San Diego is crazy. Since I’ve moved here I have been through three earthquakes, the Hilton right down the street from me blew up, I’ve been surrounded by wildfires, and now fighter jets are falling from the sky. Google says that it’s about 12 miles away, so Michael, Lou, and I are okay. But I feel for those people and hope they were out shopping or working. The houses in that area look relatively nice, so if they come home to this, I feel for their loss… and may the big, fat gubamint check you get somehow compensate!

And so we begin a new week with another installment of my Intubation series, a photo exposé of the crazy pipes and tubes that line the streets and sidewalks of sunny San Diego. I’ve added 15 new shots to the gallery, humbly hosted on the fantastic Flickr, with an added bonus of another volley of San Diego’s crazy little fire hydrants that I swear will one day rise up and subjugate the weaker, fleshier denizens of America’s most southwestern city. Have a click through and enjoy.

In other news, I invite everyone who reads this blog to go and discover StumbleUpon. I’m probably late in the game on this one, but it’s kind of a really great way to come across the best of the width and breadth of that which makes up the internet. Basically, if you are a Firefox user or use the dreaded Internet Explorer, then you can install this toolbar which syncs to an account you set up that is specified, generally, to your likes. Then with a push of the Stumble button it takes you to site after site of the weirdest, most interesting, and most life-changing of what the interwebs have to offer. If you’re instantly enamored with your latest excavation, then a hit of the “Like it” button will let the StumbleUpon master brain know and take you to another site, possibly related or maybe relevant to another of your likes. Don’t like it and it will lessen the chance of any repeat offenders.

Does it keep a running tally you can go back to of your likes? Yes. Does it allow you to add your own favorites for others to “stumble upon”? Yes. Is it highly addictive and demand you curtail your usage and ration out bouts of stumbling? Yes. Do I love it? Obviously. Go, join, become a junkie, and waste your precious time like I have late into the night all last week.

Some things I’ve recently stumbled upon…

• DailyLit
• Screaming Beans
• Drum Machine

In a town where the phrase “water shortage” is as popular as “mid-century modern”, I’m amazed at the amount of exposed piping that exists in the streets of San Diego. There is a crazy, crazy amount. More than I’ve ever seen in an urban setting. (And I’ve lived in New Brunswick, New York, Philly, and been to a bunch more.) From the finished/unfinished I-beam and steel appeal of the outside architecture to the chic exposing of duct work and sprinkler systeming in even the nicest of eateries and establishments, it seems that the decades old underground-to-above-ground aqueducting of SD had set the style precedent years before. It’s a little tiny bit like in that movie Brazil.  like it. So with that I begin my little semi-weekly photo-essay of the stylish, the clandestine, and the tragic piping of San Diego’s busiest streets. And for fun I will classify them.

As a bonus, I’ll throw in another oddity: a few shots of San Diego’s zany fire hydrants. Which are so little robot-y, I feel like they’re going to come alive and arrest me. I’ll keep you posted as I fill up the Flickr Page, but have a look at the 15 I got there so far…