San Diego CityBeat • Jan 27, 2016 by San Diego CityBeat

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January 6, 2016 · San Diego CityBeat · 1

2 · San Diego CityBeat · January 27, 2016

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January 27, 2016 · San Diego CityBeat · 3

Up Front | From the editor

The stain of veteran homelessness

irst Lady Michelle Obama called vetHomelessness Action Week. Project Homeless Connect, which provides basic services for people eran homelessness “an absolute outrage” last on the streets, is Jan. 27., and the annual Point-inweek in an address during the winter meetings of the U.S. Conference of Mayors. Time Count of homeless individuals begins late at “It is a horrifying stain on our nation, particunight on Jan. 29. During his annual State of the City address, San larly when you think about all that these men and Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer announced an iniwomen have done for our country,” she said. The First Lady didn’t call out tiative to get 1,000 veterans off the Chuck Kennedy / wiki commons San Diego as a city that has lagged streets by the end of 2016. Yes, our in helping get military veterans off starter’s pistol fired when L.A. and the streets. But she did praise other other cities were ending their maracities that answered her challenge thons. But “better late than never” can still save lives of veterans and to end veteran homelessness by the end of 2015, including Los Angecivilians who need coordinated les. Houston, Las Vegas and Phila“housing-first” assistance. The task of benchmarking the delphia are also among cities that mayor’s Housing Our Heroes inireached “functional zero,” meaning tiative will fall to the San Diego most veterans now have roofs over Housing Commission. A press their heads. conference with more details from Obama urged the nation’s mayors the mayor will come Feb. 3. SDHC to step up efforts to eradicate homelessness. “Your peers have provided spokesperson Maria Velasquez says you all with a road map for how to 30-60 days after that progress will get this done,” she said. “Whether be reportable. The goal is getting 1,000 (curyou’re a big city, a small county or an entire state—someone just like First Lady Michelle Obama rently unsheltered) veterans housed by Dec. 31, 2016. Divided by 12, that’s you has done it.” San Diego leaders may be waking up to the re83 vets that need to be housed per month. If no ality that exists on 16th Street in East Village, surprogress was made in January, then the quota is 90 rounds Tailgate Park near Petco Park and spreads per month. The closing line here for the mayor, and all over the county—in neighborhoods, riverbed enthose working on his initiative, is this: We’re countcampments and hundreds of nooks and crannies. ing on you—literally. It’s time to remove the stain. Indeed, this is a busy week for the cause. The —Ron Donoho San Diego City Council has declared Jan. 24-30 Write to rond@sdcitybeat.com

isgraced former mayor Bob Filner’s mug gets Joker makeup treatment on the cover of a forthcoming book about the sexual harassment buffoonery that got him booted from office. Filner’s former chief of staff, Lee Burdick, self-published Bob Filner’s Monster: The Unraveling of an American Mayor and What We Can Learn From It, “to take back control of my own story,” she says. The diary-like tome gets to Amazon.com on Feb. 8. CityBeat got an advanced copy. Burdick does a deep dive into the animosity between City Attorney Jan Goldsmith and Filner. Burdick alleges former police chief Bill Lansdowne told her Goldsmith bugged certain 11th floor offices at City Hall. (Goldsmith’s office deferred comment; Lansdowne couldn’t be reached for comment.) Burdick—who writes that she was never engulfed in the dreaded Filner Headlock—offers half-hearted salutes to the female victims who came forward. The book hits right as a meaty lawsuit by Filner’s former personal secretary, Benelia Santos-Hunter, heads toward a trial date.

—Ron Donoho

This issue of CityBeat is dedicated to the poor soul Trump will shoot just to prove his point.

Volume 14 • Issue 25 Editor Ron Donoho Music Editor Jeff Terich Arts Editor Seth Combs Web Editor Ryan Bradford Art director Carolyn Ramos editorial assistant Torrey Bailey Columnists Aaryn Belfer, Edwin Decker John R. Lamb, Alex Zaragoza

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San Diego CityBeat is published and distributed every Wednesday by Southland Publishing Inc., free of charge but limited to one per reader. Reproduction of any material in this or any other issue is prohibited without written permission from the publisher and the author. Contents copyright 2015.

4 · San Diego CityBeat · January 27, 2016

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January 27, 2016 · San Diego CityBeat · 5

Up Front | Letters erudite lady. Donald Trump would be proud of you. Aaryn Belfer has certainly drawn ignorance and crassness out of the woodwork! Which planet do you inhabit, Mr Ling? Do you think that these police videos are movies, with actors? They’re real. What about the ones we’re not “allowed” to see? Censorship. Ignorance, stupidity and xenophobia are rife in the United States right now. Critical thinking is becoming extinct— as reflected in our current value system. We have a Republican-derived budget where 60 percent of our money goes to war, and a meager 6 percent goes to education. Free country? Little wonder our disillusioned children are killing. We have failed them.

I applaud your articles on homelessness and the effort being made to reduce the death rate here and elsewhere. But I want to interject one very sad reality. I was as close to homeless in 2008 that I ever came to and the night before we were to be in the street I called the shelters and...because my son was an adult (22) he and I could not be in the same shelter and our beloved dog would have to go to animal control as no pets were allowed at the shelters, none of them. Our prayers were answered and an apartment came available the next day. We layed down on the floor of an empty apartment and thanked God for a roof where we could stay together. I would not have gone to a shelter...and lose all that I had left, my Anna Bowen-Davies, family. I have seen many, many, gentle, lov University Heights ing homeless people who sit outside, even in the bushes with their beloved pets. I have a special love for the homeless and LISTEN UP WHITE DUDES especially those with pets. I wish there Thank you, Alex Zaragoza, for keepwere an answer but haven’t heard one yet. ing the conversation going [“A response Thank you for your concern. to the entitled, whiny bitching of white dudes,” Jan. 13]. White privilege and male Joanne Beckett, privilege may be uncomfortable topics to San Diego examine in ourselves but this is a crucial step to take as we move toward a more just world.

WHO’S THE IDIOT SCUMBAG?

Regarding Bob Ling’s Letter to the Editor [“Choked up,” Jan. 13]. “Idiot scumbag?” Nice language to use about an

6 · San Diego CityBeat · January 27, 2016

Teagen McClain, North Park

On the

Cover Tonja Thilesen took the photo of this week’s cover subject, Julia Holter (pictured). Thilesen is a Norwegian-born photographer based in Berlin, Germany. Her primary work is in editorial and documentary subjects, and she has been published in The New York Times, Vice and Spin. For this shoot, Thilesen met up with Holter in Los Angeles during spring 2015. “We spent the day chasing the sunlight through her favorite neighborhoods, from downtown Los Angeles to Highland Park,” she says via email. “I work rather spontaneously with my subjects—I like to either bring them somewhere new, or have them show me something I haven’t seen before. I had met Julia a few times before our shoot, so she took the opportunity to show me a couple of her favorite spots around town—it turned out that she, like me, has a weakness for the culinary.”

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ken stone

Up Front | news

Barbara Bry

Party hardly In key District 1 race, city council candidates play the middle by Ken Stone

omeone is pulling the electorate’s leg. Is it local media, which depicts the District 1 race for San Diego City Council as pivotal—a battle for one political party to hold a 5-4 majority? Or do you believe the two candidates are really “independent” and “nonpartisan?” One is a Democrat and one is a Republican, but both of their websites avoid using the R- or D-words. Barbara Bry says: “I have support across the political spectrum” and “my message really resonates.” Ray Ellis says: “I’m reaching out to eligible voters, and I think our message resonates with all types.” Bry, 66, started a pro-choice group that endorsed GOP favorite Bonnie Dumanis for mayor in 2012 and re-election to district attorney in 2014. Bry voted for Carl DeMaio’s pension-busting (and labor-angering) Prop. B. She proudly points to GOP disciples among her 440-plus donors. Her campaign slogan: “She means business.” (In fact, she owns the trademark.) Ellis, 58, volunteers at homeless-aiding nonprofits, and leads an environmental think tank called Equinox. He supports banning single-use plastic bags and believes in man-made climate change. He’s backed by Democrats Tony Young, the former city council president, and Mary Herron, the one-time Coronado mayor. The morning of this interview, he said he’d breakfasted with Rep. Scott Peters, D-San Diego, on the “innovation sector.” Bry is the Democrat and Ellis the Republican. Our little secret. By the way, Bry doesn’t rhyme with Try; it’s pronounced like the cheese: Brie. She comes from German and Hungarian Jewish stock, and Bry stands for Ben Rabbi Yisrael. Her second marriage, to fellow entrepre-

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neur Neil Senturia, resulted in a “Jewish Brady Bunch,” she once said. Asked for their presidential preferences, the candidates do begin to separate. Bry raised money for Hillary Clinton in 2007 and stumped for her in New Hampshire for a week leading up to the 2008 primary. Clinton is her only public endorsement this year, Bry says. Ellis, backed by the county GOP, says he’s still “sorting out” the field. “I admit it’s kind of painful to watch some of the discussions that go on,” he said. “I don’t subscribe to many of the conversations that are taking place—at least by some of the frontrunners. I think it’s very, very sad, quite frankly.” But it could be a presidential candidate named Bernie Sanders who decides District 1—if his passionate fans neuter the traditional GOP turnout advantage in June elections. Democrats are 35 percent of the electorate in D1, compared with 31 percent GOP. Bry and Ellis dismiss the Bernie scenario. They also agree that the Jan. 8 withdrawal of Democrat Joe LaCava from their council race means it will be decided in the June 7 primary. No November runoff. LaCava, who declined to comment for this story, has endorsed Bry. A rich source of votes is UC San Diego, in the middle

of D1, which includes La Jolla (where Bry lives), University City, Carmel Valley (where Ellis lives), Torrey Pines and Del Mar Heights. The Registrar of Voters counts 1,131 Democrats and 239 Republicans in the seven precincts covered by UCSD—2,832 voters in total. (When Democratic City Councilmember Sherry Lightner, being termed out in 2016, beat Ellis in D1 in November 2012, she won by 5,700 votes.) Bry, who boasts long involvement with the school as a mentor via programs like CONNECT, has the backing of UCSD student Democrats. Several collegians (and an 18-year-old high schooler) were at work in her 900square-foot office on Governor Drive the day she spoke to CityBeat. UCSD’s Cesar Solis, a club adviser, calls Bry “a strong candidate who mirrors some of the core beliefs that the College Democrats at UC San Diego stand for, like environmental preservation and community engagement. Her values and experience in the booming technology industry make her a candidate that we stand behind.” Solis says many volunteers have sprung up at a moment’s notice to help out—nearly 20 in a recent two-week period. Ellis claims UCSD student support, too. But college Republicans didn’t respond to requests for comment. Bry’s young adult corps includes a 30-year-old field director—her daughter Nancy Kruer. A high school special education teacher with campaign experience, Kruer moved out from Chicago. She’s being paid via Bry’s loans to her campaign—$10,000 in the first half of 2015. (Note: Old San Diego warhorse Tom Shepard is a Bry consultant, too.) A Harvard-educated MBA, Bry started out as business reporter at the Sacramento Bee and the Los Angeles Times. She was recruited (while pregnant) by Neil Morgan to be business editor at the former San Diego Evening Tribune, but turned it down. She’d later become the first editor of the Morgan-launched Voice of San Diego news website. In the meantime, she got rich via tech startups. Ellis had business success too, starting at age 20 when he began a company selling Kawasaki Jet Skis in Virginia. Ellis claims the title of small-business and affordablehousing champion. He says he sat down with a group of Carmel Valley high school seniors, who told them their goal—after college—is coming back for a job in San Diego and not having to live with their parents. “There’s no reason it should take years to get a fairly simple apartment building in San Diego if it’s properly zoned,” he says, while declaring “Carmel Valley had a lot of affordable housing.” What D1 doesn’t have, yet, is a medical marijuana dispensary. One has been approved, though, at 10671 Roselle St. in Sorrento Valley. Would Ellis and Bry back more pot shops in their district? Saying she’d never been asked that, Bry took a day to think about it and emailed: “I support the system the city established to evaluate and, when appropriate, permit dispensaries.” Ellis called pot “a gateway situation,” but says of marijuana cooperatives: “We need to look at that community by community. I’m not a firm believer in onesize-fits-all.” Minimum wage? Bry is for the June ballot effort to raise San Diego’s minimum to $11.50 an hour in 2017, though she’s hesistant about the iconic $15 per hour wage. Ellis is OK with the state’s current $10 minimum, and thinks the June measure would hurt small businesses and depress employment. And so the Democratic and Republican stripes really begin to show.

January 27, 2016 · San Diego CityBeat · 7

Up Front | opinion

spin

cycle

john r. lamb

Brand Diego? Bye-bye city seal, hello new logo Design is everything. Everything! —Paul Rand

s the solution to San Diego’s many problems a new logo? Not likely. But that hasn’t stopped city leaders from embarking on a new visual path, one that will relegate the city seal back to its official documentstamp status. In its stead comes a more modern emblem vetted over months that Mayor Kevin Faulconer hopes positions San Diego as a “world-class city for all.” Faulconer, whose background is steeped in public relations, has indeed taken some shots during his tenure—including in this column—about his penchant for repeated symbolic, rather than bold, pronouncements. Last week, the usually supportive San Diego Union-Tribune ran a

story about a new website the city has launched, called Inside San Diego (InsideSanDiego.org). “The city of San Diego has become the latest local government to put its communication staff to work posting positive ‘news’ stories on a website that resembles an independent media outlet,” the story read, noting that it was part of a trend among government agencies of “bypassing or even replacing the media in the digital age.” An accompanying poll asking the question “Should tax dollars be paying for ‘news’ stories and videos produced by the government?” was running two-to-one against the idea among readers by Tuesday. Busted streets, sinkholes, shaggy palm trees and crumbling parks aside, this would appear to be a problem of perception from

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the re-election-minded mayor, who we learned this week might be facing a known competitor in the guise of former Assemblywoman Lori Saldaña in the upcoming June primary. And yet the mayor pushes on with affairs of the PR heart. In a Jan. 19 memo to all city employees, Faulconer’s right-hand man, Chief Operating Officer Scott Chadwick, issued what he called a “new city style guide and correspondence manual” that are “mandatory moving forward.” “This is an exciting new direction for the city,” Chadwick wrote in the email. “It will be with your cooperation that we can show San Diegans how we are coming together to build a world-class city for all.” The goal: “creating one, unified voice for the City of San Diego,” he added. The 82 pages are replete with mind-numbing details on the genesis of the new logo, which features two orange and green swooshes meant to resemble sails, its proper use and accepted variations, as well as appropriate means to produce city documents, much of it pulled from MerriamWebster’s Secretarial Handbook. The response has been mixed. As one City Hall occupant noted snarkily, “Big Brother telling us what font to use.”

John R. Lamb

Ackackackackackack...Skipper Kevin sails into a new city logo. But talk to the folks responsible for disseminating the new design dictums from the spacious confines of City Hall’s fourth floor, and you’ll get a different take. Bill Harris, the city’s supervising public-information officer whose days wandering the halls at 202 C Street date back to 1980, told Spin Cycle that the city’s “graphic identity” had become confusing after departments began developing their own brands, including a variety of logos. “It wasn’t a bad thing, but there was no guidance,” Harris said Monday while giving Spin a tour of the fourth floor, now the Communications Department— or “CommD,” as its referred to by employees—that once housed the city’s planning functions and at one time was to become, under former Mayor Bob Filner, the Civic Innovation Lab, a solutionfocused organization the Faulconer administration disbanded. While the mayor’s banquet of spokespeople focus on policy issues, the CommD is the information clearinghouse for city operations. Public information officers, once scattered throughout the city depending on the departments they represented, now collaborate under one roof. “The new logo is not meant to fix the streets,” Harris said, but over time departments started to create their own identities. “It’s just human nature,” he explained. But Faulconer had a different idea. “He said, no look, we’re San Diego. We’re not all these parts— we’re a city,” Harris said. “And so he’s created—and we’re helping to disseminate—a graphic identity that says, ‘This is the city of San Diego.’” But the question remains, will this have its intended effect? Spin reached out to John Ball, who’s been a graphic designer in San Diego for 30 years and serves as creative director for the awardwinning firm, MiresBall. Ball’s assessment of the logo was luke-

warm at best. “While I applaud the effort to unify San Diego under one visual identity, capturing the essence of any modern city is a tall order,” he wrote in an email. “In my opinion, the new logo is very generic, and feels like it over-weights the tourism aspect of San Diego. There is so much more to our city besides the sun and surf that the logo suggests.” Added Ball: “The new design reinforces the one-dimensional stereotype that many, especially outside the region, have of San Diego, and in that sense is a missed opportunity. Good brand design can help shape perception, and I think our region has more to offer.” The city’s new “Visual Style Guide” would heartily disagree, apparently. “The logo is at the core of the city’s values,” the guide states. “The ‘O’ represents a central point of origin, a rally point for all residents to share in common. The ‘Sails’ wrapping around the ‘O’ symbolize the geography and amenities that only San Diego can offer the community.” “The design language in this document is the primary tool for the City of San Diego to communicate. The face of this communication is the logo,” the guide added. Harris said he’s certain there will be many opinions of the new visuals, but as he noted from his “long and curmudgeonly career” perspective, the logo “for the first time incorporates a modern sense using colors that are familiar to people who live and work here.” When Spin, however, noted that the “sails” were a natural coming from a mayor who’s an avid skipper and member of the San Diego Yacht Club, Harris laughed: “I hadn’t thought of that. That’s pretty funny. But I bet we could look out a window right now and see a sail somewhere.” Spin Cycle appears every week. Write to johnl@sdcitybeat.com.

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Up Front | Opinion

Sordid

Edwin Decker

Tales

Recalling the notorious Snowball Game

his past December I had the pleasure of accompanying my friends Ben and Dave to MetLife Stadium in Rutherford, New Jersey, to see our beloved New York Giants. During the drive there, Dave and I relived the story about the last time we had gone to a Giants home game together. It was 20 years and three days prior and happened to be one of the most infamous games in NFL history: The Snowball Game of 1995. It was during this game that an all-out snowball war erupted, culminating with 14 arrests, 175 ejections, dozens of injuries, and the equipment manager of the visiting team—The San Diego Chargers—lying unconscious on the field. Giants Stadium, December 23, 1995: It was the last game of the season and the 5-10 Giants were eliminated from playoff contention while the 8-7 Chargers needed a win to advance. On the night before the game, there was a snowstorm, and the stands were not properly cleared. The first quarter was uneventful as the Giants coasted to a 17-3 lead. But early in the third quarter, the Chargers recovered a Giants’ fumble and later ran it in for a touchdown making it 1710. The snowball throwing pretty much started then. However, it was not until “The UPS Delivery of the Game” that things began to get crazy. The UPS Delivery of the Game was a live promotional event during which a guy in a brown UPS uniform would “deliver” a signed football to someone in a randomly selected seat. Dave and I were sitting on the opposite end of the stadium, but were able to watch it unfold on the Jumbotron as the public address announcer asked for our attention. All grew quiet in the stadium as the delivery man slowly made his way down the aisle. Even the snowballs stopped flying: We wondered who will it be? A veteran in a wheel chair? A young boy with sparkles in his eyes? A smokin’ babe in blueface? Finally, the delivery man found the winner, who then stood up to receive the prize—and he was wearing a Chargers jersey! Pandemonium erupted then as the entire section launched a massive, aerial snowggernaut upon him. From where we sat, it looked as if a thunderhead had formed directly over his head and followed him as he raced to the concourse for cover. Well that was that. From then on snowballs, ice balls and slush balls were flying everywhere. People were throwing at the players, the coaches, at each other—at us! Black ice ballistics routinely flying past our noses or hitting us on the backs of the heads. It was hilarious, yes, but frightening and, ultimately, vicious. Because in the fourth quarter, the Chargers

tied the game and—thanks to a mix of losing, beer, testosterone and an abundance of easily manufactured projectiles—the missiles rained heavy and hard on the Chargers players on the field, the entire Chargers sideline and any Chargers fans who still had the gonads to sport their colors. Not that there were many by that point. After the UPS incident, most of their fans inverted their jackets and hats. But there was one Charger fan sitting about six rows in front of us who would do no such thing. And because of it, was continually being plunked from behind. It was going on for at least a half an hour until he took an ice-ball to the neck and had had enough. He stood up, turned to face his assailants and shouted “C’mon motherfuckers!” Then he stripped off his Chargers’ coat, hat and shirt and began thumping his bare chest in anger and disgust—as if it were the Ryan Leaf era. What happened next was a thing to behold. Imagine the scene in a medieval war movie, just before two armies clash in an open field, and one of the generals orders his archers to “loose” their arrows—at which point you see thousands of bolts at once descending upon the enemy. Well that’s what it looked like. Hundreds and hundreds of snowballs blackening the sky before landing on his bare chest, arms and face—the rest of us scrambling for cover—as he howled profanities at the crowd. But it was equipment manager Sid Brooks who got the worst of it. Brooks was on the sideline when he was knocked unconscious by a solitary snowball launched from the upper decks. Poor guy just crumbled to his knees, then fell face first onto the turf. Anyway, the Chargers won the contest. They scored 24 unanswered points culminating with a game-winning, 99-yard interception return by Shaun Gayle, who was pummeled the whole way and later said, “It was the longest 99 yards of my life.” After the game, I approached that crazy Charger fan and told him I thought he was a badass and apologized for my unruly comrades. He was gracious about it. When I returned to San Diego the following week—like a visiting fan at the Meadowlands—I was bombarded with questions. The first question they always asked was, “Did you throw snowballs.” Very few of them believed me when I said “No.” But it’s true. I didn’t. Not to be a goody-goody, but I know about the dangers of ice-projectiles. I know about high downward trajectories. I know that, yes, snowball fights are harmless and fun—but only when both parties consent.

“

From then on snowballs, ice balls and slush balls were flying everywhere.

“

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Sordid Tales appears every other week. Write to edwin@sdcitybeat.com.

January 27, 2016 · San Diego CityBeat · 9

Up Front | Food

by michael a. gardiner

the world

fare

Variations on a theme at Baguette Brothers

here’s nothing new under the sun, only variations. El Bulli, NOMA, Javier Plascencia or Davin Waite, they are all, at most, new forms or old flavors offered in new ways. In other words, they are variations. And that is what Baguette Brothers (4896 Convoy St.) in the Convoy District is all about: variations on a theme, in this case, banh mi. My first nomination for the coveted title of “CityBeat World Fare Best Sandwich on the Planet” was the banh mi at Cali Baguette Express, specifically the No. 1 Cali Special. It was a great sandwich and a classic example of the banh mi arts. Go further into its menu—or, for that matter, that of just about any banh mi joint—and what you find are the usual suspects: BBQ pork, pate, etc. Their menus are mostly the same. Enter Baguette Brothers with a menu bearing little resemblance to traditional purveyors of banh mi. Take, for example, the “Belly Flop,” a banh mi of roasted pork belly featuring crispy glazed skin, a sweet chili sauce and all of the depth of fatty flavor that explains why anyone who does not eat bacon can be immediately identified as potentially evil. This is not traditional banh mi, not close. And yet it riffs on the theme. It has the pickled carrots and daikon. It has the cilantro. It has a hit of jalapeño. It has a perfectly competent baguette. And traditional or not, it has that incredible pork belly. It may well be my new best sandwich on the planet. At the other end of the spectrum, the most traditional of their offerings is the “Grasshogger”—a pork banh mi flavored with lemongrass and a fish sauce glaze. It is a highly competent, if unadventurous, take on a pork banh mi. And yet even this most traditional of offerings is a little bit different: lemongrass forward and with a strong hit of fish sauce.

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Baguette Brothers ventures into cross-cultural, Asian-fusion land with the “Gangnam Style” banh mi. The filling is basically Korean BBQstyle bulgogi ribeye beef with lightly caramelized onions, a bit of kimchi and a swipe of deeply umami aioli on the baguette. Despite the tendency of Asian fusion to not make sense, this one does. The flavors work—belong—together. Baguette Brothers serves more than banh mi, though not much more. The fries, whether simple, with bulgogi beef or roasted pork belly, are still just kicked up fries. The wings, though, are excellent, offered with honey sriracha, lemon Michael A. Gardiner

Gangnam Style pepper and fish sauce. No matter how stinky you think fish sauce might be, as it fries into these wings it becomes sweet with a profoundly savory umami and incredibly round flavor profile. It may be the best dish in the place. Baguette Brothers surely isn’t something new and groundbreaking. It deals in established genres and its variations call on well-trodden turf. But the way they put those flavors, those cultures, that well-trodden ground together feels a lot like something new, something not seen every day, something not seen here. The World Fare appears weekly. Write to michaelg@sdcitybeat.com.

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Up Front | drink

bottle

By Jen Van Tieghem

Rocket

While perusing the wines by the glass I was pleasantly surprised to find such outliers as Gruner Veltliner from Edna Valley and Tempranillo from Southern Oregon all Pacific Time’s Western world of wines at reasonable prices, from $6 to $11 (you can also uncork a bottle for $8). I went with the Abacela Albarino from Umpqua Valley, Oregon. hen imagining a place that specializes in The wine was pleasantly crisp with light apple wines from the Pacific Time Zone you and pear flavors and a slight sweetness. I enjoyed may think of California Chardonnay or it as I chatted with Pacific Time’s owner Dave LoOregon Pinot Noir. While the aptly named Pacific retta about his business. One thing he heard from Time (5277 Linda Vista Rd.) does carry standards me—and others—was a desire for wine flights. He from these states it also offers lessjen van tiegham said he was looking to add them, er-known varietals. and when another guest asked about But this spot is more than just a them minutes later he offered genwine bar. It’s also a bakery, eatery erous samples of three wines of her and retail shop with sandwiches, choosing for $12. cheese and other treats. With so This go-with-the-flow attitude much going on it still feels like a came in handy when a party of 14 quaint neighborhood spot where showed up ordering cheese boards, guests receive warm service and beers and wines in rapid succesfind many reasons to return. sion. Loretta and the staff took the Of course, I came with one thing good fortune in stride and soon the in mind. First, I browsed the bottle place was filled with sounds of hapselection along with a colorful map py drinkers. on one wall. The clever display is Pacific Time As for this happy drinker, I samcolor-coded, so seeing that Oregon pled a splash of Eyrie Vineyards 2013 Pinot Gris— is green on the map means wines with green placanother Oregon find—and was instantly hooked. ards are from the Beaver State, and so on. From Savoring notes of white pepper and tropical fruits, California I was happy to spy familiar names: NaI grabbed a bottle and headed into the dusky night pa’s Matthiasson and San Diego’s Vesper, among thinking, “It’s 5 o’clock somewhere.” my favorites. After looking these over I took a seat at the bar. Write to jenv@sdcitybeat.com

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January 27, 2016 · San Diego CityBeat · 11

Up Front | Drink

the

by andrew dyer

beerdist Beer fest or bro fest?

can remember when the prospect of a beer festival was not accompanied by a sense of dread and foreboding. A handful of years ago, the number of local breweries was nowhere near the century mark, and the entire scene still had a bit of an innocent, niche quality to it. There were new breweries to discover, friends to meet and interesting, one-off beers to sip and contemplate. At the risk of sounding like a jaded, moustachetwirling hipster lamenting craft beer’s catapult into the mainstream, it has got to be said: This shit has gotten way out of control. Festivals were once few and far between, rare opportunities to sample specialty beer only brewed for the occasion. Today, it is not uncommon for breweries to truck out the same beers sold at Vons or 7-Eleven. It makes a certain amount of sense. It must be tiring explaining the nuances of barrel-aged Kopi Luwak coffee stout with toasted coconut and golden fairy dust to barely upright dude-bros just looking for the highest ABV beer to crush. Why waste good product? Last year, the men’s room at a Balboa Park museum was converted into a veritable vomitorium by the third hour of an unlimited-pour festival I attended. Later, during the summer, as a volunteer server at an outdoor festival, I witnessed this bad behavior from a pair of stone-sober eyes. Lines of red-faced, boisterous inebriates snaked from each station. Many cared little for my description of what I was pouring, their only concern was that I “top er’ off, bro!” The final insult, just before last call, was when a fellow volunteer stumbled to my station to brag about ditching his hours and drinking all day, for free. Before ponying up for the next fest to catch your eye, ask yourself the following questions: 1. Are there unlimited pours, and are the tickets reasonably priced? This is a big red flag. Any respectable festival will have a punch-card tally system for pours, or, if unlimited, be discriminatingly expensive. That premium is to keep the binge-drinking proletariat out, and is worth every penny.

12 · San Diego CityBeat · January 27, 2016

Bro. 2. Is there a theme to the festival? A specialty fest will attract a specialty audience. A general fest will attract a general audience. You are so warned. 3. Who is organizing the festival? Not all festival organizers are trying to cram their space with sweaty drunkards. A little Google research can go a long way in forewarning what type of festival is on the horizon. The devolution of the beer fest is not an unavoidable effect of craft beer going mainstream. Organizers should be cognizant of over-selling their events and of over-pouring their patrons. Until they are reined in, either legislatively or by their own volition, the onus is on consumers to be aware of the type of event they’re attending. Without organizers taking responsibility beyond the mere collection of entrance fees, the popularity of festivals may continue to rise, and the quality will continue to fall. The Beerdist appears every other week. Write to andrewd@sdcitybeat.com

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Up Front | books

The floating

by jim ruland

library A battle waged on the home front

n Elizabeth Marro’s tremendous debut novel Casualties, San Diego becomes a battleground fought by the men and women behind the scenes of America’s military efforts in the Middle East. Ruth Nolan is a senior executive at RyCom, one of the largest military defense contractors in the country. She was hired when RyCom was just a start-up, moved up the ranks and followed the company across the country when it relocated to La Jolla. Fiercely determined to succeed, Ruth made herself an indispensible part of RyCom’s senior management. Now, with a massive merger imminent, she is on the verge of becoming a very wealthy woman. However, there is one crucial difference that separates Ruth from her peers, “people hatched in nests of wealth and nurtured in private schools, and then let loose among their own kind, secure in their belief that they had earned everything they had gotten and deserved better”: she is the mother of a twice-deployed Marine. While her colleagues ensure the company profits handsomely from the United States’ military interventions abroad, as the single mother whose only son is on active duty, Ruth has a much greater stake in the outcome. Ruth’s son, Robbie, returns from Iraq a changed man. Haunted by the things he witnessed “over there,” namely the deaths of his comrades in arms, Robbie struggles to adjust to being back in the United States. He only has a few months left before his enlistment is up and he doesn’t know what to do. He enlisted in the Marines to turn his life around, but also to avoid being sucked into the trajectory that his mother was planning for him: school, work, a normal life. Now he no longer knows what any of that even means. How can he go back to “normal” when he feels anything but? “He didn’t know who or what he was when he enlisted. He just knew what he wasn’t.” When Robbie is granted leave so he can visit his mother, he takes a bus trip to visit his mother’s family home in rural New Hampshire, a place his mother fled at the first opportunity, but one he often thought about while he was in the desert, wondering if he would ever see it again. “Shadows fell across the mountain and sank

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into him. The night loomed and with it came the desire to escape even the people he’d traveled two days on a bus to find. Their attempts at conversation sounded like demands in a language he no longer spoke. As they went about their quiet evening routines, he found himself watching and realizing with every passing minute that he was the foreigner here.” While Ruth waits for her son to return, RyCom finds itself embroiled in a scandal of epic proportions with accusations that it failed to protect the contractors it hired to serve the men and women who serve our country. The scandal threatens the impending merger, and it’s up to Ruth to fix it. After reading an email from the wife of a contractor who’d committed suicide—“He may have died here, but he was killed there”—she knows she must make the most difficult decision of her career. Casualties is a heartfelt, harrowing story, but never maudlin or melodramatic. Marro moves back and forth through multiple perspectives, each one believable and real, yet impossible to predict. When Ruth recalls her grandmother’s advice, it feels like the ache of a lesson learned the hard way. “It’s all one life, honey. You can’t just start a new one because you don’t like the one you have.” While San Diegans are all to familiar with the challenges that military personnel and their families face during deployment and after they come home, the personal lives of those who work for the defense industry in the boardroom and on the ground is new territory for a work of fiction. During Ruth’s journey with her son—both literally and figuratively—she struggles to undo the damage inflicted by wounds new and old for which she now feels responsible. “Each ‘if’ launched her into a waking dream, so real that she could almost believe that she had made the right decision at each of these points, that the events unfolding around her happening to the mother of another young boy.” Come see Elizabeth Marro discuss “Casualties” at Warwick’s in La Jolla on Thursday, February 4 at 7:30pm. Write to jimr@sdcitybeat.com.

January 27, 2016 · San Diego CityBeat · 13

EVENTS

SHORTlist

ART

the

THREE YOU HAVE TO SEE

COORDINATED BY

SETH COMBS

COURTESY OF REUBEN H. FLEET SCIENCE CENTER

SHAPE UP

One of the things we love about the Reuben H. Fleet Science Center—aside from it being one of the most fun places for kids to cut loose while also participating in some handson learning—is that they always seem to debut new exhibitions in bulk. So we’re pretty excited that the Fleet is debuting not one, not two, but four new exhibitions. Technically, the stem cell-focused Super Cells opened last week, but Friday, Jan. 29, also sees the opening of The Art of Science Learning, which focuses on the intersections of the arts and science, as well as Zoo in You, an interactive showcase of the trillions of microbes inside our bodies. Even with all that, it’s Taping Shape that has us the most excited. Opening Saturday, Jan. 30, it could probably best be described as a DIY version of one of those play zones you see at a place like Chuck E. Cheese. It’s made from hundreds of rolls of packing tape and bound together by layers of plastic shrink-wrap, and visitors navigate their way through cocoon-like passageways and bounce on springy surfaces. “When you stand in it, it’s very different from how you imagine it,” says Dave Ghilarducci, a local sculpture artist who designed Taping Shape. “It changes your perception. We have a couple of mathematical shapes, but it almost winds up being

2 BACK IN BLACK

Since its humble beginnings in 2002, the San Diego Black Film Festival has gradually established itself as one of the premier fests in the country, screening hundreds of independent films. Since it is held before many of the larger fests, audiences have the chance to see the next indie darling or acclaimed doc before the buzz of Toronto or Sundance. Held Thursday, Jan. 28 through Sunday, Jan. 31, festival highlights include This Little Light of Mine, a documentary about the voting rights force Fannie Lou Hamer, as well as Scratch, a “hip-opera” feature about a Haitian-Canadian man struggling to make his rap dreams come true. Tickets range from $10 for a single screening to $50 for a pass to see any of the films all weekend. All of the films are screened at the Reading Theater (701 Fifth Ave.) in the Gaslamp. sdbff.com COURTESY OF NOVIUM PRODUCTIONS

Love Swag

14 · San Diego CityBeat · January 27, 2016

Taping Shape not so much like a fun zone, but a giant ‘chrysalis’ of different types of things.” The educational aspect of the piece focuses on a variety of STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art and math) concepts. Things like tensile strength, topology, geometry, spatial relations and architecture. There are also supplemental exhibits to help drive these concepts home for both children and adults. For Ghilarducci, the real fun is seeing how patrons each take a different approach to the work. “Some people want to crawl through it and some people want to walk through it,” says Ghilarducci. “Some people are tentative while others want to tear through it. So it’s kind of a different experience for everybody.” Taping Shape will be on display through June 12 and tickets for the R.H. Fleet Science Center start at $16.95. rhfleet.org

ON THE RUN

The mission of CULTURUNNERS is right up our alley. The New York City-based art organization travels around the country in an RV to present art events that explore, as they put it, the “common concerns and COURTESY OF THE ARTIST interconnected histories between the United States and Middle East.” What’s particularly cool is that the travelers have chosen San Diego as the “Magnetism II” by Ahmed Mater launch point for their 2016 “Campaign Trail” tour. It starts with an exhibition titled BORDERLAND on Friday, Jan. 29, from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. at Low Gallery (1878 Main St.) in Barrio Logan which features artists from the Middle East, as well as photos from local photographer John Mireles. The tour launch culminates on Saturday, Jan. 30, at noon with an artist discussion at the San Diego Art Institute (1439 El Prado) that will include Mireles, Palestinian artist Khaled Jarrar and CULTURUNNERS founder Stephen Stapleton. culturunners.com

Multiple Body at UCSD SME Building, 9500 Gilman Dr., La Jolla. UCSD Visual Arts MFA candidate Erika Ostrander presents a series of large scale drawings that directly explore the continuous line of the bound body. Opening from 5 to 8 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 28. Free. visarts. ucsd.edu Art of Science Learning at Reuben H. Fleet Science Center, 1875 El Prado, Balboa Park. The new exhibition invites visitors of all ages to explore the tools and experiences used by Art of Science Learning’s Chicago, San Diego and Worcester Incubators for Innovation. Includes photos, artwork, models, prototypes, video and interactive, hands-on experiences from each community. From 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Opens Friday, Jan. 29. $16.95$19.95. 619-238-1233, rhfleet.org HCULTURUNNERS at Low Gallery, 1878 Main St., Barrio Logan. The traveling show explores the “common concerns and interconnected histories between the United States and Middle East” and includes an exhibition entitled BORDERLAND that features artists from the Middle East and local photographer John Mireles. Opening from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. Friday, Jan. 29. 619-348-5517, culturunners.com HDiscovering Your Creativity: A PopUp Experience at Del Mar Library, 1309 Camino Del Mar, Del Mar. At this special after-hours event, tour the creative process through explanatory panels and created works. Includes a moderated discussion with five featured local artists and writers. From 6 to 9 p.m. Friday, Jan. 29. sdcl.org HInscription: A Monumental Installation at New Americans Museum, 2825 Dewey Road Suite 102, Point Loma. The closing reception for the exhibition by Shinpei Takeda, who will be on-site to discuss the 50-foot participatory installation which incorporates dialogues of shared traumas of displacement. From 5:30 to 8 p.m. Friday, Jan. 29. Free. 619-7567707, newamericansmuseum.org HAlvaro Blancarte: Marking the Present at MCASD - La Jolla, 700 Prospect St., La Jolla. The Tijuana-based artist will showcase works that use sands and marble powder mixed with acrylic and enamel paints to depict the splendor of the deserts of Baja California. From 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 30. Free-$10. 858454-3541, mcasd.org Ed Ruscha Then & Now: Paintings from the 1960s and 2000s at MCASD - La Jolla, 700 Prospect St., La Jolla. An innovator of West-Coast Pop and Conceptual Art, this tailored exhibition of Ruscha’s work considers the artist’s use of recurring words, images and themes across the decades. From 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 30. Free-$10. 858454-3541, mcasd.org El Tango! at Alexander Salazar Fine Art, 1040 7th Ave., Downtown. A one-nightonly exhibition featuring the works of Mirta Zaliauskas who specializes in depictions of the beloved Argentinian dance. Opening from 4 to 8 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 30. Free. alexandersalazarfineart.com HFlor Garduño: Trilogy at Museum of Photographic Arts, 1649 El Prado, Balboa Park. The renowned Mexican black and white photographer presents an exhibition exploring the principal themes within three groups: “Bestiarium,” “Fantastic Women” and “Silent Natures.” From 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 30. Free$8. 619-238-8777, mopa.org Go Red with Bella Hearts at Exclusive Collections Galleries Seaport Village, 835 West Harbor Drive, Ste AB, Downtown. A

H = CityBeat picks

one-night-only charity event featuring renowned artist Bella Hearts. Includes hors d’oeuvres and champagne. RSVP required. From 6 to 9 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 30. 619-238-0320, ecgallery.com HNathan Gulick: Finest City at Ice Gallery, 1955 Julian Ave., Barrio Logan. A mid-show reception for the L.A.-based artist’s new show featuring a series of arrangements of readymade architectural decorations in amplified colors set amongst a faux grass lawn. From 4 to 6 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 30. Free. icegallery. wordpress.com Passage to Light at Taylor Branch Library, 4275 Cass St., Pacific Beach. A solo show from Kaori Fukuyama who specializes in minimal abstract oil paintings that focus on color and light. Opening from 3 to 6 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 30. Free. 858581-9934, kaorifukuyama.com HTaping Shape at Reuben H. Fleet Science Center, 1875 El Prado, Balboa Park. This interactive exhibition designed by Dave Ghilarducci is made from hundreds of rolls of packing tape and bound together by layers of plastic shrink-wrap. From 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 30. $16.95-$19.95. 619-238-1233, rhfleet.org Zoo in You at Reuben H. Fleet Science Center, 1875 El Prado, Balboa Park. A new 2,000-square-foot bilingual exhibition that explores the fascinating and complex world of the trillions of microbes that make their homes inside our body. From 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 30. $16.95$19.95. 619-238-1233, rhfleet.org Simple Pleasures at Basic, 410 10th Ave., Downtown. Viz Cult Artist Showcase presents new abstract paintings by Daniel Silvio Carbone and Lizette Rodriguez. Opening from 7 to 11 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 2. Free. 619-531-8869, facebook.com/viz.cult Women in Light at Luxe Gallery, 1081 16th St. (5th Floor), Downtown. A celebratory exhibition of women in photography featuring work by San Diego City College Photo Department staff, faculty, alumni and colleagues. Opening from 7 to 9 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 2. Free. 619-388-3281, sandiegocityphoto.com

BOOKS Ian Rankin at Mysterious Galaxy Book Store, 5943 Balboa Ave., Ste. 100, Clairemont. The bestselling crime novelist will sign and discuss his latest John Rebus book, Even Dogs in the Wild. At 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 27. Free. 858-2684747, mystgalaxy.com Laura Lynne Jackson at Warwick’s Bookstore, 7812 Girard Ave., La Jolla. The high school English teacher and psychic medium will present her first book, The Light Between Us. At 7 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 27. Free. 858-4540347, warwicks.com HDawn MacKeen at Warwick’s Bookstore, 7812 Girard Ave., La Jolla. The investigative journalist will talk about her new book, The Hundred Year Walk, the story of her grandfather who is an Armenian genocide survivor. At 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 28. Free. 858-454-0347, warwicks.com HCharlie Jane Anders at Mysterious Galaxy Book Store, 5943 Balboa Ave., Ste. 100, Clairemont. The writer and managing editor of io9.com will discuss and sign her debut novel, All the Birds in the Sky, about two childhood friends who are separated young but later reunited under apocalyptic circumstances. At 7:30 p.m. Friday, Jan. 29. Free. 858-268-4747, mystgalaxy.com A.R. Baumann and Corey Lynn Fayman at Mysterious Galaxy Book Store, 5943 Balboa Ave., Ste. 100, Clairemont.

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THEATER KEN JACQUES

in today’s beach reads era. As a play, it demands of its audience patience and intestinal fortitude. When the Rain Stops Falling runs through Feb. 14 at Old Town Theatre. $34 and up. cygnettheatre.com —David L. Coddon Theater reviews run weekly. Write to davidc@sdcitybeat.com.

OPENING: Sugar: Based on the screenplay of Some Like it Hot, this musical is about two unemployed musicians who disguise themselves as women in order to hide from the Chicago mob. Adapted by Peter Stone, it opens Jan. 28 at the Coronado Playhouse. coronadoplayhouse.com The Metromaniacs: This new David Ives comedy centers on an 18th century Parisian poet who falls in love with a famous poetess, not realizing that she is actually a he. Naturally, hilarity ensues. Presented in association with Shakespeare Theatre Company, it opens Jan. 30 at the Old Globe Theatre in Balboa Park. theoldglobe.org

Rosina Reynolds and Tom Stephenson in When the Rain Stops Falling

Rain and pain in Old Town

ecipe for depression—not curing it…causing it: Australian Andrew Bovell’s oppressively ponderous When the Rain Stops Falling, a downer set partly Down Under that traffics in family dysfunction, death, child molestation and apocalyptic biblical metaphors. Over the course of an hour and forty minutes it seems as if the rain never stops falling and the pain never stops coming. Cygnet Theatre is staging the San Diego premiere of Bovell’s 2010 play, directed in Old Town by Rob Lutfy and featuring a seven-person ensemble (all but one playing either dual roles or younger/ older versions of their characters) that has to be as wrung out as the audience The two noir crime authors will be promoting their latest books, Under a Cloud of Rain (Baumann) and Desert Diva (Fayman). At 2 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 30. Free. 858-268-4747, mystgalaxy.com Doug Robinson at D.G. Wills Books, 7461 Girard Ave., La Jolla. The accomplished mountaineer and writer will read from and discuss his book, The Alchemy of Action, which examines the brain chemistry and psyches of adventure athletes. At 7 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 30. Free. 858-456-1800, dgwillsbooks.com HKali Wallace at Mysterious Galaxy Book Store, 5943 Balboa Ave., Ste. 100, Clairemont. The onetime local author holds a launch party for her new young adult debut horror novel, Shallow Graves. At 4 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 30. Free. 858268-4747, mystgalaxy.com Gigi Pandian and Robin Dunn at Mysterious Galaxy Book Store, 5943 Balboa Ave., Ste. 100, Clairemont. The two fantasy authors will sign and discuss their new novels, The Masquerading Magician (Pandian) and Conquistador of the Night Lands (Dunn). At 2 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 31. Free. 858-268-4747, mystgalaxy.com Saul Levine, M.D. at Warwick’s Bookstore, 7812 Girard Ave., La Jolla. As part of Warwick’s ongoing Weekend with Locals Program, Dr. Levine will sign and dis-

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is by the time the house goes dark. None of Bovell’s characters in this non-linear, time-traveling play escapes unscathed. On the surface, When the Rain Stops Falling tracks the foredoomed fates of two families, alternating not only time periods but also settings in London and Australia’s Coorang National Park. If there is an anchor among the swiftly shifting parent-child or husband-wife stories, it’s the relationship between young Gabriel Law (Josh Odsess-Rubin) and Gabrielle York (Rachael Vanwormer), who meet at an Aussie roadhouse, fall in love and soon suspect a horrifying connection between their families. Given the tenor of this play, it’s not a spoiler to say things don’t end well for Gabriel and Gabrielle.

cuss his book, Our Emotional Footprint: Ordinary People and Their Extraordinary Lives. At noon. Sunday, Jan. 31. Free. 858-454-0347, warwicks.com Neal Griffin at Warwick’s Bookstore, 7812 Girard Ave., La Jolla. The bestselling author will discuss and sign his latest thriller, A Voice from the Field, about a small town woman searching for a missing teen. At 7:30 p.m. Monday, Feb. 1. Free. 858-454-0347, warwicks.com Arielle Ford at Warwick’s Bookstore, 7812 Girard Ave., La Jolla. The relationship coach will discuss and sign her new book, Turn Your Mate Into Your Soulmate. At 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 2. Free. 858454-0347, warwicks.com Shilpi Somaya Gowda at Warwick’s Bookstore, 7812 Girard Ave., La Jolla. The New York Times bestselling author will discuss and sign her new novel, The Golden Son, which centers on four Indian characters who must balance the expectations of their culture and their families. At 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 3. Free. 858-454-0347, warwicks.com

COMEDY Shatner’s World: We Just Live in It at Balboa Theatre, 868 Fourth Ave., Downtown. Through anecdotes, songs, jokes

Bovell’s grim narrative swells with recriminations, leaving its principals reaching for the faintest hopes of reconciliation. (The most tender depiction of this is one scene between Rosina Reynolds, as the older Gabrielle, and Tom Stephenson, playing her thoroughly decent spouse, Joe.) In the backdrop, throughout the movement back and forth in time, is the uneasy prospect of The World—not just the families’ but everyone’s—coming to an end. Not only Bangladesh but parts of Europe and even America are flood-ridden. The rains are unceasing. The fish are disappearing. When the Rain Stops Falling possesses the substance and structure of a complex novel of the sort that is rarely considered

and even some poignant moments, William Shatner recounts his path from classically trained Shakespearean actor to cultural icon. At 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 28. $40-$100. 619-570-1100, sandiegotheatres.org Bridget Everett at House of Blues, 1055 Fifth Ave., Downtown. The comedian and actress is probably best known for her appearances on Inside Amy Schumer and her band, The Tender Moments with Adam “Ad-Rock” Horovitz from the Beastie Boys. At 7 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 31. $20-$25. 619-299-BLUE, houseofblues. com/sandiego

DANCE HMalashock SIGNATURES at Malashock Dance Studio, 2650 Truxton Rd. Suite 202, Point Loma. This performance highlights two of John Malashock’s “signature” works and also includes two world premieres. Audiences should be prepared to be seated only a few feet away from the dancers. At 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 28 through Sunday, Jan. 31. $15$25. malashockdance.org If. Dance Theater at Project Space @ Horton Plaza, 324 Horton Plaza, Downtown. The emerging avant garde dance trio presents an evening of experimental

An Enemy of the Pueblo: In this modern retelling of Henrik Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People, a Mexican midwife struggles to revive a small border town known for having a healing hot springs. Presented by Amigos del Rep, it opens for one performance on Feb. 2 at the Lyceum Space in the Gaslamp. sdrep.org Guards at the Taj: A new black comedy about two Taj Mahal guards whose faith is tested after a ghoulish encounter. Written by Rajiv Joseph, it opens Feb. 2 at the La Jolla Playhouse. lajollaplayhouse.org The Realish Housewives of San Diego: A parody of the self-absorbed ladies of the Bravo network series of shows, but with a local spin. Developed by a creative team out of The Second City improv troupe, it opens for eight performances Feb. 2 at the Balboa Theatre in the Gaslamp. broadwaysd.com

For full theater

listings, please visit

dance and live music. From 7 to 9 p.m. Friday, Jan. 29. Free. facebook.com/ if.dancetheatre HKota Yamazaki / Fluid Hug-Hug Dance Company at Mandeville Auditorium, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla. Choreographer Kota Yamazaki presents this performance inspired by Japanese ritual poetry readings. It features dancers from diverse cultural and dance backgrounds including Western contemporary, butoh, hip-hop and Jamaican dance. At 8 p.m. Friday, Jan. 29. $28-$46. 858-534-TIXS, artpower.ucsd.edu

“T heater ”at

sdcitybeat.com

panions for Independence, a nonprofit that pairs service dogs with people with disabilities. From 6 to 8 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 27. thewinepubsd.com HMastiff Sausage Company Third Year Anniversary at Societe Brewing Company, 8262 Clairemont Mesa Blvd., Clairemont. Mastiff Sausage Company celebrates three years with a special Pork 3-Way Sandwich, complimentary apps, small bites, desserts and $1 beers served in Mastiff Mugs. From 1 to 6 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 31. Free. 858-598-5409, mastiffsausagecompany.com

FILM

MUSIC

HSan Diego Black Film Festival at Reading Cinemas Gaslamp 15, 701 Fifth Ave., Downtown. Check out hundreds of independent films, animated features and documentaries at this annual festival. See website for full list and times. Thursday, Jan. 28 through Sunday, Jan. 31. Various times. $10-$50. sdbff.com

Brahms and Beethoven’s Pastorales at Jacobs Music Center, 750 B St, Part of the San Diego Symphony Upright & Grand Piano Festival, series conductor Jahja Ling and Horacio Gutierrez will play Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6 and Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 1. At 8 p.m. Friday, Jan. 29 and 2 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 31. $20-$96. 619-2350804, sandiegosymphony.com

FOOD & DRINK HWoofer Wednesday at The Wine Pub, 2907 Shelter Island Dr., Shelter Island. Patrons can bring their dog(s) and 10 percent of the tab will be donated to Canine Com-

Bands for Bernie at WorldBeat Center, 2100 Park Blvd., Balboa Park. The San Diego for Bernie Sanders 2016 Working

EVENTS CONTINUED ON PAGE 16

January 27, 2016· San Diego CityBeat · 15

EVENTS MICHAEL JAMES ARMSTRONG

Finest City by Nathan Gulick is on view at a solo exhibition at Ice Gallery (1955 Julian Ave.) in Barrio Logan. There will be a mid-show reception from 4 to 6 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 30.

EVENTS CONTINUED FROM PAGE 15 Group throws this fundraising concert for the Bernie Sanders campaign which includes performances from Broken Stems, Tony Tig and more. From 5 to 10 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 30. $10. 619-2301190, bandsforberniesd.com

sound features ukulele solos and multipart vocal harmonies combined with flamboyant outfits, theatrical effects, and crowd participation. At 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 2. $25-$50. 760-839-4190, artcenter.org

Mozart’s Triple Concerto at Copley Symphony Hall, 750 B St., Downtown. Pianists Jahja Ling, Jessie Chang and Conrad Tao will each be behind a piano for Mozart’s lyrical Triple Piano Concerto. Also includes selections from Johannes Brahms and George Gershwin. At 8 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 30. $20-$66. 619-2350804, sandiegosymphony.org

Art of Élan at Lux Art Institute, 1550 S. El Camino Real, Encinitas. A special concert reception that explores the worlds of fantasy and reality as expressed through art and music. Includes works by Dmitri Shostakovich, Missy Mazzoli and composer Nico Muhly. At 7 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 3. $15-$40. 760-436-6611, artofelan.org

Pacificaires and Cedar Center Choruses at College Avenue Baptist Church, 4747 College Ave., College Area. Soloists, ensembles, three pianoplaying directors and a seven-piece orchestra will play amidst the harmonies of a 100-voice community chorus. From 2 to 3:20 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 30. Free. pacificaires.org Donny Osmond: The Soundtrack of My Life Tour at Balboa Theatre, 868 Fourth Ave., Downtown. The wholesome singer celebrates 50 years as a performer with a concert featuring covers and his own solo hits. At 6 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 31. $35-$145. 619-570-1100, sdbalboa.com Lytle Scholarship Concert Presents Beethoven at Conrad Prebys Music Center, UCSD campus, La Jolla. Cecil B. Lytle presents a concert featuring the Gilbert Castellanos Latin Band to benefit the Lytle Scholarship Endowment. From 3 to 5 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 31. $10-$50. rels.ucsd.edu The Ordeal at Rancho San Diego Library, 11555 Via Rancho San Diego, El Cajon. Cathryn Beeks and her bandmates perform rock, country, folk, and more. Part of the San Diego County Library’s Acoustic Showcase series. At 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 2. Free. 619-660-5370, sdcl.org HWellington International Ukulele Orchestra at California Center for the Arts, 340 North Escondido Blvd., Escondido. The New Zealand band’s signature

16 · San Diego CityBeat · January 27, 2016

OUTDOORS Kerry’s Ride The San Diego Bike Coalition’s second annual two-day ride gives bicycle-lovers of all abilities the opportunity to pedal at a relaxed pace with friends along Southern California’s coastline. See website for start locations and itinerary. At 9 a.m. Saturday, Jan. 30 and Sunday, Jan. 31. Free. sdbikecoalition.org HLove Your Wetlands Day at Kendall Frost Marsh Reserve, corner of Pacific Beach and Crown Point Drives, Pacific Beach. The annual event features features six hours of interactive activities, guided tours, games, raffles, and bird demonstrations to illustrate the importance of wetlands in San Diego. From 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 30. Free. sandiegoaudubon.org

PERFORMANCE Presidents Tonight! at North Coast Repertory Theatre, 987 Lomas Santa Fe Drive, Solana Beach. History quizmaster and language columnist Richard Lederer will offer a treasury of insights into the feats, fates, families, foibles and firsts of our American presidents. At 7:30 p.m. Monday, Feb. 1. $17-$22. 858-481-1055, northcoastrep.org HThe Sand Dog Cometh at CSUSM, Arts Building, 333 S Twin Oaks Valley Road, San Marcos. This multi-disciplinary

solo performance is written, directed and performed by British dance and performance artist Mary Pearson and pays tribute to ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture, the ‘70s, unintelligible academic language, classic crooners and Rihanna, among other things. At 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 2. Free-$12. 760-750-8889, csusm.edu/al

POETRY & SPOKEN WORD HVAMP: Face The Music at Whistle Stop, 2236 Fern St, South Park. So Say We All’s monthly live storytelling show will feature local writers sharing tales about facing the facts, facing the truth, and facing that fine music. From 8:30 to 10 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 28. $5 suggested donation. 619-284-6784, sosayweallonline.com

SPECIAL EVENTS Star Awards at Lyceum Theatre, 79 Horton Plaza, Downtown. The San Diego Performing Arts League’s annual awards ceremony honors arts volunteers and recognizes “Emerging Stars,” volunteers under 30 years of age who help give promise to the future of the arts. At 7 p.m. Monday, Feb. 1. $30-$42. 619-544-1000, sdartstix.com

TALKS & DISCUSSIONS Probing Fragments: Contemporary Art and Architecture in South Korea at UCSD SME Presentation Lab, Voigt Drive and Matthews Lane, La Jolla. Visual Arts Professor Kyong Park and Assistant Professor Erica Cho partake in this all-day lecture conference on on contemporary art and architecture in South Korea, as well as the country’s arduous evolution from a dictatorship to liberal democracy. From 10:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 30. Free. visarts.ucsd.edu

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January 27, 2016 · San Diego CityBeat · 17

photos by stacy keck

Hoping the Parallel art party in Barrio Logan isn’t a sign of inevitable gentrification by Seth Combs

hat are we even waiting for?” a 20-something hipster asked his friends. He’d likely never seen a line this long for an art show, much less a line that curved around the block. I counted 60 or more people. Toward the back of the line, two girls I knew were being pulled inside through a window by one of the artists. Once we got up to the front of the line, security guards told us we’d have to throw away our brownbagged tallboys before entering. If this sounds auspicious for an art show, I assure you, it was. Inside the Community@ Mi Apartamento apartment complex in Barrio Logan, the Parallel event showcased more than two dozen of San Diego’s best and brightest artists in each of the complex’s 29 residential units. Local painter and OG street art maverick Mike Maxwell displayed recent works that were both vivid and a surprising departure from past portraiture pieces. Spenser Little’s room of wirework was packed with people marveling at his custom lamps that silhouetted words like “fuck” onto the wall.

who happens to be the head of a very reputable arts institution. She was clearly not having a good time. I inquired about her noticeable grimace and she remarked that the whole affair was, in her opinion, a little off-putting. She felt the event, while commendably supportive of local artists, was but a clever marketing celebration of the recently renovated apartments themselves. I initially dismissed her naysaying, but as I weaved through the huge crowd parked in the backyard and into the second group of apartments, her point seemed more salient. It became clear: Parallel wasn’t an art event. It was a carefully staged marketing party that happened to include some art. In the press releases and Facebook invite for the Parallel event, Sezio and Cohort used terminology like “artist-driven experience” and “artists take over” as if the event was some kind of unsanctioned DIY takeover of an otherwise empty building. And while I have no doubt that a lot of time and effort went into the setup and installation of the artists’ respective rooms, the pretense was palpable.

Wire work from Spenser Little There was a lot of exciting and amazing art at this event, put on by local nonprofit Sezio and the artist-run Cohort Collective. Still, I couldn’t help but feel like something was off. When I went into the increasingly ubiquitous painter and muralist Celeste Byers’ room, I noticed a print of a woman wearing an ironic tank top with a caption that read, “This place is getting really hipster.” Yeah, tell me about it. As I walked down the stairs and toward the backyard, I ran into a friend of mine

A scene from Parallel As I looked a little closer, there were messages scattered throughout the complex that said things like “Need a place to live?” with information on how to rent one of the cool new Community@ Mi Apar-

18 · San Diego CityBeat · January 27, 2016

Clockwise from top left: The Community@ Mi Apartamento building; Mike Maxwell’s room at the Parallel art event; a scene from inside Parallel’s Acamonchi room. tamento units. So as great as some of the art may have been, it was used as window dressing; the artistic equivalent of a department store mannequin. By looking at the art in the room, the hope was that aging hipsters and trust-fund Millennials might envision it being their own self-important, art-filled apartment. And it worked. A few days after the event, I contacted Christina Strangman, director of special projects and property management at the L.W.P. Group, which owns the Community@ Mi Apartamento property. When asked if anyone had inquired about the apartments after the event, she said that the response had been “tremendously positive.” Those unfamiliar with L.W.P. (Live, Work, Play) Group should know the company is not some corporate, behemoth real estate group. It has an impressive record of developing properties all over town into either thriving businesses (The Pearl Hotel, Tacos Perla) or reasonably priced apartment complexes in North Park, Bankers Hill, downtown and East Village. Given their reputation, I don’t doubt L.W.P.’s sincerity in statements like this one from its website: “We seek to participate in the traditions of and enhance the quality of life in the communities where we invest.” The opening of Community@ Mi Apartamento and the Parallel event wasn’t some

declarative sounding of the trumpets to affluent creative types to start moving into the neighborhood, but I’m barely refraining from using the dreaded g-word. It prompts the question: What happens when other developers see the success of these types of events and try to emulate the formula? Make no mistake: New residents and developers are coming. The key to Barrio Logan’s future will depend on whether these new residents do, indeed, attempt to enrich and embrace the community. That doesn’t mean just going to hip art shows at La Bodega Gallery and shopping at the actual bodega across the street from the Mi Apartamento complex. It also means fighting for the integrity of the community. Keeping corporate interests out. Going to community forums and meetings. Attending protests for causes that affect the neighborhood. Barrio Logan has a long, rich tradition of doing this. There are certain neighborhoods in San Diego that have become increasingly homogenized, tourist-friendly and, yes, (fine, I’ll say use g-word) gentrified. Will the new residents of Barrio Logan pack up and leave after they start making more money or when they can’t afford the ever-increasing rents? Or, will they stay and fight to keep the identity of one of the city’s last real, gritty, authentic neighborhoods? I hope it’s the latter.

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Culture | Art In June 2014, he did another “Greetings From…” piece in the Chinatown section of New York City and he and Beggs officially began to consider taking their show on the road. After finishing murals in Redhook, Brooklyn, and a rooftop in Manhattan, the couple purchased an RV and traveled to Coney Island, Jerpicture postcards sey City, Canton, Ohio, and beyond. “Every city has a different story,” says Ving. “Some ou’d think Victor Ving and Lisa Beggs would be sick of each other by now. For more than nine cities like Cleveland will reach out to us and somemonths, the couple has been traveling in a small times, like in Denver, we have to go out and roam RV as the “Greetings Tour” and creating city-specific around to find someone willing to let us paint a wall.” The couple was essentially just roaming around murals inspired by the “Greetings From…” postcards San Diego when they were that were all the rage in the seth combs introduced to Edwin Negamiddle of the 20th century. do who owns North Park “I think we’re both really skate shop and gallery easy going so that helps a space Gym Standard. With lot,” Beggs says. “You realize his help, they secured the you don’t need much. And if Belching Beaver alley wall you get claustrophobic you for the mural. They do most can just step outside.” of the murals for free (they Ving is putting the final have a sponsorship deal touches on the duo’s San Diwith Montana Cans spray ego mural on the side of the paints) and Beggs serves as Belching Beaver tasting room the project documentarian. in North Park (4223 30th St.). An accomplished photogThe mural includes iconic lorapher, she takes pictures cal imagery within each of the Lisa Beggs and Victor Ving of the process and finished San Diego letters. The “A” is a murals, and posts them to Coronado Bridge scene. The “D” is inspired by a picture of Sunset Cliffs. The “O” fea- the project’s website (greetingstour.com) and social media. The couple had agreed to do the tour for a tures the Giant Dipper roller coaster in Belmont Park. The San Diego mural is the 12th in a series that year, but now they’re not sure when they’ll stop. “We said we’d do it for a year, but it’s been nine Ving says started back in 2001 when he did a “Greetmonths and we’ve decided to keep going,” says Ving, ings From…” mural in his old neighborhood in Queens, New York. He remembers getting so much positive adding that they’re headed to Orlando next. “I guess feedback on the piece that, even then, he felt com- it’ll go until, well, I don’t know. It’s kind of indefinite right now. I never thought I’d be 32 and living in an pelled to try it in other cities. “It felt good, because people really liked it and RV, but I like it. You open the backdoor and you have wanted to protect it,” Ving says. “Everyone has the biggest backyard in the world.” hometown pride.” —Seth Combs

Seen LocaL

In this semi-regular department, we ask some of our favorite local artists and curators what new shows or artists are worth checking out. Whether it’s a particular piece, an entire exhibition or just a current obsession, here are some artsy options from eyes we trust. Sonya Sparks Owner and Curator, Sparks Gallery “Gallery 4204 is a little gem nestled in Kensington. It currently has a selection on view of Marie Najera’s new Dress Series (marienajera.com) I spoke with Najera about this series, and she explained that these works evoke a playful quality, unlike many of her more emotionally driven pieces that are more dense in content and concept. These works reflect a carefree time of youth, where one can be free to play and say what they feel. I love the lightness of the series, which is set alongside her husband’s work (RT Lonsdale) for the current show at the gallery.” gallery4204.com

such a strong link to memory means I can still recall the spice scents walking into the gallery. The fabric texture and spice colors seeping through it are visually intense and captivating. All the scents seem to blend together. From one color, I could pablo mason perceive turmeric. And from smell, I noticed allspice and maybe nutmeg. It’s a must-see show and I’m really glad that MCASD has installed it again. They had it up a few years ago but I missed it.” mcasd.org

Susanna Peredo Founder, Vanguard Culture “I’m excited to see what photographer Josue Castro and his team of culinary artists have in store this year. Similar to Josue’s photographic work, his events tend to fall into the edgy, sensuous and sophisticated. He has accomplished this by collaborating with and photographing some of Baja California’s greatest chefs and wine makers. One of the coolErnesto Neto, Mother body est projects on the horizon is a emotional densities, for alive temple time baby son Baja-themed food and wine tasting Dia Bassett event on March 30 at MOPA. It’s in Curator, Gallery D partnership with the Guggenheim LA, MOPA in San “I think Ernesto Neto: Mother body emotional Diego, renowned Mexican photographer Flor Gardensities, for alive temple time baby son at the duño and The Kitchen Project in Tijuana.” Downtown Museum of Contemporary Art is cool, and —Seth Combs the installation invigorates your senses. Smell being

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January 27, 2016 · San Diego CityBeat · 19

UP FRONT | PLACES

HIDDEN

BY JESSICA JOHNSON

SAN DIEGO Interactive charm out in nature

PHOTOS BY JESSICA JOHNSON

Alta Vista Gardens throughout the grounds, giving artists a magnificent showcase to display their talents. Garden art, sculptures, walkways and walls created by some of the area’s most talented artisans are here on display. Along the trail systems throughout the garden are multipurpose platforms, which act as way stations for visitors. These platforms play host to a multitude of events in the garden, such as fine art shows, culinary events and the performing arts, as well as Tai Chi and Yoga. The goal of the garden is to leave no stone unturned in its quest to “Bring Together People, Nature and Art.” The garden is open Monday through Friday from 7 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and on weekends from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

ost people know about the San Diego Botanic Garden & Hermitage Self-Realization Gardens, both which are exquisite and beautiful. If you go about 15 minutes east of these areas, however, there’s another spot that holds its own for unique beauty: Alta Vista Gardens. Alta Vista Gardens is an interactive botanical garden that combines up-to-date technology and natural splendor. This a place all ages can appreciate (admission is $2 for non-members and free with a membership). There are different zones, including the sub-tropical area, an herbal labyrinth, the Children’s Musical garden, ponds, prehistoric gardens and more. Rather than taking the conventional approach of creating another living plant museum, this garden has become a gathering place for the commu- To get more details about these and other out-of-thenity. Art installations are placed throughout the gar- way spots in San Diego, go to hiddensandiego.net. den. Recently, the garden acquired some of Ricardo Breceda’s installations; Breceda is well known for his Alta Vista Gardens contributions to Galleta Meadows out in the Anza 1270 Vale Terrace Dr. Borrego Desert. Besides the installations, another key element to 760-945-3954 the garden is the incorporation of other art pieces

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January 27, 2016 · San Diego CityBeat · 21

Culture | Film

World of Tomorrow

Playing it safe Oscars’ Live Action and Animated shorts take few chances by Glenn Heath Jr.

imilar to the selections of vanilla nominees in virtually every other category at this year’s Academy Awards, the sheared list of Best Animated and Live Action Shorts is a decidedly mixed bag. Sidestepping the silly qualifying requirements these films must complete in order to be eligible (a convoluted process worthy of its own thinkpiece), the Academy branches who nominate these categories oftentimes favor social issues and sentimentality over the daring and difficult. It’s no surprise that this consensus weeds out artistic innovation. The most glaring examples of this trend come in the Best Live Action Short category. Day One, a “ripped from the headlines” war story from director Henry Hughes, was produced at the esteemed American Film Institute in Los Angeles, a program meant to seamlessly segue students into the Hollywood ranks. Watching this overbearing and melodramatic drama, one gets the sense that Hughes and his crew wanted to appeal to the Academy’s basest liberal guilt. An Army interpreter (Layla Alizada) experiences the horrors of war during her first day on tour in Afghanistan. The American soldiers she accompanies to a bomb maker’s residence end up causing more collateral damage, and she is forced into an unimaginable situation with a pregnant Muslim woman. It’s a manipulative look at every complexity involved in a conflict where religion, ideology and professionalism are all at odds. Less insulting but equally inert is Ave Maria, a socially aware comedy of errors about a bubbling Jewish family that crashes their car into a church in Palestine, decapitating a Virgin Mary statue and upsetting the silent routine of five nuns. Not much is gleaned from this scenario about the ongoing regional conflict; just that those who are so indebted to religious practices often compromise these values when it suits them best. For a nice musical alternative, check out the 2005 nominee West Bank Story. Taking place during the Kosovo war, Shok looks at the friendship of two young Albanian boys whose innocence is destroyed thanks to the volatile and devastating military occupation. Directed by Jamie Donoughue, the film is less sensational than Day One but often reeks of the same calculating, cloying structure. Leave it to the least complicated film in the cat-

22 · San Diego CityBeat · January 27, 2016

egory, Benjamin Cleary’s melancholic romance Stutterer, to remind us that simpler is often better. Matthew Needham gives an endearing performance as a socially awkward man with a speech impediment attempting to navigate the uncertain waters of online dating. It’s fleeting and lovely. *** The films are far more interesting in the Best Animated Short category, where director Richard Williams’ Prologue efficiently sketches out a close-contact battle between Athenian and Spartan warriors. Due to its precise understanding of action, this was the one short I wished was longer. If you’ve seen The Good Dinosaur then you’ve already had the pleasure of watching Sanjay’s Super Team, the short film that preceded it, a subtly powerful fantasy about generational communication, identity, and hero worship. In We Can’t Live Without the Cosmos, Russian director Konstantin Bronzit traces the intimate relationship between two cosmonauts training for a mission into space. The enduring and magical qualities of friendship eventually undermine the suffocating effects of institutional bureaucracy. Overshadowing all comers is Don Hertzfeldt’s masterful, mind-bending World of Tomorrow, which clearly stands out as the most formidable and lasting film of the group. Using his patented stick figures and kaleidoscope of shifting shapes and spaces, Hertzfeldt’s luminous sci-fi effort follows a young girl and her future clone as they traveling across time periods, examining both the devolution of species and self. While the juvenile protagonist sees it all as a visceral adventure, the audience witnesses a forthcoming apocalypse. Memory, trauma and sorrow all collide in clever anecdotes juxtaposed with a mosaic of colorful, fluid backdrops. “I am very proud of my sadness, because it means I am more alive,” says the clone. World of Tomorrow has more life in 16 minutes than most features. See it. Both Oscar shorts programs open Friday, Jan. 29, at the Ken Cinema. Film reviews run weekly. Write to glennh@sdcitybeat.com.

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Culture | Film

All is lost

o your job.” These three words summarize the fundamental theme running through The Finest Hours, a modestly old-fashioned disaster film about a daring Coast Guard rescue off the coast of Cape Cod in 1951. Survival can only be achieved by working in tandem with others toward a greater goal. Panic gets you killed. Events unfold not in sensational fashion but as a procedural, where small moments of action are given just as much

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Much of the first hour crackles with high-wire intensity as the soft-spoken Sybert tries to calm his mutinous crew and jerry-rig a makeshift steering system for the crippled tanker. On shore, Webber’s clash with protocol and local dissonance feels less immediate and convincing. The Finest Hours, which opens on Friday, Jan. 29, dances between muscular naval film and weepy melodrama. Gillespie’s visual style shows flashes of life during an unbroken shot that finds the camera careening through the various corridors of the ship as important information travels The Finest Hours from topside to engine room. It’s weight as those resonating with reminiscent of a similarly tense, drama. Director Craig Gillespie long take in his often-superb crosscuts between the tactile ef- Fright Night remake. Eventually the film becomes forts of those operating on land and at sea, giving each side equal less interested in the machinations of survival and more conbilling. Faced with insurmountable cerned with triumphant hero odds, Bernie Webber (Chris worship. Pine, Affleck and the Pine) captains a small vessel rest of the character-actor heavy through brutal weather to save cast try to instill these characthe survivors of an oil tanker ters with nuance and doubt, but that has split in half. Meanwhile, ultimately a heavy-handed finale resident expert machinist Ray overwhelms what’s left of their Sybert (Casey Affleck) does his admirable work. best MacGyver impression try —Glenn Heath Jr. ing to keep his half of the vessel from capsizing.

Opening 45 Years: Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtnay play an elderly couple whose marriage is threatened when a past trauma comes creeping back into their lives. Fifty Shades of Black: The Wayans Brothers strike again with another unfunny, sexist, racist, poorly made spoof that’s deathly out of fashion. Jane Got a Gun: Natalie Portman stars as a vengeful woman who confronts the cold-blooded killers threatening to murder her louse of a husband. Kung Fu Panda 3 (3D): Po (Jack Black), the soft-bellied butt kicking panda, must face his greatest challenge yet when a supernatural force threatens his friends. Lazer Team: Inspired by 1980s style scifi comedies, this film tells the story of four misfits who must use an alien technology to save the world. Opens Friday, Jan. 29, at the AMC Mission Valley Cinemas. 2016 Oscar Shorts: This collection of short films is nominated for the Academy Awards in the Live Action and Animated categories. Opens Friday, Jan. 29, at the Ken Cinema. The Finest Hours: Chris Pine plays a brave coastguardsman who leads a small crew into the rough waters off of Cape Cod to rescue the sailors on a marooned oil tanker.

One Time Only Caddyshack: A destructive gopher and a vulgar golfer take a posh country club by storm in this classic sports comedy starring Chevy Chase and Bill Murray. Screens at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 27, at the Arclight Cinemas La Jolla.

Pretty Woman: Richard Gere’s cold businessman finds true love with Julia Roberts’ hooker with a heart of gold. Screens at 8 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 27, at The Pearl Hotel in Point Loma. Viva la Libertà: When an embattled Italian politician disappears, the man’s assistant convinces his twin brother to take over his duties until he can be found. Screens at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 28, at the Museum of Photographic Arts in Balboa Park. Burnt: Bradley Cooper and Siena Miller star in this drama about a self-destructive chef who makes a career comeback after nearly destroying his life with drugs and alcohol. Screens at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Jan. 29 and 30, at Cinema Under the Stars in Mission Hills. The Princess Bride: This is not your grandfather’s fairy tale. Screens at 11:55 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 30, at the Ken Cinema. Groundhog Day: Bill Murray stars as a television weatherman who lives the same day over and over again. Bill Murray stars as a television weatherman who lives the same day over and over again. Bill Murray stars as a… Screens at 8 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 3, at The Pearl Hotel in Point Loma.

For a complete

listing of movies, please see

“Film Screenings” at sdcitybeat.com under “E vents.”

January 27, 2016· San Diego CityBeat · 23

Music

tonje thilesen

Julia Holter ulia Holter readily admits she isn’t a huge fan of touring. Perhaps she’s only saying that because the L.A. singer/songwriter is currently enjoying the waning days of a six-week break between extensive runs. Or maybe it’s the fact that she hasn’t yet figured out how to get any work done on the road. Either way, it isn’t going to matter for a while. The 31-year-old artist released her fourth full-length album, Have You In My Wilderness, in September. She spent October opening shows with New Mexico indie-poppers Beirut, and the rest of last year zigzagging the globe from Germany to China, and from Korea to Australia. Holter is kicking off her first full-fledged U.S. run for Have You In My Wilderness this week with a six-date West Coast tour starting in San Diego. Then it’s off to Europe for a few more shows, and back once again for some East Coast and Midwest dates, as well as a few in Canada. Although it won’t be until mid-March before the classically trained multi-instrumentalist will be back in her own ZIP code for more than a few days, she does recognize the upside that comes with performing every night. “Things surprisingly change,” Holter says from her Los Angeles home. “Songs from the albums end up sounding a lot different when they’re played live. And that’s always something that I’ve been comfortable with. We have different instrumentation when we play and there aren’t a million layers of vocals and keyboards. You do something different with what you have and I like that.” Born from a trio of songs that once exclusively lived in her live set—“Sea Calls Me Home,” “Betsy on the Roof” and the album’s title track—Have You In My Wilderness sets itself apart as Holter’s only record that doesn’t construct an overarching theme from literary sources. Her 2011 debut, Tragedy, was inspired by the ancient Greek play Hippolytus, and 2012’s follow-up, Ekstasis, leans on references from Virginia Woolf, Frank O’Hara

24 · San Diego CityBeat · January 27, 2016

and Canadian poet Anne Carson. It was Colette’s 1944 novella Gigi that helped to color Loud City Song in 2013. Breaking from that tradition, Holter has described Wilderness as a “collection of ballads.” And while producer Cole Marsden Greif-Neill made sure the singer’s voice was far more prominent in the mix this time around, the new album still rests comfortably where pop and experimental music intersect. Does that mean Holter is done with literary references or operating under a thematic umbrella? Not necessarily. “I like to work with overall stories,” she says. “There’s something very exciting to me about having recurring characters, even if it’s an abstraction of that character that’s not always fitting. I’m sure I’ll do something like that again. But we’ll just have to wait and see.” Even if she does return to an academic text or outside source for inspiration in the future, the singer is skeptical of anyone with the idea that her music is any more fraught with ideas than other things out there. “I don’t think my music is highconcept at all,” Holter says. “And I don’t think I’m pushing the boundaries in terms of conceptual music. Some people might say it, but that just has to be semantics or something. There’s far more conceptual music that exists these days. And I’m not really strategizing my music in any way.” She’s also not about to switch things up by incorporating direct life experiences into the narratives of her songs. First and foremost, Holter sees herself as a storyteller. “Nobody really wants to know about my weird relationships,” she says. “I mean, don’t people want to listen to a song and apply it to their own lives anyway? Then it has a

universal quality and is much more engaging than a song that’s about this very specific, weird person’s life. Nobody needs to know that. It’s kind of boring.” Fans would likely enjoy debating that, but it doesn’t really matter. Even if Holter fancied the idea of completely re-designing her creative approach, she doesn’t have the time. In addition to her current tour schedule, Holter was just tapped to compose the musical score for Bleed For This, an upcoming Ben-Younger-directed and MartinScorsese-produced boxing film. She also recently joined her father—historian, author, CEO of Downtown L.A. Motor group and folk singer Darryl Holter—on his 2015 release, Radio Songs: Woody Guthrie in Los Angeles 1937-1939. Performing alongside Ani DiFranco and Sara Watkins as some of the album’s guest performers, the father-daughter duo counted the experience as a surprising first. “It wasn’t exactly a familiar experience,” says the younger Holter. “I’ve definitely listened to him play for years. But that’s very different than playing with one another. And it was the first time that we worked on something like that together. It was fun and very moving.” She’s excited to repeat the process again on his next album, but has plenty of her own work to do in the interim. After the breakneck pace of four albums in five years, as well as her first foray into the world of film scoring, Holter is content with just concentrating on her upcoming tour dates before making a commitment on the next creative project. “I’m actually trying to figure that out,” she says. “But there’s not a clear process for it. For now, I’m just trying to make sense of the ideas I already have.”

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Music

notes from the smoking patio L

ocal artists are the focus of the next School of “Since it’s all local bands, a lot of these musiRock show. On February 5 at The Irenic, stu- cians have been able to come and hang out with dents of the local music them,” studio coordinator Dan school will be performing seFaughnder says. “It’s cool to lections from bands such as have the kids be able to play The Donkeys, Barbarian, Wild with them.” Wild Wets, Weatherbox, HideEvery year, School of Rock out, Mrs. Magician, Little Hurputs on a handful of live shows, ricane and Octagrape, among many of which focus on the many others. This is the third works of one specific artist. School of Rock show in which However, the locally focused the students have covered local performances are some of the bands. In the past, they have most popular they’ve ever played songs by legacy acts done. As Faughnder notes, it such as Rocket from the Crypt often takes local musicians by and The Locust, but this one is surprise. specifically focused on bands “This one is always the best that are active in the scene attended,” he says. “Bands right now. come out and bring their “The point of the event is to friends. They’re like ‘Check make sure that students are exthis out! Kids are playing our cited about the scene,” says Tysongs!’” ler Ward, music director of San “For bands in San Diego, it Diego School of Rock. “To see can feel like we’re in a smaller how much great music is compond, but the tight-knit coming out of our little village.” munity makes our scene speNineteen students have been cial,” Ward adds. “It’s awerehearsing for 12 weeks on the some to see bands get love School of Rock live from a music school. I don’t songs for the show, and in some cases have even been visited by members of the very think they’re expecting to get support from educabands whose songs they’ve been learning to play. tion and youth in that way.”

—Jeff Terich

Localchella shows stacking uP

oachella is taking over the desert for two weekends in April, and if you missed the window to buy tickets they’re long sold out now. But on the plus side, many artists playing the festival are also touching down in our fair city. Here’s a list of some Coachella bands that are also making the side trip to San Diego in April.

ago, but a band this iconic merits encore performances.

Unknown Mortal Orchestra (Belly Up Tavern, April 21): As memory serves, Unknown Mortal Orchestra were playing The Casbah just about six months ago, so kudos to this Portland act for growing their audience considerably in that time. They do Chvrches (Observatory North Park, April 13): I in- lo-fi pop with a funk edge that’s always a good time. terviewed this Glasgow-based synth-pop band back Deerhunter (Observatory North Park, April 22): It in 2013, and I’m pleasantly surprised to see how big feels like a long time since Deerhunter last played they’ve gotten since then. Their songs are super in San Diego, so it’s refreshing to see their name recatchy, and they put on a fun show at that. turn to our local listings. Their last album Fading

Beach House (Observatory North Park, April 15): Frontier was excellent, though pretty much everyBeach House put out two albums in 2015, Depres- thing they do is. sion Cherry and Thank Your Lucky Stars. I’m a big —Jeff Terich ger fan of the dark, chilly sound of the latter, but whatever their setlist looks like, they translate well on a big stage. Ex Hex (Casbah, April 18): Ex Hex are as rock ‘n’ roll as it gets. Another band that I’ve had the pleasure of writing about in these here pages, the punk trio plays no-nonsense new wave and rock ‘n’ roll that’s light on frills but big on fun. The Damned (Belly Up Tavern, April 19): The Damned are UK punk legends, having released one of the first punk singles with 1976’s “New Rose.” So it’s impressive that they’re still trucking. They were here about three years

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Chvrches

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Music

Jeff Terich

If I were u A music insider’s weekly agenda Wednesday, January 27 PLAN A: Mustard Plug, Dan Potthast, Duping the Public @ The Casbah. It’s not often I get to say this, so soak it in: Go see some ska! Pick it up, pick it up, pick it up!

Thursday, January 28 PLAN A: Julia Holter, Circuit Des Yeux @ The Irenic. Read Scott McDonald’s cover story this week on Los Angeles singer/songwriter Julia Holter. She blends accessible pop ballads with an avant garde sensibility, and her latest release, Have You In My Wilderness, is her best yet. Soak in her ethereal, gorgeous arrangements. PLAN B: Wanda Jackson, Action Andy and the Hi-Tones, Recommended Dosage DJs @ The Casbah. Rockabilly legend and certified badass Wanda Jackson has been rocking since the early 1960s and she’s still as cool as they come. Putting my request in early for “Funnel of Love.”

#SDCityBeat

BACKUP PLAN: PWR BTTM, Gone Baby Gone @ The Hideout.

Friday, January 29 PLAN A: The New Kinetics, The Nervous Wreckords, Jesika Von Rabbit @ Soda Bar. The New Kinetics are basically a supergroup at this point, fronted by Birdy Bardot and featuring members of Soft Lions and Shady Francos. And they’re also an absolute blast, with a fun, stylish classic garage approach that a lot of new bands could learn a thing or two from. PLAN B: Symbolic, Malison, Kulteir @ The Merrow. Local metal outfit Symbolic has been pummeling for years, and if you want to destroy the week with some melodic metal annihilation, then here’s the show to do that with.

Saturday, January 30 PLAN A: Natalie Emmons, Inspired and

the Sleep, Bakkuda, PRGRM, Buddha Trixie, Alex Lievanos, Everything Undone, DJ Shane @ Soma. Soma is a pretty big place as far as local venues go, but this lineup of excellent local bands can fill that space with sound without any problem. Natalie Emmons is fresh from a recent trek to Japan, and Bakkuda—whom I profiled late in 2015—put out one of my favorite local releases of last year. PLAN B: The Bad Vibes, Le Ra, The Whiskey Circle @ The Hideout. But wait, there’s even more great local music happening on the same night! Swamp rockers The Bad Vibes are sharing the stage with neo-psych janglers Le Ra for a whole lot of excellent melodies and hazy effects. BACKUP PLAN: Hallucinator, Invocation War, Miscreancy @ Tower Bar.

Sunday, January 31 PLAN A: Corners, Wild Wild Wets, San Pedro El Cortez, DJ Holswagg @ The Casbah. Now here’s a lineup that’s stacked with awesome, guitar-driven goodness from top to bottom. Get here early for the manic garage punk of Tijuana’s San Pedro El Cortez, get a little tipsier with the psych freakouts of Wild Wild Wets, and close out the night with moody post-punk from L.A.’s Corners.

Childbirth

Monday, February 1 PLAN A: Childbirth, Lisa Prank, Ditches @ Soda Bar. Pro tip: Don’t look up “childbirth” on YouTube. Even better pro tip: Check out Childbirth, the band, whose catchy punk rock anthems blend feminism with humor in a super fun and catchy package. You’ll be singing along in no time: “Let’s be bad, and split a dessert!”

Tuesday, February 2 PLAN A: Seeker, Left Behind, Great American Ghost, Jasonxvoorhees @ Soda Bar. I’m not a huge fan of metalcore, but Dallas group Seeker has the energy and aggression that helps get you through a frustrating week. So if Tuesday’s got you down, or maybe you just want to get loud, make this part of your Tuesday plan.

January 27, 2016 · San Diego CityBeat · 29

Music

Concerts HOT! NEW! FRESH!

Metric (HOB, 2/24), Joyce Manor, Andrew Jackson Jihad (Observatory, 2/27), From Indian Lakes (HOB, 3/5), Slaves (The Irenic, 3/12), Smith Street Band (Che Café, 3/18), A Great Big World (The Irenic, 3/19), Warren Haynes (BUT, 3/22), TEEN (Whistle Stop, 3/25), Napalm Death (Casbah, 3/25), Hey Marseilles (Soda Bar, 3/26), Amon Amarth (HOB, 4/7), Third Eye Blind (Observatory, 4/8), Lord Huron (BUT, 4/13), Chvrches (Observatory, 4/13), Beach House (Observatory, 4/15), Acid Mothers Temple (Soda Bar, 4/17), James Bay (Humphreys, 4/17), Foals (Observatory, 4/17), Protoje (BUT, 4/18), The Damned (BUT, 4/19), The Arcs (Observatory, 4/20), Deerhunter (Observatory, 4/22), Puscifer (Copley Symphony Hall, 5/1), Explosions in the Sky (Observatory, 5/3-4), Jewel (Humphreys, 5/21), Brian Jonestown Massacre (BUT, 6/2), Eric Bachmann (Soda Bar, 6/5).

GET YER TICKETS STRFKR (Observatory North Park, 2/12), Thee Oh Sees (BUT, 2/12), Meat Wave (Soda Bar, 2/13), The Growlers, Jonathan Richman (Observatory, 2/16-17), At the Gates (HOB, 2/19), Dr. Dog (Observatory, 2/20), Steve Poltz (BUT, 2/20), Big Business (Casbah, 2/21), Lee Ann Womack (BUT, 2/22), Anti-Flag (Observatory, 2/25), Metric (HOB, 2/25), Rihanna (Viejas Arena, 2/26), Julien Baker (The Irenic, 2/27), Protomartyr (Soda Bar, 3/2), Waxahatchee (The Irenic, 3/3), Wavves, Best Coast (Observatory, 3/4), John Hiatt (BUT, 3/7-8), Eleanor Friedberger (Hideout, 3/11), Wolf Eyes (Casbah, 3/12), Magma (Brick by Brick, 3/15), The String Cheese Incident (Observatory, 3/15-16), Intronaut (Brick by Brick, 3/16), Junior Boys (Casbah, 3/18), Dwarves, Queers (Soda Bar, 3/20), Reverend Horton Heat (BUT, 3/23), Glassjaw (Observatory, 3/24), Black Tusk, Holy Grail (Brick by Brick, 3/25), Abbath, High on Fire, Skeletonwitch, Tribulation (Observatory, 3/26), Rob Crow’s Gloomy Place (Casbah, 3/27), Alex G (Che Café, 4/1), Absu (Brick by Brick, 4/2), White Denim (BUT, 4/2), Into It. Over It., The World Is a Beautiful Place and I Am No Longer Afraid to Die (The Irenic, 4/3), Operators (Soda Bar, 4/10), Steve Miller Band (Humphreys, 4/14), Prong (Brick by Brick, 4/22), Thao & the Get Down Stay Down (BUT, 4/28), Tortoise (BUT, 5/3), Modern English (The Hideout, 5/17), The Cure (Sleep Train Amphitheatre, 5/30), Leon Russell (BUT, 5/31), Twentyonepilots (Viejas Arena, 7/24), Weezer, Panic! At the Disco (Sleep Train Amphitheatre, 8/3), Demi Lovato, Nick Jonas (Sleep Train Amphitheatre, 8/14), Ben Harper (Humphreys, 8/23), Journey, The Doobie Brothers (Sleep Train Amphitheatre, 8/30), 5 Seconds of Summer (Sleep Train Amphitheatre, 9/9).

January Wednesday, Jan. 27 Tony Lucca at Soda Bar.

Thursday, Jan. 28 Wanda Jackson at The Casbah. Julia Holter at The Irenic. PWR BTTM at The Hideout.

30 · San Diego CityBeat · January 27, 2016

Friday, Jan. 29 Richard Cheese at House of Blues. G. Love and Special Sauce at Belly Up Tavern (sold out). The Hood Internet at The Casbah.

Saturday, Jan. 30 Pato Banton at Belly Up Tavern. The Silent Comedy at The Casbah. Mike Gordon at Observatory North Park.

February Monday, Feb. 1 Childbirth at Soda Bar.

Tuesday, Feb. 2 Steel Pulse at Belly Up Tavern. Bullet for My Valentine at House of Blues.

Thursday, Feb. 4 Enforcer, Warbringer at Brick by Brick.

Friday, Feb. 5 The English Beat at Belly Up Tavern. Jhene Aiko at Observatory North Park.

Saturday, Feb. 6 The English Beat at Belly Up Tavern. DJ Quik at Observatory North Park.

Wednesday, Feb. 10 Ottmar Liebert and Luna Negra at Belly Up Tavern. Supersuckers at The Casbah. Jess Glynne at House of Blues.

Thursday, Feb. 11 Tiger Army at Observatory North Park. The Donkeys at Soda Bar. Aaron Neville at Balboa Theatre.

Friday, Feb. 12 STRFKR at Observatory North Park. Thee Oh Sees at Belly Up Tavern.

Saturday, Feb. 13 Meat Wave at Soda Bar.

Sunday, Feb. 14 Beats Antique at Observatory North Park. Built to Spill at The Casbah.

Monday, Feb. 15 Built to Spill at The Casbah.

Tuesday, Feb. 16 The Growlers, Jonathan Richman at Observatory North Park.

Wednesday, Feb. 17 The Growlers, Jonathan Richman at Observatory North Park.

Thursday, Feb. 18 The Toasters at The Casbah. Cradle of Filth at House of Blues.

Friday, Feb. 19 At the Gates at House of Blues. Radiation City at The Casbah.

Saturday, Feb. 20 Dr. Dog at Observatory North Park. Steve Poltz at Belly Up Tavern.

Sunday, Feb. 21 Big Business at The Casbah.

Monday, Feb. 22 Lee Ann Womack at Belly Up Tavern.

Wednesday, Feb. 24 Lake Street Drive at Observatory North Park. Reagan Youth at Brick by Brick. Metric at House of Blues.

Thursday, Feb. 25 Ani DiFranco at Belly Up Tavern (sold out). Anti-Flag at Observatory North Park. Metric at House of Blues. Drive Like Jehu at The Irenic (sold out).

Friday, Feb. 26 Rihanna at Viejas Arena. The Infamous Stringduster at Belly Up Tavern. Mono/ Poly at The Hideout.

Saturday, Feb. 27 Diane Coffee at The Hideout. Julien Baker at The Irenic. Joyce Manor, Andrew Jackson Jihad at Observatory North Park.

Monday, Feb. 29 Fetty Wap at House of Blues (sold out). Vance Joy at Balboa Theatre. Coeur de Pirate at Belly Up Tavern.

March Tuesday, March 1 Joe Satriani at Balboa Theatre.

Wednesday, March 2 Protomartyr at Soda Bar. Basia Bulat at The Casbah. Mutemath at House of Blues.

Thursday, March 3 Liza Anne at The Casbah. Galactic at Belly Up Tavern. Lewis Black at Balboa Theatre. Waxahatchee at The Irenic.

Friday, March 4 Wavves, Best Coast at Observatory North Park. Keb’ Mo’ at Balboa Theatre (sold out). Hunter Valentine at The Hideout. Agent Orange at The Casbah.

Saturday, March 5 Atreyu at Observatory North Park. From Indian Lakes at House of Blues.

Sunday, March 6 311 at House of Blues.

Monday, March 7 John Hiatt at Belly Up Tavern.

Tuesday, March 8 John Hiatt at Belly Up Tavern. St. Lucia at Observatory North Park.

Thursday, March 10 Pearl Charles at The Hideout.

Friday, March 11 Bongzilla at Brick by Brick. Gary Clark Jr. at House of Blues (sold out). Eleanor Friedberger at The Hideout. Astronauts Etc. at The Merrow.

Saturday, March 12 Wolf Eyes at The Casbah. Slaves at The Irenic.

Sunday, March 13 Culture Abuse at Til-Two Club.

Tuesday, March 15 The String Cheese Incident at Observatory North Park. Magma at Brick by Brick.

rCLUBSr

710 Beach Club, 710 Garnet Ave., San Diego. Pacific Beach. Wed: Agents of Ware, Vetted. Thu: Karaoke. Fri: Dazed and Confused. Sat: Miles Ahead. Sun: Karaoke. 98 Bottles, 2400 Kettner Blvd. Ste. 110, San Diego. Little Italy. Fri: Dee Lucas. Sat: Jenn Renee Cruz. Air Conditioned Lounge, 4673 30th St., San Diego. Normal Heights. Wed: ‘Forgotten Bass’ w/ DJs Calculon, Kid Twist, Bass n Jason, 2 Much, Monky. Thu: ‘My 80s Vice’ w/ DJ Girth. Sat: ‘JUICY’ w/ DJ Mike Czech. Sun: ‘Chvrch’ w/ DJ Karma. American Comedy Co., 818 B Sixth Ave., San Diego. Downtown. Fri: Greg

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Music Proops. Sat: Greg Proops. Sun: Matt Donaher and Josh Fadem. Bang Bang, 526 Market St., San Diego. Downtown. Fri: Treasure Fingers, Landis Lapace, Treasure Fingers, Landis Lapace. Sat: Santé, Sidney Charles. Bar Pink, 3829 30th St., San Diego. North Park. Wed: ‘Midweek Boogie’ w/ DJ L. Sat: DJ Saul Q. Beaumont’s, 5662 La Jolla Blvd., La Jolla. Thu: Casual Friday. Fri: Scratch. Sat: Funk Junkies. Sun: James Ian. Belly Up Tavern, 143 S. Cedros Ave., Solana Beach. Wed: Beautiful Beast, Chris Cote, David Smith. Thu: The Motet, Sophistafunk. Fri: G. Love and Special Sauce, Ripe (sold out). Sat: Pato Banton, Ginger Roots, The Protectors. Sun: Point Break Live, Can You Keanu?. Tue: Steel Pulse (sold out). Black Cat Bar, 4246 University Ave., San Diego. City Heights. Fri: The Fictitious Dishes, Fresh Brunettes. Sat: The Bum Deals, Gone Baby Gone, Cochinas Locas. Boar Cross’n, 390 Grand Ave., Carlsbad. Thu: Monolith. Brass Rail, 3796 Fifth Ave., San Diego. Hillcrest. Wed: Karaoke. Sat: ‘Sabados en Fuego’ w/ DJs XP, KA, K-Swift. Mon: ‘Manic Monday’ w/ DJ Junior the Disco Punk. Brick by Brick, 1130 Buenos Ave., San Diego. Bay Park. Thu: Orgy, Death Valley High, Mursic. Fri: Saving Abel, Kirra, Gunner Gunner, Born to Rise. Sat: Damage Inc., Hellbent, Lords of Sabbath. Sun: The No Name Gang, Screaming for Silence, Vajra, Malison. Cafe Sevilla, 353 Fifth Ave., San Diego. Downtown. Wed: Aro Di Santi. Thu: Malamana. Fri: Joef & Co. Sat: Aire. Sun: Aire.

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Comedy Palace, 8878 Clairemont Mesa Blvd., San Diego. Clairemont. Wed: San Diego Comedy Festival. Thu: San Diego Comedy Festival. Fri: San Diego Comedy Festival. Sat: San Diego Comedy Festival. Sun: San Diego Comedy Festival. Dirk’s Nightclub, 7662 Broadway, Lemon Grove. Fri: TNT. Sat: DJ Hurricane Andrew. Dizzy’s, 4275 Mission Bay Drive, San Diego. Mission Bay. Fri: Christopher Hollyday Quartet. Sat: Quintette du Hot Club de France. F6ix, 526 F St., San Diego. Downtown. Fri: Deejay Al. Sat: DJ Vision. Sun: DJ Rico. Fluxx, 500 Fourth Ave., San Diego. Downtown. Fri: Reflex. Sat: Chachi. Gallagher’s, 5040 Newport Ave., San Diego. Ocean Beach. Thu: SM Familia. Fri: Hazmat, Hazmat. Sat: Wild Side. Henry’s Pub, 618 Fifth Ave., San Diego. Downtown. Wed: AOK Music. Fri: DJs Jimmy Boy, Antonio Aguilera. Sat: DJs E, Antonio Aguilera. Sun: Karaoke. Mon: DJ Antonio Aguilera. Tue: Big City Dawgs. House of Blues, 1055 Fifth Ave., San Diego. Downtown. Thu: Dustin Lynch. Fri: Richard Cheese and Lounge Against the Machine. Sat: Fayuca. Sun: Bridget Everett. Tue: Bullet for My Valentine, Asking Alexandria, While She Sleeps. Kava Lounge, 2812 Kettner Blvd., San Diego. Midtown. Wed: ‘Family Matters’. Thu: ‘Acid Varsity’. Fri: ‘Soul Work’. Sat: ‘Deep Aura’. Kensington Club, 4079 Adams Ave., San Diego. Kensington. Fri: Johnny Deadly Trio, Seatbelt. Mc P’s Irish Pub, 1107 Orange Ave., Cor-

onado. Thu: Northstar. Fri: In Midlife Crisis. Sat: Trunk Monkey. Sun: Ron’s Garage. Music Box, 1337 India St., San Diego. Little Italy. Thu: Mark Christopher Lawrence Presents Comedy at the Music Box: Alonzo Bodden, Erik Knowles. Fri: The Cured, DJ Steve West. Patricks Gaslamp, 428 F St., San Diego. Downtown. Wed: The Upshots. Thu: The Fuzzy Rankins Band. Fri: RedWave, Lauren Leigh. Sat: WG and the G-Men. Rich’s, 1051 University Ave., San Diego. Hillcrest. Wed: DJ John Joseph. Fri: DJs Dirty Kurty, Will Z. Sat: DJs Taj, K-Swift. Sun: DJ Cros. Riviera Supper Club, 7777 University Ave., La Mesa. Wed: ‘Boss Jazz’ w/ Jason Hanna. Fri: Swing Thing Trio. Sat: Johnny Deadly Trio. Tue: Karaoke. Shooters Lounge, Sheraton Resort Hotel, La Jolla. Thu: SoCal Jazz Society Free Concert. Side Bar, 536 Market St., San Diego. Downtown. Wed: Kyle Flesch. Thu: Shadowman. Fri: Epic Twelve. Sat: DJ Slowhand. Soda Bar, 3615 El Cajon Blvd., San Diego. City Heights. Wed: Tony Lucca, Dustan Louque. Thu: Sir Daniel, Third Eye Commando, DJ Nez. Fri: The New Kinetics, The Nervous Wreckords, Jessika Von Rabbit. Sat: Rin Tin Tiger, Bad and the Ugly, The Wild Fires. Sun: Marty O’Reilly, Kimmi Bitter. Mon: Childbirth, Lisa Prank, Ditches. Tue: Seeker, Left Behind, Great American Ghost, Jasonxvoorhees. SOMA, 3350 Sports Arena Blvd., San Diego. Midway. Fri: Calibrate Me, Ascensions, HOX, Against The Odds, Auré, So Bored. Sat: Natalie Emmons, Inspired

and the Sleep, Bakkuda, PRGRM, Buddha Trixie, Alex Lievanos, Everything Undone, DJ Shane.

Bro’ w/ DJs Heminguey, Ikah Love. Sun: ‘Uptown Top Ranking’. Mon: ‘Elevation’ w/ DJs Mike Delgado, Ryan Hand.

Spin, 2028 Hancock St., San Diego. Midtown. Sun: ‘Reggae Sunday’.

The T Lounge, 1475 University Ave., San Diego. Hillcrest. Thu: Stanza.

Sycamore Den, 3391 Adams Ave., San Diego. Normal Heights. Thu: Joshua Taylor, Ves Frank. Sun: Tim Mudd, Podunk Nowhere.

The Tin Roof, 401 G Street, San Diego. Gaslamp. Wed: Pat Hilton and the Mann. Thu: Charlie Rae Band, Coriander. Fri: Coriander, Nate Donnis, Bob Peace. Sat: Coriander, Ian Thomas Trio. Sun: ‘G Street Sessions’, Brandon Joshua, Zak Shaffer, Star Bandits. Mon: ‘Beats & Booze’. Tue: From The Cold.

The Casbah, 2501 Kettner Blvd., San Diego. Midtown. Wed: Mustard Plug, Dan Potthast, Duping the Public. Thu: Wanda Jackson, Action Andy and the HiTones, Recommended Dosage DJs. Fri: The Hood Internet, Gino Soccio, KYWO. Sat: The Silent Comedy, Creature and the Woods, Robert Jon and the Wreck, The Liquorsmiths (sold out). Sun: Corners, Wild Wild Wets, San Pedro El Cortez, DJ Holswagg. Mon: Blaise Guld and Killchord, The Montell Jordans, Svelte. Tue: The Hand of Gavrilo, Headphone, Cloudside. The Hideout, 3519 El Cajon Blvd., San Diego. City Heights. Thu: PWR BTTM, Gone Baby Gone. The Irenic, 3090 Polk Ave., San Diego. North Park. Thu: Julia Holter, Circuit des Yeux. The Loft @ UCSD, Price Center East, La Jolla. Fri: Danny Green Group. Tue: Bobby Bradford, Vinny Golia, Mark Dresser. The Merrow, 1271 University Ave., San Diego. Hillcrest. Thu: Just In Case, Alive & Well, With Age. Fri: Symbolic, Dolan Brotherhood, Malison, Kulteir. Sat: Shawshank Redeemed, Wolfwaker, Fadrait, Fractured Sky. The Office, 3936 30th St., San Diego. North Park. Wed: ‘Ceremony’. Thu: ‘No Limits’ w/ DJ Myson King. Fri: ‘Cool Party

Til-Two Club, 4746 El Cajon Blvd., San Diego. City Heights. Thu: Clean Cuts DJs. Fri: The Hathcocks, Los Homeless, Sideshow. Sat: Roger Rivas and the Brothers of Reggae, Lexicons, Mochilero Allstars. Tio Leo’s, 5302 Napa St., San Diego. Bay Park. Wed: Gino & The Lone Gunmen. Thu: Little Kings. Fri: Open the Band. Sat: Full Strength Funk Band. Tower Bar, 4757 University Ave., San Diego. City Heights. Thu: Karaoke. Sat: Hallucinator, Invocation War, Miscreancy. Ux31, 3112 University Ave., San Diego. North Park. Thu: ‘Throwback Thursday’. Fri: DJ Lee Churchill. Sat: DJ Junior the DiscoPunk. Sun: Michael Palmer and Dub Grammer, Psydecar, The I-Ways. Tue: Karaoke. Whistle Stop, 2236 Fern St, San Diego. South Park. Thu: So Say We All’s VAMP: Face The Music. Sat: ‘Booty Bassment’. Winstons, 1921 Bacon St., San Diego. Ocean Beach. Wed: King Schascha, DJ Carlos Culture. Thu: Spafford. Fri: Zion I, The Earful. Sat: Cubensis. Sun: Karaoke. Tue: Ryan Montbleau and Scott Pemberton.

January 27, 2016 · San Diego CityBeat · 31

Last Words

Brendan Emmett Quigley

Up and down Across 1. Pres. born one mile from my house in Brookline, MA 4. French seasoning 7. Begins 13. Chapter 3 14. Pants that are dropped, for short 16. Hold together 17. Arabian desert nomads 19. Japanese noodle dish 20. Some deliveries 22. Locked up 24. Cheerleader’s word 25. Quatro estaciones 26. Bad outlook 28. Author St. Johns 33. Loin letters 35. Place for experimenting 36. Admit as much 37. Skyscraper transport with exactly two cars 41. “How about that!” 42. “___ of Saul” (2016 Best Foreign Language front-runner) 43. Quaint word in some bar names 44. “Toodles!” 45. Insubstantial 46. Under the weather 47. Ice Cube’s group 49. Room to move 52. 1962 Shirley MacLaine Robert Mitchum romcom 57. “Leave. Now!” 58. Backup for emergency startups Last week’s answers

32 · San Diego CityBeat · January 27, 2016

62. Some smokes 63. Happening infrequently 64. Chinese energy 65. Appliance time saver 66. Squeeze in barely 67. Bad spelling?

Down 1. Sail 2. Globe curse 3. Tease playfully 4. Publicity ___ 5. Comic who was in the fictional band The Rutles 6. What may lie ahead, in a cliché 7. Diving gear 8. Two-time Emmy winner for “Veep” 9. Ishmael’s boss 10. Start from the beginning 11. NFL commentator Aikman 12. Ottawa NHLers, familiarly 15. Common port type 18. Abbr. meaning way passé 21. Hammerlocked limb 22. Shoe section 23. Small lump 25. Q7 and A3, e.g. 27. Like one considering gastric banding, maybe 29. “Girl U Want” new wavers 30. And others, in a footnote 31. With a regal flair 32. Shooter Adams 34. ___ Whelan (“Scandal” character”) 38. 1972 Bill Withers hit 39. Vito and Fredo’s family 40. Hosiery piece 45. Where one might get pinned 48. Pull (from) 50. First name in mascara 51. Used tissue shape 52. Cumin meas. 53. Time’s sign? 54. Look at 55. The enemy 56. “Silicon Valley” channel 59. I, to Kraftwerk 60. Pen or dam, for one 61. Puffed cereal brand

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January 27, 2016 · San Diego CityBeat · 33

34 · San Diego CityBeat · January 27, 2016

#SDCityBeat

January 27, 2016 · San Diego CityBeat · 35