Background! Because I know you care!

To give context to my opinions, I thought it would be helpful to post a sketch of my background. I grew up in the suburbs in New England, and then went to college in the Washington, D.C., area. Next, I went to law school at Pepperdine in Malibu, moving to Santa Monica the summer after my 1L year. I lived in Santa Monica until I just recently moved down to SD. After graduating and taking the bar, I worked for a small civil litigation defense firm in Santa Monica for just over three years, before I left to join my new firm. New firm is a large national firm, and I continue to practice civil litigation defense.

Pokez Mexican Restaurant

Our first night in the new apartment, after the movers were finally able to finish, we ate at Pokez Mexican Restaurant (Yelp). I suggested the place after noting its writeup in this old NYT travel piece linked by the (underwhelming) Wikipedia page on the East Village. The atmosphere in this place is awesome. Its all done up rock-Mexican-urban artsy-something or other and I love it.

This place's thing is to have virtually everything on the menu capable of being made vegetarian or vegan. Neither GF or me is either, so this was less of a selling point for us.

They give you a ton of food for your money at this place. I ordered the enchiladas suiza ($7.00 for two with rice and beans), but they were out of the promised "special green sauce." I ordered it anyway, with standard salsa subbed in. It was good, solid, but it did not blow me away. I feel I need to try this dish again with the "special green sauce." GF had the carne asada tacos ($8.25 for two with rice and beans). They were very good, but extremely salty. So, if salt is your thing, try these.

Also, no booze! We tried to order beer, as there was a sign in the corner listing prices for beer and sangria, but the waiter said something I didn't quite catch regarding their liquor license and comic con weekend. So I don't know what the deal with this is; all I know is that I couldn't get any booze there.

Statement of Blog Purpose

So after living and working in Santa Monica for these past five or so years, I took a new job in San Diego. Exciting! The offices of my new firm are smack dab in the middle of downtown SD, and this downtown looks so nice and clean and fun and safe, I figured this is my chance to finally live in a central urban core. I think I have been reading Atrios and Matt Yglesias too much, and they have successfully reprogrammed the suburb kid I was raised as.

The first two months, I stayed with family that lived down here (in Point Loma), while my girlfriend finished up some things in Santa Monica. But now she has moved down, and found us an apartment in Downtown San Diego's East Village neighborhood. We just moved in a few days ago.

The purpose of this blog is to chronicle our experiences in our new neighborhood.