San Diego CityBeat • Jan 30, 2013

Panama P.6 Noir P.17 Short P.20 Doom P.22

2 · San Diego CityBeat · January 30, 2013

Throw open the gates, Bob During his campaign for the Mayor’s office, Bob Filner promised a new age of municipal transparency and announced that former City Councilmember Donna Frye, San Diego’s queen of open government, would be among his first hires. The townspeople rejoiced.

Alas, we’re nearly two months into the Filner era, and the figurative gates of the city are bolted shut.

In fact, the city is far less open at this stage than it was at any point during Jerry Sanders’ second term as mayor, when the ample communications department was really quite responsive to requests for information from the press and aggressively engaging on social media.

So far, it’s been nearly impossible for any reporters in the city, including those whom Filner likes, to get questions—about anything, big or small—answered by his two-member communications staff. We suspect that it’s not their fault; Filner brought with him a reputation for insisting on making every little decision himself.

We suspect that press questions are fed to the mayor and end up languishing on a pile of things to do.

The one way Filner is being open is by crisscrossing the city, speaking to groups of people. It seems that the only way to get a question answered is by showing up at one of those appearances, which is easier said than done because most of the time, we don’t know where he’s going to be.

There are folks encouraging us to be patient, and aside from the occasional snide comment on Twitter, we have been patient. In fact, save for one U-T San Diego reporter who did a story on Filner’s unresponsiveness to his question about the Mayor’s office’s initial hires, the entire San Diego press corps has been remarkably patient.

But if we—the folks at CityBeat—were to be honest with ourselves, we’d acknowledge that if this were Carl DeMaio not answering questions, we’d be screaming bloody murder by this point and asking what the little baby-faced anti-government crusader had to hide. (Truth be told, for all his many faults, communication with the public is something DeMaio is very good at—he’s a marketing machine.)

We’re gathering that Filner likes to communicate to the press and the people in his own way: public appearances and the occasional press conference,

rather than answering questions as they come into the office. It’s our guess that he’s come to the conclusion that if a handful of reporters bitch and moan about not getting calls back or emails returned, well, there’s not much of a public-relations downside to that; citizens aren’t exactly going to pour into the streets, raise a ruckus and demand change. Filner can put money that Sanders put into communications into something he cares more about.

But that doesn’t mean answering questions isn’t important. Newspapers, radio, TV and the web are how people get information about how their government is spending their money and servicing their basic needs. The mayor controls everything in the city other than the City Council and the City Attorney’s office. He controls police, fire, water, roads and sewdavid rolland ers. Most of the time, the questions are basic and non-confrontational; often, we don’t even need the mayor himself to answer it. The information we provide helps people make decisions for themselves and their families. Heck, when the matters are really serious, the mayor should want to get his side on the record.

Particularly when the media—or the public—are requesting government documents, it behooves Filner to provide them without delay. Judging from his performance so far, he interprets public-records statutes Bob Filner too narrowly at best and unlawfully at worst. CityBeat had a records request rejected this past week that we believe wasn’t handled properly by the mayor. We fully support Filner’s agenda of putting citizens before lobbyists and neighborhoods before special interests. We’d hate to see him and his team get bogged down in lawsuits over the dissemination of public records, which are sure to come if things stay as they are.

This is to say nothing of the possibility of a major public-safety or public-health disaster—another fire, an earthquake, a plane crash, widespread power failure, water contamination—and the mayor’s ability to communicate quickly and effectively with the citizenry and keep us informed and safe.

We hope that Filner realizes sooner rather than later that it’s in his best interest to work cooperatively with the press.

What do you think? Write to editor@sdcitybeat.com.

This issue of CityBeat is dedicated Peter Holslin’s new mustache, which came with a free van and bag of candy.

Volume 11 • Issue 26 Editor David Rolland Associate Editor Kelly Davis senior Staff Writer Dave Maass Music Editor Peter Holslin Staff Writer Alex Zaragoza Events Editor Shea Kopp Film Editor Anders Wright Web Editor Ryan Bradford Art director Adam Vieyra

Columnists Edwin Decker John R. Lamb Contributors Ian Cheesman, Derrik Chinn, David L. Coddon, Jeff “Turbo” Corrigan, Scott McDonald, Jenny Montgomery, Kinsee Morlan, Sasha Orman, Jim Ruland, Marie Tran-McCaslin, Jeff Terich, Quan Vu Production Manager Efraim Manuel Senior account executive Jason Noble Advertising Account Executives Sean Eshelman, Paulina Porter-Tapia

Cover illustration by Adam Vieyra director of marketing Chad Boyer Circulation / Office Assistant Shea Kopp Vice President of Finance Michael Nagami Business Manager Angela Wang Human Resources Andrea Baker Accounting Tracy Lowe Alysia Chavez Vice President of Operations David Comden Publisher Kevin Hellman

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January 30, 2013 · San Diego CityBeat · 3

Keep these trends alive Surprisingly, I disagree with “Grubby Bitch” on almost all of the “Leave these eat-drink trends in 2012” [Jan. 2].

Taking it from the top, I order veggie burgers, so the more (non-meat) stuff they can pile on, the better. Next, if the service is attentive and friendly, I don’t care if the server takes my order standing on his or her head (hard to imagine, though). Next, housemade ketchup won’t have the usual amount of sugar, stabilizers, etc. of store-bought. The more homemade stuff the better—slow food!

Oh, and outfits. I love seeing female servers in button-down shirts and suspenders, and especially those cute neckties. Don’t need no cleavage bending over the table to serve everyone. Although I guess the menfolk don’t mind. And Hawaiian shirts could probably be reserved for tropical venues; do you really want a luau ambiance if you’re not at a luau kinda place?

Last, but not least, if I could afford to go to a pop-up, I’d be there in a minute—sounds fun. When I was working, I constantly fantasized about freelancing. I’ll bet chefs do, too.

Enough of that. Love your paper—a voice of reason during all those conservative years. Happy 2013!

Kathy Folk, North Park

Skate parks ain’t easy It wouldn’t be possible to include the whole story about the City Heights skate park in the short squib in your Jan. 2 issue [“Watch This Space”], but you might like to have a few more details.

The idea for skate parks was generated at the City Heights Area Planning Committee well be-

fore there was a Mid-City CAN Youth Council, before there was a Mid-City CAN, even before many of the youth members were born. It was talked about, dreamed about, wanted, but not available.

In those early days, we really were too poor to rub two nickels together. Even today, we can’t rub dollar coins together.

The rediscovery of a City Heights skate park (or two or three) as a project was precipitated by one of our neighbors several years ago, at about the time Mid-City CAN was being created. Our neighbor broached the idea at planning-committee meetings, urging us to find a way to build skate parks, reminding us of past discussions we had about skate parks.

Mid-City CAN and its youth council are to be commended for taking up the quest and bringing momentum to the endeavor.

The path is not smooth. We have to come to terms with where to put skate parks. Not every potential location is universally liked and admired. If the Park de la Cruz / Copley Family YMCA (which is one site, not two) is chosen, an amendment to the general development plan for that park will be needed.

We have to decide whether the cost, estimated from $500,000 to $750,000, should be put to skate parks or other park-recreation sites. You note we are about 100 acres short of our parkland quota. What parks we have are in bad shape, so we have to carefully weigh every proposed use for the few park-recreation dollars that come available.

There are still other stumbling blocks to cope with in pursuit of skate parks in City Heights, so it’s premature to hint that a new skate park will, or even might, appear here in 2013. It isn’t as easy as it sounds.

sh enan igans

Black History Mini-Crossword By Dave Maass ACROSS 1. Shirley _____, current Assembly member for District 79.

2. Pio ____, a San Diegan of African descent who became the last Mexican governor of California.

5. Valencia Park’s public library is named after this leader.

DOWN 1. Leon _____, San Diego’s first black City Council member and county supervisor.

3. In pre-war San Diego, The Creole Palace became known as the “____ Club of the West.”

4. Mountain town that was home to many of San Diego County’s earliest black pioneers.

4 · San Diego CityBeat · January 30, 2013

Jim Varnadore, City Heights

kelly davis

bonus

news Occupy goes to court

Judge Harry Powazek stands near his wall of photos of drug-court graduates.

The new hope for solving opiate addiction How Vivitrol is transforming the approach to drug treatment · by Kelly Davis

J

udge Harry Powazek agreed to have his picture taken for this story only if it could be shot near the wall of photos in his office of his drug-court graduates.

“Read some of what they wrote,” he says, gesturing to the mat portion of the framed pictures where graduates signed their names and included words of thanks. Powazek knows each person’s story—why they ended up in jail and what they went through during drug court’s rigorous 18-month program, which promises a clean slate in exchange for showing up for counseling programs, finding a job (or performing community service) and staying off drugs.

In a year or so, there will be faces on the wall whose stories are quite different from the others—10 people who, each month since early fall, have received an injection of Vivitrol, a drug that nullifies the effects of opiates like heroin and Oxycontin.

Initially used to treat alcohol addiction, in 2010, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved Vivitrol’s use for opiate addiction. It’s what’s referred to as an opioid antagonist, meaning that it blocks the receptors in the brain that give an opiate addict a high. One injection of Vivitrol lasts roughly 30 days.

What it does, Powazek says, is free people from the compulsion to start using again— what’s the point of shooting up if nothing’s going to happen?—and helps them focus on getting their lives together.

“It’s not like penicillin—you take it and you’re done,” Powazek says. “For most people, the cravings are diminished substantially where they’re at a stable place emotionally to take on the benefits of the counseling, the meetings and the structure this program has to offer. They don’t feel they need to run out and use.”

For now, the Vivitrol pilot is limited to Powazek’s North County Drug Court program in Vista. The drug is expensive—a single dose costs around $1,100—so participation in the program is capped at 10 people. San Diego’s is currently one of a number of Vivitrol pilot studies, says Jennifer Snyder, a spokesperson for Alkermes, the pharmaceutical company that manufactures the drug. A program in Maryland is using Vivitrol to help drug-addicted jail inmates transition back into the community. So, too, are pilots in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and New York’s Rikers Island jail, all of which are hoping to see a decline in recidivism.

Powazek says he first heard about Vivitrol at a conference. “I’ve been going to the drug-court conventions every year, and they’ve always talked about medication that would help in the transition, not as a cure, but as a supplement to the therapy,” he says. “We’ve talked about it, and most of my counselors are kind of open to it, but there’s always a reluctance to begin to use another pill or another shot, so we had to balance that, but, ultimately, we had no money.”

Vivitrol CONTINUED ON PAGE 7

In the dark of the early morning on Oct. 28, 2011, police officers and sheriff’s deputies descended on the Occupy San Diego encampment in Civic Center Plaza and used pepper spray and brute force to arrest 51 activists. The detainees—37 men and 14 women—were held on buses for hours without access to restrooms (yes, some urinated and defecated where they sat) before being hauled off to jail.

The San Diego County Sheriff’s Department later acknowledged that mistakes were made in the booking process and that it would conduct a formal review with the San Diego Police Department.

Months later, however, the sheriff refused to release the resulting report.

Now, six of the women arrested during the Occupy protests are suing the law enforcement agencies over a range of alleged civil-rights abuses. The women are represented by members of the San Diego chapter of the National Lawyers Guild—including Julia Yoo, Gerald Singleton and Marjorie Cohn— with the assistance of four dave maass Thomas Jefferson School of Law interns.

In one Superior Court case, 26-year-old peace activist Kari Helstern alleges that law-enforcement officers used excessive force to arrest her during the Oct. 28 raid at the Children’s Park, which served as Occupy’s off-site supply area, and again during the highly publicized coast-wide port blockade on Dec. 12. In a separate Superior Court case, Stephanie Jennings, a 51-year-old community volunteer and member of the Occupellas singing group, alleges she was falsely arrested on Jan. 7 during a performance and march outside the Civic Theater. While in jail, she says she was denied access to medication for her recent kidney transplant.

“Number one, they didn’t have the legal right to arrest them; number two, they used grossly excessive force in doing it,” Singleton, their attorney, says.

“Whether it was to teach them a lesson or because they don’t like their political views, I don’t know. It’s really inexcusable. To use the kind of force against these two women, it just doesn’t have a place in civilized society.”

Four women who were arrested when the plaza was raided on Oct. 28 are suing in federal district court over the experiences on the sheriff’s buses and in detention. Yoo, their attorney, expects to add more defendants to the case as it progresses.

“The clients obviously want their voices to be heard, and they definitely want policy changes with respect to the treatment of detainees to ensure that people aren’t denied their basic dignity,” Yoo says.

The police and sheriff’s departments do not comment on pending litigation as a matter of policy.

—Dave Maass

January 30, 2013 · San Diego CityBeat · 5

david rolland

john r.

spin cycle

lamb Adios, Plaza de Panama project?

“Yes, risk taking is inherently failure-prone. Otherwise, it would be called sure-thing-taking.”

—Jim McMahon

troversial park remodel project was adequate, the city “abused its discretion” by finding that “economic hardship” would result if the plan were rejected.

Could this coming Friday mark In the city’s Municipal Code, the end of the road for Irwin Ja- “economic hardship” is defined in cobs’ contentious $45-million this case as “no reasonable benefimakeover plan for Balboa Park? cial use of the property,” and it was No one yet knows for sure, this finding that a majority of the but a tentative ruling issued last San Diego City Council invoked to Friday in a Superior Court case justify altering the historic park pitting the city and the Plaza de when it approved the project in Panama Committee, which is led July. The project would return the

by Qualcomm cofounder Jacobs, plazas de California and Panama against local preservationists and to pedestrian use while redirecting their supporters would likely, if vehicular traffic over a new bypass upheld, present a major setback. bridge from the west to a massive In a seemingly anguished pre- new garden-topped, submerged, liminary ruling, Superior Court paid-parking structure behind the Judge Timothy Taylor concludes Spreckels Organ Pavilion. that while the months-long public But in his tentative ruling— deliberative process over the con- which could become final this Fri-

6 · San Diego CityBeat · January 30, 2013

day—Taylor shreds the city’s case.

Referring to the arguments the city and committee put forth that denying the project would someday affect the regional economy or lead to untenable future road conflicts between vehicles and pedestrians, Taylor wrote, “Setting aside for the moment the inherently speculative nature of such predictions, these arguments seek to add words to the Municipal Code that are not contained therein.”

Relying on such “future facts,” the judge said, is “largely beside the point.

“Parking lots are a lawful and reasonably beneficial use, even if an undesirable one,” he said. “The critical finding by the City Council is so lacking in evidentiary support as to render it unreasonable; it must therefore be set aside.”

Project proponents will have their opportunity on Friday to argue otherwise before Taylor, but the task seems uphill and the mood murky.

City Council President Todd Gloria, an exuberant Jacobs-plan supporter whose district includes Balboa Park, called the tentative ruling “a blow to the people’s dream of polishing our city’s crown jewel in time for the 2015 centennial celebration.”

ager for the Plaza de Panama project, told Spin Cycle that “we are disappointed with the opinion related to the finding of ‘reasonable beneficial use’ of the car-dominated plazas. The court recognized in its ruling that the Plaza de Panama project’s benefits far outweigh its impacts, that the environmental-impact report’s consideration of the alternatives was ‘above reproach,’ and that SOHO’s opposition is ‘short-sighted.’

“We believe that the court’s tentative ruling on the use issue is in error, and Irwin Jacobs our attorneys intend to vigorHe added: “This is a sad day ously present our case to the court for those of us who understand during oral arguments Friday.”

City Attorney Jan Goldsmith’s the need to reclaim precious parkland from cars and give it back to office offered a similarly resolute— the people for their enjoyment. albeit more diplomatic—statement: While this is no doubt a setback, “We thank Judge Taylor for the I am confident dedicated San Di- early tentative ruling. We call them egans will continue to selflessly ‘tentative’ rulings because they champion needed improvements can be changed. Judge Taylor’s adin Balboa Park just as they have vanced ruling will allow both sides to focus on the key issue. for nearly 100 years.”

“Friday’s hearing will have an Bruce Coons, executive director of Save Our Heritage Organ- impact on Balboa Park for generaisation (SOHO), the local preser- tions to come and will determine vationist group that filed suit in whether the city can free up this August challenging the council jewel for pedestrians as envidecision, offered a different per- sioned by the City Council.”

Asked if Jacobs will pull the spective. “We are thrilled with the court’s strong tentative ruling plug on the project if the ruling regarding the city’s abuse of dis- stands, Kovtun hedged. “It is too cretion in violating its Municipal early to say what action would be Code, and we look forward to the taken in the face of the final rulfinal ruling Feb. 1,” Coons said in ing. As the judge said, it would be a statement. a sad day if we were to lose this “This ruling,” Coons contin- opportunity.” ued, “will allow SOHO and other He added that, to date, the stakeholders to achieve the long- committee has spent more than held goal of eliminating parking in $8 million on design work, enviBalboa Park’s Plaza de Panama in a ronmental studies and community non-destructive and un-intrusive outreach on the project. way, while protecting the Balboa Spin Cycle reached out unsucPark National Historic Landmark cessfully to the office of Mayor District that we all cherish.”

Bob Filner for its take on the preCoons gave credit to the “tens liminary ruling. of thousands of San Diegans who Filner is likely giddy at the agreed that the historic integrity prospect that a massive project and character of Balboa Park’s pushed so feverishly by the previlandmarked structures, gardens ous administration may be headand open space must be preserved. ing to the trash heap. Last month, This important victory is yours.” the new mayor told a Hillcrest The judge seems aware that his crowd, “I hope that the court finds ruling, if made permanent, will with the historical SOHO and have significant consequences. some of those who want to save “Not lost on the court is the very Balboa Park, but I’ve got to follow real possibility that this decision whatever the court says.” will cause [the committee] to Could this mean yet another abandon its efforts to raise mon- testy visit by Filner to City Couney for a long-desired project in cil chambers in the near future Balboa Park,” he wrote, “and at a to theatrically demand a fork be minimum render very difficult a put in the Jacobs plan? As Judge centennial celebration along the Taylor said, “future facts” are hard to predict. lines hoped for by so many.”

But it’s clear that Team Jacobs won’t go down without a fight. Got a tip? Send it to Gordon Kovtun, program man- johnl@sdcitybeat.com.

Vivitrol CONTINUED from PAGE 5 He invited folks from Los Angeles County’s Department of Public Health to San Diego to discuss a pilot study they launched in 2009 involving 399 addicts. The results of the study were so promising that, in 2011, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors agreed to allocate $3.4 million to fund Vivitrol for three years.

Powazek also invited Susan Bower, San Diego County’s director of alcohol and drug services, to the meeting.

“After they were done with the presentation, lo and behold, the county said maybe we can come up with some money,” Powazek says.

Bower agreed to allocate $184,000 to the pilot—$150,000 for the medication and $34,000 for a two-year study by the San Diego Association of Governments’ Criminal Justice Research Division, says Craig Sturak, spokesperson for the county’s Health and Human Services Agency; the county’s three other drug-court locations are serving as control groups for the study. As for what’ll

The effects of a Vivitrol injection last roughly 30 days.

“We now know that substanceabuse disorders, particularly addiction, is a brain disease,” she adds. “It’s not a matter of bad behavior and bad character and all of those negative things that we attribute to people with addiction.”

Currently, San Diego County forbids medication-assisted treatment in the programs it funds, making it the only one of California’s 13 largest counties with such a policy. That makes the Vivitrol pilot unique, though it doesn’t indicate a change in the county’s position, Sturak says.

“The general consensus here is that Vivitrol is different from methadone, and this is a very “The Vivitrol is not a cure. small pilot.”

It’s just something to help them get by.”

It’s a start, says Margaret Dooley-Sammuli, senior policy advo—Harry Powazek cate for criminal justice and drug policy for the San Diego & Impehappen with the pilot project’s off. And the feedback that we’ve rial Counties ACLU. “It’s good,” she says, “because over, “I think that’s something gotten—they say that they don’t that would be looked at after the have the cravings, at least as bad. it’s actually health treatment that evaluation’s done, to see what the They are able to focus in on the they’re thinking about.”

Vivitrol, compared with other results were,” Sturak says. counseling and the behavior modaddiction medicine, is different in Choosing participants for the ification,” he says. pilot project “was incredibly dif“The Vivitrol,” he adds, “is not that it doesn’t require a daily dose ficult,” Powazek says. a cure. It’s just something to help and doesn’t have street value.

“Probably the most attractive “We’ve been having, especially them get by. The behaviors, the up in North County, a large influx cause for the addiction—whether from the criminal-justice perspecof convicted felons who are 18, 19, it’s mental health or whatever— tive is that it’s non-divertable—in 20, 21. They went straight from until you address that… you’re not Oxycontin to heroin, or they start- going to be successful.”

Vivitrol CONTINUED ON PAGE 8 ed stealing. We’re having fits with Vivitrol, of course, isn’t the first them because they’ve not hit bot- drug used to combat addiction. tom, they don’t have a great deal Methadone has been used to treat of focus and all they want to do, opiate addicts since the 1960s. And, generally speaking, is run. prior to Vivitrol was Naltrexone, a “So we thought, This is great. daily pill approved by the FDA in Let’s give them a shot and if any- 1984 for alcohol dependence and thing’s going to prove how well later approved for opiate addiction.

Vivitrol will work—.”

Medication-assisted treatment But they ran. Drug Court re- says Elinor McCance-Katz, mediquires that participants show up cal director for the state of Calito counseling sessions and, initial- fornia’s Department of Alcohol ly, come to court weekly. Many of and Drug Programs, is considered the first Vivitrol recipients never the standard in treating addiction. showed up.

“Opiate addiction is very, very “They wouldn’t stay to get the difficult to treat,” she says. “We counseling; they would just run,” have medication treatments that Powazek says. “Or they decided are FDA approved and are shown to use barbiturates. It was incred- to be effective.... ibly difficult.”

So, Powazek and his team decided to modify the requirements.

In order to be in the Vivitrol program, a person had to show up for scheduled counseling and court dates for a month.

“You have to show a commitment that you’re willing to address your addiction issue,” Powazek says, “show that you’re going to the meetings, you’re willing to work, you’re not going to take off, that type of thing.

“So, we made those changes, and we rarely have people taking

January 30, 2013 · San Diego CityBeat · 7

Vivitrol CONTINUED from PAGE 7 other words, no one’s going to take this needle and sell it on the street.

No one wants a drug that’s going to take away the effect of their drug,” says Kathy Jett, a policy consultant with the government-reform nonprofit group California Forward, who most recently headed up addiction and recovery services for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

“And the other piece is, it’s nonaddictive,” Jett says. “It’s up to the individual to go back for that second shot. And if they choose not to, there’s no medical problem, there’s no detoxification. It just simply wears out after 30 days.”

As attractive as Vivitrol may seem, there are two issues that need to be worked out, Jett says— the cost and the question of who’s best-suited for the drug. Pilots like San Diego County’s will help answer the latter question.

“This is not a sort-of one-sizefits-all drug,” Jett says. “It really is another tool in our toolbox to work with addicts. It’s extremely promising with addicts who are coming out of institutions where we stabilize them and they’re now reentering back into the community where they’ll get all the stimulus to use again.”

As for cost, states and counties are tapping into a range of sources, from federal grants to, in California, funding made available through AB 109, legislation that diverts nonviolent offenders away from prison and into county jails. Private health insurance covers Vivitrol, as does Medi-Cal. And, increased use of the drug is a way to address cost, too, Jett says.

“Until the drug is expanded in the public sector, like all new medications, it’s going to have a high price tag. This is not an easy medication to make.”

There’s also the argument that the cost of treatment is cheaper than incarceration.

“If you think about it in the long run, my people are not in jail—so there’s not the cost of jail. They’re not committing crimes,” Powazek says. “There is this theory that it’s just cheaper to give them a shot.

I’m not sure I buy into it—giving them a shot without the psychological support I don’t think is a solution, but it’s certainly cheaper than housing them. It’s cheaper than this revolving door.”

Write to kellyd@sdcitybeat.com and editor@sdcitybeat.com.

8 · San Diego CityBeat · January 30, 2013

by marie tran-McCaslin marie tran-mccaslin

eats. Windowless with low and warm lighting, Izakaya Masa is proof that pubs have some common themes across cultures. The tables are close together and everyone is huddled deep in conversation over bowls of ramen or small plates of various grilled meats. Whatever happened during the workday can be washed away with beer, sake or shochu, Japanese distilled liquor.

The menu is fairly large, ranging from small appetizers to full combination meals. There was the udon my friends craved, but I usually go for a half-serving of hakata ramen and its slowcooked, collagen-rich tonkotsu broth. It’s enough for a small Izakaya Masa’s katsu-don and grilled beef tongue meal, but there’s plenty of room for another dish, and I try something different each time.

Among the small plates, I like the beef tongue, grilled and served simply with a slice of lemon.

There’s also takoyaki (battered balls filled with octopus) and hamachi kama (grilled fish cheek).

My spousal unit prefers the katsu-don, fried pork Let your hair down in Mission Hills chop served with egg on top of rice. Sushi lovers will find a small sushi menu featuring nigiri and a Good friends of mine are ardent plane geeks. few rolls; the chicken katsu roll, which probably When Japan Airlines began service from San Dioffends many Japanese traditions, is delicious ego to Tokyo, it was not only an opportunity for with beer. It’s fried chicken rolled with rice and them to see Japan, but also a chance to fly on the seaweed and ranks alongside chicken and waffles Boeing 787 Dreamliner. Fortunately, they didn’t as a great way to eat fried chicken. have any issues with overheating batteries that The near-residential location means parking grounded the Dreamliners earlier this month, but is generally easy to find, but expect a wait. The they did develop a newfound addiction to udon small restaurant is usually packed, even on weeknoodles. Having never been to Japan, but a frenights. They take reservations, which are highly quent visitor to Izakaya Masa (928 Fort Stockrecommended if you plan on going with a group ton Drive in Mission Hills, izakayamasa.com), I larger than four. Service is brisk, and, while suggested dinner to slake the craving. you’re never rushed during your meal, don’t be “Hey, it looks a lot like the places we ate at in surprised if you’re moved along quickly once you Japan!” one friend said excitedly. ask for the check.

Well, that’s a vote of confidence for the déIf, unlike my friends, you’re unable to make cor’s authenticity. Later, they said our meal reit to Japan any time soon, there’s a taste of the minded them of their trip, except there weren’t izakaya experience in Mission Hills. No need for pictographic menus and no worry about a lana plane ticket or worrying about overheating batteries mid-air. guage barrier.

Traditionally, an izakaya is something like a Write to marietm@sdcitybeat.com pub. It’s a place to drop by after work for a drink and editor@sdcitybeat.com. (or more, depending on your job) and some good

the wandering

appetite

January 30, 2013 · San Diego CityBeat · 9

by anders wright

bottle

Rocket Being early pays off

It happens now and again. I have a movie to see and time to kill beforehand. In one recent case, I was an hour early for a press screening of Stoker, the first English-language film from Korean auteur Park Chan-wook, at Hillcrest Cinemas. It was reasonably late in the day, so I felt justified spontaneously sauntering over to The Wine Lover (3968 Fifth Ave., thewineloversd.com), the cozy little wine-bar bungalow just across the street from the theater.

I took a seat at the bar, and a minute or two later, Serge Chablé, who co-owns the business with his brother, Nick, came through the front door, fresh from helping some patrons out on the patio.

Truth be told, I hadn’t come looking for conversation, but when it’s just you and the owner, you can’t help yourself.

I sipped on a glass of 2008 Rivarey Tempranillo, which ran just five bucks as part of the all-

10 · San Diego CityBeat · January 30, 2013

day happy hour. It’s a perfectly reasonable wine, and reasonable at that price, but I still had time, and decided midway through that I wanted something more substantial.

I’ve been focused on Syrah for years, but recently I’ve delved back into Cabernets. I told Chablé that I wanted something that would knock me down, and he suggested exactly that, a 2007 Levendi. He poured a taste, and it was inky and peppery enough that I committed to a David Rolland full glass. This is a solid California cab, an achingly big wine made up in the Napa Valley, complete with a full nose and hints of berries, leather and tobacco.

Throughout all this, Chablé was pulling together a batch of sangria for the evening. He makes it from scratch (that much was clear), and when he poured me a taste, I almost wished I’d started there. I don’t drink a lot of sangria, because it tends to be sweeter than I like, but Chablé’s managed to be both dry and light, a solid concoction that I would have been comfortable drinking with a meal.

All told, it was a great way to kill an hour. I should try to be early more often.

Write to anders@sdcitybeat.com and editor@sdcitybeat.com.

no life

offline

by dave maass

Bleeding ears

I go through a pair of headphones just about every month. It’s always the the input jack that breaks, cutting off sound in one ear. It’s like being on hold on a call to the hipster dentist’s office. All tallied, I probably spend as much on replacement ear buds in a year as I did on the iPhone I plug them into.

I hand over about 10 times more of my money to headphones manufacturers, Apple and data-plan providers and the corporations that produce the technology that allows me to listen to music than I do the artists who make music worth listening to.

I feel a twinge of remorse for that, but the truth is, if I paid the price tag to own every album that rolled across my ear drums, I’d be nodding my head to the beat in bankBrightside Radio’s Chase Ohlson and John Saunders ruptcy court. I’m lucky to work at an altweekly where the promotional copies pile up like If you’re looking for something outside the Zimbabwean termite mounds on our music edireach of Spotify, you might give a listen to Gashtor’s desk. I’ve also spent a considerable amount cat’s Neutral Milk Hotel-esque Devil Kid Demos, of time searching for free and legal ways to satMarvin Hood’s schizophrenic interpretation of isfy my Galactus, devourer-of-planets, appetite Nirvana’s Nevermind and Keep Calm and Canfor new music. ter On, a sensitive pop EP from Replacer, a New Legal doesn’t mean fair, and I wish corporaZealand-based “Brony” (that’s a “My Little Pony: tions like Verizon and AT&T, which get rich off Friendship is Magic” junky). providing the bandwidth, would spend as much Soundcloud: The social audio-hosting site supporting music on the ground level as they do Soundcloud.com has also become an invaluable sponsoring parades and rubber-chicken politiresource for me. I’m fond of the app version, cal dinners. I have to take responsibility, too, and which functions in much the same way Twitter 2013 is the year I plan to ramp up my spending does: You follow people, artists and labels, and and contribute as directly as I can to the musithey’ll post their own tracks or do the equivalent cians. In my fantasy utopia, people who can afof retweeting with tracks they dig. Some of my ford to would voluntarily pay to keep music free. favorite users are Barsuk Records, Thrill Jockey In the meantime, here are a few ways my lisRecords and San Diego-based Volar Records. tening habits have developed recently, with some Mostly, I’m using Soundcloud for the podplugs for the artists I wish I could pay more: casts and DJ mixes. Mr. Scruff, based in ManBandcamper: Mike Keller, an app developer chester, England, often posts his full, funky club and metal guitarist out of Brooklyn, has released sets, sometimes as long as six hours. I’m also a a free (and ad-free) iPhone app that streams the religious subscriber to Ninja Tune’s “Solid Steel catalog of independent artists on the popular DIY Radio Show,” which is celebrating its 25th year site Bandcamp.com. Bandcamper is not perfect (obviously not all of that as a podcast) with guest (at Bandcamp management’s request, Keller remixes from a cast of electronic genre-defining moved a handy, but bandwidth-hogging, searchDJs, including Luke Vibert, Fourtet and Photek. by-tag function) or 100-percent reliable, but you Brightside Radio: The iTunes podcast liget what you don’t pay for. It isn’t available for brary hasn’t been as bountiful as I expected, Droid yet, but Keller says developers interested with many podcasts that would excite me going in porting it should get in touch. months without an update. One of my favorite During the last few months, this app has podcasts, though, happens to be based in San fundamentally changed how I listen to and disDiego: Brightside Radio, a high-energy, notcover music. I spent a whole weekend taking an very-talky, hour-long mix released every week around-the-world tour of Bandcamp, adding mulike clockwork. sicians from Ann Arbor (AbsoFacto), Budapest John Saunders and Chase Ohlson’s show be(Strad), Leeds (Ariya Astrobeat Arkestra), Sydney gan as, and still is, a program on SDSU’s radio (Tin Sparrow) and Catania, Italy (Fab Samperi), station, but has since grown an enormous interto my “favorites” list, which allows me to scroll national fan base. According to their data, they through and stream them almost like they were say they’re banking as many as 150,000 listeners. in my iTunes library. The app is especially useful They’ve also just launched a video podcast under the brand Brightside TV. for educating yourself on the San Diego scene; I recommend starting with Low Volts, Mrs. MagiWrite to davem@sdcitybeay.com cian and BRUIN (specifically the remix album and editor@sdcitybeat.com.

“Thug Wave”).

January 30, 2013 · San Diego CityBeat · 11

the

shortlist

1

COORDINATED BY ALEX ZARAGOZA

Beauty is in the eye

Traditional notions of beauty have been repeatedly challenged by feminists, scholars and writers like Toni Morrison, whose acclaimed novel The Bluest Eye tells the heartbreaking story of a poor African-American girl in the Midwest who wants nothing more than to have beautiful blue eyes just like her white schoolmates.

To tell the story of 11-year-old Pecola Breedlove’s struggle with racism and self-image in 1940s Ohio, Mo’olelo Performing Arts Company and Moxie Theatre joined forces and will stage Lydia Diamond’s adaptation of The Bluest Eye at Moxie Theater (6663 El Cajon Blvd., College Area).

Both theater companies are headed by women and are known for edgy, thought-provoking productions, so it’s no surprise that they took an interest in this play. Mo’olelo and Moxie took advantage of each other’s strengths to bring the show to life, says Jessica Bird, production manager for Mo’olelo.

“It’s definitely a story that fits both of our missions,” she says. “Moxie’s mission is to create more diverse images of women. Our mission is to tell stories of people traditionally underserved in America, which are both something Toni Morrison does in her story.”

For fans of Morrison, the stage version of The Bluest Eye will be a pretty straightforward version of the book—no experimental lighting or costuming necessary.

“We want to stay true to the story because it is so narrative,” Bird says. “I’m excited to be part

Lorene Chesley, Marshel Adams and Cashae Monya in The Bluest Eye

of this production because it’s very beautiful and heart-wrenching.”

Preview performances of The Bluest Eye begin Saturday, Feb. 2, at 8 p.m. with tickets ranging from $12 to $20. The play officially opens Friday, Feb. 8, and runs through March 3. Go to moolelo.net or moxietheatre.com for show times and ticket inforIn the book Imbibe!, author David Won- mation. And bring a box of tissues. drich argues that the cocktail is “the first uniquely American cultural product to catch the world’s imagination.” Given our nation’s proclivity to produce sophisticated drunks, it only makes sense The late Thelonious Monk was one of that this month’s Culture & Cocktails, presented by the greatest jazz musicians who ever the San Diego Museum of Art at 6 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 31, commemorates the expansive, three-muse- lived. Gilbert Castellanos, who’s easily the hardestum-spanning exhibit Behold, America! Although the working jazz musician in San Diego, knows that as exhibit presents a full spectrum of American art his- well as anyone. That’s why Castellanos will perform tory, tonight’s event is focused on Americana from a tribute concert in Monk’s honor starting at 8 p.m. the ’50s and ’60s, so don your fanciest denim or pol- Saturday, Feb. 2, at 98 ka-dot dress and throw back some spiked root beers Bottles (2400 Kettner or lemonade provided by Hot Dog on a Stick. Tickets Blvd. in Middletown).

It’s the second installare $15 for nonmembers. sdmart.org ment of Castellanos’ Trumpet Trilogy (a tribute to Dizzy Gillespie is up next in March). But wait, we hear you saying, Monk was a pianist—and Gilbert Castellanos a unique one at that—and Castellanos is a trumpeter. Well, Castellanos will have talented local pianist Joshua White on hand to help out. Can Castellanos, White and friends pull off Monk’s dissonant, offbeat brand of jazz? We bet they can. $12 online, $15 at the door. 98bottlessd.com

2 Behold, Amer(hic)a!

3

12 · San Diego CityBeat · January 30, 2013

Theloniously yours

Art HMuseum Month Get into 42 county museums for half off through the month of February. Museum Month passes can be picked up at any Macy’s location in San Diego, Temecula and Imperial Valley. sandiegomuseumcouncil.org HSouthwestern College Photography Faculty Exhibit at Art Gallery, Building 710, Southwestern College, 900 Otay Lakes Road, Chula Vista. See works by a dozen artists including Micajah Truitt, Neil Kendricks, Siobhan Arnold, Shane Anderson and John Dillemuth. On view through Feb. 26. Opening receptions at 11 a.m. and 6 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 31. facebook. com/events/328094533969945 All Over the Map: The Travelogue of Philip Petrie at Swift Gallery, 2820 Roosevelt Road, Point Loma. Browse Petrie’s surrealist oil paintings. Opening from 5 to 8 p.m. Friday, Feb. 1.

HMadeline Sherry: The Times at Pulse Gallery, 2825 Dewey Road, Suite 13, Point Loma. See new works by Sherry that explore the cultural, socio-political and psychological aspects of mass advertising propaganda of the 1940s and ‘50s.

Opening from 5 to 8 p.m. Friday, Feb. 1, pulsegallery.org Lionel Talaro at Fusionglass Co., 8872 La Mesa Blvd., La Mesa. Talaro displays his oil paintings. Opening from 5 to 8 p.m. Friday, Feb. 1. 619-461-4440, fusionglassco.com Translitteration at San Diego Art InstituteMuseum of the Living Artist, Balboa Park.

View juried artwork by Joyce Corum. On view through Feb 24. Opening from 6 to 8 p.m. Friday, Feb. 1, sandiego-art.org Textscapes at Protea Gallery, 3780 30th St., North Park. Art by Joyce Dallal. Opening 5 to 8 p.m. Friday, Feb. 1. 619-787855, proteagallery.com HRichard T. Reyes at Starbucks Hillcrest, 381 Fifth Ave., Hillcrest. Check out Reyes’ graphite-on-paper illustrations featuring his take on Goldilocks and the Three Bears. The evening doubles as a fundraiser: bring watercolor paints, oil pastels, colored cardstock, brushes and other art materials to donate to elementary schools.

At 6 p.m. Friday, Feb. 1. 619-295-9310, facebook.com/events/21831678334342 HSynesthesia: Manisfestations of Energy, Paintings by Ellen Salk and Sound by Christopher Adler at Oceanside Museum of Art, 74 Pier View Way, Oceanside. View Salk’s collaborative piece with experimental sound artist, Christopher Alder, which reflects Salk’s interest in the combined perception of sound and color. On view until May 5. Opening at 5 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 2. $10. 760-4353720, oma-online.org HIn Search of Shadows: James Hubbell Sculpture at Oceanside Museum of Art, 74 Pier View Way, Oceanside. The exhibition will showcase multi-media sculptures from the artist’s 50-year career. On view through June 2. Opening at 5 p.m.

Saturday, Feb. 2. $10. 760-435-3720, oma-online.org HOpen House at Space 4 Art, 325 15th St., East Village. View pieces by Jamilah AbdulSabur, Ingrid Hernandez and Melissa Inez Walker that explore space through active and imagined action. Opening 6 to 10 p.m.

Saturday, Feb. 2, sdspace4art.org HBlizzard Love Triangle at Zepf Alt., 1150 Seventh St., Downtown. A group show featuring pieces by a trio of up-andcoming female artists, Nihura Montiel, Georgina Trevino and Neidy Godinez.

From 6 to 11 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 2. 619244-965, facebook.com/ZepfAlt.Gallery Family Day at Lux Art Institute, 1550 S. El Camino Real, Encinitas. Enjoy free stu-

“Ancient Gift” by James Hubbell will be on view at In Search of Shadows, an exhibition of the artist’s sculptures opening from 5 to 7 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 2, at the Oceanside Museum of Art (704 Pier View Way in Oceanside). dio tours, live music, refreshments and a hands-on art project for the rugrats. From 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 2. 760436-6611, luxartinstitute.org Robert Delanty at Monarch Gallery, 125 Prospect St., La Jolla. Delanty will show works from his series, “Living Waters.” At 4 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 2. RSVP requested.

858-454-1231, monarchfineart.com

Ave., Downtown. This show of pen art includes Michelle D. Ferrera, Carrie Anne Hudson, Buffalo One and more, plus live art by Sharif Carter, True Delorenzo and David Goff and jewelry by Momotique.

From 7 p.m. to midnight, Tuesday, Feb. 5. facebook.com/events/404782226268932

Books

Book Arts Student Exhibition at Next Door Gallery, 2963 Beech St., Golden Hill.

See works of art that pay homage to books by students from San Diego City College.

Opening 6 to 9 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 2.

619-233-6679, studiomaureen.com

HLisa O’Donnell at Warwick’s Bookstore, 7812 Girard Ave., La Jolla. O’Donnell shares from her novel, The Death of Bees.

At 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 30. 858454-347, warwicks.indiebound.com

John Huenneke Retrospective at Spanish Village Art Center, 1770 Village Pl., Balboa Park. An exhibition of Huenneke’s animal sculptures. Opening 4 to 7 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 2. 619-72-806, sandiegosculptorsguild.com

Ellen Cassedy at Astor Judaica Library, 4126 Executive Drive, La Jolla. Cassedy delves into her Lithuanian Jewish past in We Are Here: Memories of the Lithuanian Holocaust. At 7 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 30. $8-$10. 858-457-330, sdcjc.org/ajl

Los Corozones at RE-Gallery, 348 South Cedros, Solana Beach. Check out work by 10 local artists, including Lester Corral, Rodrigo McCoubrey and Nick Baltins.

Each artist has created a heart and a love letter expressing how and why they made it. From 6 to 9 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 2. 619517-3141, regallery.org

Noir at the Bar at Players Sports Bar, 761 Clairemont Mesa Blvd., #213, San Diego, Kearny Mesa. Five crime writers will read from their books. At 7 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 31. 277-760, mystgalaxy.com

HJordan Cantwell at Cirello Gallery, 383 Ray St., North Park. Cantwell displays his artwork and discusses his process. Opening 7 to 9 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 2, facebook.com/events/22928579851312 HNo Hope for the Manicured at Voz Alta, 1754 National Ave., Barrio Logan.

See works by Matt Land, Nacho Chincoya (from Chiapas Mexico) and Acamonchi.

Batwings, The Lumps and Gloomsday will be playing live. From 6 to 11 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 2. 619-230-1869, facebook. com/events/35678091697297 Fresh Talent at La Jolla Art Association, 8100 Paseo del Ocaso, La Jolla. A group exhibition of emerging artists’ work. The reception will feature violinist, Maryam Parto. At 5 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 2. 858459-1196, lajollaart.org HScoli Acosta: Elementalisthmus at MCASD Downtown, 101 Kettner Blvd., Downtown. An exhibition of Acosta’s series of “Pentagonal Monochromes,” or handmade tambourines composed of canvas stretched over bars, surrounded by a ring of jingles made from flattened bottle caps.

On view through June 30. See website for museum hours and admission info. Sunday, Feb. 3. 858-454-3541, mcasd.org The Pen is Mightier at Basic, 410 Tenth

Erica Bauermeister at Warwick’s Bookstore, 7812 Girard Ave., La Jolla. The bestselling author will discuss and sign The Lost Art of Mixing. At 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 31. 858-454-347, warwicks.indiebound.com Rick Baker at Fallbrook Coffee Company, 622 South Mission Road, Fallbrook. Baker will sign copies of his book, The Tears of a Father. From 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 2. 728-6000, fallbrookcoffeeco.com HPeter Hook at M-Theory Music, 915 West Washington St., Mission Hills. The Joy Division and New Order bass player will be signing copies of his new book, Unknown Pleasures: Inside Joy Division.

From 4 to 6 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 2. facebook.com/events/515769471790305 Weekend with Locals: Cornelia Feye at Warwick’s Bookstore, 7812 Girard Ave., La Jolla. As part of their continuing series, Warwick’s hosts the author of House of the Fox. At noon Sunday, Feb. 3. 858-454347, warwicks.indiebound.com Elise Sax at Warwick’s Bookstore, 7812 Girard Ave., La Jolla. The writer will talk about her book, An Affair to Dismember. At 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 6. 858-454347, warwicks.indiebound.com Brandon Sanderson at Mysterious Galaxy Book Store, 751 Clairemont Mesa

CONTINUED ON PAGE 14 January 30, 2013 · San Diego CityBeat · 13

theater A case of split personality The first act of Clybourne Park at San Diego Repertory Theatre is engrossing drama punctuated by deeply rooted pain, eruptions we don’t see coming and transgressions disguised as niceties. Personal investment in playwright Bruce Norris’ characters, both white and black, is inescapable. We care about Russ and Bev, who lost their Korean War vet son to suicide and have lost hold of their relationship as a result. They’ve sold their house in Clybourne Park, a prosperous white neighborhood of Chicago, to a black family, and a nasty firestorm has sparked around them.

We care not only because of the eloquence of Norris’ writing but also due to sublime performances from Mark Pinter as Russ and Sandy Campbell as Bev, who together bring this complex story of family, race and loss to such a moving Act 1 crescendo.

But Clybourne Park, inspired by Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun (the fear-mongering character Karl Lindner is the connective thread), is really two plays in one, and the second act undermines much of the subtlety and sensitivity that preceded it. As the action shifts from Russ and Bev’s home in 1959 to the same house in disrepair and on the verge of a teardown in 2009, Clybourne Park becomes a

Daren Scott

Sandy Campbell and Mark Pinter (background)

acters pale by comparison. The play’s discourse on good intentions, bad intentions and the racial divide does make the transition from the play’s first act to the second, but the narrative tone does a 180. The delicate and important questions raised earlier are too often dressed in one-liners, exasperation and shock value.

The second act’s coda, a softly lit and ominous return to the events of 1959, is a reminder of what could have been. But then Clybourne Park is Norris’ play—his vision and his choices.

The Rep is true to that vision, for which director and cast deserve due credit. For this visitor to the play’s uneasy neighborhood past and future, the disappointment lingers.

Clybourne Park runs through Feb. 10 at the Lyceum Theatre at Horton Plaza, Downtown. $33-$52. sdrep.org

based on true events. Opens Jan. 31 at Diversionary Theatre in University Heights. diversionary.org

—David L. Coddon

The Trip to Bountiful: In spite of the objections of her son and daughter-in-law, an elderly woman treks from Houston to her hometown of Bountiful, Texas, and finds that things have changed. Opens Feb. 1 at New Village Arts Theatre in Carlsbad. newvillagearts.org

Write to davidc@sdcitybeat.com shout-fest all but stripped of its poignancy. and editor@sdcitybeat.com.

The cast, directed by Sam Woodhouse, which also includes Monique Gaffney, JaOpening: son Heil, Jason Maddy, Amanda Leigh Cobb Birds of a Feather: Human actors play two gay penand Matt Orduna, returns in different but guins who raise a chick in the Central Park Zoo and related roles in Act 2, but these 2009 char- an opposite-sex couple of hawks who do the same

14 · San Diego CityBeat · January 30, 2013

on a ledge of a swanky Manhattan high-rise. Yep,

The Bluest Eye: This adaptation of Toni Morrison’s 1970 novel focuses on an 11-year-old girl in 1940s Ohio who’s been led to believe that her dark skin makes her ugly. Jointly presented by Moxie Theatre and Mo’olelo Performing Arts Company, it opens Feb. 2 at Moxie Theatre in Rolando. moxietheatre. com, moolelo.net Frederick Douglass Now: Roger Guenveur Smith’s one-man show uses noted abolitionist Frederick Douglass as a vehicle to explore the AfricanAmerican historical experience. Runs Feb. 4 through 6 at the Lyceum Theatre at Horton Plaza, Downtown. sdrep.org Hamlet: The son of a king is fit to be tied in the wake of his dad’s death and his uncle’s rise to power. Presented by Intrepid Shakespeare Company, it opens Jan. 30 at San Dieguito Academy Performing Arts Center in Encinitas. intrepidshakespeare.com Plays by Young Writers: A series of scripts by playwrights younger than 19 performed over two weekends—each performance consisting of two full productions and one staged reading. Runs Feb. 1 through 9 at the Lyceum Theatre at Horton Plaza, Downtown. lyceumevents.org

For full listings, please visit “T heater ” at sdcit yb eat.com

Blvd., Clairemont. Sanderson will sign the final volume of his series, The Wheel of Time. At 7 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 6. 858268-4747, mystgalaxy.com

Comedy Jim Breuer at Sycuan Casino, 5469 Casino Way, El Cajon. Breuer will perform stand up as part of his “Something for Everyone” tour. At 8 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 31. $25-$35. 619-445-602, sycuan.com/ entertainment/jim_breuer HNew Best Thing Presents: When She and He Did That at Whistle Stop Bar, 2236 Fern St., South Park. This stand-up / sketch-comedy show focuses on sordid tales of awkward love. At 8:30 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 6. facebook.com/ events/521680274531168

form hits from his two albums. At 7:30 p.m.

Monday, Feb. 4. $10-$15. 858-481-155, northcoastrep.org

story of an orphaned French girl adopted by a regiment of soldiers set during World War II. At 7 p.m. Friday, Feb. 1, and 2 p.m.

Sunday, Feb. 3. $45-$275. sdopera.com

Performance

Jacque Tahuka-Nunez: Journeys to the Past at California Center for the Arts, 340 North Escondido Blvd., Escondido.

Tahuka-Nunez will demonstrate her ancestors’ California Indian traditions through story, song, dance and basket weaving. At 9:30 and 11:30 a.m. Wednesday, Feb. 6. $3. 760-839-4190, artcenter.org

The Surreal Show at Victory Theater, 2558 Imperial St., Logan Heights. Tantra Theater explores the abstract, absurd and dreamlike aspects of sacred sexuality. At 7 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Feb. 1-2. $20-$25. 619-236-1971, facebook.com/ events/298968520209651 The Daughter of the Regiment at San Diego Civic Theatre, 1100 Third Ave., Downtown. The 2013 season of the San Diego Opera kicks off with Gaetano Donizetti’s

Poetry & Spoken Word Poetry Ruckus at Ducky Waddle’s Em-

porium, 414 N. Coast Hwy. 101, Encinitas.

Local poets will be reading their work, with special guest, Michael Fitzpatrick. If you would like to join in contact ruthlesshippies@gmail.com. At 7 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 30. 760-632-488, duckywaddles.com HVamp: Still Here at Whistle Stop, 2236 Fern St, South Park. So Say We All presents local writers talking about surviving in this tough world. Hear stories from Justin Hudnall, Rebecca Romani, David Lin and others.

From 8:30 to 11 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 31. $5. 619-284-6784, sosayweallonline.com HAgitprop Reading Series: Alt Lit Cityscapes at Agitprop Gallery, 2837 University Ave., North Park. The gallery’s writer’s series welcomes Ana Carrete and Aurelio

Meza reading their works. At 7 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 2. 619-384-7989, facebook. com/events/22971612383126 Shakespeare Reading at Upstart Crow, 835 West Harbor Drive, Seaport Village.

San Diego Shakespeare Society holds an open reading of Henry VI Part Three. Parts are assigned before each scene. From 6:45 to 8:30 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 5. 619-333141, sandiegoshakespearesociety.org

Politics & Community Michael Dukakis at La Jolla Country

CONTINUED ON PAGE 16

Dance HNonSense at Encinitas Library, 540 Cornish Dr., Encinitas. Patricia Rincon Dance Collective brings back its Myth Project dance series with an eccentric, site-specific new piece inspired by Rene Magritte’s paintings. At 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Feb. 1-2. $11-$22, rincondance.org

Food & Drink Meet the Brewers at Solace & the Moonlight Lounge, 25 East E St., Encinitas. Six local brewers come together to benefit StandUp for Kids. Taste beers from Ballast Point, Green Flash, Rough Draft, Butcher’s Brewing, Societe Brewing and Anderson Valley Brewing paired with an appetizer by chef Matt Gordon. From 6 to 8 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 5. $30. RSVP: events@eatatsolace.com. 760-753-2433, eatatsolace.com

Music San Diego Symphony: The Magic of Scheherazade at Copley Symphony Hall, 750 B St., Downtown. Mei-Ann Chen conducts Rimsky-Korsakov’s classic piece. At 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 31. $20. 619235-084, sandiegosymphony.org HLocal Flavor: Sounds Like San Diego at Museum of Making Music, 5790 Armada Drive, Carlsbad. Jack Tempchin, Joey Harris, Marie Haddad, Josh Damigo, Neon Cough, Scott Mathiasen and others perform songs written by San Diego hitmakers. At 6 p.m. Friday, Feb. 1. $20, includes food and beverages. 760-4385996, museumofmakingmusic.org HSome of My Friends Are Guitar Players at Westgate Hotel, 155 Second Ave., Downtown. Guitarist Peter Sprague joins trumpeter Gilbert Castellanos. From 8 to 11 p.m. Friday, Feb. 1. 619-238-1818, westgatehotel.com Jennifer Koh at Athenaeum Music & Arts Library, 1008 Wall St., La Jolla. The violinist will perform works from her series, Bach and Beyond Part II. At 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 2. $40-$45. 858-454-5872, ljathenaeum.org/chamberconcerts.html Endre Hegedes at Scripps Miramar Ranch Library, 131 Scripps Lake Drive, Scripps Ranch. The pianist will perform works by Bach, Schubert, Schumann, Chopin and Mussorgsky. At 7 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 2. $15. srfol.org Winter Classical Concert at Schulman Auditorium, 1775 Dove Lane, Carlsbad.

Hear two ensembles cover renaissance through romantic compositions. At 2 p.m.

Sunday, Feb. 3. 760-62-212, carlsbadca. gov/about/calendar Robert Grossman at North Coast Repertory Theatre, 987 Lomas Santa Fe Drive, Solana Beach. The ’50s folksinger will per-

January 30, 2013 · San Diego CityBeat · 15

Day School, 9490 Genesee Ave., La Jolla.

The former governor will speak about the “Second Obama Administration.” At 10 a.m. Saturday, Feb. 2. $10-20, cityclubofsandiego.com

Special Events HCulture & Cocktails: Behold, America! at San Diego Museum of Art, Balboa Park. Celebrate ‘50s Americana and the exhibition, Behold, America!, at this soiree.

Don a greaser look or poodle skirt and enjoy blowouts and straight razor shaves at a mobile spa, spiked root beer floats, hot dogs and other old fashioned American goodies. From 6 to 10 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 31. $15. 619-232-7931, sdmart.org Friday Night Liberty at Liberty Station, Roosevelt & Cushing, Point Loma. The monthly open studio and gallery event returns with dance performances from San Diego Ballet, San Diego Dance Theater and Malashock Dance, art exhibitions at Pulse Gallery, San Diego Watercolor Society and Visions Art Museum and live music at the Recreational Music Center. From 5 to 9 p.m. Friday, Feb. 1. 619-573-9300, ntclibertystation.com Attic Sale at San Diego History Center, Balboa Park. Buy furniture, frames, giant photos, books, posters, display items and more from the San Diego History Center, Museum of Photographic Arts and San Diego Model Railroad Museum. From 7 to 11 a.m. Saturday, Feb. 2. 619-232-623, sandiegohistory.org HCommon Good Market at 1622 National Ave., Barrio Logan. Check out frames from hip New York-based eyewear maker Warby Parker and goods from local vendors as part of Warby Parker’s nationwide tour.

From 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 2. facebook.com/events/326166887501530

Talks & Discussions The Making of the Modern World Lecture Series at Conrad Prebys Music Center, UCSD campus, La Jolla. Music professor Aleck Karis discusses “Craft and Tools in Late Beethoven.” At 7 p.m.

Wednesday, Jan. 30, roosevelt.ucsd. edu/publicevents Artist Talk: Pae White at San Diego Museum of Art, Balboa Park. The Los Angeles-based artist, whose work appears in Behold, America!, discusses her art. From 7 to 8:30 p.m. Wednesday, January 30. $7-$15. 619-232-7931, sdmart.org Impressionism Plus Two at Athenaeum Music & Arts Library, 1008 Wall St., La Jolla.

Art history lecturer Linda Blair will discuss the historic context, personalities, theories and techniques of Impressionism. At 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 5. $12-$17. 858-4545872, ljathenaeum.org/lectures Silent Spring + 50: Lessons from San Diego’s Bees and Bays at Reuben H. Fleet Science Center, Balboa Park. At the third installment of this discussion series that marks the 50th anniversary of Rachel Carson’s book, Jill Witkowski will discuss “Preventing San Diego’s Silent Spring: What can be done about local water pollution?” and James Nieh will talk about “Insidious effects of a parasite and common pesticides on honey bees.” At 5:30 p.m.

Wednesday, Feb. 6. 619-238-1233, ethicscenter.net/Silent-Spring-February2013

For more listings, visit “E ve nt s” a t sd c it yb e a t.c o m

16 · San Diego CityBeat · January 30, 2013

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redemptive, the antecedent that it brings to mind for most readers is Crime and Punishment. Writer Geoffrey O’Brien once called Thompson a “dime-store Dostoyevsky,” and the description fits.

Thompson’s stories are depraved but also tragic, surreal and experimental in perspective and form. It’s hard not to recognize the literary merit in his effort to expose the horrible heart of a broken mind.

The Killer Inside Me was Thompson’s fourth novel, and his second published true noir. His first was written in San Diego, where he lived during the 1940s, at the beginning of his emergence as a crime author.

What follows here is a guide to Jim Thompson’s San Diego, should you be brave enough to take a detour from your reality to trace the footsteps of a man with a very troubled mind from which rose some savagely brilliant art.

I

Crime fiction, despair and the bottle A tour through noir writer Jim Thompson’s San Diego · by D.A. Kolodenko

S

an Diego likes to claim the great 20th-century hardboiled detective writer Raymond Chandler as much as Los Angeles does. Although Chandler wrote about the City of Angels more definitively, it’s well known that he wrote The Long Goodbye, Little Sister and Playback in La Jolla, where he lived in the late ’40s and ’50s. Playback, his last novel, was even set there.

Tours of Chandler’s San Diego are well-documented online in blogs: people visit his extant but renovated house in La Jolla; the soon-to-be-demolished Whaling Bar in the La Valencia Hotel, where several scenes in Playback take place; and his gravesite at Mount Hope Cemetery.

But Chandler isn’t the only legendary crime writer to have lived and written in San Diego. The other is Jim Thompson.

Maybe you’ve never heard of him.

But you might’ve seen Michael Winterbottom’s 2010 adaptation of Jim Thompson’s 1952 novel The Killer Inside Me, one of the most contentious films in recent years, starring Casey Affleck, Kate Hudson and Jessica Alba. The controversy revolved around the film’s graphic depiction of violence against women by psychotic Texas Deputy Sheriff Lou Ford.

Winterbottom’s defense of his depiction of extreme brutality was in part that he was being faithful to Thompson’s book, whose first-person narration took readers boldly, horribly, directly inside the messed-up mind of a

mentally ill killer. Whether or not one accepts Winterbottom’s defense (most don’t), few questioned its accuracy— probably because most of the critics who hated the movie hadn’t read the book.

Thompson’s books sold OK in his day, but not well, and not for long. They supplemented a living that he largely squandered in a loop of alcoholism and recovery—when he lived in San Diego during the 1940s, he was in and out of rehab 27 times. His novels were published as pulp fiction— those luridly packaged pocketbooks printed on cheap pulp paper that were the mid-20th-century version of today’s grocery-store books—and, to this day, such genre fiction is often ghettoized as second-class literature.

Yet even as their literary reputations have been shaped by the perceived limitations of the crime genre, the best classic-noir writers, like Chandler and Thompson, whose work has endured and defined the motifs of the genre, also elevated it, making it both visceral and meaningful.

In The Killer Inside Me, Deputy Ford attempts to seduce us into seeing things his way, as Thompson filters the novel’s world through Ford’s banal, folksy, yet sadistic, perspective. Thompson’s remarkable fabrication of this wildly untrustworthy voice is what gives the novel its power as a work of art, and what makes the cold objectivity of the camera in the film feel like a failure.

Although The Killer Inside Me is fatalistic rather than

n his definitive 1995 National Book Critics Circle awardwinning biography of Thompson, Savage Art, Robert Polito recounts the journey that led Thompson to San Diego: He came to California in 1940 with his wife, kids, mother and cousin from his home state of Oklahoma to deliver his friend Woody Guthrie’s Plymouth sedan to a Communist Party lawyer in San Francisco.

Thompson had been a writer most of his life, publishing journalism and short fiction in periodicals since he was a teenager. A disillusioned communist who’d directed the Oklahoma Federal Writer’s Project and written an unpublished working-class oral history, Thompson arrived in San Diego a 34-year-old raging alcoholic who considered himself a complete failure. He’d grown up in the shadow of his charismatic but financially unstable father, a smalltown Oklahoma sheriff who was disgraced out of his job and was always on the run, sometimes from his own family.

Resentment toward his father became a central theme to work through in his fiction.

At the urging of his wife, Alberta, Thompson tried to get work writing in Hollywood but had no luck. There he met the great screenwriter Samuel Fuller in a bar in Hollywood.

Polito doesn’t identify it, but my guess is it was Musso & Frank Grill on Hollywood Boulevard, Thompson’s favorite Hollywood hangout, popular among hardboiled writers like Chandler and Sam Fuller. The bar remains entirely unchanged and would make an excellent out-of-San Diego destination on your Thompson tour. Fuller invited him to National City for a Christmas party at the home of celebrated writer Nathaniel West, who would die tragically less than two weeks later with his wife in a car crash near El Centro.

Thompson’s cousin Neddie and her husband lived in a small house in Bankers Hill, and took in Jim’s family.

Thompson took a job scraping paint off of an airplane factory floor. That job led to progressively better jobs via the burgeoning San Diego defense industry build-up for World War II, though he complained that the cost of living was too high in San Diego. He became a timekeeper for Solar Aircraft, and Alberta worked there, too.

First stop on your tour: the Solar Aircraft Co. (now Solar Turbines) factory building at the corner of Laurel Street and Pacific Highway, where a walk around the premises affords glimpses of the WWII-era offices, chapel, Quonset

CONTINUED ON PAGE 18

January 30, 2013 · San Diego CityBeat · 17

D.A. Kolodenko

Thompson’s Bankers Hill duplex

18 · San Diego CityBeat · January 30, 2013

down on the toilet seat as he straddled the rim of the tub.”

Read Nothing More Than Murder, his breakthrough first crime novel, a dark homage to James M. Cain, written in that bathroom in Bankers Hill.

Polito summarizes some of the places Thompson liked in San Diego where you can still see stuff that he saw: “He appreciated… strolls in Balboa Park, weekend outings to the Del Mar race track with Alberta… and Sunday morning breakfasts at Mission Beach.” An insomniac, Thompson would wander the city looking for a drink, and perhaps working out a plot or character: “He enjoyed the nightlife south of Broadway, or he rambled the Spanish Old Town.” Imagine a 6-foot-5, lanky man, sleepless, intoxicated, wandering the streets of downtown San Diego at night. That was Thompson. Passersby didn’t know what lurked in his brain.

By the following year, the Thompsons had found a cheaper home in Linda Vista, a dull little box of a house at 2601 Nye St. This is where they would live for the rest of the decade. Nothing More Than Murder was a wellreviewed success, but he couldn’t find a publisher for his follow-up, Recoil, which would eventually find a publisher in New York a few years later.

For a while, he worked as a reporter for the liberal newspaper The San Diego Journal and briefly as a rewrite man for The Los Angeles Mirror, but his drinking got him fired from both.

Convinced that San Diego was jinxed, Thompson began spending half of his time writing in New York. By the early 1950s, he’d moved his family back east. Over the next few years, he churned out a dozen crime novels, including The Killer Inside Me, The Alcoholics (set inside a rehab institution based on his time in them in San Diego), Savage Night, A Hell of a Woman, A Swell-Looking Babe, After Dark My Sweet and many more—an unprecedented

D.A. Kolodenko

huts and hangars. This was originally a tuna processing plant, and then the site of Ryan Aeronautics, where Charles Lindbergh’s Spirit of St. Louis was built.

Now walk up the Laurel Street hill and head south on Second Avenue. Polito quotes Thompson quipping about that walk: “You can tie your shoelaces on [those hills] without stooping.”

Arrive at a little Spanish duplex at 2130 Second Ave. This was the first house that the Thompsons rented after moving out of his cousin’s house. Polito writes that although the Bankers Hill duplex was “a pressure-cooker” for Thompson’s family, “from his front steps he could smoke cigarettes and watch tramp steamers glide out of the harbor.”

To get writing done in the cramped quarters, Thompson “was forced into the bathroom, his typewriter plopped

The writer’s home in Linda Vista period of productivity that would fizzle, stall, recover and then come to an end in the ’70s due to his ongoing struggles with alcoholism and related health problems. When he was dying, he correctly predicted and told his family that he would finally receive recognition a decade after he was gone.

Thompson’s daughter Patricia characterized her time in San Diego, constantly feeling the need to protect her mother from Thompson’s alcohol-fueled verbal and emotional abuse in an interview with Polito: “That wasn’t a particularly glorious time for me. I don’t care if I ever go back to San Diego—I wouldn’t care if I never heard the name of San Diego again.”

At least we can be glad that, in spite of Thompson’s failings in San Diego, his time here also gave us Nothing More Than Murder, his first great thriller, the one that began his legacy as a master at making art from failure.

Write to editor@sdcitybeat.com.

david rolland

off portion of the floor, “were all kind of in their proper places. …

I really appreciated the way that it was set up, and I thought it was pretty beautiful.”

At the reception, there will be no signs guiding attendees along their way. Parts of the structure that aren’t in use will be blocked off; folks will find their way and view the art however they wish.

“I don’t like telling people how to view shit,” Armstrong says. “You just wander around. You’ll find it.”

—David Rolland

Unmanicured hands on deck Lovers of the oddities found at Pat’s Corner, the kooky thrift store stacked floor to ceiling with random treasures, were hit Lee Lavy works on his installation. recently by the news that the corner at 30th and Upas streets would be torn down to make room for a Jonathan Segal-designed apartment complex. Along with Pat’s, the bulldozers will be taking the former Ice Gallery and the studio behind it belonging to artist Gerardo “Acamonchi” Yepiz.

“It has been a big hit and transition,” says Yepiz, Ice, Bread & Salt who co-curated shows at the Ice Gallery space with When architect James Brown brought Michael Perry Vasquez from 2002 to 2005. “It really made James Armstrong, Thomas DeMello, Joseph me question who I am and where I’m at in this point Huppert and Lee Lavy into the sprawling, cavern- in my life. But it also made realize that there are a lot ous Weber bread factory building in Barrio Logan of resources and a lot of love.” and told them to pick spots for an art show, they As a goodbye to the space, Yepiz and artist Matmust have felt like kittens in yarn heaven. The four thew Land have teamed up for No Hope for the Manartists, who comprised the former Ice Gallery in icured, opening at 6 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 2, at Voz Alta North Park, will eventually occupy a small corner of (1754 National Ave. in Barrio Logan). The exhibition, the building, but they’re spreading out for their first which exalts the virtues of DIY, punk and getting dirt show, which will open with a reception from 6 to 9 under your fingernails, will feature collaborative and p.m. Friday, Feb. 8. solo works, new and old, by Land and Yepiz, as well as “That’s the dream,” Armstrong says. “You get to a Chiapas, Mexico-based artist Nacho Chincoya. point, someday, to where people just offer you oppor“A lot of art shows are centered on the artist and tunities like that. They offer you a space and say, ‘Do what they’re bringing to the table. That can be kind whatever you want.’” of egotistical to view as somebody else,” Land says.

The building itself (1955 Julian Ave.) will be “To shed a bit of the ego, we wanted to bring more of known as Bread & Salt. Renovated by Brown’s firm, the community into one Public, the project will also include gallery and ar- art show in celebration chive space for the San Diego Museum of Art, art- of the past 11 years that ists’ live-work spaces and other uses.

Gerardo has been makHuppert, DeMello, Lavy and Armstrong were all ing art in the community. there last Saturday—Lavy and Huppert making early It’s an Irish wake, so to progress on their installations, DeMello and Arm- speak, for the fall of the strong leaving for a run to get supplies. creative art space that’s Armstrong, who’ll create tunnels using doorways, going down over at Upas windows and fabric in a small group of rooms, play- and 30th.” ing with light and color, tells CityBeat that there’s Community is a major no theme for the show, no relationships between element in No Hope for the four installations. The artists toured the build- the Manicured. Land is “Domestic Xray” ing, found their locations and let the ideas for how organizing a messengerby Matthew Land to transform the spaces come to them. No deep con- bike race through the and Acamonchi cepts are at play; it’s simply about aesthetics. neighborhood—it starts at Lavy is the only one of the four using an upstairs 3:33 p.m. at 401 B St.—as well as live sets from musician space. After choosing the room, he saw an attic, friends The Lumps, Gloomsday and Batwings. where old machine parts, hoses and all manner of “To me it’s not just about pretty pictures on the mechanical flotsam and jetsam were stored. For part wall,” Yepiz says. “It’s about bringing people in, conof his installation, Lavy will replicate a wall where solidating friendships and people’s creativity. The gears hung on racks. love is for everyone.”

“The attic was super-mysterious. This wall was all —Alex Zaragoza laid out with writing, and it was all very systematic, orderly,” Lavy says. “I mean, even all these parts,” he Write to alexz@sdcitybeat.com adds as he places various circular pieces on a taped- and editor@sdcitybeat.com.

seen local

January 30, 2013 · San Diego CityBeat · 19

The top 10 Oscar-nominated shorts come to the Ken Cinema

by Anders Wright Every year, movie nuts do their best to see every nominated film before the Oscars. The ceremony’s been bumped up by a couple of weeks this year, which cuts down the amount of time film fanatics have to get to the theater. The toughest movies to see before Oscar night are the foreignlanguage films—many of which don’t get theatrical releases prior to the ceremony—and the shorts. But, once again, the Oscar-nominated live-action and animated films will play the Ken Cinema for at least a week staring Friday, Feb. 1.

I’ve seen all 10 nominated shorts, and though some are better than others, and some are a bit precious, there really isn’t a bad film in the bunch.

The five animated films have two things in common. First, they’re all American, and, second, none has spoken dialogue, which makes for an interesting dichotomy.

It’s sort of surprising to see a short that comes out of The Simpsons in this mix, but Maggie Simpson is the star of The Longest Daycare, which is a terrific look at the way different people respond to society, be it good, bad or ugly, and the different ways in which we group and treat our children.

(Bear in mind that this takes place at the Ayn Rand Daycare Center.)

Adam and Dog by Minkyu Lee examines man’s relationship to his best friend, which dates as far back as the Garden of Eden.

Director and animator PES has been making smart, quirky, stop-motion films for ages, but Fresh Guacamole marks his first Oscar nomination. It’s easy to dismiss what he does here, combining everyday objects into a dish (this is a follow-up to his previous film, Western Spaghetti), but the way he times his sequences and edits them together just makes it look easy. It’s not.

The other stop-motion animated film here is Head Over Heels, a sweet little allegory about an older couple who’ve grown so far apart that Walter lives on the ceiling while Madge still walks around on the floor.

The stop-motion work is impressive, and there’s an emotional backdrop to it that’s palpable.

But I believe my favorite of this batch is Paperman, a Disney short that ran in front of Wreck-It Ralph. Made in (mostly) glorious black-and-white, it wordlessly tells the story of a urban office drone

Disney’s wistful Paperman who meets the girl of his dreams and uses paper airplanes to get her attention and free himself from his cubicle hell. It looks great, has a wistful feel to it and is sweetly romantic.

While all five animated films hail from the U.S., the live-action shorts come from around the globe.

The sole American movie, Curfew, was one of my favorites, though. It tells the tale of a black-sheep uncle who’s tasked with looking after his niece for a few hours, an encounter that will change at least one of them—in a good way—for the long run.

I wasn’t as crazy about Henry, the French-Canadian short about an elderly pianist desperate to hold on to his memories.

I thought the most ingenious of them was Death of a Shadow, which is smart and odd, a weird-ass look at Nathan, who’s made a deal with the devil to document 10,000 deaths in hopes of earning back his life. The movie stars Matthias Schoenarts, who was so damn good in last year’s Oscar-nominated Bullhead, but is unrecognizable in this entirely different movie.

Still, my guess is that the award will end up going to the Somali film Asad or, more likely, Buzkashi Boys. The former is about a boy who wants to be a modern-day pirate and has a cast made up entirely of Somali refugees. The latter was shot on location in Kabul and is also about children; it’s not a perfect film, but the backdrop of that broken country is both beautiful and startling, to the point where you almost stop watching the actors because you’re so immersed in what’s happening around them.

Write to anders@sdcitybeat.com and editor@sdcitybeat.com.

A City and a city

Sound City

20 · San Diego CityBeat · January 30, 2013

I’m old enough to remember when Dave Grohl was overshadowed by Kurt Cobain. But he’s done pretty well for himself since Nirvana ended with Cobain’s 1994 suicide. After 18 years of success with Foo Fighters, Grohl has stepped behind the camera to make his first film.

Sound City, which screens just once in San Diego—at 7 p.m.

Thursday, Jan. 31, at Hillcrest Cinemas—profiles the legend-

ary San Fernando Valley studio where folks like Fleetwood Mac, Neil Young, Tom Petty and Metallica laid down tracks. The movie also examines the shift from analog to digital recording, and how, at least in Grohl’s world, some of the human aspect of the recording industry was lost. Sound City was where Nirvana recorded Nevermind, the album that would change their lives forever, so the subject has a personal connection for Grohl, who interviewed people

like Stevie Nicks, Frank Black, Trent Reznor, Lars Ulrich, Taylor Hawkins and former bandmate Krist Novoselic for the film.

Another documentary with limited showings is The New Juarez, the final film in Charlie Minn’s trilogy about the drug war in Mexico. Minn’s been making films like this for years, including 8 Murders a Day and Murder Capitol of the World, but The New Juarez appears to say that things are looking up ever-so-slightly in that violence-plagued border town (I’ve seen only the trailer).

We need more filmmakers like Minn who grab a subject and don’t let go. Sadly, you’ll have to journey to the Regal Rancho del Rey in Chula Vista to see his new one, since that’s the only theater in the area that’s screening it.

—Anders Wright

Opening Bullet to the Head: Sly Stallone is a hit man who teams up with a cop to find the guy who killed their partners—and shoot a bunch of guys along the way. It’s Walter Hill’s first film in a decade.

Oscar Nominated Short Films: All 10 Oscar-nominated short and live-action films play the Ken Cinema, and there are some real winners in this batch. See our review on Page 20.

San Diego Black Film Festival: The SDBFF enters its 11th season as one of the largest black film festivals in the country.

Dozens of movies will screen from Thursday, Jan. 31, through Sunday, Feb. 3, at Reading Cinemas Gaslamp. See sdbff. com for movies, showtimes and tickets, and be sure not to miss the annual Shaft Superfly Party.

Jan. 30, at The Propagandist, Downtown.

My Fair Lady: It won Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor Oscars. Not too shabby. Screens at 7 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 31, at Reading Cinemas Town Square in Clairemont.

Plan 9 From Outer Space: Those jokers at RiffTrax offer up an encore performance of their take on arguably the worst film ever made. Screens at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 31, at several area theaters. Check fathomevents.com for details.

Stand Up Guys

One Time Only Tarantula: Watch out. The spinner of this web isn’t Charlotte. Screens at 6:30 p.m.

Wednesday, Jan. 30, at the Central Library, Downtown.

One Night Stand: Creating a Play in a Day: This sort-of documentary is about folks like Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Cheyenna Jackson, Richard Kind, Roger Bart and Nellie McKay, putting together a musical in 24 hours. Screens at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 30, at several area theaters.

Check fathomevents.com.

Dumb & Dumber: Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels—still dumb after all these years.

Screens at 8 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 30, at The Pearl Hotel in Point Loma.

Ghostbusters: The folks at The Propagandist are rolling out a new cocktail menu on Feb. 2, which includes The Gatekeeper, named after the character in this slimy comedy. Screens at 8 p.m. Wednesday,

Bestiare: This quiet documentary examines animals—and their relationship to nature and humans—in a way you’ve never seen before. Screens at 8 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 31, at The Loft at UCSD. Any Given Sunday: Get prepped for the Super Bowl with Oliver Stone’s take on the NFL. Screens at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Feb. 1, at Full Moon Drive-In in Pacific Beach.

Jerry Maguire: Get prepped for the Super Bowl with Cameron Crowe’s take on the NFL at 6:30 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 2, at Full Moon Drive-In in Pacific Beach.

The Producers: This is the more recent version of Mel Brooks’ movie, which is based on the Broadway musical, which was based on the original movie. Screens at around 7 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 2, at Sea Rocket Bistro in North Park.

The French Connection: One of the greatest cop movies of all time. Gene Hackman won an Oscar for playing Popeye Doyle, a gritty NYPD narc who stumbles on a huge drug conspiracy. The movie also earned Best Director honors for William Friedkin, Best Adapted Screenplay and, yeah, Best Picture. Screens at 7 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 2, and Tuesday, Feb. 5, at Reading Cinemas Gaslamp.

The Pink Panther: Luckily, this is the 1963 original, starring Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau, and not the Steve Martin remake. Screens at 6:30 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 3, at Full Moon Drive-In in Pacific Beach Even the Rain: A crew of filmmakers, including Gael Garcia Bernal and Luis Tosar, is making a movie in Bolivia about Christopher Columbus. Getting in their way is a local uprising over water rights, which happens to parallel the Indians’ struggle against the Spanish 500 years prior.

Screens at 6:30 p.m. Monday, Feb. 4, at the Central Library, Downtown.

Chicago: The Best Picture winner for 2002 is pretty sharp, but the wave of movie musicals we expected in its wake never really arrived. Screens at 7 p.m. Monday, Feb. 4, at Reading Cinemas Town Square in Clairemont.

Groundhog Day: Bill Murray’s obnoxious weatherman has to live the same day over and over and over again. Ironically, it just gets better with age. Screens at 8 p.m.

Wednesday, Feb. 6, at The Pearl Hotel in Point Loma.

Now Playing Quartet: It’s surprising that it took Dustin Hoffman this long to direct a movie. Quartet, about what happens when a faded opera singer (Maggie Smith) is forced to move into a home for retired musicians, including the rest of the quartet she left behind, is slight, but enjoyable.

56 Up: Every seven years since 1964, filmmakers have captured the lives of a group of British children who were just 7 when the process started. Director Michael Apted has spent a lot of time with these

people, and it shows.

Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters: Sure. Why not?

Movie 43: Three teenagers kick around the Internet, looking at nasty short films, which allows all kinds of big stars, like Hugh Jackman, Kate Winslet and Emma Stone, to appear without making a huge commitment.

Parker: After his crew double-crosses him, Jason Statham teams up with Jennifer Lopez to get his revenge.

West of Memphis: Amy Berg’s new documentary about the West Memphis Three looks at the entire journey of the men who were railroaded on murder charges as teens and spent almost 20 years in jail. It also casts a light on a new suspect—and not the person you might expect.

Race 2: This Bollywood action sequel finds the hero heading to Turkey to track down the bad guys who killed his girlfriend.

Beasts of the Southern Wild: Wait, what? Didn’t this micro-budget movie come out last summer before being nominated for a slew of Oscars last week? Yeah, that’s why it’s back in theaters, Sherlock.

Broken City: Ex-cop Mark Wahlberg finds himself immersed in scandal when he starts trailing Catherine Zeta-Jones, wife of New York Mayor Russell Crowe.

For a complete listing

of movies pla ying locally, please see “F ilm S creenings” at sdcit yb eat.com under the “E vents” tab.

Sisterakas: Filipino comedy about a guy who hires his half-sister on the Internet to be a personal assistant, with the intention of making her life hell.

Stand Up Guys: Al Pacino gets out of the joint after almost 20 years and immediately hooks up with his old associates, Christopher Walken and Alan Arkin.

Warm Bodies: In a world populated by both zombies and humans, one member of the walking dead (Nicholas Hoult) starts to have feelings for a real girl (Teresa Palmer).

January 30, 2013 · San Diego CityBeat · 21

Riki Feldmann

From left to right: Anton Patzner, Lewis Patzner and Jon Bush

Even without guitars, Judgement Day shred Heavy-metal isn’t often thought of as being associated with orchestras or string arrangements. But more often than not, a cello or a horn will find its way into a symphony of destruction. Metallica famously performed with the San Francisco Symphony on their 1999 live album, S&M. Three years before that, Finnish chamber quartet Apocalyptica released their own album of classical Metallica covers. And that’s even before we get into the dramatic subgenre of “symphonic metal.”

Still, as far as we can tell, Oakland trio Judgement Day is the first band to lay claim to the title of “string metal.”

Playing intense, technical, instrumental heavy metal without the help of a single guitar, Judgement Day’s Anton Patzner (violin), Lewis Patzner (cello) and Jon Bush (drums) push the limits of what acoustic stringed instruments can do. They layer on the riffs like Megadeth’s Marty Friedman does, but they also go full-throttle psychedelic, turning a chamber session into a heady raga. Whichever way they tweak their sound, they always shred.

Patzner explains that the sound grew out of some time

22 · San Diego CityBeat · January 30, 2013

by

Jeff Terich

2010’s Peacocks / Pink Monsters, the Patzner brothers fed their instruments through effects pedals, distorting and tweaking their sounds into unrecognizable noises and textures. By comparison, Polar Shift finds them emphasizing the natural sounds of their instruments.

For an album that strips away the most metal elements of the band’s sound, however, Polar Shift still shreds pretty hard. Songs like “Ghost Hunt” and “Common Denominator” are built on intricate harmonies and aggressive rhythms, and the intensity rarely lets up. Patzner says they challenged themselves to stay fierce without falling back on effects.

“Every record is an experiment to see how cool of a record we can make with just violin, cello and drums,” he says. “We wanted to try just actual violin, cello tones, and make it as live as possible. ... On our other records, you can’t really tell we’re playing violin and cello. They sound like guitars or­—you can’t really tell what they are.”

The Patzners grew up in a musical household. Their parents are both classical musicians and music teachers, and younger brother Graham is the songwriter and frontman of Bay Area folk-rock outfit Whiskerman. In 2007, Lewis earned his degree in cello performance from the Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore.

Despite the talented bloodline and level of musical accomplishment in the band, Judgement Day rarely rehearse.

They take a loose approach to developing songs, which mostly grow out of a road-testing phase.

“We don’t really need to practice unless we’re working on material,” Patzner says. “I’m a big proponent of going on the road and beta-testing the material. The songs all evolve on the road. They’re not really that complicated.”

The atypical nature of Judgement Day’s music has found them playing to a wide variety of audiences, opening for the warm-and-fuzzy indie-pop duo Mates of State, but also the modern progressive rockers Dredg. Some people don’t know quite what to expect when watching the band for the first time, but Patzner says they’re up won over by the end of the set.

“A bunch of people will come up to us and say, ‘I’ve never seen anything like that’ or, ‘I dunno man, I thought that was gonna be lame, but it was awesome,’” he says. “Some people don’t want to like us, but then they do.”

As Judgement Day tackle new musical challenges, their status as a string-metal band—solidified by their web address, stringmetal.com—becomes less of a wholly encompassing part of their identity. But they’re not likely to mellow out anytime soon.

The term “was appropriate at first, because our first album was a lot more metal,” Patzner says. “I wouldn’t say we make metal anymore, though.

“We should probably get a new URL.”

spent busking with Lewis, his brother, in Berkeley.

“We started the band playing on the street,” he recalls, speaking by phone from a tour rest stop. “It kind of evolved as a street-crowd-pleaser kind of thing. The louder we played and the more we jumped around, did kicks or rock ’n’ roll moves, the more money we made.”

Yet Patzner is quick to clarify that, in spite of the genre name, the group’s biggest influences are predominantly in hardcore punk. (“String hardcore” doesn’t have quite the same ring to it.)

“I used to go to hardcore shows in Santa Cruz,” Patzner says. “It’s a really cool scene. I’d go to house shows, or there was this classroom where I’d go see hardcore bands like Plot to Blow Up the Eiffel Tower and Akimbo. It was my favorite thing to do. And I really wanted to be in a band like that… but I play violin.

“Really, our influences are more hardcore than metal,” he adds. “We just call it metal.”

The band’s new album, Polar Shift, is a significant de- Judgement Day play with Pinback at parture from the trio’s methods on previous albums. On House of Blues on Friday, Feb. 1.

January 30, 2013 · San Diego CityBeat · 23

notes from the SMOKING PATIO Locals Only As the lineup for the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival made the rounds last week, so did a much stranger version of the Coachella lineup.

Instead of hot headliners like The Stone Roses and Red Hot Chili Peppers, this bizarrouniverse Coachella features a Civil War reenactment, a book signing with Kim Kardashian and a performance by The Indio Community Wind Ensemble.

The Coachella poster, which uses the same desert-landscape background as official Coachella posters, was the creation of Dan Faughnder, frontman of local band Sledding with Tigers. He made it in December, after growing frustrated with the Indio festival’s lineup in recent years.

“I was just, like, Man, every year it gets more disappointing and more disappointing,” he says. “So, this year, I decided to make my own Coachella lineup with bands I wanted to see.”

And, yes, that includes the surviving cast of The Golden Girls.

Faughnder, who’s never been to Coachella, made the poster in Photoshop and put it online in December. He posted it again on The Ché Café’s Tumblr page (thechecafe.tumblr.com) last Thursday. It’s now achieved serious meme status, having been reposted by Buzzfeed, The Huffington Post and countless Tumblr users.

In most cases, Faughnder hasn’t gotten credit for his work. The Huffington Post put a watermark on the version it posted, but it was for a Tumblr user who openly admitted to not having made it.

“At this point, it belongs to the Internet,” Faughnder sighs. “It’s not even mine anymore.”

CD Review Miss Erika Davies Part the Sea (self-released)

go great with eggs benedict and mimosas on a lazy Sunday afternoon. At seven tracks, it has bittersweet acoustic folk (“You & Me,” “Lovely Ways”), lighthearted western swing (“Workin’”) and even some ska-tinged lounge (“Stay Away”). When Davies isn’t accompanied by lounge-y guitar, standup bass and brushed drums, she’s lazily strumming a ukulele or plucking out quiet notes on a guitar, as on the divine closing track, “Fragile Voices.”

Davies conveys a wonderful mix of emotions throughout, dipping and diving through her melodies with the freewheeling spirit of a hummingbird. As lighthearted as it all may seem, there are moments where happiness blends with sadness: In “You & Me,” Davies recalls a storybook romance, only to reveal that the relationship had lapsed: “That old feeling of ‘I think we’ve met before’ / carried us just as far as you walking out the door.”

Davies seems most comfortable with acoustic, café-friendly accompaniment, but it doesn’t always fit the bill: The rocking “No Delorean” could’ve used some more muscle to carry its hard-hitting, stopstart riff. Indeed, one of these days I’d love to hear Davies backed by a rock band or a swing ensemble, which could bring out the power in her voice.

All the same, Part the Sea is a refreshing listen in this old-centric music world.

Though some elements on the EP are clearly retro, it’s all incidental. As Davies sings her heart out, she’s just being herself—an approach that transcends time.

To borrow a phrase from Portlandia, the dream of the 1890s is alive and well in pop music today. Suspenders, mandolins, folksy sing-along choruses—thanks to the likes of Mumford & Sons and The Lumineers, what was once old is now the stuff of novelty.

But indie-jazz singer Miss Erika Davies doesn’t get caught up in the sonic cobwebs of so many other contemporary roots acts.

While she channels the spirit of Billie Holiday with her mesmerizing voice, Davies explores a range of styles and moods on her —Peter Holslin new EP, Part the Sea. Recorded and mixed by Gary Hankins, Write to peterh@sdcitybeat.com Part the Sea is a loose, low-key affair—it’d and editor@sdcitybeat.com.

24 · San Diego CityBeat · January 30, 2013

January 30, 2013 · San Diego CityBeat · 25

if i were u

week, they sent bloggers into a tizzy with news that they’ve got a song coming out, “Big News,” BY peter holslin new on a split 7-inch with New York rockers Sainthood Reps. BACKUP PLAN: Kris Allen (trio), Jillette Wednesday, Jan. 30 BACKUP PLAN: Go Yama, Gen- Johnson @ Soda Bar. PLAN A: Akron/Family @ The erik, ekseL, Andre Elias, Kill Loft at UCSD. A version of Ani- Quanti DJs @ Kava Lounge.

Sunday, Feb. 3 mal Collective for the Americana PLAN A: Benjamin Francis Leftset, Akron/Family stray ever furwich, Tori Rogg, Mostly Sunny ther from the bounds of classic Friday, Feb. 1 folk and rock with each passing PLAN A: Pinback, Judgement @ Soda Bar. Part of the reason I album, plumbing a range of styles Day @ House of Blues. With their like Benjamin Francis Leftwich is as they conjure a lysergic rain- cathartic, craftsman-style indie- because he has such a silly name. bow of four-part harmonies and rock, Pinback always put on a hyp- But this English folkie also has strange, enthralling sounds. Still, notic show. But don’t miss Judge- soft, earnest tunes that fans of they give off a rootsy vibe on “No- ment Day, a badass “string-metal” Belle and Sebastian would adore.

Room,” a slab of brooding psyche- band armed with violin and cello, BACKUP PLAN: Augustana, delia off their forthcoming album, who we feature on Page 22. PLAN Lauren Shera @ The Griffin.

Pip Sub Verses. PLAN B: Audios, The B: Stephen Steinbrink, Jehovas BreakLites, Ch@ng3 & Reason, Fitness, Upside Down, MandaBam & Real J Wallace, DJ 2 Recs rin Dynasty, Bogsey and The @ Soda Bar. Rap-rock can be a Argonauts @ The Ché Café. Takcringe-worthy thing, but Wash- ing inspiration from songwriters ington outfit The BreakLites ac- like Nick Drake and Arthur Rustually sound good when they pair sell, Stephen Steinbrink draws up an MC with a guitarist. Indeed, charming, catchy indie-pop with a their easy-going licks help make soft, cloudy core. Rarely do musitheir beats and rhymes sound that cians sound so huggable. BACKUP much cooler. BACKUP PLAN: PLAN: The Bronx, Ghetto BlastBelvedero, Goodnight Texas, er, Teenage Burritos, Phantoms @ The Casbah. This show is sold The Midnight Pine @ Lestat’s. out, but if there’s a way you can get in, do it: L.A. punks The Bronx Thursday, Jan. 31 kick ass.

PLAN A: Cro-Mags, Rail Them to Death, Take Offense, UprisBenjamin Francis Leftwich ing A.D., The Apathy Cycle @ Saturday, Feb. 2 Brick by Brick. As pioneers of PLAN A: Smile, Reeve Oliver, hardcore punk, Cro-Mags spent The Creepy Creeps, Dumetown Monday, Feb. 4 the ’80s slamming down brutal, @ The Casbah. Back in the mid- PLAN A: ZZ Ward, Delta Rae, metal-infused tunes about life ’00s, pop-rockers Reeve Oliver Martin Harley @ Belly Up Tavon the streets of New York City’s got all sorts of buzz for infectious ern. ZZ Ward’s blues ballads shine Lower East Side. The band’s line- tunes that fit right in alongside with a radio-ready polish. With her up has changed a lot in the years those of Weezer and Jimmy Eats powerful voice and signature fesince, but this show is still likely World. They haven’t played live dora, she seems primed for the big to be a bruise-fest. PLAN B: Mu- in five years, so this should be a time. PLAN B: Red Shield, Solid riel Anderson @ Dizzy’s. Muriel treat. PLAN B: Weatherbox, Tan Giant @ The Shakedown Bar. Red Anderson is a joy to watch: a mas- Sister Radio, Crooks, Throne @ Shield creep up on you: The Louiter player of fingerstyle guitar (as The Ché Café. Taking an astute siana metal band’s recently released well as “harp-guitar”), she plucks approach to rocking out, North EP, Disquiet Follows the Soul, opens away with incredible delicacy, County’s Weatherbox pair fist- with a wash of ominous guitar noise making sweet, melodious folk pumping melodies with math-y before descending into a pit of that’s sure to get you smiling. guitar-and-drum workouts. Last churning, glorious doom. BACKUP PLAN: T.V. Mike and The Scarecrowes, Drew Andrews and The Spectral Cities, Nathan Hubbard / Passengers @ Soda Bar.

Tuesday, Feb. 5 PLAN A: The Who @ Valley View Casino Center. Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend are both nearing their 70s, but tonight they’ll be performing Quadrophenia, their classic 1973 rock opera about a young Mod. They reportedly don’t hit the high notes like they used to, but they still rock out like a teenager would. BACKUP PLAN: Onuinu, The Glass Canoe, Keith Sweaty @ Soda Bar.

26 · San Diego CityBeat · January 30, 2013

HOT! NEW! FRESH! Night Beds (Casbah, 2/19), Buke & Gase (Casbah, 2/20), Allah-Las (Casbah, 2/23), The Hush Sound, The Last Royals, Sidney Wayser (Casbah, 3/11), Swingin’ Utters, Sean and Zander, Wild Roses (Casbah, 3/15), Ivan and Alyosha (Soda Bar, 3/18), Andrew McMahon (HOB, 3/20), The Mavericks (BUT, 3/25), The Airborne Toxic Event (HOB, 3/31), The King Khan and BBQ Show (Casbah, 4/17), Gabriel Iglesias (Valley View Casino Center, 4/26), Os Mutantes, Capsula (Casbah, 5/1), Marina and The Diamonds, Charli XCX (HOB, 5/10), Black Angels, Wall of Death, special guest (BUT, 5/19), Tim McGraw (Sleep Train Amphitheatre, 6/7), The Fleshtones (Casbah, 6/9), Fleetwood Mac (Viejas Arena, 7/5), Luke Bryan (Sleep Train Amphitheatre, 8/11), Rascal Flatts (Sleep Train Amphitheatre, 9/13), Keith Urban (Sleep Train Amphitheatre, 9/28), Jason Aldean (Sleep Train Amphitheatre, 10/18).

January Wednesday, Jan. 30 Geographer, On an On at The Casbah.

Akron/Family at The Loft @ UCSD.

Thursday, Jan 31 Nashville Pussy at The Casbah. The Wood Brothers at Belly Up Tavern. Detective at Soda Bar. The Parlotones at The Griffin.

February Friday, Feb. 1 Pinback, Judgement Day at House of Blues. The Bronx at The Casbah. Ray Wylie Hubbard at AMSDConcerts.

Saturday, Feb. 2 ALO at House of Blues. Smile, Reeve Oliver at The Casbah. Kris Allen at Soda Bar. D.O.A. at Brick by Brick.

Sunday, Feb. 3 Benjamin Francis Leftwich at Soda Bar. Augustana at The Griffin. Jayo Felony at Porter’s Pub.

Monday, Feb. 4 T.V. Mike and The Scarecrowes at Soda Bar. ZZ Ward, Delta Rae, Martin Harley at Belly Up Tavern.

Tuesday, Feb. 5 Onuinu at Soda Bar. The Who: Quadrophenia and More at Valley View Casino Center.

Wednesday, Feb. 6 Chelsea Wolfe at The Loft @ UCSD.

Thursday, Feb. 7 OFF!, Negative Approach, Bad Antics at Epicentre.

Friday, Feb. 8 Simon Shaheen at The Loft @ UCSD. Seapony, Rose Melberg at Soda Bar. Bro Safari, Torro Torro, Tittsworth at House of Blues.

Saturday, Feb. 9 The Wailers at Belly Up Tavern. Gram Rabbit at The Casbah. Spider John Koerner at AMSDConcerts.

Sunday, Feb. 10 Big Freedia at The Casbah. The Brad Steinwehe Big Band Matinee at Belly Up Tavern.

Monday, Feb. 11 Merauder, Murder Death Kill at Ché Café.

Tuesday, Feb. 12 Ed Sheeran at Spreckels Theatre. 12th Planet at Voyeur.

Wednesday, Feb. 13 In Flames at House of Blues. St. Lucia at The Griffin.

Thursday, Feb. 14 Wallpaper at The Casbah. Toubab Krewe at The Loft @ UCSD. Japanther at Soda Bar.

Friday, Feb. 15 Mouse on Mars at Soda Bar. Ra Ra Riot at Belly Up Tavern. Ellis Paul at AMSDConcerts.

Saturday, Feb. 16 OM at The Casbah. The Salvator Santana Band at The Griffin.

Tuesday, Feb. 19 Night Beds at The Casbah.

Wednesday, Feb. 20 B.B. King at Belly Up Tavern. Meklit Hadero at The Loft @ UCSD. RYAT, Rainbow Arabia at Soda Bar. Buke & Gase at The Casbah.

Thursday, Feb. 21 Meklit Hadero at The Loft @ UCSD. Warm Soda at Soda Bar. The Orwells at The Casbah.

rCLUBSr

Prettyman, Paul Cannon. Mon: ZZ Ward, Delta Rae, Martin Harley.

Blarney Stone Pub, 5617 Balboa Ave, Clairemont. 858-279-2033. Wed & Fri: The Barmen. Thu: Ryan Hiller. Sat: The Fooks. Sun: Open mic w/ Men of Leisure.

Tue: Irish jam.

Bourbon Street, 4612 Park Blvd, University Heights. bourbonstreetsd.com. Wed: DJ Sebastian La Madrid. Thu: Marcel.

Sat: Dreamgirls Revue. Sun: ‘Soiree’.

Brass Rail, 3796 Fifth Ave, Hillcrest. thebrassrailsd.com. Sat: ‘Sabados en Fuego’ w/ Jay Valdez. Sun: Daisy Salinas, DJ Sebastian. Mon: Junior the Discopunk.

Brick by Brick, 1130 Buenos Ave, Bay Park. brickbybrick.com. Wed: Eddie Spaghetti, Nick Bone and The Big Scene. Thu: Cro-Mags, Rail Them to Death, Take Offense, Uprising A.D., The Apathy Cycle. Fri: Roni Lee, Jennifer Batten, Sara Groban, Stone Horse. Sat: D.O.A., CH 3, Sculpins.

Casbah, 2501 Kettner Blvd, Midtown. casbahmusic.com. Wed: Geographer, On an On (sold out). Thu: Nashville Pussy, Low Volts, Marsupials. Fri: The Bronx, Ghetto Blaster, Teenage Burritos, Phantoms (sold out). Sat: Smile, Reeve Oliver, The Creepy Creeps, Dumetown. Mon: Sir Sly, Kitten, Frank and Derol.

Che Cafe, UCSD campus, La Jolla. thechecafe.blogspot.com. Thu: Let Em Rot, Calafia Puta, Sleepwalk, DEA. Fri: Stephen Steinbrink, Jehovas Fitness, Upside Drown, Mandarin Dynasty, Bogsey and the Argonauts. Sat: Weatherbox, Tan Sister Radio, Crooks, Throne.

Croce’s, 802 Fifth Ave, Downtown. croces.com. Wed: Sue Palmer. Thu: Gilbert Castellanos and The New Latin Jazz Quintet. Fri: Michele Lundeen. Sat: Daniel Jackson (11:30 a.m.); Agua Dulce (8:30 p.m.). Sun: Irving Flores (11:30 a.m.); Mark Fisher Trio (7:30 p.m.). Mon: Dave Scott and Monsoon Jazz. Tue: Mike Wofford/Holly Hofmann Quartet.

Dirk’s Nightclub, 7662 Broadway, Lemon Grove. dirksniteclub.com. Wed & Sun: Karaoke. Fri: TNT. Sat: Zone 4.

710 Beach Club, 710 Garnet Ave, Pacific Beach. 710bc.com. Wed: Open mic, open jam. Thu: Live band karaoke. Mon: Battle of the Bands. Tue: PB-Oke Karaoke.

Dizzy’s, 4275 Mission Bay Dr, Downtown. dizzyssandiego.com. Thu: Muriel Anderson. Fri: The Bi-National Mambo Orchestra. Sat: Steph Johnson w/ Rob Thorsen and Fernando Gomez.

98 Bottles, 2400 Kettner Blvd. Ste. 110, Little Italy. 98bottlessd.com. Fri: Talk Like June. Sat: Gilbert Castellanos.

Eddie V’s, 1270 Prospect St, La Jolla. eddiev.com. Wed: Freddie A Dream Trio.

Thu: Richard James Trio.

Air Conditioned Lounge, 4673 30th St, Normal Heights. airconditionedbar.com.

Wed: DJ Hevrock. Thu: DJ Yaser Aly. Fri: DJ DJ Junior the DiscoPunk. Sat: ‘Juicy’ w/ Mike Czech. Sun: DJs Watch .44, Sunday Sauce.

El Dorado Bar, 1030 Broadway, Downtown. eldoradobar.com. Wed: Them Lost Boys, Whiskey Pete, Osal8, Austin Speed, Andre Power, Sasha Marie. Thu: Unite, J-Blow. Fri: DJ Edroc, Saul Q, Kid Wonder, Don’t Go Jason Waterfalls. Sat: Erick Diaz, Adam Salter, Andrew Decade. Mon: French Kiss Collective.

American Comedy Co., 818 B Sixth Ave, Downtown. americancomedyco.com.

Wed: Billy Bonnell. Thu-Sat: Jared Logan. Tue: Open mic.

AMSDconcerts, 4650 Mansfield St, Normal Heights. amsdconcerts.com. Fri: Ray Wylie Hubbard.

Bar Pink, 3829 30th St, North Park. barpink.com. Fri: DJ Artistic, NosuckerDJs. Sat: Okapi Sun, The New Kinetics.

Sun: DJs Joemama, Tramlife. Mon: The Husky Boy All-Stars. Tue: Adrian Demain’s Exoticatronica.

Beaumont’s, 5662 La Jolla Blvd, La Jolla. brocktonvilla.com/beaumonts.html. Thu: Simeon Flick.

Belly Up Tavern, 143 S. Cedros Ave, Solana Beach. bellyup.com. Wed: Benefit for Rock for the Fallen w/ Slightly Stoopid, Natural Vibrations. Thu: The Wood Brothers, Seth Walker. Fri: Tristan Prettyman, Paul Cannon, DJ ManCat. Sat: Tristan

Epicentre, 8450 Mira Mesa Blvd, Mira Mesa. epicentreconcerts.org. Fri: Comedy w/ Riley Bacon, Luis Sotelo, Chris P. Bacon, Jimmy Wolpert, Haily Nicole, Caleb Brandalis, Micheal Alvin Jr., David Zafar. Sat: Save the Bear, Marvin and Friends, Reptile Dysfunction, Margot Smokes, Birds of Prey.

Fluxx, 500 Fourth Ave, Downtown. fluxxsd. com. Thu: W and W. Fri: Brett Bodley, DJ Slowhand. Sat: DJ Karma, Craig Smoove.

Gallagher’s, 5040 Newport Ave, Ocean Beach. 619-222-5303. Wed: Lady Dottie and the Diamonds. Thu: Piracy Conspiracy.

Griffin, 1310 Moreno Blvd, Bay Park. thegriffinsd.com. Wed: The Tribal, That’s Right, Cult Vegas, Daniel Newheiser. Thu: The Parlotones, The New Kinetics, Irontom. Fri: Shwayze, Starting Six, Paul Couture, Chris Young. Sat: Maka Roots, Sister

CONTINUED ON PAGE 28 January 30, 2013 · San Diego CityBeat · 27

Lubei, The I Sight Band. Sun: Augustana (acoustic), Lauren Shera. Tue: Oliver Trolley, Color You.

the hit list

Hard Rock Hotel, 207 Fifth Ave, Downtown. hardrockhotelsd.com. Thu: Kevin Brown, DJ Fresh One. Sat: Chris Kennedy, Mr. Dee Jay (207); DJ G-Roy, Huy Believe (Float). Sun: Christopher Lawrence.

Battle of the bands In the movie Pulp Fiction, Mia Wallace, as played

by Uma Thurman, says there are two kinds of people in the world: Elvis people and Beatles people. Someone can like both, but never in the same amount. This is a test that reveals a lot about a person.

On Friday, Feb. 1, you can make a similar decision at The Propagandist (835 Fifth Ave., Downtown) for Depeche Mode vs. New Order. DJs Biddy, Visions and Skinny Fat will attempt to sway your decision by playing the best of both bands, but it’s up to you to pick a side. I’m fervently New Order on this one, but I still just can’t get enough of DM’s synth pop.

If all that arguing over ’80s new-wave gods gets you in the mood to argue over entire genres, head to Tower Bar (4757 University Ave. in City Heights) that same night for Hip-Hop vs. Punk Rock. The event, which happens every first Friday of the month, pits a punk band and rap group against each other in musical battle. This time, Los Angeles mic masters Mestizo will go head-tohead with local punks Partito Tempo. The second round features National City’s Old English dropping mad rhymes on the raw sounds of Outlaw Bastards from Tijuana. Come by at around 11 p.m.

This one always starts late. Cover is $3.

Cruise on down to Whistle Stop Bar (2236 Fern

28 · San Diego CityBeat · January 30, 2013

Henry’s Pub, 618 Fifth Ave, Downtown. henryspub.com. Wed: ‘Club M.A.W.’ Thu: DJ Yodah. Fri: DJs Rev, Yodah. Sat: DJs E, Yodah. Sun: Karaoke. Mon: DJs Joey Jimenez, E. House of Blues, 1055 Fifth Ave, Downtown. houseofblues.com/sandiego. Thu: Pentatonix, Speak. Fri: Pinback, Judgement Day. Sat: Saucy Monky; ALO, California Honeydrops.

Ivy @ Andaz, 600 F St, Downtown. ivyentertainmentsandiego.com. Thu: JMoney, Tristan D, Ideal, Murphi Kennedy, OJ, Christian De La Torre, Nomad, Bala, Rockefella. Fri: Lipstik Inc. Sat: Exodus, Decon, Este, Angle, Cheyenne Giles, Lipstik Inc.

St. in South Park) on Saturday, Feb. 2, for Sleepwalking Old Skool Jamz. The fight breaking out at this one is not publicized, but, as a regular, I can assure you that there’s one going down. The evening is split in two, with smooth lowrider oldies and classic Motown hits getting things going at the beginning. But ’round midnight is when DJs kick it up, playing old-school party hits by the likes of Nu Shooz and The Gap Band. As Mrs. Wallace said, you can like both, but never in the same amount.

—Alex Zaragoza Write to alexz@sdcitybeat.com and editor@sdcitybeat.com.

Kava Lounge, 2812 Kettner Blvd, Midtown. kavalounge.com. Thu: Go Yama, Generik, Eksel, Andre Elias, Kill Quanti DJs. Fri: DJ Smash, Viscer, Videla. Sat: DJs Robin Roth, LadyNoir, Michael. Sun: Unidentified Fusion Orangement. Tue: ‘Two Step Tuesday.’

Kensington Club, 4079 Adams Ave, Kensington. 619-284-2848. Fri: Clockwork, Bricklayer Bosh, Nox and The Joykovs, Ray Argyle. Sat: Last Years Hero’s, The Floor Notes, Revenge Club.

Lestat’s Coffee House, 3343 Adams Ave, Normal Heights. lestats.com. Wed: Belvedero, Goodnight Texas, The Midnight Pine. Thu: Jann Klose. Fri: Savannah Philyaw (CD release). Sat: Belmont Lights, Solwave, The Lower 48.

Loft @ UCSD, Price Center East, La Jolla. theloft.ucsd.edu. Wed: Akron/Family. Sat: AfroJazziacs, Science Fiction Jazz.

Mc P’s Irish Pub, 1107 Orange Ave, Coronado. mcpspub.com. Wed: Rick and Jason. Thu: JG Duo. Numbers, 3811 Park Blvd, Hillcrest. numberssd.com. Thu: DJ Angel X; ‘Varsity’. Fri: Viernes Calientes. Sat: ‘Ladies - Femme Fatale’.

Office, 3936 30th St, North Park. officebarinc.com. Wed: ‘The Beat Goes On’ w/ Oh and the Whats, DJ Uncle Junie. Mon: ‘Dub Dynamite’ w/ Rashi, Eddie Turbo.

Onyx Room / Thin, 852 Fifth Ave, Downtown. onyxroom.com. Fri: Seize, Yogui, Muzik Junkies, Mike Zee, Martin Kache, Tony V, La Mafia. Tue: Spoken word open mic.

Patricks II, 428 F St, Downtown. patricksii.com. Wed: Len Rainey and The Midnight Players. Thu: Bill Magee Blues Band. Fri: Mystique Element of Soul. Sat: Dennis Jones.

Propagandist, 835 Fifth Ave, Downtown. thepropagandistsd.com. Fri: Depeche Mode vs. New Order Tribute Night. Sat: New Menu Release.

Quality Social, 789 Sixth Ave, Downtown. qualitysocial.com. Wed: Eskimo Bros.

Queen Bee’s, 3925 Ohio St, North Park. queenbeessd.com. Wed: Firehouse Swing Night. Fri: Sergio Razta. Sun: Salsa. Tue: Open mic.

Rich’s , 1051 University Ave, Hillcrest. richssandiego.com. Wed: Bianca, DJ Marcel. Thu: ‘Ladies Night.’ Fri: DJs Dirty Kurty, John Joseph. Sat: DJ Corey Craig.

Sun: DJ Hektik.

Riley’s, 2901 Nimitz Blvd, Point Loma. rileysmusiclounge.com. Wed: Open mic.

Thu: Karaoke.

Riviera Supper Club, 7777 University Ave, La Mesa. rivierasupperclub.com.

Wed: Kice Simko. Thu: Steve Harris. Tue: Meagan Flint.

Ruby Room, 1271 University Ave, Hillcrest. rubyroomsd.com. Wed: Ugly Boogie, The Morgan Leigh Band, Abe West.

Thu: Curious, Sixfootunda, Otter, MDMK, Savage. Fri: The Stage Kids, The Alligator Republic, Okay! Okay!, Lucky and Wild.

Sat: Splitbreed, 6BLOCC, Fonkah, RKSTR. Sun: Peripherals, Township Rebeliion, Blue Sons, Torn Shoes, Tommy Kelly Acoustic.

Tue: Mauru, Bakkuda, Collision Creation.

Seven Grand, 3054 University Ave, North Park. sevengrandbars.com/sd. Wed: Gilbert Castellanos Jazz Jam. Thu: Comedy w/ Zoltan, Chris Curtis, Gus Sanchez, Sam Wiles, Austin Train, Nick Crosby, Mike Ula. Shakedown Bar, 3048 Midway Drive, Point Loma. theshakedownsd.com. Fri: The Generators, Smogtown, The Wooly Mammoth, The Devereaux. Sat: The Dollyrots, Payoff, Images, The Focke Wolves.

Mon: Red Shield, Solid Giant.

Side Bar, 536 Market St, Downtown. sidebarsd.com. Wed: Kyle Flesch. Fri: Chris Cutz. Sat: Epic Twelve.

Soda Bar, 3615 El Cajon Blvd, City Heights. sodabarmusic.com. Wed: Audios, The Breaklites, Chang3 and Reason, Bam and Real J Wallace, DJ 2 Recs.

Thu: Detective, Sick Balloons, Sociawki.

Fri: Schitzophonics, Pass the Axe, The Touchies. Sat: Kris Allen (trio), Jillette Johnson. Sun: Benjamin Francis Leftwich, Tori Rogg, Mostly Sunny. Mon: T.V. Mike and The Scarecrowes, Drew Andrews and The Spectral Cities, Nathan Hubbard/Passengers. Tue: Onuinu, The Glass Canoe, Keith Sweaty.

SOMA, 3350 Sports Arena Blvd, Midway.

CONTINUED ON PAGE 30 January 30, 2013 · San Diego CityBeat · 29

somasandiego.com. Fri: Godhammered, One Theory, Her Bed of Thorns, A New Challenger Approaches, All But Broken, Our Reflections. Sat: Chasing Claymores, Selis, I Am the Conqueror, Scarlett Avenue, Lucky and Wild, Woolly Mammal.

Sun: Silverstein, Like Moths to Flames, Secrets, Issues, Glass Cloud.

Spin, 2028 Hancock St, Midtown. spinnightclub.com. Fri: FAB Fridays. Sat: 2NUTZ. Sun: Reggae.

Stage Bar & Grill, 762 Fifth Ave, Downtown. stagesaloon.com. Wed: Bl3ndr, Mark Fisher/Gaslamp Guitars. Thu: Dubstep DJs, Van Roth. Fri: The Disco Pimps, Sophia Bouhaddou. Sat: DJ Miss Dust, Fingerbang. Mon: Reggae, Lethal Rejection. Tue: DJ Von Kiss.

The Flame, 3780 Park Blvd, Hillcrest. flamesandiego.com. Thu: ‘Club ‘80s’; ‘Rockabilly Psychois’; ‘RnR Debauchery’.

Fri: ‘Therapy’; ‘Darkwave Garden.’ Sat: ‘Elektrofied’.

Tiki House, 1152 Garnet Ave, Pacific Beach. tikipb.com. Thu: Kayla Hope.

Til-Two Club, 4746 El Cajon Blvd, City Heights. tiltwoclub.com. Wed: ‘A Brief History of Rhyme’ w/ DJs Heather Hardcore, Marclar. Thu: DJs Roger Lane, Vegemite.

Fri: ‘Taboo’ w/ Miki Vale, niomiesoulfly.

Sat: Supertasty, DJs Heather Hardcore, Rudy Palos, Marclar. Mon: Karaoke. Tue: Kim Gordon Comedy Night.

Tin Can Ale House, 1863 Fifth Ave, Bankers Hill. thetincan1.wordpress.com.

Wed: Reed Street Sessions, Mrs. Henry, Kinetic Circus. Thu: The Gift/Curse, Machines Learning, Allophone. Fri: Manuok, Former Friends of Young Americans, Oh Spirit. Sat: The Long Holidays, Down UFO, Rosewood 5. Mon: Tin Can Country Club w/ Jesse Bowen. Tue: San Pedro el

30 · San Diego CityBeat · January 30, 2013

Cortez, Sixties Guns, Dancing Strangers.

Tio Leo’s, 5302 Napa St, Bay Park. tioleos.com. Wed: Zydeco. Thu: Mercedes Moore.

Tower Bar, 4757 University Ave, City Heights. thetowerbar.com. Fri: ‘Hip-Hop vs. Punk Rock’ w/ Mestizo, Partito Tempo, Outlaw Bastards, Old English, DJs Unite, Mr. Henshaw, Pelengue. Mon: Pyrate Punx DJs. Turquoise, 873 Turquoise St, Pacific Beach. theturquoise.com/wordpress. Wed: Tomcat Courtney, Talia Ceravolo. Thu: Latin Jazz Crew. Fri: Tomcat Courtney, Afro Jazziacs. Sat: Peligroso Caramelo, Tomcat Courtney. Sun: Sounds Like Four, Tiffany Jane. Mon: Persian Classical Music. Tue: Ibrahim Senegal, Afro Jazziacs.

U-31, 3112 University Ave, North Park. u31bar.com. Fri: DJ Chris Cutz.

Voyeur, 755 Fifth Ave, Downtown. voyeursd.com. Wed: Deorro. Thu: Gladiator and Luminox. Fri: Shogun. Sat: Hook N Sling. Tue: Vice.

Voz Alta, 1754 National Ave, Barrio Logan. vozaltaprojectgallery.com. Thu: Bill Caballero.

Whistle Stop, 2236 Fern St, South Park. whistlestopbar.com. Thu: Vamp: Still Here. Fri: The Amandas. Sat: Records With Roger (5 p.m.).

Winstons, 1921 Bacon St, Ocean Beach. winstonsob.com. Wed: Open mic w/ Jefferson Jay. Thu: OB Comedy Competition (6 p.m.); The Brian Jordan Band (9:30 p.m.). Fri: Ocean Beach Comedy (6 p.m.); Hot Buttered Rum, Dead Winter Carpenters (9 p.m.). Sat: Hot Buttered Rum, Dead Wiinter Carpenters. Sun: ‘O.B.-o-ke’ w/ Jose Sinatra. Mon: Electric Waste Band.

Tue: Battle of the Bands Week 5.

January 30, 2013 · San Diego CityBeat · 31