Calle Articulo Unos Dos Tres, more commonly known as First Street — one of the oldest streets in TJ — is being ripped up and revamped as part of a program designed to create a …
February 3, 2010
Blog Entries
- SEC Cocks an Eyebrow at Bobby Vassallo Again
- A wallow in the wild
- Update Little Falls 2/03/2010
- El Camino upends No. 9 Poway to stay perfect in league
2 comments
- Sun and Sand in February
- League Cites Establishment in Bid for Longer "Strong Mayor" Trial Period
13 comments
Audio clips
News & Stories
Ripped Up, Revamped
Astro Coast
Florida four-piece Surfer Blood might have spent too much time lying in the sun, listening to '90s indie-rock. On their debut album, Astro Coast, the similarities to Weezer, the Shins, Sebadoh, and Pavement keep crashing …
February 3, 2010
Pinched
I recently drove home to Lakeside on the 67 so I could stop at Sarita’s taco shop for a burrito. While stopped at the 67/Mapleview intersection, a truck caught my eye. A repo truck. You …
February 3, 2010
Soft Pack 'Em In
Ten days before the Soft Pack take the stage on the David Letterman Show, the San Diego band formerly known as the Muslims returned to the Tower Bar in City Heights to release their s/t …
February 3, 2010
Beautiful Baby
The Green Season. Border Patrol agents in Laredo, Texas, confiscated 745 pounds of marijuana; the bundles were wrapped in Christmas paper. During a routine immigration inspection, a drug-sniffing dog alerted agents to a passenger van …
February 3, 2010
Golden Opportunities
It’s not hard to make decisions when you know what your values are. — Roy Disney A tight shot on George Clooney’s face opened and drew back, across the bare hotel room in which he …
February 3, 2010
Danish group Tvind builds exotic compound on Baja coast
In the early 1970s, my late grandfather, an artist and retired San Diego State art professor, took me camping to a beautiful and remote setting along Baja’s northwest coast. While exploring the peninsula’s back roads, …
February 3, 2010
Not a Tourist Place
Maybe it’s the pale, washed-green cupboards or the mustard walls or the blue-and-yellow tablecloths and olive bowls for sale. This place just feels like a little piece of France. Right here in Little Italy. Cheeky. …
February 3, 2010
Who Put the Dogs Out?
San Diego is on the map as one of the dog friendliest of cities. Beaches, hiking trails, and even some stores and cafés accommodate four-legged visitors. It’s all here, from dog sports to doggy daycare. …
February 3, 2010
South Bay Baptist Church
“2010: A New Beginning” reads the label on the binder in the ministry booth set up in the church hall. The table surrounding the decorated cardboard triptych is strewn with candy. Other, similar booths advertise …
February 3, 2010
Chocolate Ginger Cookies
Recipe by Ricardo Heredia, executive chef, Alchemy What I make depends on how I feel that day. I love Latin food. Anything South American. My grandmother was Mexican, so I grew up with Mexican food …
February 3, 2010
Super Bowl Edition
An NFL placekicker has his own world. For him, the word “placekicker” is another way of saying “no contact.” Contact, for a placekicker, is referred to as “roughing the kicker.” A normal day at the …
February 3, 2010
Back in the Spotlight
It seems impossible to speak of Mel Gibson’s “comeback” in Edge of Darkness without speaking of what it is he is coming back from. But speaking strictly, the aftermath of his arrest for drunk driving …
February 3, 2010
Flood Repair
Water roared down our street, pooled up around the clogged street drain, and began to overflow into our neighbor’s front yard. By the time Patrick unclogged the drain — two plastic "No Parking" signs were …
February 3, 2010
Sour Grapefruit
Can you judge a chef’s palate by a single dish if that dish represents how he cooks when he’s showing off for his peers? Before moving to San Diego, ten years ago I came down …
February 3, 2010
The Coldest Wind
At first it looks as if Neil Simon’s Lost in Yonkers (1991) will repeat the coming-of-age theme in his Brighton Beach trilogy. It’s 1942. When their father hits the road to pay off a loan …
February 3, 2010
Have Drums, Will Travel
Before moving to North County, singer-songwriter Spud Davenport drummed for various L.A. and San Francisco bands, the most successful of which was Toymuzic. After learning how to play both guitar and keyboard, he penned the …
February 3, 2010
We've Always Looked After Our City
Thirty Years AgoGeorge Marston thought the Nolen plan presented sound concepts for developing the city, but not everyone in San Diego agreed with him, as he found out when he ran for mayor in 1913. …
February 3, 2010
Hick Pop
On a January evening, Phil Bensimon stood on the porch of his home on Highfield Avenue in La Mesa. The front room of the house had been converted into a recording studio. Bensimon listened through …
February 3, 2010
Know Your Metal
Ritual Torture says playing death metal doesn’t mean they want people to die. “We’re not about violence,” says guitarist Jesse Jensen. But Ritual Torture’s lyrics can get gory and morbid. “Humanity has always been obsessed …
February 3, 2010
Sonic Assault
Thursday 4The Brooklyn-band hype machine needed something different, a new sound and language to distract from the steady stream of ornate art-pop acts — the TV on the Radios and Dirty Projectors, the Animal Collectives …
February 3, 2010
Last hurrah
Virtually unknown to the public here, Bill Cavala, a onetime UC Berkeley professor and top aide to Speaker Willie Brown Jr., was for most of two decades the Democratic operative most indispensable to the party’s …
February 3, 2010
Vivian Girls
A few months ago I came across a wonderful new band with a familiar sound. There were jangly and distorted guitars, raggedy drums, aloof female vocals, and singsong melodies and everything cloaked in a haze …
February 3, 2010
Smoke Tree Canyon
Stark and barren, yet glorious in their nakedness, Anza-Borrego’s skeletal mountain ranges conceal more than they reveal to casual passersby. If you want to know them better, you must leave the security of the automotive …
February 3, 2010
San Diego mayor Sanders puts football above water
In his State of the City speech on January 13, Mayor Jerry Sanders devoted 434 words to the possibility of taxpayers shelling out hundreds of millions of dollars for a subsidized Chargers stadium and 174 …
February 3, 2010
Cashless ducats
San Diego city councilman Ben Hueso, running in the Democratic primaries for an assembly seat this year, has been busy handing out free tickets from the City’s big stash. The latest: two passes to the …
February 3, 2010
Flagged
The Obama administration’s nominee to run the Transportation Security Administration dropped out of consideration two weeks ago, shortly after Senate Republicans began asking questions about his San Diego divorce. Erroll Southers, a former FBI agent, …
February 3, 2010
Box Office Rebound
Each year Pollstar magazine lists the 200 top-grossing concert headliners. No San Diego–based artists showed up on the 2008 list, but three local bands with multimillion-dollar tours appear on the 2009 list. The reformed blink-182 …
February 3, 2010
Lions in Fancy Shoes
“We haven’t played locally for over six months,” says Kristofer Towne, singer-guitarist for a Scribe Amidst the Lions. “We’ve been busy working on the first in a concept trilogy of releases.” The Last Sting Trilogy …
February 3, 2010
Tickle Studies, Ice Cream Truck Tunes, Avocado Seeds
Matt: Why can’t I tickle myself? Anybody else can tickle me, but when I try it, nothing happens. — Anonymous, via email Somehow this was also a burning question in Swedish academic circles. Maybe something …
February 3, 2010
San Diego Office of Education fires Rodger Hartnett
Every morning at seven o’clock, Rodger Hartnett starts his day. The 62-year-old law school graduate and county employee breakfasts inside his Tierrasanta home as he watches the news. Afterwards, he opens up his book of …
February 3, 2010
San Juan Islands, Washington
Our one-week journey takes us to an archipelago in the Puget Sound, just off the United States’ northwest corner: the San Juan Islands. It’s a perfect trip if you don’t mind taking on a cooler …
February 3, 2010
Gardening from the Ground Up
With the immediate intimacy of her sweet, classically trained voice, Foster sounds nearly as depressed as A. Camp on the Cardigans’ “Step On Me” or “Nasty Sunny Beam.” Lacking A. Camp's sense of humor and …
February 3, 2010
Medellin, Colombia, Encapsulated
Medellin, enchanted city, home of the silicon buttcheek, where no one remembers the natural light of stars and the sun has barely been named, where the Paisas wear their souls on their skin and old …
February 3, 2010
Normal as Blueberry Pie
First off, how normal is blueberry pie? Serious question. As far as Zen koans go, I'm sticking it right up there with “Why has Bhodi-Dharma left for the East?” or “Why are those car wheels …
February 3, 2010
Dave Rawlings Machine
Touring behind the critically acclaimed A Friend of a Friend, Dave Rawlings Machine made their second appearance in the past year at the Belly Up. A full house was treated to two covers-heavy sets, with …
February 3, 2010