Spitball Army

Within a couple of hours of landing in San Diego, I was covering some old ground.  Here, through the windshield of a PT Cruiser, is the view from about midway across “Suicide Bridge” in Balboa Park, looking toward the tower and dome of the Museum of Man.  The bridge most likely has a more formal, official name, but as kids we always referred to it as “the suicide bridge,” in consideration of the tales of jumpers we had heard spun with eerie, bone-chilling horror.  Many years after leaving California, I was reminded of this locale when I heard the song “Balboa Park” by Bruce Springsteen, and its haunting lyrics of a cocaine mule dying beneath the overpass.  The beauty of the Park obscures the view of that potentially seamy underbelly.

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“Balboa Park” (1995) by Bruce Springsteen