Hey all! My name is Mike and I am part of the wonderful Sys-Ops team here at Gap Intelligence! I have lived in San Diego since I could remember. I have held a handful jobs and have recently graduated from UCSD, and as such I believe that I have had a lot of experience interacting with the various personalities around this enormous city, and am fully aware of the humorous generalizations surrounding it. So this is me, jumping aboard the trendy “types-of-people meme” bandwagon and attempting to have a little fun with the folks of my home town. You stay classy, San Diego.
1. PB Bros
Sporting lifted trucks, fitted ball caps, and an arsenal of tank-tops and ill-advised designer t-shirts, you can often find this demographic making aggressive bee lines for parking spots at your nearest 24-hour fitness whilst simultaneously updating his Twitter/Facebook status to let all his adoring followers know that it’s gym time. He is known to showcase his taste in music, inadvertently rolling up car windows of other drivers one at a time. Born and raised on the outskirts of Garnet Avenue, daily routines include protein shakes and bro-fisting in between various PB hot spots. Jaegerbombs!
2. Dog Owners
Living amongst the suburbs, but often concentrated in neighborhoods like Ocean Beach, the San Diego Dog Owner is obviously most often found at their local dog park. The San Diego Dog Owner can vary in appearance, ranging from the simple dog owner, to those who bask in the hipster-esque novelty of being a dog owner, spending more time taking multiple pictures of their dogs in emotionless poses than they do walking or training them. The San Diego Dog Owner is known to purchase doggy cupcakes from local bakeries, discuss the pros and cons of raw food or gluten-free diets, compare how quickly it takes for their dog to destroy a new toy, and spend copious amounts of time shopping for classy canine costumes.
3. Hardcore Vegan/Organic Foodies
All the foods you love or once loved to consume is now deemed unhealthy by this demographic’s standards. These regular juicers can be found at your nearest Whole Foods or local produce collective scouring the aisles for the most organic or vegan goods. Farmers markets have become the norm and you can bet your gluten that these coconut-water drinking health nuts have them studied down to a science. In fact, regular nine-to-fivers have little-to-no hope in finding some homegrown goodness before the vendor booths have been emptied.
4. Crossfit & Yoga Junkies
Sometimes overlapping with No. 3 to create a combination nothing short of whimsical, these conglomerations of yogis and Crossfitians have become so large that membership to either has nearly doubled to atrocious fees upwards of $140 a month since they started popping up on every street corner. They are often found wearing stretchy clothes to almost any occasion, and exhibit no sign of shame for the amount of sweat they exude.
5. Newfound Electronic Music Fans
Hip-hop is dead and rock is on its way out as more and more of the public has turned to the synth-stabbing succulence that is electronic dance music (EDM). This demographic can be recognized by their shameless styling of stunna shades and shirts with BIG LETTERS, cruising to their destinations in packed 4-door sedans with windows down and dubstep (AOL-connection-sequence-turned-music) blaring. These trendy, bandwagoning partygoers are most noticeable through their innate ability to shuffle places instead of walking, and they often wear neon colored clothes with unnecessary matching suspenders.
6. Drunk People at 24-hour Mexican Restaurants
The California burrito is named just that because of its origin down here in classy San Diego. There surely must be an additive present in their food to attract such large masses of intoxicated folk with such fervor. Indisputably, if you are a bar-goer in San Diego, you are also, at some point in time, a member of this demographic. These crowds of people seem to appear out of thin air between the hours of 11 PM and 2 AM and it is not uncommon for them to linger long enough to go home reeking of a mixture between alcohol, heavily seasoned meat and hot sauce to die for. Often times, and depending on your neighborhood, there are spontaneous fights over who was next in line and hot carrots.
7. Rejected Las Vegas Street Performers
Shake weights, sketchy amplifiers and more improv props than you can shake a stick at; last but certainly not least are San Diego’s nearly famous slew of street performers. No one knows whether they are native San Diego inhabitants or immigrants from less performer-friendly cities, but here they are turning up in abundance. A fine notch down from the level of talent seen on Las Vegas Blvd, they can be found situating themselves in front of closed-for-day businesses shamelessly showcasing their one or many talents to an ever-changing crowd of club-goers, bar hoppers and people looking for a place to eat.
