch: Queenstown Public House. It’s a converted house in Little Italy with indoor and outdoor dining. Service and the food is generally very good. I’ve enjoyed many menu items, but Prawns & Grits and the Big Bowl stand out. For a good burger: dive bar Balboa Bar & Grill on Fifth is the place to go.
Where to take visitors: Stroll through Little Italy, Midway Museum, the Zoo, Ferry to Coronado for adult beverages or dining with a fantastic view of the downtown skyline and bay.
Scariest downtown memory: I was recently stalked for several blocks by an unknown individual in the dark early morning hours on my way to the convention center to run the stairs. I have done this walk at this hour many times, but this was unusual. The incident ended at the corner of Front and C streets when I stopped next to two burly jail guards who just got off their shift. I believe downtown is generally quite safe as cities go. However, be careful out there; head on a swivel!
Love or hate Comic-Con: Love it. Thousands of people in costume having fun roaming throughout greater downtown San Diego, what’s not to like! It’s like the bar scene in Star Wars inside some establishments.
Padres: We walk to a few Padres games at Petco Park each season. Pre-gaming festivities may be hosted at our home or at a friend’s home. If we want to meet at a Gaslamp bar before a big game, one person in our group will go early and hold a table until everyone arrives. For performing this service, they don’t have to ante up when the bill arrives!
Show venues: The Rady Shell at Jacobs Park for music. A world-class venue on the bay with Coronado Bridge views. Cinema Under the Stars is a fantastic Mission Hills venue for seeing classic movies. There are several terrific restaurants steps from the cinema.
Homelessness: It affects me in three ways:
- It adversely impacts the quality of downtown life for those of us who are housed.
- The sheer scope of the problem seemingly without remedy results in a callousness to the plight of the less fortunate, whose situation is too large for any one person to resolve.
- It undermines my faith in government and human-service institutions who have so far failed to meaningfully address the issue at scale. Without scale, however well-intentioned and reasonable, the current effort to address the issue risks devolving into enabling these folks to live in abject poverty on the streets, without starving or freezing to death, but without an apparent meaningful path to treatment, permanent housing or dignity.
Mayor Todd Gloria: From my admittedly distant perspective, which is largely colored by the homeless situation, I would say Mayor Gloria is an average caretaker mayor who has elected to play it safe to preserve his inevitable run for higher office, instead of taking greater risks proportionate to the scope of the challenge to solve or substantially mitigate our city’s most pressing issue.
District 3 City Councilmember Stephen Whitburn: Same opinion as Mayor Gloria.
The city needs more: Affordable housing for lower, working, and middle class folks. Everyone but the upper middle class and the rich are being priced out of the housing market, rental or ownership. If things don’t change, even the upper middle class will be priced out.
The city needs less: At the risk of sounding like a cranky old “get-off-my-lawn” neighbor, we need less of the CRSSD and similar so-called “music” festivals at San Diego Waterfront Park. The electronic “music” is both awful and too loud for those of us who live nearby. It is so bad that we are basically driven to leave downtown for the weekend until the thing is over. Relocate the festival to a more appropriate venue away from residential neighborhoods.
Parting advice: As out-of-towners new to San Diego, meeting and making new friends was a challenge. We met most of our downtown friends as a result of my wife’s working part-time at a few Little Italy boutiques. It’s been a terrific way to get quickly integrated into the neighborhood.
