Canary Island pines, Australian tea, Moreton Bay fig, Kauri pine, Calif. juniper, Ilelo palm, dragon tree, elderberry, bunya nunya.
November 22, 2017
News & Stories
The top ten trees of Balboa Park
Thanks for thy present! None sweeter or better.
The Pumpkin Oh, greenly and fair in the lands of the sun, The vines of the gourd and the rich melon run, And the rock and the tree and the cottage enfold, With broad leaves …
November 22, 2017
Awesome Fest creator wants to change name
Did the punk rawker in you notice something odd this year? Labor Day weekend came and went minus an Awesome Fest. Fear not, faithful festival attendee, the event is still on for its 11th year …
November 22, 2017
Pixar’s splendid Coco
Smash the American Idol. Still The Voice. America’s Got Talent, but let it stay at home and delight the household and its gods (or at least its ancestors). But what if the household is not …
November 22, 2017
Kimpton Hotel's alleyway of Mexican primo spirits
“Curadero” may not mean much outside of the downtown San Diego Kimpton, but within its lobby-side, mural-strewn walls, the neologism signifies top-quality Cali-Baja cuisine, inspired cocktails, choice drafts, 80+ premium Mexican spirits (including mezcal, bacanora, …
November 22, 2017
An unlikely Christmas story: The Man Who Invented Christmas
One month before Christmas, it’s The Man Who Invented Christmas. With three flops in a row and a string of creditors stretching around the block, Charles Dickens (Dan Stevens) floats the idea of a Christmas …
November 22, 2017
Mozart's Requiem at the San Diego Symphony
On Saturday, November 18th, The San Diego Symphony performed Mozart’s Requiem. They pushed the concert hard on social media and it appears to have paid off. I was only using eyeball metrics but the house …
November 22, 2017
SDG&E and AT&T’s turkey times
Political handout day, otherwise known as Thanksgiving, came two weeks early for embattled San Diego mayor Kevin Faulconer, whose One San Diego nonprofit threw its annual turkey giveaway on Saturday, November 11 in Oak Park. …
November 22, 2017
Eleven kinds of patties at Burgerim
Merguez. Never quite knew what it was. A North African region? No. That’s the Maghreb. Some organization in a James Bond movie? Nuh-uh. It took me coming to the squirty fountain in the new Horton …
November 22, 2017
Fly by Night: almost a metaphysical musical.
When I see a title which includes “metaphysical musical” I’m expecting souls connecting on the astral plane based on the residue of previous lives which then stains future iterations of the same souls. You might …
November 22, 2017
Punk Yacht Club's silly sailors
Punk Yacht Club happened after Connecticut-raised Jesse Goodwick and ex-Bostonian Greg Marsh moved out here from the East Coast. For a while, Goodwick had a real job that used his mechanical engineering degree. “Then I …
November 22, 2017
Omit the 21st century
Dear Hipster: Top five desert-island album choices? — Hannah (listening to My Bloody Valentine in Talmadge) I’ve been sitting on this one for a while now, not afraid per se, but reticent to meet this …
November 22, 2017
Mr. Halfright
It’s not his real name, but the name he gave me wasn’t real, either. He’s navigated his dual wheelchairs, one for his luggage and one for himself, with impressive efficiency — and even agility, despite …
November 22, 2017
El Mezcalito — attempt to bring mescal into the fold
There are as many flavors to mescal as there are Ramirezes or Smiths in the San Diego County phone book — but only Del Maguey Vida Mescal is best suited for Puesto’s mescal cocktail, El …
November 22, 2017
Bad Kids on reverb
After four and a half years, two albums, and two EPs, Bad Kids are finally getting a buzz. The poppy surf punkers from Imperial Beach played to a standing-room-only audience at the House of Blues’ …
November 22, 2017
The pull-apart basin
Canyon Sin Nombre is located in the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, an area known for its driving tectonic forces and awe-inspiring geologic structures. Geologists refer to this region as the Salton Trough, as it is …
November 22, 2017
InnerMission's Falling: rarely happy
InnerMission Theatres’ starkly realistic, deeply moving production of Deanna Jent’s Falling closes this Saturday. It deserves a much longer run. About halfway into the 80-minute piece, teenaged Lisa Martin tells her mother, Tami, she wants …
November 22, 2017
Chula Vista book seller left church for Plato
Name: Jerry Dell Ehrlich Age: 81 Occupation: Author/bookstore owner Neighborhood: National City Where interviewed: Postmodern Bookstore, Chula Vista What are you reading? “I keep certain books around. I try to have every third book I …
November 22, 2017
American Carnage in City Heights
When the world as we know it ends, will it be our fault? Broadly speaking, dystopian sagas diverge into two camps. On the one hand, you have your bleak future in the vein of Fahrenheit …
November 22, 2017
God uses a clay pot such as I am
Membership: 120 Pastor: Ed Gonzalez Age: 40 Born: Bulacan, Philippines Formation: Febias College of Bible, Valenzuela, Philippines; The Master’s Seminary, Los Angeles Years Ordained: 13 San Diego Reader: How long do you spend writing your …
November 22, 2017
Eighteen is the new fourteen
A while back, I sent my collegiate son a text with the following quote from a letter by F. Scott Fitzgerald to his collegiate daughter: “Once one is caught up in the material world, not …
November 22, 2017
Happy as a Lamkin
Matt Lamkin and his girlfriend moved down to Ensenada in 2012. At the time, Lamkin was still playing in the Soft Pack and, as he explains it, “If we went on tour it didn’t really …
November 22, 2017
How about Coronado’s “Zee Huis”?
A trend of endowing mansions with fanciful and often foreign names seems to be emerging among San Diego’s mega-rich. Many may be familiar with La Jolla’s Foxhill estate, former home of the local publishing magnate …
November 22, 2017
Single-minded Joshua White
“It’s a celebration of my new music,” is how pianist Joshua White describes 13 Short Stories when he checks in by phone. “The new album, it tells a story of the band, of us as …
November 22, 2017
Hook me up to Cap'n Crunch
Dear Hipster: If you had to eat one food every day for the rest of your life, what would it be? — Dan Apparently I’m being forced, most likely at gunpoint or other annihilatory threat, …
November 22, 2017
If there’s a vote on San Diego's convention center...
There is a new breeze blowing through the San Diego Convention Center Corporation. Unfortunately, it smells much like the last one. Since 2009, I have been interviewing Heywood Sanders, the Texas-based university professor who is …
November 22, 2017
Papa Doug’s big wait
While ex–Union-Tribune owner and long-pending Trump ambassadorial appointee to the Bahamas Doug Manchester awaits financing for his Navy Broadway complex in downtown San Diego, the opening of his new convention hotel in Austin, Texas, also …
November 22, 2017
A reader thinks the Chargers failed
The Chargers failed Dryw Keltz’s cover story [“The (often moronic) emotions of NFL fans”] about whether former Chargers fans still root for the team was fair and balanced, but it lacked this one key talking …
November 22, 2017