Get ready for the crowds. The biggest crowds of the year are in San Diego over the next ten days.
Pride weekend this weekend, Opening Day at the Del Mar Racetrack a few days later and of course all next week, the mother of all San Diego conventions takes off on its action-packed adventure and does its thing right through the next weekend. The Comic Con. The annual popular arts event that is so big it explodes out from the downtown convention center and into the entire Gaslamp Quarter and attracts even people who couldn’t get tickets, and there are plenty of them.
The downtown entertainment invasion includes programs, parties and people watching. And the annual search for those TV and film celebrities who flee Hollywood for San Diego for fun at the Con.
Throw in the Padres being back home at Petco Park for a weekend series and the warm weather attracting big crowds to the beaches, and you’ve got a lot of people, a lot of congestion and a lot of traffic.
For San Diego’s tourism industry and the local economy, the next ten days are almost like the holiday shopping season between Thanksgiving and Christmas. What goes on the next ten days can help make the whole year a good one.
And everyone and every agency says they’re ready for the hundreds of thousands of people who will be crowded into our city.
Police have extra patrols, lifeguards are at full force, the hotel folks have stocked up and so have the shops, restaurants, bars and clubs.
Yes these are the biggest ten days of the summer in our city and no city probably does it better than San Diego.