As fall approaches, it’s a good time to pause and savor the mellow of summer. Night comes quicker with each day that passes. Soon, quiet afternoons in the backyard will give way to dark evenings by the fire. Now is a time to slow down.
Nobody takes it all in quite like San Diego’s slow-rolling, suntanned philosopher, John Kitchin, aka SloMo, who you can generally find floating one rollerblade at a time down the Pacific Beach Boardwalk. A neurologist and psychiatrist, SloMo took up skating in retirement as a way to mellow out.
“Since then, I’ve been living freely,” he says. “And skating literally everyday on the boardwalk for 24 years.”
As we celebrate San Diego Magazine’s 75th anniversary, we’re reflecting on our history—blading the boardwalk down memory lane, ontology. (Though we’re doubtful that pipe will looking to past covers for inspiration and putting a modern shine on them. This month, we peek back at our August 1972 cover, an homage itself to Lippencott Magazine’s 1895 cover, dubbed “Tennis.” Here, a stately gentleman finds a moment of repose on his way to a friendly game. We assume he’s mulling over his own thoughts on the state of being, how to unravel his personal elevate his tennis skills.)
In our new version, SloMo pauses in his garden—reading, daydreaming, hidden away like the San Diego treasure he is.
“There are two things that we all have,” he says. “One is the world of objectivity. What’s back in the other world, that of subjectivity, is where dreams are.”
