Queen Bee's Art & Cultural Center
The Queen Bee herself, Alma Rodriguez, says “I credit the name [Queen Bee’s] to the San Diego Reader. When I moved to this location, the headline in the paper said: ‘Queen Bee of art and entertainment is moving to North Park.’ That’s how it happened.” (Before Queen Bee’s, Rodriguez says she ran a punk-rock venue in the College area called the Hot Monkey Love Café.) The Reader wasn’t the only factor, however. A believer in premonitions and destinies, Rodriguez says she googled what big events happened in the world on the week of her birthday in 1968. “One of the articles I came across was ‘National Bee Day’ on the day of my birthday. The article was related to the Napoleonic Bee, and my nickname as a young girl and punk-rocker was Little Napoleon. I freaked out that day. There were too many coincidences. I’d known Napoleon was a great leader, and I took an interest in why people called me Napoleon. Then I found out Napoleon’s emblem was a queen bee. I realized that day that my destiny was to be a queen bee.”