https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2019/
Take a look at the photo above. I managed to overcome my usual ineptitude with technology the other day to snap that picture as I was walking into a barbershop in the Californian city of Coronado. Actually, although Coronado is classified as its own city (of barely 25,000) it is in reality part of San Diego. Across a large curving bridge that was opened by Ronald Reagan back in the late 1960s sits the home of US naval aviation, the huge airbase of Coronado, on a peninsula that forms the magnificent San Diego harbor.
This harbor is the home of the third- or fourth-biggest US naval base in the world (depending on how and what you count), the biggest being in Norfolk, Virginia. And even though this peninsula – which is so long you can’t help thinking it’s an island – is dominated by the naval airbase, by a separate Navy Seals base, and by other parts of the US Navy, there is also a chunk of the peninsula that constitutes the civilian town of Coronado. Given how many people either live in, commute to or work for the US Navy, you won’t be surprised to hear that it is the safest city in the United States. Any police officers who want only to investigate bicycle thefts should immediately put in their applications to the Coronado Police Department. There are basically no parking fines handed out because the metres in Coronado charge 25 cents per hour – yes, a quarter is all it takes to park for an hour – so you’d have to be brain dead not to pay up.
My wife and I stumbled on Coronado purely by chance back in 2013 when we were here for an earlier sabbatical of mine. Purely by luck we ended up renting a house on the beach in this amazing place, and we loved it. So when the offer came to return to the University of San Diego School of Law – the most conservative law school in the US, let me note, which means maybe one-third of the law professors would be right of centre, and why I can find a spot here – both my wife and I knew we’d be renting again in Coronado. It is magnificent, and quite a contrast to London, where we spent the first half year of my sabbatical.
Don’t get me wrong. For both us, London is our favourite city on earth. But Coronado is right up there. Furthermore, if you ever find yourself in San Diego let me strongly recommend that the first touristy thing you must do is to take the two-hour boat tour of the harbour. You’ll see a stunning array of top-of-the-line US Navy vessels – destroyers, battleships, weird looking stealth ships, helicopter carriers, two or three of the big Nimitz class aircraft carriers, and at the far outlet end of the harbour the docking zone for nuclear submarines. San Diego is home to the killer attack subs, but once in a while you will see the “big banger” missile-launching Tridents come in for a visit. They are magnificent.
