Sometimes when I get too down on Chula Vista for having a small town attitude, I remind myself that the city of San Diego is not much better.
The frustration with Chula Vista stems from watching its potential as a world class city be unrealized for so long. Maybe that will change when the bayfront on the west develops and the university in the east opens its doors, but how long has it been since those wishes have been whispered aloud without commensurate action?
San Diego’s problem? An inferiority complex. A case of the witty, good-looking middle child with a case of the not-feeling-loved-or-attractive-enough blues.
The city has beaches and parks and mountains and museums and universities and nightlife and so many other attractions going for it and yet it has been fretting for years about losing a football team that doesn’t want to be here unless it is on uneven ground.
If the city of San Diego and the San Diego Chargers were high school students San Diego would be a nerdy chess player and the Chargers a mildly attractive cheerleader who is fourth in the pecking order of the campus Mean Girls club. All of the nerd’s friends would be slipping him copies of “She’s Just Not That Into You” for guys while the cheerleader toys with the chess player’s heart until someone better comes along.
The inner workings and behind-the-scenes negotiating of building a billion-dollar stadium are more complex than can be detailed in a high school romance, teen coming-of-age movie. But there comes a point where the frustration boils over and it spews out like garbled hysteria.
But the essence of the “lover’s” drama is this: the Chargers have for the last few decades and under the Spanos family always wanted more than what the city could offer and it played on fans’ sentimentality to get the most out of the relationship — the stadium expansion and ticket guarantee come most significantly to mind.
If one has business interests in the perennially mediocre Chargers or is one of the tens of thousands of fans in the city of a million then you celebrated their off the field victory. But if you were an indifferent observer you watched and shrugged. Good for them, bad for the city.
Over time the Chargers have made it clear they want a better stadium at little cost and risk to them and they’ll go where they can to get one. From a business perspective you can’t fault them. But you can fault the city for continuing to woo and pursue a love interest that clearly was only in the relationship as long as it benefitted one side — and it wasn’t San Diego.
Credit to Chula Vista when not long ago the Chargers flirted with them. They guessed the dalliance was meaningless and was meant to make the Chargers’ main sucker jealous. Looks like it worked because even now the city is doing what it can to save the relationship when it should have helped the team pack its bags a long time ago.
