Under the Perfect Sun: The San Diego Tourists Never See

by Jim Miller, Mike Davis, Kelly Mayhew, et al.

Book Overview

For fourteen million tourists each year, San Diego is the fun place in the sun that never breaks your heart. But America's eighth-largest city has a dark side. Behind Sea World, the zoo, the Gaslamp District, and the beaches of La Jolla hides a militarized metropolis, boasting the West Coast's most stratified economy and a tumultuous history of municipal corruption, virulent antiunionism, political repression, and racial injustice. Though its boosters...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1565849809
• ISBN13: 9781565849808
• Release Date: May 2005
• Publisher: New Press
• Length: 418 Pages
• Weight: 1.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.2" x 7.9"

Customer Reviews

Great Read!

This book offers an informative and insightful glimpse into an obscure side of San Diego's history.

Excellent work on a rarely looked at topic

I have lived in San Diego for many years, and as of this moment one of the authors (Kelly Mayhew) is my professor at San Diego City College. So I write this not only to address the topic but one of the three authors. San Diego is an incredible city, but the history gets lost. When we go to the harbor, how many people know these things: (a) That Chinese labor was one of the most important ingredients to creating our lovely city, and yet the only major indication of that is "China Camp" next to Denny's on Harbor Drive? (b) Seaport Village is a joke; created to whitewash our city and pretend that our harbor's roots don't rest in Portuguese and Chinese immigrants. (c) The harbor itself went up to what is now Front St, and a plaque on the sidewalk discusses this very thing. (d) Broadway, before known as D street, as it is wedged between C & E, was changed because the mayor bought a house on D, and thought that having his own address on "Broadway" instead of "D" sounded more elegant. I wont even get into all of the other elements of this book, and the amazing things that I learned from it. It has not only helped me to see the history of San Diego, but also to truly understand its present and future. I can assure you that if you read this book, you can really appreciate the fact that things haven't changed very much. The motivation and model that San Diego's boosters have designed over one hundred years ago is still alive and kicking today. Kelly Mayhew is an extremely knowledgeable and competent author. It is true that this book is rather biased, but the foreword says so right to that point. Furthermore, anyone with an even cursory understanding of journalism knows that objectivity is not attainable, and you're left with two options. One, is pretending that you are being objectionable and completely free of bias, and telling your audience to believe you because you're somehow the pinnacle of equity. Or, you can announce your bias right off the bat, letting the reader know where you're coming from, and be honest about your intentions. Mayhew et all have chosen that path, and I applaud them for it. One other aspect of this book that I found very refreshing is that it is written by three authors, all of which "took a stab" at nearly the whole subject of San Diego history. True, they focused on different events and from different lenses, but the outlines are roughly the same. This allows you to get three slightly different versions (all three are easily in the realm of "left leaning"), but more importantly three different writing styles. The first author, to me, was quite informative, but a bit like reading stereo instructions; not that engaging. The other two authors (including Kelly Mayhew) were much more engaging for me, and I felt like I had three books in one sometimes. In short, this is an excellent book. The authors do not attempt to hide their positions when discussing topics. Again, having lived in San Diego for well over a decade now, this

Davis is dead-on

Davis, Miller and Mayhew take the air out of San Diego's myth balloon. If you like Howard Zinn, you'll love this.

Finally, some history about this place!

I moved to San Diego just over two years ago from Boston, and since living here, have found it to be strangely void of any substance - just a place with sunshine, pretty beaches and palm trees, but not much else. And frankly, there isn't as much sunshine as one is led to believe, but the selling of the city on its sunshine is part of the lure along with other such illusions as you will discover in this book. The book also claims in many respects, that the hidden truth of San Diego's dirty past and present is helped by the San Diego Union Tribune, the only major newspaper in town. I no longer subscribe to that paper because even before reading this book, it was obvious the paper was pure PR for the military and the selling of a perfect San Diego, a city that is everything but. All kinds of neighborhood crime occurs in this city but you will never read about it in the San Diego Union Tribune. But the bigger disappointment I've felt since moving here is the anti-Mexican sentiment that is still quite rampant. For a city that is right on the border of Mexico, you would think there would be more celebratory venues to reflect that fact. But no, you must go all the way to Los Angeles, or even San Francisco to discover the wonderful art and culture of the Mexican people, because San Diego's goal is to be white and stay white. There is a wonderful park here called Chicano Park, that the Mexican Americans or "Chicanos" fought for and finally won, that consists of the largest concentration of murals in the world. This park has been written about in books by Jim Prigoff and others, but the City of San Diego rarely promotes the park as a tourist attraction or anything else, despite the City designating it a historic site back in 1980. I actually only learned about it after living here for a year because it was vandalized with anti-Mexican graffiti. But as the book emphasizes, although these occurrences are rather common, the SD Union Tribune writes as though such happenings are a rare occurrence in such a perfect city. Chicano Park is one of the last venues the Chicanos can still claim as their own, having the Centro Cultural de la Raza taken away from them a few years ago, as well as other struggles. Ah, but Italian festivals are big here, despite the relatively small community of Italians that live here, especially in comparison to Mexicans. No, Cinco de Mayo done American style (one big drunk-fest) doesn't qualify. An extremely small section of the city was dubbed Little Italy, complete with a large Little Italy sign that spans the main street that houses a handful of some of the worst Italian restaurants you've ever eaten at. No, this isn't the North End of Boston, or Little Italy in New York. This is Minute Italy, made large to encourage more white folk to come to San Diego and feel like they're in a major European influenced metropolis. But you're not, and it doesn't take long before you realize that everything here is fake. Everything is pret

Indespensible San Diego History

This is an excellent, in-depth San Diego history. Davis, Miller, and Mayhew offer well-researched, hard-hitting indictments of this city's dark past, yet at the same time inspire hope in readers and San Diego citizens in their recognition of dedicated activists, and regular folks. Having lived in the city since 1989 and having been frustrated at not finding any history but "sunny" vacation-land tales, I was intrigued with these perspectives--labor, racial politics, the shady manipulation of land development.