Yes, I know that county-and statewide power outages are a normal occurrence on the East Coast, but San Diego, parts of Arizona and Baja California experienced their first ever power outage and boy, was it a doozy. Not only did we hear stories about frantic shoppers furiously packing their shopping carts with a week’s worth of rations at local grocery stores, but we also heard about local neighborhoods coming together to break bread, talk shop and pass a beer around to toast the football season opener.

Living in a sleepy beach town that San Diego is often infamous for, residents were well-behaved and fully enjoyed living like the Amish for one night, kind of. In my neighborhood of Cardiff-by-the-Sea, our little community came together. We spent the early afternoon, well in traffic, before going on a bike ride through downtown Encinitas to see what was going on in the streets. Bars were open, business owners welcomed patrons with open arms as long as there was sunlight and residents were frolicking in the streets like we were all away at summer camp.

Cell phone service was pretty shoddy and those who couldn’t access Facebook, Twitter or local news sites relied on friends and family out of the county to read us any status updates from San Diego Gas & Electric (SDGE) over the phone. For those who weren’t so concerned about when the power was supposed to come back on, we (I) walked through the streets, checked on neighbors and their fire pits and BBQ grills, looked for those smart ones who jimmied their car battery to power the football game and fully enjoyed the moonlight and stars sans all of that city light interference.  

San Diego Power Outage 2011 forced residents to get creative with how they would cook dinner and entertain themselves. And I’m hoping Mayor Jerry Sanders makes an electrical outage mandatory at least once after each summer so residents can hold onto one last memory from what turned out to be a pretty epic evening. I’m sure it would ease our city bills just a smidge. Just sayin’.