Tag Archives: San Diego

Lope

Nationality: USA
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Primary Language: English

This informant grew up in San Diego, CA.  He is now a sophomore student at USC.  He told me about a few folk expressions from his high school and I chose “Lope”

Informant: Lope is short for “Low Profile” but it can be used in all different sorts of contexts.  If someone if drinking vodka in the parking lot they might ask their friends if they are being “lope,” meaning “is this cool? Will anyone see me?”  Also kids used to use the phrase all the time when smoking marijuana around school or parents.

Me: Do you know where the phrase came from?

Informant: I’m pretty sure someone at my high school came up with it when I was there.  It was basically a way to check with your friends if you were chill doing whatever thing you weren’t allowed to do, without anyone else around knowing.

Me: Was it a widely used word around the school?

Informant: Uhh I wouldn’t say widely, but all my friend group knew was it meant or anyone who partied.

The word “lope” looks like it was created by someone to remain secretive when they were breaking the law or doing something they shouldn’t.   More likely than not, some popular kid starting using it and then everyone tagged along.

Pirate’s Cave

Nationality: American
Age: 23
Occupation: Student, Part time facilities attendant at on campus gym
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/27/13
Primary Language: English

Here my informant recounts a tradition among the local youth he knew in Point Loma to visit a place they called the “Pirate Cave” he describes the historical basis for the tradition, and the reasons people are still drawn there.

“Alright, well I grew up in Point Loma San Diego, and there’s this thing called sunset cliffs, and it’s a bunch of like 40 or 60 foot cliffs, big and really pretty, and, um, in the 1920’s during prohibition, it was like a major smuggling destination for alcohol, and there’s a really cool cave that’s connected to where boats could land at the cliffs, and has like access at low tide only, and then it goes up to the top of the cliff like through and under and um its really cool cause like you can go in and explore and um people have like found bones in there, and there’s like notches in the wall where they used to put candles to light the passage ways, and what’s really sketchy is like, its been known about for a while by locals, and they [the smugglers] tried to catch them, so they have like pitfalls in the path like inside the cliffs  like, that were traps for police forces which were set up, um, yeah, pretty awesome. We just call it pirate’s cave because of people who pirated the alcohol brought it in that way and, now they stopped using it. And there’s like carved steps, yeah it’s really cool.”

The informant enumerates undeniable draws to explore this former bootlegging hideout. From rotting bones to booby traps, many of these rumors are so adventurous  they seem likely to be fabricated. However, regardless of their accuracy, there must be some foundation for rumors, and my informants’ description of “Pirate Cave” shows how tradition can develop from a desire for adventure.