San Diego CityBeat • June 3, 2015

MUSIC

Ceremony sheds hardcore mantle

NEWS

San Diego unions make green push

2 · San Diego CityBeat · June 3, 2015

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June 3, 2015 · San Diego CityBeat · 3

Up Front | From the editor

Housing first, stadium second

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here will the San Diego Chargers call University’s Fermanian Business and Economic Inhome? A public subsidy of, say, $600 milstitute shows dramatic public savings from placing lion might convince our local NFL foothomeless in permanent supportive housing. ball team to stay in Mission Valley and play in a new The median expense per user decreased from billion-dollar-plus stadium (give or take about a roughly $111,000 in 2010 (when they were homeless) hundred moving parts). to about $12,000 in 2013 (two years into the proAs negotiations between the Chargers ownergram). Hospital costs for the group as a whole were ship and the city of San Diego kicked off on Tuesreduced by more than a million dollars; ER visits day, all eyes focused on whether the team had aldipped by 78 percent (from $750,977 to $164,919). ready decided to bolt for Carson to reside in a gild“The results are impressive,” says Dr. Lynn Reased, mansion-esque structure that’s being dangled as er, chief economist for PLNU’s Fermanian Business relocation bait. and Economic Institute. “Providing chronically On the same day, in East Village at the figurahomeless and frequent users of public resources tive corner of Reality and Common Sense, a final with stable and secure housing, combined with a report was presented, to a smattering of reporters, comprehensive set of health and social services, can on a homeless initiative that’s saving lives and taxyield a dramatic reduction in the use and expense of payer/social service dollars. various public services.”

The latter is the far more compelling story.

Awesome. Truly awesome.

An independent report has verified that over a What’s that—the Chargers require a public subtwo-year test period, sidy to stay and be part a United Way initiaof the community? The tive called Project 25 financing plan that was has housed 36 formerly volunteered from Maychronic homeless peoor Kevin Faulconer’s ple and reduced public Citizens’ Stadium Adresource costs by 67 visory Group suggested, percent. The savings among other things, amounts to $3.5 million. that the city and county Funded with $1.5 of San Diego could ante million over three years up a total of $242 milfrom United Way, Projlion ($121 million each, ect 25 is a public-private or, $7 million per year partnership between over 30 years). the county of San Diego At that Project 25 and the city of San DiSan Diego City Councilmember Todd Gloria press conference, where ego/San Diego Housing the issue was a little Commission. Father Joe’s Villages is managing the more than $1.5 million in public-private money pilot project. spent over three years, San Diego City CouncilmemWhat is Project 25? Longtime CityBeat readber Todd Gloria praised the United Way’s pioneerers are likely familiar with the initiative. (Go to ing efforts. County Health and Human Services sdcitybeat.com and search for “Project 25” to find Director Nick Maccione said the report shows that in-depth reportage.) Essentially, it’s aimed at the “Housing First” works. Father Joe’s Villages Presimost frequent users of public services. Individuals dent and CEO Jim Vargas emphasized that to make enrolled in the program ranged in age from 22 to 61. the initiative work, “We had to give, and give and The median age was 47. Five were veterans. All had give a lot, and we didn’t give up.” some form of mental illness, physical disability or There’s also a good deal of talk that involves substance abuse disorder. Many had all three. giving when the topic is housing the Chargers.

The participants in Project 25 were often getting Who seems like the more worthy, cost-effective, deserving recipient? picked up off the street by ambulances and taken for ER visits or hospital stays, as well as arrested —Ron Donoho and housed in jail. All at a substantial cost.

Write to rond@sdcitybeat.com A report validated by the Point Loma Nazarene This issue of CityBeat would love to be on the cover of Vanity Fair.

Volume 13 • Issue 43 Editor Ron Donoho Music Editor Jeff Terich Arts Editor Kinsee Morlan Staff Writer Joshua Emerson Smith Web Editor Ryan Bradford Art director Carolyn Ramos Columnists Aaryn Belfer, Edwin Decker, John R. Lamb, Alex Zaragoza

Contributors Ian Cheesman, David L. Coddon, Seth Combs, Tiffany Fox, Michael A. Gardiner, Glenn Heath Jr., Peter Holslin, Dave Maass, Scott McDonald, Jenny Montgomery, Susan Myrland, Jim Ruland, Ben Salmon, Jen Van Tieghem, Amy Wallen Production Manager Tristan Whitehouse Production artist Rees Withrow MultiMedia Advertising Director Paulina Porter-Tapia

Senior account executive Jason Noble Account Executives Beau Odom, Christina MacNeal, Kimberly Wallace Marketing Intern Drake Rinks Accounting Kacie Cobian, Sharon Huie, Linda Lam Human Resources Andrea Baker

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

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June 3, 2015 · San Diego CityBeat · 5

Up Front | Letters

Minimum wage & tipping Great article by Michael Gardiner [“Just the tip,” May 27]. One HUGE factor not discussed however, is minimum wage. In rural Colorado (when I lived there), there was no minimum wage for wait staff so my friends made something pitiful like $3 an hour. In that situation tips were everything. To top it off, some of those old farmers only tipped a quarter anyway (as in 25 cents not 25 percent), so an established charge and a decent wage would have been great if you’re not working in some hot spot.

I know here in California I’ve never paid less than 20 percent regardless of how good or bad the service was because I don’t want to be a crumb. I don’t think we need tipping to have good service. If someone is a lousy server they can get fired like the rest of us. We shop with no commission sales staff all the time and they are nice because it’s their job, maybe they even ARE nice, go figure. I thought for sure you were going to quote Mr. Pink: “This tipping automatically is for the birds, as far as I’m concerned they’re just doing their jobs.” But Mr. White says waiting tables is the one job anybody can get. Maybe if that was true you’d have to tip or else you’ll get spit in your food because there’s no competition for that job. But not anymore, it’s HARD to get a job ANYWHERE these days so people value them and will strive to do it well, tip or no tip.

Bartenders will always be excluded from this.

I’ve dropped ridiculous amounts of extra cash with that first drink just to get looked at again.

Tipping in a packed bar can be like eBay for cocktails. If I’ll be completely ignored otherwise, I’m

6 · San Diego CityBeat · June 3, 2015

paying la mordida, not a gratuity. If we stopped tipping at restaurants it would be like getting a substantial discount and maybe people would eat out a bit more. If a business has to raise the prices to pay their employees, that’s up to them, but breaking out a separate service charge that’s on the bill automatically is just manipulation to make the food appear less expensive. If we start doing that I’ll be the first to call shenanigans.

On the

Cover

David Bardin, Cardiff

correction A news story from the last issue (“Political Riptide,” May 27) incorrectly stated that presumptive medical coverage was part of a labor deal between lifeguards and the city that included pay increases and cuts to pension benefits. The potential future implementation of such coverage was approved by the City Council in 2014 as part of a five-year needs assessment.

send us your thoughts Read a story in San Diego CityBeat that inspired you to add your two cents? We welcome letters to the editor that respond to, or follow up on, news stories, columns or opinion pieces that have run in these pages. Send an email to editor Ron Donoho at rond@sdcitybeat.com. For your letters to be considered, you must include your first and last name, and the part of town where you reside.

Photographer Stacy Keck shot the Out Here brothers for this week’s cover feature on San Diegans who are doing exciting cultural things in Tijuana. Armed with her Canon 5D Mark II, the local shooter didn’t need much convincing when it came to the idea of a Mexico adventure. “I was lured to the shoot with the promise of churros and tostilocos, but the real treat was meeting Daniel and David [Peña],” says Keck. “I’ll be keeping a close eye on these two and the magic they’ll surely continue to create across the border.” And yes, as evidenced by the photo above, we did buy her some churros. You can check out more of Keck’s excellent work at stacykeckphoto.com.

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Up Front | News

Unions talk green, tests to come Labor council adopts transit-first policy as pressure mounts to slow freeway expansion

by JOSHUA EMERSON SMITH

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planning agency. Brought forward by the labor council’s environmental caucus, the document called for increased investment in public transportation projects over the next 10 years.

“What we’ve advocated is the transitfirst agenda,” said Richard Barrera, secretary-treasurer of the labor council. “In the SANDAG plan, there’s a lot of transit work to be done. The question is, do we make that work a priority, or do we continue to do the freeway expansion first?”

Formed last fall, the caucus has crusaded to boost the profile of environmentalism within the council. The resolution is the first major accomplishment for the caucus, which was formed by, among other unions, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and the American Federation of Teachers.

“The contemporary context is that we have to make alliances with folks in the community because labor is under assault,” said Jim Miller, caucus chair and professor of English and labor studies at San Diego City College. “The only way I see labor surviving and prospering and building a real movement is through a kind of socialjustice-unionism philosophy that’s not just about our narrow interests.”

The resolution, which calls for building new transit infrastructure using union employees, puts growing pressure on SANDAG to put off freeway expansion until more public transportation projects are completed. Specifically, the resolution calls for half of all transportation in the “urban core” to consist of biking, walking and transit by “prioritizing funding and implementation of an integrated network.”

While voicing support for public transit projects isn’t a huge political risk for the labor council, seriously campaigning for such an agenda could be. The resolution put forth by the environmental cau-

cus signals an internal debate within labor over how much to wager on green.

“I don’t remember the unions coming out with such a forceful statement as this,” said Carl Luna, political science professor at San Diego Mesa College. “The question is when the labor council spends its political capital coming up, and it only has so much, how much is it going to put into actually making this real?”

While pressuring elected officials to go greener might not directly affect wages and benefits for the labor council’s membership, the move would mirror a wider strategy of coalition building, exemplified by the national push by labor to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour.

“There’s a political payoff because it re-solidifies the linkage between the labor movement, environmentalist and the progressive agenda in general,” Luna said, “and coming up on the minimum-wage debate in San Diego, the unions can use all the help they can get.”

News of the resolution was welcomed by Monique Lopez, a policy advocate specializing in transit justice for the Environmental Health Coalition. But, rather than hailing the resolution as a sign of powerful reinforcements to come, she carefully observed the groups’ overlapping agendas.

“Labor supporting a transit-first approach to regional transportation planning shows that such an approach provides great economic benefit to the region,” she said.

“But, it also shows their dedication to their members who need a reliable, effective and affordable transit network.”

“

I don’t remember the unions coming out with such a forceful statement as this.

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our years ago, when activists sued a regional planning agency over a massive $214-billion spending plan to expand freeways and build public transportation, labor leaders voiced support for the cause.

The San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG) 2050 Regional Transportation Plan didn’t properly measure its impact on greenhouse gas emissions, according to a lawsuit, now in the state Supreme Court, filed in 2011 by the Cleveland National Forest Foundation.

Activists and union officials agreed the transportation plan, an ever-evolving document that’s updated every four years, was too light on investment in trolley and other environmentally friendly transportation options.

At first, SANDAG, composed of elected officials representing San Diego County and 18 cities, showed little willingness to green up its plan. But since the lawsuit, the agency has made minor tweaks, moving some transit projects up in its multidecade timeline.

However, with the scientific community ever more grim about the coming effects of global warming, the sense of urgency in the region grew over recent years, and critics of the planning agency have been far from satisfied with the changes.

In September, the advocacy group Environmental Health Coalition took a hard stand against any new freeway expansion.

And, in February, the relatively moderate think tank Circulate San Diego sent a letter to SANDAG asking the agency to explore pushing a significant number of transit projects to the front of the construction queue.

Then, last week, the San Diego and Imperial Counties Labor Council unanimously adopted a transit resolution that read like an open letter to the regional

Beyond forming alliances, pushing a green agenda does have broader appeal for union officials. The idea that investment in public transit is a direct subsidy to the working class has been a key tenet of labor’s environmental platform.

“If people can get to and from work on public transit in 30 minutes or less, that’s the equivalent of a nearly $3-an-hour raise,” Barrera said.

At the same time, labor has already benefited from the green economy, especially in Imperial County, where the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 569 has put members to work building solar installations and wind turbines.

However, playing hardball with SANDAG would be something else entirely.

A token resolution will likely have little impact on the planning agency’s long-term vision for the region—a vision which officials staunchly maintain will include significant freeway expansion.

“The focus on transit to the exclusion to everything else is something that we do hear from some folks,” said Charles Stoll, SANDAG’s director of land use and transportation planning, “but I think our transportation planning has always been focused on a balance and giving people of the region a choice of transportation options.”

In response to growing pressure from transit advocates, SANDAG staff gave a presentation on its regional plan at an annual board retreat in January. Looking at the feasibility of constructing all transit projects in the plan over the next 10 years, the analysis painted a picture of a costly and nearly impossible scenario.

“The issue there is money,” Stoll said, “the fact that 35 years of transportation funding doesn’t materialize in 10 years.”

Environmental advocates took exception to the analysis. Circulate San Diego called on SANDAG in a formal letter to conduct a more nuanced study that looked at a more flexible time scale, stating: “If certain transit investments are feasible to advance, and others are not, then the feasible projects should be modeled to occur earlier than other investments.”

Given the agency’s power and reluctance to back an aggressive environmental agenda, it’s hard to predict what impact unions could have in this fight. Over the last 18 months, labor has taken major losses after doubling down on progressive candidates, such as San Diego City Councilmember David Alvarez, who lost a bid for mayor, as well as Democrat Carol Kim, who was defeated by Republican Chris Cate for San Diego City Council District 6.

At times, it’s almost appeared as if the labor council has been in free-fall since 2013, when state Assemblymember Lorena Gonzalez left her former position as the council’s secretary-treasurer. While there are myriad reasons for the labor council’s recent list of

labor CONTINUED ON PAGE 8 June 3, 2015 · San Diego CityBeat · 7

Up Front | opinion

divided state of

chad peace

america

Political parties have unfair advantages in campaign financing

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ne of the stranger San Diego political battles brewing for the 2016 season is a challenge to County Supervisor Dianne Jacob being mounted by fellow Republican Joel Anderson.

What makes this strange is that Jacob shows no evidence of political weakness. Her image of backcountry populism plays well with her East County constituents, and she has picked her fights carefully.

And let’s be honest, her real opposition is not Joel Anderson, the likeable Senator from East County’s 38th District. Her real opposition is the San Diego County Republican Party and the usual collection of characters that control the party’s organizational spending.

And why would the party take on one of their most respected and long-time public servants?

One reason, it seems, is that

Jacob got crosswise with this group when she voted to lower the limit on political contributions allowed to county supervisor campaigns by—you guessed it—political parties.

Throughout our country, political parties have a special right that no other individuals or organizations get: the ability to give substantially more money to political candidates, even in nonpartisan local elections. This partisan advantage has increased as spending limits have been imposed on individual citizens over the last several decades.

Another reality is that the small covey of political operatives who control local Republican spending are not particularly popular with Republican elected officials themselves, nor the vast majority of Republican voters who have no idea who actually runs “their” party. Few San Diegans likely

know, for example, that their local Republican leadership includes characters with questionable ties to international online piracy and hacking operations.

But, to their entrepreneurial credit, this cast of Republicans has recognized the business advantage afforded to political party corporations, and in turn, has seized control of the local Republican governance structure.

So, when Jacob and her fellow supervisors voted to put limits on political party spending, they landed a blow to the well-honed business model of the party’s controlling faction, one that is anchored by its ability to legally launder political contributions through the party.

When the limit to county supervisor campaigns was lowered recently, party corporate officers publicly opposed these changes as undemocratic infringements

on their free speech. What they were privately wound up about, however, was the loss of their special advantage to funnel contributions through the party, in order to avoid the limits on contributions made by individual citizens, as well as their ability to use the party organization as a mechanism to obscure the true source of those contributions.

Hard to miss the irony, right?

The same people who herald the benefits of personal liberty and individual freedom, benefit— politically and financially—from a political organization that derives power from government rules that limit the free speech rights of individuals.

But, to be clear, whether or not San Diego’s party insiders are “sketchy,” these brutes are simply running the same game that political parties all over the country operate, locally and nationally.

The targeting of Jacob simply puts a local spotlight on the root cause of our national political dysfunction. The Democrats, for example, who campaign against “corporate influence,” have written laws to give special exemptions to political parties and labor unions, which are private

corporations. They just happen to be their corporations.

It’s a sad irony that increased gamesmanship is an inevitable consequence of well-meaning election and campaign finance “reforms.” By limiting the free-speech rights of individuals to contribute and otherwise assist candidates who seek public office, we have driven political spending, and the candidate-selection process itself, into darker and darker circles.

This is because, like it or not, money will always find politics.

By giving political parties (corporations organized under section 527 of the IRS tax code) legal privileges that no one else gets, we have further shifted our election process from one designed to serve people into a more tightly controlled and calculated insider game.

Not surprisingly, individual citizens of all political beliefs and social backgrounds are the victims.

Not surprisingly, individual citizens of all political beliefs and social backgrounds are leaving both parties altogether.

Chad Peace is managing editor of the San Diego-based news website Independent Voter Network (IVN.us).

labor

CONTINUED from PAGE 7 political losses, the point remains that it hasn’t been experiencing its most triumphant movement.

Gonzalez’s chief of staff, Evan McLaughlin—who formerly severed as the labor council’s political director—said that union support for a green economy is nothing new.

“One of the things that has always been an objective of labor is to provide a voice that isn’t just relevant to union members but also to speak up for a better way of life for the entire workforce,” he said.

“Labor’s advocacy for achieving a higher quality of life for workers through accessible and efficient transit should be a part of that.”

Still, rhetoric from union officials has recently sounded convincingly more idealistic than calculating. Tom Lemmon, head of

8 · San Diego CityBeat · June 3, 2015

the San Diego County Building and Construction Trades Council, told CityBeat that in order to “do what’s right,” unions have to take risks.

“Clearly, if we’re going to stop global warming and try to neutralize our environment and try to keep it stable from where we’re heading, we’re going to have to make some changes,” he said. “I think when you’re building a freeway, you’re pushing a lot more dirt than you are when you’re building a railway, so some of my folks will be impacted.

“But, if you really do it right, and you’re building twice as much railway as you were going to build freeways,” he added optimistically, “it should balance out.”

Write to joshuas@sdcitybeat.com.

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Up Front | Opinion

Sordid

Edwin Decker

Tales

God gave us the drought because he hates gays, duh

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hatever the cataclysm, be it a tsunami, hurricane, pandemic or Kardashian family squabble, there’s always more than a few lunatics who like to say the disaster is God’s wrath against the LGBT community. The current drought is no different, with the likes of Bill Koenig from World Watch Daily, John McTernan of Defend and Proclaim the Faith Ministries and TruNews Radio’s Rick Wiles all preaching to their respective choirs that it’s the fault of gay people and/or abortionists.

Now, those of us who don’t have a wad of drying clay in the reservoir between our ears know this is ridiculous. But you really have to marvel at the level of ridicularity one must plummet to believe in the smiting concept. It’s outright amazing when you break it down. So let’s do break it down, you know, for fun.

I’m guessing most religious people—the moderate ones anyway—will agree that it is quite daft to believe that God proactively punishes or rewards certain behaviors. I’m not talking about the after life, where we supposedly will all be judged, but in the here and now, on Earth. Just a quick look at how many innocent children die prolonged, painful deaths from some horrible disease while as many predatory, Wall Street weasels live full, extravagant lives should disabuse of you that notion.

But hey, if you can’t concede that point, fine. I will concede it back to you. That’s because there are so many more levels of ridicularity here, that one is not needed. So let’s say The Almighty is an all-knowing, all-powerful, perfect being who proactively rewards the righteous and smites the wrongtious. Well what kind of creator would create a class of people with an un-ignorable sexual attraction to members of the same sex yet not want them to pursue that desire? Hard to imagine a benevolent deity being that cruel or making that big of a mistake, but I’m a reasonable sort of fellow. I’ll concede that point, too. So I’ll imagine, for argument’s sake, that God liked gay people at first, then changed his mind. I’ll imagine he created them without really understanding what it meant to be gay but found out one day when—while searching online for the documentary, Grizzly Man—stumbled onto a gay porn site.

Of course, it is doubtful that an infallible being would need to change his mind about anything, since infallible beings typically get it right the first time, but it is his prerogative. Thing is, couldn’t he just fix his queer problem without hurting anyone?

After all, it’s not their fault he doesn’t like the way he made them.

Ah, but what does that matter? I’m going to concede the point anyway. Because the next argument will show how devastatingly dysfunctional one’s brain must be in order to believe the smiting concept. Question: Why is there always so much collateral damage when God drop-kicks the wicked?

For instance, Hurricane Katrina not only injured

The Lord’s target group, but others as well: doctors, nurses, firemen, those Going-To-Church-EverySunday-Old-Ladies, social workers, people who donate money for new orphanage wings, and Bible study group leaders who have never once considered scissoring or sword-fighting. I mean, infallible, schmimfallible, God has all the aim of a wino trying to piss into a thimble.

But guess what? I concede that point, too. Because my final argument is plenty sufficient to show the level of idiocy it takes to believe this idiotica.

Dig this—in the last decade or so, religious monomaniacs have scapegoated homosexuals for a litany of hurricanes, earthquakes and tsunamis. Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell blamed them for 9/11. In 1983, Pat Buchanan said AIDS was God’s “awful retribution.” And now the drought. You name it, everything from natural disasters, to war, to plague, to the fall of empires are, according to some, the result of The Almighty’s outrage about gays.

And herein lay the fatuity. In order to believe this, you must believe that a deity who knows everything there is to know about everything, can’t seem to figure out that his smiting policy isn’t working. After hundreds of years of bombarding us with one anti-queer missile after another, we still have a shit-ton of queers. And, they’re thriving. We’ve got gays in the military, gays in government, gays in sports, gays in The Scouts, gays in gay parades, gays in marriages and, somehow, unbelievably, gays in the Church—bishops and priests— on God’s payroll! Clearly smiting doesn’t work. How does God not know that? Or, at least, why hasn’t one of his advisors clued him in: Advisor to The Lord Almighty: “Hey God, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about the California drought.”

God: “Sure, what’s up?”

ATLA: “Shit ain’t working, dude. They still got the gays.”

God: “All right, let’s try something else. How about a hurricane?”

ATLA: “Been there, done that.”

God: “We could do another flood. That’ll show ‘em!”

ATLA: “Yawn. Look, can’t you just snap your fingers and make them be straight?”

God: “Hmm, never thought about that. Do you think it will work?”

ATLA: “Well, you can try it on me.”

God: “Wait, what? You’re gay, too? [Thunder cracks]. I smite thee, I smite thee! May blood rain o’er your village for seven seasons and every first born male set adrift in a river of acid, and, uh-oh, here come the bumblebees!—followed by pain, despair, death, agony, pain death, dea . . .”

“

Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell blamed them for 9/11.

“

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Sordid Tales appears every other week.

Write to edwin@sdcitybeat.com.

June 3, 2015 · San Diego CityBeat · 9

Up Front | Food

by michael a. gardiner

the world

fare

Culinary words collide at Foodgarden Market

T

his article began its life as a pissing contest on Facebook. What started as a thread in which writer/blogger/TV personality Bill Esparza criticized the level of analysis in Thrillist.com’s article on the 16 best street-food cities in the world became a debate about what constitutes “street food.”

Esparza: If it’s not on the street, it can’t be street food.

Gardiner: If it’s street food at heart, it’s street food anywhere.

It’s a debate that comes into sharper focus with the opening of the Foodgarden Market at the east end of the Plaza Rio shopping center (Boulevard Rodolfo Sanchez Taboada in Tijuana’s Zona Rio district). Foodgarden is a shopping-plaza food court with the heart of a Singapore hawker center. It includes offerings from celebrity chefs: Javier Plascencia’s Erizo Baja Fish House & Market and Mexican TV chef Martín San Román’s La Rotisserie San Román; and upand-comers like La Justina chef Iker Castillo’s Meraki Cocina de Humo and promising (relative) outsider Don Zefe Cocina de Hogar.

Perhaps the Foodgarden dish that best captured the spirit of the place was the tostada de coliflor adobada (tostada of roast marinated cauliflower) at Meraki. A vegetarian dish with the satisfying textures and savory flavors of meat, it has a smoky, barbecue-like indulgence. The crowning touch was bits of cubed pineapple, an apparent reference to Northern Mexico’s version of tacos al pastor known as tacos adobado. It is an exuberantly creative dish.

Meraki’s octopus tacos were nearly as good, but Erizo’s take—“de la jefe” tostada—was even better. Featuring bits of tender octopus, a chipotle mayonnaise, tomato, avocado and pickled ancho chiles, it’s the theme of Baja-style mariscos (sea-

10 · San Diego CityBeat · June 3, 2015

food) taken to its natural extreme. Erizo’s verde de camaron—ironically enough, with an endorsement from Esparza on the posted menu (“green, mean machine”)—is a shrimp ceviche featuring a serrano, habañero and tomatillo salsa, avocado and red onion pickle. It’s at the other end of Baja mariscos: simple stuff, perfectly done.

Foodgarden also offers the French-based offerings of Martín San Román’s Rotisserie. The roasted leg of lamb is your best bet. And there is Don Zefe, to which chef Jose Rodrigo Figueroa has brought the “home cooking” from his La Carmelita food truck. Home cooking, that is, if your mom roasts pork belly to the point of a perfectly crisp skin and tender meat, serving it over lentils simmered soft but still retaining their shape.

And there are so many other things at Foodgarden. There are more restaurant options: other Mexican, Italian and Lebanese food options, for example. And there’s the Ciadely Helados paleta (Mexican popsicles) stand, La Casa del Queso cheese shop, a fresh vegetable shop, beverage options (adult and otherwise) and more.

Michael A. Gardiner

Meraki’s tostada de coliflor adobada In what came close to a point of agreement, Esparza said that gastro parks like Foodgarden are a “yuppie/hipster’s idea of street food.” He’s not all wrong. But what Foodgarden really is, ultimately, is a place where culinary worlds meet with the opportunity to exchange ideas and energy, and you get to taste them whether they’re street food or not.

The World Fare appears weekly.

Write to michaelg@sdcitybeat.com.

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Up Front | Food

by Ron Donoho Ron Donoho

Urban

Eats Quartyard is a whole-in-one

T

here aren’t many places I recommend for a dining experience where the game “corn hole” is prominently featured. You’re at least somewhat familiar with corn hole—a distraction that emigrated from the Midwest where folks toss bags (filled with corn, beans, plastic pellets, etc.) at an angled block of wood that has a hole drilled near the top end. It’s a safer, crowd-friendly version of horseshoes or lawn darts. I’m not sure which addiction came first, but lately I can’t get enough of corn hole, or the place where I’m honing my game, the relatively new East Village public space called Quartyard (1102 Market St.).

Built with Spartan, white, retro-fitted shipping containers, Quartyard is a pop-up park—a collection of places to eat, drink, play and relax on what used to be a neglected parking lot near a trolley stop.

The roughly 30,000-square-foot oasis includes a coffee shop, a sausage-centric restaurant, a full bar, lots of picnic tables, a stage area for bands and a fenced-off dog run.

Quartyard’s Meshuggah Shack Coffee Shop opens at 6 a.m. and delivers caffeine through a

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menu of drinks with names like El Kinky Nut, The Dude Abideth and A Steaming Hot Cup of Shut the F**k Up. Good morning, indeed. The shack’s décor is whimsical; note the back shelves that contain naked Barbie dolls sitting in a bobsled-style seating arrangement; a rag doll with its head cut off and Meshuggah Shack Coffee Shop replaced with a coffee cup; and the Polaroid of an old guy’s naked butt.

Food trucks (LouZiana Food, Tortally Tasty, That’s What Cheese Said) regularly line the Park Boulevard side of Quartyard. But the main eatery is S&M, an offshoot of University Heights’ S&M Sausage and Meat, the brainchild of Scott Slater (yes, the same eponymous owner of meatcentric Slater’s 50/50). S&M’s menu features heaping helpings of bacon, and a rotating mix of homemade sausages.

There’s something about eating a bratwurst sandwich at an outdoor festival, or a bustling art walk, that’s become second nature to me. Being at Quartyard has the same ambiance, so I reach for S&M’s brat topped with bacon-apple sauerkraut and whole-grain mustard.

You can scan through S&M’s craft beer list to wash down your sausage of choice, or you can walk over to the shipping container that houses the Quartyard Bar, run by Best Beverage Catering. They’re serving wine, beer and spirits, including locally distilled Old Harbor gin.

On any given Saturday or Sunday, Quartyard might be humming with pre-partiers filling up before a Padres game. The more the merrier, because the crowd is always chill, though, it does make for a longer wait to get a spot on the cornhole courts. First-world problems.

Urban Eats appears every other week.

Write to rond@sdcitybeat.com.

June 3, 2015 · San Diego CityBeat · 11

Up Front | Drink

cocktail

BY ron donoho

tales

erybody can be comfortable hanging out and having a few drinks,” he says.

There are two points Schmidt emphasizes when describing the Park&Rec drink offerings. The first is that they are not Infusing Speed at Park&Rec afraid of dessert cocktails. They’re doing a version of a milkshake/mudslide called The Slide (aged rum, coffee liqueur, cream and chocolate malt). uring the May opening party for “These can be taboo for bartenders,” says Park&Rec (4612 Park Boulevard), a freSchmidt.

“They tend to be messy to prepare.” quent guest from when the The other important factor behind location went by a different name the bar is technique that enhances points out a showerhead hanging speed. “Instead of taking the time to from the ceiling behind a bandstand. muddle drinks, we’re infusing liquor,” The showerhead was used during wet he says. An example is a tall and fizzy t-shirt contests when Bourbon Street drink called Dos Ojos. It’s cucumberwas one of the most popular gay bars infused tequila, lime, ginger and soda in University Heights. water.

There’s no talk of those contests “We do the infusing ahead of time,” continuing (we’re in a drought, folks) says Schmidt. “In the case of the Dos at the new Park&Rec, a product of Ojos, we soak tequila in the cucumber John Pani of ELE Collective (WayPark Bench cocktail for days. When you serve it, it’s the point Public, Hotel Vyvant) and partmost vibrant, fresh cucumber you’ve ner Andy Zlotnik. The wet-and-wild ever tasted.

And way faster to serve than any entertainment now comes served in a glass, via muddling.” crafty cocktails created by the Revelry Cocktail On weekends, Park&Rec is offering a Liquid Co. duo of Trevor Easter and Anthony Schmidt.

Brunch menu. Courtyard sippers include a Both consulting partners have worked at Noble Bloody Mary and Tony’s Margarita, each availExperiment and other notable bars around town; able with different takes on that ready-on-call Easter will continue pouring playful, classic cucumber-infused tequila. cocktails at Park&Rec for the immediate future.

Schmidt says the new cocktail menu is meant Write to rond@sdcitybeat.com. to be a catch-all. “This bar is a place where ev-

D

12 · San Diego CityBeat · June 3, 2015

#SDCityBeat

Up Front | books

The floating

library

by jim ruland

Lowbrow meets high concept in a collection of fictitious record reviews

I

f you love music, but the prospect of reading a collection of record reviews strikes you as a less-than-thrilling use of your time, Daniel Mahoney just might make you reconsider.

His new book Sunblind Almost Motorcrash, published by Spork Press, collects a series of imaginary record reviews by bands that don’t exist. (If this review was in an audio format, you’d hear the sound of a needle scratching a record here.) That’s right: the songs, records, bands— even the record labels—are all products of Mahoney’s prodigious imagination.

For example, in Mahoney’s review of Greasewood Park’s The Woman Inside My Head, he sings the praises of fictional vocalist Jed Winstone: “Fat guitar, solid drumming, and soaring violin sound timelessly goodtimey, while Winstone repeats his grievances reminding us of old lovers or any number of lovers we might have had kids with but somehow didn’t. Wounded and wasted, pissed off, pissed, and frustrated, this is what it sounds like when someone takes a swing at heaven.”

What appears at first blush to be a sendup of underground outlaw blues turns into the kind of screed one types through squinted eyes at three in the morning after getting unintentionally drunk and there are things that need to be said. Right. This. Minute.

Or, at least that’s how it was for me. When I was a record reviewer for punk rock zines like Flipside and Razorcake, I’d often find myself staying up late at night, drunk or high or gacked to the gills, a poor man’s Kickboy Face (who was a poor man’s Lester Bangs), pounding my sneering feelings into the keyboard. At times it felt as if the record review was the perfect format for surreptitiously shoe-horning declarations of love and loss and heretofore indescribable woe in 250-word blocks of copy, destined to be read by a handful of record fanatics and some very confused musicians.

Mahoney has been there, too, and he’s elevated the mostly thankless chore of finding new ways to say, “Guys you really need to check this out” into an art form.

“The results are nothing short of miraculous, and we are left strucken dumb, shaking our heads as if to say: This was not merely a symphonic woodstool, this was a velveteen polyphonic sofal assortment of microfine dronefibers exquisitely arranged.”

To get the joke, it helps to know that the band being discussed is precociously named sINTerval, and their latest opus is the not-so-promis-

#SDCityBeat

ing sounding Blandwave Vol 1, but every music magazine has its tribe of ultra earnest scribes who drink too much on deadline day and can be counted on to try and slip Joycean neologisms past the copy editor, such is their eagerness to make their mark as Sincere Young Men. (I don’t know why it’s almost always men who fall into this trap, but you can read “Portrait of the Record Reviewer as a Young Pitchfork Employee” every day on the Internet.)

Mahoney is at his most humorous when the genre is death metal. “After last year’s unrivaled metaldrone masterpiece, Maaaaaaa! Abaddon comes back again with a weighty doomic slew: Lock! Choke! Distort! Dead Black Monarch. This is Abaddon but Abaddon times a billion! More grimlore! More moss distortion esoteric overmoan, more tongue spoored corkscrew splutter. More deepblind shadows and blackrobed slow-mouthed murder vox.” One gets the sense that Mahoney could go on forever in this mode.

One of my few complaints with Sunblind Almost Motorcrash is that if there’s a joke to be had, Mahoney will go for it and one can’t help but wonder what the book would have been like if the faint, flickering narrative of the nameless reviewer had been developed along the lines of Joe Wenderoth’s Letters to Wendy’s, another masterpiece of neglected formats: the comment card.

Still, even though we’re squarely in the realm of make believe, Mahoney somehow manages to be spot on in his descriptions. Consider the following: “Heartbroken beautifully refined girl/ boy harmonies mixed with highspun guitar hooks allowing the lilting mystery of each song into further realms of caramelized suncrumble.”

Doesn’t that sound like the perfect description of a self-titled record by a band that deigns to call itself “Dandy Lions”?

Well, you don’t have to imagine because this beautiful, handmade book is accompanied by a cassette tape filled with real music by real bands that wrote and recorded real songs inspired by Mahoney’s fake reviews. Call it art imitating imitations.

Sunblind Almost Motorcrash brought me back to a time before record reviewing morphed into promotional content and was a form of ultrapersonal correspondence between people who shared the same secret language.

Write to jimr@sdcitybeat.com.

June 3, 2015 · San Diego CityBeat · 13

EVENTS

SHORTlist

ART

the

Three you have to see

COORDINATED BY

SETH COMBS

ADAM ROSEN

for people attending the event; finding new, cool businesses through their desire to discover new art,” says Adam Rosen, who’s been organizing Art Around Adams for the past eight years. “That said, I think that the diversity of attractions really sets it apart. It is not a typical vendor-heavy street fair that we see all too often.”

Can’t say we disagree.

There will be literally hunArt Around Adams dreds of performers in 17 performance areas all along Adams, from Oregon Street in Normal Heights to Vista Street in Kensington. More than 100 visual artists will display their work at dozens of “imNeighborhoods like North Park and Little Italy promptu galleries.” There will also be dozens of have a lot of cultural cachet. They also have an arts bands, semi-pro wrestling from Super Awesome event, walk or festival seemingly every other week. Showdown and a highly entertaining kid’s zone This means neighborhoods like Kensington and area. The Inslider food truck will be on hand for Normal Heights can be overlooked, but the burghs hungry folks, and there’ll be specials on food and along Adams Avenue are filled with some great drinks at neighboring bars and eateries. And don’t indie galleries, boutiques and eateries. That’s why worry about hoofing it. There will be bike valets in we love the annual Art Around Adams event. For select locations courtesy of Brooklyn Bicycles, as 12 years, a two-mile stretch along Adams is turned well as a “Comedy Trolley” service that will shuttle into a hodgepodge of art openings, concerts, foodie patrons around while a stand-up comedian cracks happenings and cultural performances. jokes. It all takes place Saturday, June 6, from “The idea is to create a sort of dual discovery noon to 8 p.m. artaroundadams.org

1

AROUND THE (ART) WORLD IN A DAY

2 COOL CLASSICAL

For more than seven years, nonprofit music organization Art of Élan has been all about exposing new audiences to classical chamber music in unique venues.

For their annual Crossfire series, Élan takes a mini-orchestra and combines it with decidedly non-orchestral musicians for a night of musical cross-pollination. For the latest show on Thursday, June 4, at The Glashaus in Barrio Logan (1815 Main St.), patrons can watch local multiinstrumentalist John Mailander and friends mix in elements of bluegrass and folk, resulting in a one-of-a-kind musical cocktail of banjos, mandolins, violins and cellos. The event begins at 6:15 p.m. with cocktails and food trucks. After checking out the artist studios, enjoy the concert, but stick around for an after-party with the musicians. Tickets are $15 for general admission (or $30 if you want a seat) and include one drink. artofelan.org

3

ALL’S FAIR

It’s time again to ride some rides, play some games and, best of all, stuff your face with a bizarre variety of deep-fried food. But wait! Is that batter-soaked, peanut-butter-filled pickle organic? This year’s San Diego County Fair features a Farm to Table Dinner at 4:30 p.m. on Saturday, June 6, which includes craft beer paired with arty courses such as crystallized basil and deconstructed bruschetta. And that’s just one event in a hip lineup for the annual food, music, rides and everything-in-between shindig at the Del Mar Fairgrounds (2260 Jimmy Durante Blvd). Kicking off Friday, June 5, the fair runs through Sunday, July 5. Tickets range from free for kids under 6, to between $8 and $15 for everyone else. sdfair.com.

COURTESY OF THE SAN DIEGO COUNTY FAIR

WILLIAM ZAUSCHER

Art of Élan’s Crossfire

14 · San Diego CityBeat · June 3, 2015

Per•spek•tiv at TPG2, 1475 University Ave., Hillcrest. Local street photographer Mikesumoto and artist Victor Villa present new works showcasing their aerial and linear perspectives. Opening from 5 to 10 p.m. Wednesday, June 3. Free. 619203-6030, tpg2.net HBarriofication at La Bodega Studios and Gallery, 2196 Logan Ave., Barrio Logan. A solo show from local painter Ricardo Islas whose work confronts the social issues Chicanos deal with every day. Includes a performance from Karlos Paez of the B-Side Players. Opening from 5 to 10 p.m. Saturday, June 6. facebook. com/Bodega619 Here Comes the Bride and Other Nightmares at Women’s Museum of California, 2730 Historic Decatur Road, Barracks 16, Point Loma. Artist Freyda Miller shows off her work that consists of a mix of photographic and sculptural work, both focused on women. Opening from 6 to 8 p.m. Thursday, June 4. 619-233-7963, womensmuseumca.org H8 // MFA Exhibition at UCSD Art Gallery, Mandeville Center, La Jolla. The annual UCSD MFA student exhibition will feature artwork by eight graduating students including Dominic Paul Miller, Julian Rogers, Angela Washko and more. Opening from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. Thursday, June 4. Free. uag.ucsd.edu Oikeiō sis at UCSD Visual Arts Facility Performance Space, 9500 Gilman Dr., La Jolla. UCSD MFA Candidate Michael Ano uses various objects to contemplate relationships between us and them, the provincial and cosmopolitan, the real and virtual, terror and beauty. Opening from 6 to 9 p.m. Thursday, June 4. Free. 858534-2230, visarts.ucsd.edu SDAI Fundraiser at Culture Brewing Co, 111 S Cedros Ave, Ste 200, Solana Beach. Local artist Jessica Siemens will showcase new oil paintings and CBC will donate 25 percent of its proceeds to the San Diego Art Institute. From 6 to 9 p.m.

Thursday, June 4. Free. 858-345-1144, sandiego-art.org Oceanside Art Walk at Downtown Oceanside, Pier View Way and Tremont St., Oceanside. Businesses throughout downtown Oceanside transform into galleries to showcase local art for the community’s June Art Walk. This month’s theme: Ode to Oceanside. From 6 to 9 p.m. Friday, June 5. Free. 805-704-7482, oceansideartwalk.org Deep Enough to Drown at UCSD Visual Arts Facility Gallery, Russell Dr. and Lyman Ave., La Jolla. A collaborative project by MFA candidates from UC Irvine and UCSD. Participating artists include Lucas Coffin, Maura Murnane, Patrick Shields and dozens more. Opening from 6 to 9 p.m. Friday, June 5. Free. visarts.ucsd.edu Sit Set at Brokers Building, 402 Market St., Downtown. An art exhibition concerning tables and chairs featuring the work of Madeline Sherry, Dan Camp, Billie Hamilton and many more. Opening from 7 to 11 p.m. Friday, June 5. Free. facebook. com/events/1582713248684184/ HSan Diego Comic Art Gallery Grand Opening at San Diego Comic Art Gallery, 2765 Truxtun Rd. Barracks 3, Point Loma. The new gallery devoted to comic book art opens its doors with an exhibit of the work of Kevin Eastman, the cocreator of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. From 5 to 9 p.m. Friday, June 5. Free. 858-270-1315, facebook.com/ events/1673488919547538/

San Diego County Fair

The Salton Sea at Culture Brewing Co, 111 S Cedros Ave, Ste 200, Solana Beach. Jessica Siemens will showcase

new oil paintings that she makes by taking photographs and then replicating those photos in a work of art. Opening from 5 to 9 p.m. Friday, June 5. Free.

858-345-1144, culturebrewingco.com 25 and Under Art Showcase at MCASD - Downtown, 1001 Kettner Blvd., Downtown. Join MCASD as they celebrate the top 25 finalists in MCASD’s 25 and Under Art Contest. Attendees can vote for their favorite artists and watch MCASD pick this year’s winner. From 1 to 3 p.m. Saturday, June 6. Free. 858454-3541, mcasd.org HSan Diego Dreaming at L Street Fine Art, 628 L St., East Village. An exhibit that focuses on individualized interpretations of the “California Dream.”

Artists include Rebecca Bauer, Ken Goldman, Mark Jesinoski and dozens more. Opening from 6 to 9 p.m. Saturday, June 6. Free. 619-231-6664, lstreetfineart.com Big Trouble in East Village at Basic, 410 10th Ave., Downtown. This onenight-only pop art show pays tribute to the cult classic, Big Trouble in Little China, and features dozens of local artists. Opening from 7 p.m. to midnight.

Tuesday, June 9. Free. 619-531-8869, thumbprintgallerysd.com HShades at Hess Brewing North Park, 3812 Grim Ave., North Park. A group art and photography show featuring 8 x 8 inch works from over 20 local San Diego artists, including Charlene Mosley, Jared Lazar, Brittni Leigh Cute and more. Opening from 6 to 10 p.m. Wednesday, June 10. Free. facebook.com/events/1441137776178980/

BOOKS Louise Mathews at Del Mar Library, 1309 Camino Del Mar, Del Mar. The San Diego author and retired Chief of Food Services for the San Diego Sheriff’s Department will read from her book, Jailhouse Cuisine. At 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, June 3. Free. sdcl.org W. Craig Reed at Mysterious Galaxy Book Store, 5943 Balboa Ave., Ste. 100, Clairemont. The bestselling author will sign and discuss his latest foray into nonfiction, Cold War III: How the U.S. Navy Can Defeat Putin and Halt Climate Change. At 7 p.m. Thursday, June 4. Free. 858-2684747, mystgalaxy.com Leah Thomas at Mysterious Galaxy Book Store, 5943 Balboa Ave., Ste. 100, Clairemont. The author will sign and discuss her debut YA novel, Because You’ll Never Meet Me, about two teenage boys who are isolated from society for different reasons.

At 2 p.m. Saturday, June 6. Free. 858268-4747, mystgalaxy.com Juliette Sobanet and Sarka-Jonae Miller at Warwick’s Bookstore, 7812 Girard Ave., La Jolla. The two local authors will be promoting their new romance novels, Dancing with Paris (Sobanet) and Between Heartbreak and Happiness (Miller).

At noon. Sunday, June 7. Free. 858-4540347, warwicks.indiebound.com Liz Fenton and Lisa Steinke at Warwick’s Bookstore, 7812 Girard Ave., La Jolla. The co-authors will present their newest work, The Status of All Things, a humorous novel that follows a woman attempting to change her life through social media status updates. At 7:30 p.m.

Monday, June 8. Free. 858-454-0347, warwicks.indiebound.com Paolo Bacigalupi at Mysterious Galaxy Book Store, 5943 Balboa Ave., Ste. 100, Clairemont. The author will sign and discuss The Water Knife, a near-future thriller about climate change and drought in the southwestern United States. At 7:30 p.m.

Monday, June 8. Free. 858-268-4747, mystgalaxy.com

H = CityBeat picks

#SDCityBeat

EVENTS

THEATER

T

ake Henry James’ short novel Washington Square, adapt it for the Lifetime (“Television For Women”) network, and you’d have something like Victoria Stewart’s play Rich Girl, now at the Old Globe’s Sheryl and Harvey White Theatre under the direction of James Vasquez. Well, at least the first act of the play, which has its teleplay way with the vagaries of the power-womanmother/wallflower-daughter relationship and the timeworn question of love vs. money. The second act of Rich Girl, a retelling of James’ story about a homely heiress with a tyrannical parent (in the novel, it’s a father), ramps up the drama and becomes much more absorbing.

The four-person cast is appropriately dominated by Meg Gibson in the role of a Suze Orman-typez, who is convinced her daughter Claudine (Lauren Blumenfeld) is being courted for her money by a freespirited but broke theater artist (JD Taylor). Credit the charismatic Gibson for the comic energy of Act 1 and the poignancy of Act 2. If you’ve read James’ novella or seen

HAnnie Barrows at Warwick’s Bookstore, 7812 Girard Ave., La Jolla. The bestselling author will sign and discuss her new novel, The Truth According to Us, about a spoiled senator’s daughter trying to make it on her own in ‘30s America. At 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, June 9. Free. 858-454-0347, warwicks.indiebound.com H.W. Brands at Warwick’s Bookstore, 7812 Girard Ave., La Jolla. The Pulitzer Prize nominee will present his newest work, Reagan: The Life, a book about, well, you can probably guess. At 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, June 10. Free. 858454-0347, warwicks.indiebound.com Nelson DeMille at Mysterious Galaxy Book Store, 5943 Balboa Ave., Ste. 100, Clairemont. The bestselling author signs and discusses his latest John Corey thriller, Radiant Angel. At 7:30 p.m.

Wednesday, June 10. Free. 858-2684747, mystgalaxy.com

COMEDY HThe Kids in the Hall at Balboa Theatre, 868 Fourth Ave., Downtown. The groundbreaking five-man sketch comedy troupe, discovered by SNL’s Lorne Michaels in the late ‘80s, are reunited and bringing their new live show to town. At 8 p.m.

Wednesday, June 3. $47. 619-570-1100, sandiegotheatres.org Eddie Izzard at San Diego Civic Theatre, 1100 Third Ave., Downtown. The iconic comic that John Cleese once called “the funniest man in England” stops by on his “Force Majeure” tour. At 8 p.m. Thursday, June 4. $44.50 619-570-1100, sandiegotheatres.org

DANCE HNew Directions at Mandell Weiss The-

#SDCityBeat

about a kids’ show songwriter who must undergo brain surgery. When A New Brain is good, as during moving tunes sung by Tom Zohar as the protagonist, Gordon Schwinn, and Sandy Campbell as his neurotic mother, it is very good indeed. When silliness intrudes, as it does on a few toocute numbers with props, A New Brain is just amusing. The ideal way to appreciate it as a whole is to imagine that everything on stage after Gordon’s dire diagnosis is in his head, scatterings of life and memory, joys and fears that sometime make no Meg Gibson (left), Lauren Blumenfeld sense. That’s the marvel of the brain. and JD Taylor in “Rich Girl.”

A New Brain runs through June 21 the stage/screen adaptation, The Heiress, at Diversionary Theatre in University you’ll know where Rich Girl is headed. Heights. $29-$51. diversionary.org How you feel when it gets there may de- —David L. Coddon pend on your affinity for Claudine, who, like her mom, can really get on your nerves. Theater reviews run weekly.

Rich Girl runs through June 21 at the Old Write to davidc@sdcitybeat.com.

Globe’s Sheryl and Harvey White Theatre OPENING: in Balboa Park. $29 and up. oldglobe.org.

Becky Shaw: The Pulitzer Prize-nominated “anti-roH H H mantic dramedy” about the dark side of blind dates.

Diversionary Theatre’s final performance Written by House of Cards writer and producer Gina of its 2015 mini-season, A New Brain, is an Gionfriddo, it opens June 5 at Patio Playhouse in Esambitious musical production (a cast of 10, condido. patioplayhouse.com more than 30 songs) that more often than Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill: Broadway vet not hits the right notes. Composer William Audra McDonald stars as Billie Holiday in this musiFinn (The 25th Annual Putnam County cal play based on one of the legendary singer’s last performances. Presented by Ion Theatre, it opens Spelling Bee) and librettist James Lapine June 5 at the URBN CNTR 4THE ARTS in Hillcrest.

(Into the Woods) wrote this 1998 musical iontheatre.com JIM COX

It’s love vs. money in Rich Girl

atre, UCSD, La Jolla. An exciting mix of dance, theater and interdisciplinary collaborations that highlights UCSD undergraduate choreographers. At 7:30 p.m.

Thursday, June 4 through Saturday, June 6. $10-$20. theatre.ucsd.edu Malashock Dance Student Showcase at La Jolla Country Day School, 9490 Genesee Ave., La Jolla. Students from the Malashock Dance School perform original works created by school faculty members, including Erica Buechner, Nikki Dunnan, John Malashock and more.

At 8 p.m. Saturday, June 6. $10-$15. malashockdance.org

FASHION Ines Di Santo Trunk Show at U.S. Grant Hotel, 326 Broadway, Downtown. Preview the Spring 2016 wedding fashion line of Ines Di Santo’s handmade bridal and evening gown collections. At noon Thursday, June 4 and 10 a.m. Friday, June 5. Free. 619-232-3121, inesdisanto.com

FOOD & DRINK Council Brewing’s First Anniversary at Council Brewing, 7705 Convoy Ct., Kearny Mesa. Anniversary beer and glassware will be available for purchase as Council Brewing rolls out two new house sours and additional surprises for attendees. From 2 to 9 p.m. Thursday, June 4, and 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Friday, June 5 and Saturday, June 6. Free. 858-5279438, councilbrew.com Beer & Sake Festival at Harrah’s Resort Southern California, 777 Harrah’s Resort Southern California Way, Valley Center. Local restaurants and breweries serve up tasty appetizers and a wide selection of beer and sake. The 13th annual event also includes art booths, a silent auction and raffles. From 7 to 10

p.m. Friday, June 5. $40-$120. 760751-3100, japan-society.org Duck Foot Brewing Grand Opening at Duck Foot Brewing Company, 8920 Kenamar Dr. Suite #210, Miramar. Patrons can choose from a variety of beers on tap and munch on food truck snacks. The first 25 to arrive will receive a limited edition gift.

From noon to 10 p.m. Saturday, June 6.

Free. 858-433-7916, duckfootbeer.com Microbrew & Craft Beer Festival at Pechanga Casino & Resort, 45000 Pechanga Pkwy, Temecula. Sample unlimited bites of Pechanga Chef chili cook-off tastings and dozens of craft beers from all over the world. From 1 to 5 p.m. Saturday, June 6. $50. 951-693-1819, pechanga.com

MUSIC HSunset Poolside Jazz Series at Westgate Hotel, 1055 Second Ave., Downtown.

Every Thursday starting June 5, jazz enthusiasts are invited to sway to the sounds of Southern California’s finest talents at the Westgate Hotel’s annual poolside festival.

See website for lineup and details. From 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. Thursday, June 4. 619238-1818, westgatehotel.com Mainly Mozart Chamber Players at Timken Museum of Art, 1500 El Prado, Balboa Park. Members of the Mainly Mozart Festival Orchestra perform the music of Igor Stravinsky, Ludwig van Beethoven and Felix Mendelssohn. A reception and curated museum tour will follow the performance. At 7 p.m. Thursday, June 4. $55$250. 619-239-5548, mainlymozart.org HCrossfire at Glashaus, 1815-B Main St., Barrio Logan. Art of Elan hosts this special show that fuses bluegrass and classical music elements. Performance includes a special appearance from local multi-instrumentalist John Mailander. At 6:15 p.m.

Thursday, June 4. $15-$30. artofelan.org

Lone Star and Laundry & Bourbon: Two one-act comedies that both take place in ’70s Texas. Presented by Different Stages, it opens June 5 at The Hall at Swedenborg Church. differentstages.biz Mulatto: Langston Hughes’ first full-length play tells the story of a southern plantation owner who refuses to recognize his bi-racial son as his own. It opens June 5 at Community Actor’s Theatre in Rolando. communityactorstheatre.com Gridlock: A world premiere reading of a new play

by Salomon Maya about a group of strangers that get to know each other a little too well during a traffic jam. Part of the San Diego Jewish Arts Festival, it happens June 6 at the Lyceum Space at San Diego Repertory Theatre. sdrep.org Sylvia: A comedic romp about a couple of emptynesters who adopt a dog only to find that their new pet causes them to confront underlying issues in their relationship. It opens June 6 at New Village Arts Theatre in Carlsbad. newvillagearts.org Motown the Musical: The hit musical that tells the true story of music mogul Berry Gordy, who founded the famous Detroit label that launched the careers of Marvin Gaye, Diana Ross, Michael Jackson and dozens more. Presented by Broadway San Diego, it opens June 9 at San Diego Civic Theatre. broadwaysd.com All Shook Up: A family-friendly musical comedy set in the ’50s about a stranger trying to expose a small town to rock ‘n’ roll. Music by, well, who else?

Opens June 10 at Moonlight Amphitheatre in Vista. moonlightstage.com

For full listings,

please visit “T heater ” at sdcit ybeat.com

Benny Green Trio at Athenaeum Music & Arts Library, 1008 Wall St., La Jolla.

Part of the Athenaeum’s Farrell Family Jazz Summer Series, Green is a jazz traditionalist known for his adherence to the hard-bop idiom of the 1960s. At 7:30 p.m.

Thursday, June 4. $26. 858-454-5872, ljathenaeum.org Valley Center Music Festival at Bates Nuts Farm, 15954 Woods Valley Road, Valley Center. The fourth annual fest features a Kansas City barbecue cookoff, a beer and wine garden, twelve bands on three stages, door prizes, silent auction and more. From noon to 7 p.m. Saturday, June 6. Free. 760-7492888, vcmusicfest.com Vinyl Junkies Record Swap at The Casbah, 2501 Kettner Blvd., Midtown. Vendors selling thousands of collectible and vintage records in all genres, plus DJs spinning throughout the day including Pall Jenkins, Tim Mays, Lou Niles and more. From 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, June 6. $3. 619-232-HELL, facebook.com/VinylJunkiesRecordSwap Mainly Mozart Festival Orchestra at Balboa Theatre, 868 Fourth Ave., Downtown. Conductor Michael Francis and pianist Jon Kimura Parker lead the Mainly Mozart orchestra through works by Mozart and Beethoven. At 7:30 p.m. Saturday, June 6. $25-$85. 619-570-1100, mainlymozart.org Spring Ovation Concert at Copley Symphony Hall, 750 B St., Downtown. Members of the San Diego Youth Symphony’s orchestras and wind ensembles will perform works by Glazunov, Tchaikovsky, and Gershwin, among others. At 7 p.m. Saturday, June 6. $10-$35. 619-235-0804, sdys.org Mainly Mozart Youth Orchestra at Balboa Theatre, 868 Fourth Ave., Downtown. The annual concert features each

of Mainly Mozart’s seven Youth Orchestra ensembles and a finale featuring the Advanced Orchestra and Festival Orchestra members. At 2 p.m. Sunday, June 7. $25-$85. 619-239-0100, mainlymozart.org Klezmer Summit North County at AVO Playhouse, 303 Main St., Vista. The San Diego Jewish Arts Festival’s musical celebration features The Divas of Klezmer, three popular klezmer performers who sing Jewish and Yiddish songs from the stage, streets and shul. At 2 p.m. Sunday, June 7. $10. 760-643-2888, moonlightstage.com Klezmer Summit: L’Dor V’Dor at Lyceum Theatre, 79 Horton Plaza, Downtown.

The 14th annual celebration of Jewish music features the acclaimed classical violinist, Rachel Barton Pine, as well as performances from fest favorites Yale Strom and Hot Pstromi. At 7:30 p.m. Monday, June 8. $18. 619-544-1000, sdrep.org Kalin and Myles at Del Mar Fairgrounds, 2260 Jimmy Durante Blvd., Del Mar. Part of the San Diego Fair’s Paddock Concert Series, the Northern California duo forge pop and hip hop into something they call “Hip Pop.” At 9 p.m. Wednesday, June 10. Free-$12. 858-755-1161, sdfair.com Peter Frampton and Cheap Trick at Del Mar Fairgrounds, 2260 Jimmy Durante Blvd., Del Mar. The legendary ‘70s rockers perform as part of the San Diego’s Fair’s Summer Concert Series. At 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, June 10. $10$74. 858-755-1161, sdfair.com

OUTDOORS Grunion Run at Birch Aquarium, 2300 Expedition Way, La Jolla. Observe hundreds of small silver fish ride the waves onto La Jolla beaches to spawn along with a pre-

EVENTS CONTINUED ON PAGE 16

June 3, 2015 · San Diego CityBeat · 15

EVENTS sentation by Birch Aquarium scientists.

Last one of the season. From 10:30 p.m. to 12:30 a.m. Friday, June 5. $12.50-$17.

858-534-FISH, aquarium.ucsd.edu World (Nearly) Naked Bike Ride at Evolution Fast Food, 2965 Fifth Ave., Hillcrest.

Join locals and others around the world for a 15-mile bike ride in the buff to peacefully protest motor vehicle pollution. At 2 p.m.

Saturday, June 6. Free. 619-550-1818, facebook.com/SanDiegoWNBR

PERFORMANCE HThinking Shakespeare Live! at Old Globe Theatre, 1363 Old Globe Way, Balboa Park. Old Globe Artistic Director Barry Edelstein offers a 90-minute exploration of a performer’s approach to Shakespearean language so audiences may easily understand the poetry of the Bard. At 11 a.m. Saturday, June 6. $10$15. 619-231-1941, oldglobe.org

SPECIAL EVENTS HWhat’s the Big IDEA? at SILO in Makers Quarter, 753 15th St., East Village.

Breadtruck Films and the San Diego Architectural Foundation will present a documentary about San Diego’s upper East Village area, followed by guest speakers and post-screening discussions. Refreshments provided. From 6 to 9:30 p.m.

Thursday, June 4. $30-$90. 619-7025655, sdarchitecture.org F1rst Thursday at Downtown Encinitas, South Coast Hwy 101 and Encinitas Blvd., Encinitas. Encinitas businesses stay open on the first Thursday of every month.

Features unique events, activities and freebies at dozens of shops and restau-

16 · San Diego CityBeat · June 3, 2015

rants. From 5 to 8 p.m. Thursday, June 4. Free. 760-943-1950, encinitas101.com Night of Beauty at The Loft Hair Design, 106 W. Grand Ave., Escondido. A social evening of beauty tips, freebies, cocktails and appetizers that benefits Dress for Success San Diego. The first 50 attendees will receive swag bags stuffed with premium products and lifestyle gear. From 6 to 9 p.m. Thursday, June 4. Free. 760-7415638, thelofthairdesign.com HThe Vintage Marketplace at The Oaks at Rainbow Park, 5157 5th St., Fallbrook. Shop for vintage home furnishings, jewelry, clothing, garden statuary and much more at this semi-regular marketplace. From 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Friday, June 5, Saturday, June 6 and Sunday, June 7. $5. 760-728-2303, thevintagemarketplaceattheoaks.blogspot.com Philippine American Celebration at Spreckels Organ Pavilion, Balboa Park. A celebration of Philippine art, culture, and history featuring traditional and contemporary Philippine music, dance performances, exhibitions, and hands-on activities. From noon to 9 p.m. Friday, June 5, 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Saturday, June 6, and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday, June 7. Free. bpc2015pac.com Friday Night Liberty at NTC at Liberty Station, 2640 Historic Decatur Road, Point Loma. The first Friday gallery and studio walk featuring open artist studios, galleries, live performances, shopping and entertainment throughout NTC’s Arts & Culture District. From 5 to 9 p.m. Friday, June 5. Free. 619-5739300, ntclibertystation.com HSan Diego County Fair at Del Mar Fairgrounds, 2260 Jimmy Durante Blvd., Del Mar. It’s time again to ride some rides, play some games and, best of all, stuff

your face with a bizarre variety of deepfried food. Through July 5. From 4 to 11 p.m. Friday, June 5. Free-$15. 858-7551161, sdfair.com Fire Expo and Demo Derby at Del Mar Fairgrounds, 2260 Jimmy Durante Blvd., Del Mar. A firefighting skills demonstration and demolition derby competition among firefighters from all over S.D. County. This popular event raises funds for The Burn Institute. From 4 to 8 p.m. Friday, June 5 and 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday, June 6.

Free-$12. 858-755-1161, sdfair.com HEnviro Fair and Locally-Grown Fest at Del Mar Fairgrounds, 2260 Jimmy Durante Blvd., Del Mar. This annual, daylong celebration of organic farming and sustainable living includes cooking demonstrations, booths with environmentally smart products, and talks from leaders in the field. From 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, June 6. Free-$14. 858-755-1161, sdfair.com Triton 5K and Festival at UCSD, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla. Run or walk the Triton 5K, a USATF-sanctioned 3.1 mile race through the UCSD campus. A post-race festival will feature live music, hands-on activities for kids, the Junior Triton Run, and a beer garden. At 9 a.m. Saturday, June 6. $10-$35. 858-246-1865, 5k.ucsd.edu HArt Around Adams at Adams Avenue, 4S Ranch. This 12th annual music and art walk extends over two miles and showcases numerous visual, music and performance artists with 100 businesses changing into impromptu art galleries and/or performance arenas for the day.

From noon to 8 p.m. Saturday, June 6.

Free. artaroundadams.org Evocative Literary Art Night at Trinitea Tea Hillcrest, 3865 5th Ave., Hillcrest. Author Josh Rutherford will

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EVENTS 4 p.m. Sunday, June 7. Free. sdncc. chambermaster.com

SPORTS Turista Libre: Tijuana Toros at San Ysidro Port of Entry, South of the pedestrian border crossing in Tijuana, Colonia Federal. Join Turista Libre and cheer on the minor league baseball stars of the Liga Norte de Mexico as they take on the Laguna Vaqueros. Round-trip transportation included. At 3 p.m. Saturday, June 6. $25. turistalibre.com

TALKS & DISCUSSIONS Are We Alone? at Calit2 Auditorium, Atkinson Hall, UCSD campus, La Jolla.

The final showcase of the Are We Alone? themed discussions, performances, and presentations that encourages students to ask fundamental questions about what it means to be human as individuals and as a species. From 5 to 8 p.m. Wednesday, June 3. Free. imagination.ucsd.edu

“Totally Fried” by Ken Goldman is on view at San Diego Dreaming, a group show opening from 6 to 9 p.m. Saturday, June 6 at L Street Fine Art (628 L St., Downtown). perform a theatrical reading from his book, Sons of Chenia. The night will also feature an art exhibit curated by Dolphin and Hawk. From 7 to 10 p.m.

Sunday, June 7. Free. 619-431-5120, dolphinandhawk.com

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RB Alive! Street Fair. The 27th annual fest in Rancho Bernardo features arts and crafts booths, food vendors, a kid’s zone and more. Takes place on Bernardo Center Dr. between Lomica Dr. and Bernardo Plaza Ct. From 10 a.m. to

Special Forum: Art and Culture at Warwick’s Bookstore, 7812 Girard Ave., La Jolla. Leaders of arts and cultural organizations like MCASD, Atheneum, ArtPwr! and more will briefly present an overview of their organizations and highlights from last year. Includes live music from flutists Elena Yarritu and Carlos Agular. From 6:45 to 8:30 p.m. Thursday, June 4. Free.

858-454-0347, warwicks.indiebound.com A Conversation with Wong Fu at Price Center Ballroom, UCSD, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla. The YouTube trio and UCSD alumni began making videos in 2003 and have amassed more than 2.5 million subscribers. Hear about

their rise to YouTube fame at this informal discussion. From 2:30 to 3:30 p.m.

Friday, June 5. Free. 858-246-0809, visarts.ucsd.edu Ikebana Demonstration at William Heath Davis House, 410 Island Ave., Downtown. Ikebana master Akiko Bourland and Linda Canada of the Japanese American Historical Society will discuss Japanese history and key techniques of this traditional Japanese art form. From 2 to 4 p.m. Sunday, June 7. Free. 619233-4692, gaslampfoundation.org HSuds & Science: What is Desalination? at Wavelength Brewing Company, 236 Main St., Vista. Grab a beer and listen to Dr. Dan Cartamil explain the science of desalination and the potential environmental impacts on the ocean and our shorelines. From 6:30 to 8 p.m.

Wednesday, June 10. Free. 760-8209283, rhfleet.org

WORKSHOPS Cook Gluten-Free: Summer Flavor Flours at City Farmers Nursery, 4832 Home Ave., City Heights. Explore the latest approach to gluten-free baking based on Flavor Flours, the most recent cookbook by famed baker Alice Medrich. From 1:30 to 4 p.m. Saturday, June 6. $15.

619-284-6358, cityfarmersnursery.com Photography 101 at Taylor Branch Library, 4275 Cass St., Pacific Beach.

A discussion of photography basics for folks with actual cameras (not just phones). Discussion topics will include shutter speed, aperture, ISO, proper lighting, zooming, and depth of field. From 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. Saturday, June 6. Free. 858-581-9934, pblibraryfriends.org

June 3, 2015 · San Diego CityBeat · 17

STACY KECK

Culture | Art

The Dreamers

Daniel and David Peña

D

aniel Peña was in a rut. The Chula Vista-raised photographer and video artist had moved to Tijuana a year and a half ago, but quickly became depressed. “It’s a big adjustment. Your parents won’t visit you. I went through a lot of shit,” he says.

Enter younger brother and illustrator David, who moved down a few months later. Daniel was already living in a multiunit artist complex called Mariposa Espacio de Arte across from the Casa del Túnel art center. Together, the brothers created a ground-floor gallery inside the apartment complex called Out Here. Located right along the border fence a few blocks away from the Otay Mesa crossing, they had their first group show, a mix of San Diego and Tijuana artists, in February. Most recently, they attracted a packed house for a show featuring San Diego artists Celeste Byers and Aaron Glasson.

The Peñas also commissioned Byers and Glasson to paint a mural on the border wall outside the gallery, and are looking to do the same with other artists on the whitewalls that separate the traffic and the pedestrian walkways along the border.

For them, it’s part of a larger mission to get the San Diego and Tijuana art scenes to intermingle. “We want more unity,” says Daniel. “We want artists from both scenes to interact and there’s been a lot of that at our shows.” facebook.com/outheremx

18 · San Diego CityBeat · June 3, 2015

The agitator PANCA

W

hen the Tijuana street artist known as PANCA debuted a 45foot mural of two women cannibalizing another woman in the sometimes stuffy confines of the San Diego Art Institute this past winter, some of the more, um, senior members of SDAI took issue.

Perhaps they didn’t apstacy keck preciate the demented, pop-surrealist-style caricatures that PANCA says are inspired by the “characters wandering around” the Tijuana streets, but they certainly couldn’t look away either.

“Tijuana shocked me and I couldn’t look away,” says PANCA, who grew up Paola Villaseñor, a “regular American kid” from Chula Vista who moved to Tijuana Out Here 10 years ago. “I made my life here because it was like a big visual playground just waiting to be discovered.”

Her murals can be found throughout the alleys and backstreets of her adopted home.

She’s preparing for an installation show in September at Low Gallery in Barrio Logan and another in Mexico City in October.

She’s also created a series of tshirts and clay figurines, and is working on a claymation series with help from her video artist PANCA’s new clay figures husband.

She even gives tours of her murals with help from Tijuana tourism company Turista Libre. Even with all the success, don’t expect her to move back to San Diego anytime soon. “I’m more comfortable being in the chaos then looking at it from ‘over there.’” aypanca.com

The activist

Dominic Paul Miller

T

o hear Dominic Paul Miller tell it, his current project has been brewing since 1998, when he visited a maquila in Ciudad Juarez, the border city near El Paso, Texas. Often set up by U.S. companies in free trade zones to take advantage of cheap labor, maquila factories became a topic that continuously fascinated and infuriated the sculptor and mixedmedia artist.

Miller says he chose UC San Diego to pursue his MFA so he’d be close to the border. “I hadn’t spent time in Tijuana before arriving here,” says Miller. “But I knew that my plan was to work in the context of the maquila industry along the frontier.”

Granted a Fulbright scholarship, Miller worked hands-on with Tijuana-based labor rights organization Ollin Calli and, in the process, commissioned factory workers to create a piece of art. The result is a 4-footby-6-foot work that combines 10 handmade graphical drawings into a singular piece entitled, “Diagrama de Dependencia,” which Miller will unveil during the MFA Graduate Exhibition 2015 at the UCSD University Art Gallery (opening June 4).

Even with the drawing completed, Miller says he plans to continue working in the labor rights workshops Ollin Calli provides to Baja locals. Back in the U.S., he’ll continue to bring attention to labor and border issues via his art. “It’s incredible how close it is, but completely invisible to us on the U.S. side.” dominicpaulmiller.com

“Diagrama de Dependencia”

The constructionists Collective Magpie

I

t was hard to miss the work of Collective Magpie when the Art San Diego Contemporary Art Fair opened this past November. While hundreds of artists inside the vast Balboa Park Activity Center politely hung their work in the confines of their respective cubicles, the artistic soul mates that make up Collective Magpie (MR Barnadas and Tae Hwang), were erecting a giant, one-story “ We i g h t l e s s GLOBOS rendering Lounge” made from the color-striped plastic bags that are prevalent in Tijuana markets. Needless to say, they stole the show.

Together since 1996, Hwang and Barnadas have always made it a point to present their interactive art pieces as a unit. That art has increasingly been more border-focused and while there’s not an overt agenda, their new project, GLOBOS, is certainly broad in scope. Working with the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego and the New Children’s Museum, the duo has held youth workshops in San Diego and Tijuana, to construct large, goldtissue-paper balloons that will be part of an NCM exhibition and then culminate in a dual-border, beachside launch of the balloons in 2016.

“This has been one of our most humbling experiences with an art project so far,” says Barnadas, when discussing GLOBOS and the kids workshops. “As we construct these balloons together, we share stories, ideas, and thoughts about the border. In this way, perhaps we make new meaning together with each other.” collectivemagpie.org To see more pictures and videos of these artists, go to sdcitybeat.com.

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Art Around Adams

Art Around Adams

Art Around Adams

Culture | Art

Seen Local here comes el sol

O

stacy keck

n a quaint, but otherwise gorgeous estate right off of Avenida Revolución in downtown Tijuana, Carlos Cisneros, who works under the name Elsoldelrac, spends most of his day in what appears to have once been a storage shed.

It actually still resembles a storage shed, and is cluttered with art supplies and projects that aren’t yet completed. It’s a typical artist studio, but what separates Cisneros is not just the sheer amount of work he’s producing, but how varied it is.

“I don’t know. I do everything. I just do,” says Cisneros, while fashioning a chair out of a bucket and a piece of wood for us to sit on during an interview. “I just make stuff with the stuff that I have.”

It’d be convenient to think that Cisneros’ youth (he’s 23) has something to do with being all over the place artistically, but by no means is he unfocused. He’s made fans in the local art scene primarily because you don’t know what he’s going to do next. Just as he finished a photography-and-collage series called #FUCKTHESOCIALSYSTEM for a group show in Mexicali, he was already working on a sculpture piece for a collective show in Joshua Tree.

“I have one more month left in school, but I don’t have anything left to do because I work so fast,” says Cisneros, who studies art at Universidad Autónoma de Baja California.

Growing up in Tijuana, Cisneros says art has been “the only thing I’ve thought about since I was eight or ten.” He used to sneak into his architect uncle’s office to use the paints. Over the years, he’s collaborated on a few murals and has painted his

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tag on many a street corner, but quickly moved away from street art to devote time to his more recent work. This include everything from conceptualiststyle found-art to abstract expressionism-inspired pieces using fermented jamaica (hibiscus) paste.

To hear him explain it, the #FUCKTHESOCIALSYSTEM series was a statement on forced breeding practices from the time of European conquistadors, and includes pictures of female and male genitalia surrounded by things like colored clothes pins and goldpainted chili peppers.

“People didn’t like that I had penises and pussies in there, but that’s what I want with my work,” says Cisneros. “I don’t care if you like it or you don’t, but you’re going to have it on your mind after you see it.”

Most recently, he worked with a collective he helped start called Boiling Process (boilingprocess.tumblr. com), which includes a dozen artists (six from Tijuana and six from L.A.), for a siteresponsive project called Joshua Treenial that features dozens of artists creating sculptural works that are Carlos Cisneros displayed throughout the High Desert region. The metal cactus sculpture he made now sits in his studio, and like a lot of the work compiled here, he says he’s not attached to it. He mentions that he falls in love so hard with whatever new piece he’s just completed, that he comes to not care at all about the ones that came before. Thus, he often uses or repurposes materials from previous pieces to create new ones. He scoffs at being called prolific, but does acknowledge that he has big plans. He rolls up his sleeve to show off the tattoo scrolled on his forearm.

“It’s Frida Kahlo. It says, ‘Pies, para que los quiero si tengo alas para volar?’ It means, ‘Feet, what do I need you for when I have wings to fly?’” elsoldelrac.com “NOPAL”

—Seth Combs

June 3, 2015 · San Diego CityBeat · 23

Culture | Voices

ryan bradford

well that was

awkward

The night I crashed Neil Diamond

T

he night I see Neil Diamond in concert is the first time I’ve ever wondered if I’ve inadvertently made a deal with the devil.

On the way to Valley View Casino Center, I pick up my friend, Kip, from Tiger! Tiger! He’s been celebrating a co-worker’s birthday. “I’m pretty lit,” he says.

We stop for more booze at Target across the way from the concert venue, because that feels like an American—and therefore Neil Diamond—thing to do. Kip talks about the facts he’s memorized from Neil Diamond’s Wiki page. “He’s sold more than 125 million records,” he says. “More than Bruce Springsteen. I would say that makes him at least one of the 10,000 richest people that’s ever existed.” We go with Jim Beam.

There’s a sign at Valley View that says: “Parking: $20.” That’s how they get you, I think, but roll up to the parking lot attendant anyway.

“Excuse me sir, is this parking for the concert?” I ask, as if unsure that I’ve arrived at the right massive amphitheater.

“Yes,” he says. Then, unprovoked and with a dramatic dash of covertness: “But don’t worry, wait here and I’ll get you in for free.” He turns his back to us and we wait. Minutes pass. I begin to say, “Excuse me,” again, certain that I misheard him.

Kip shushes me. Finally, the attendant moves the barricade. We drive to the far end of the parking lot and nestle between two large cars to pound the Beam.

“Why do you think he did that?”

“Maybe Neil gave explicit directions to let anyone under the age of 40 in for free,” Kip says. By this time, we’re on a first-name basis when talking about Neil. “I like how you used the old-person word for show,” Kip says. “Concert.”

No one is standing outside the venue. The muted bass emanating from the looming arena exposes our lateness; Neil is a punctual starter. We see a guy exit a side door, which remains open.

“Let’s go in there,” Kip says.

“I have press creds,” I say. There’s no need to sneak in, but the distance between this side door and the main entrance is, like, 100 extra steps, so the protests die on my tongue. We enter. Nobody asks for tickets. There’s a woman standing at the entrance to the stadium (and only now am I connecting Valley View’s layout of interior rings with Dante’s Inferno), and I’m certain she will ask for tickets.

“Is this will call?” I ask, not really aware that my eyes are doing the point-in-different-directionthing that happens when I drink whiskey.

“C’mon,” Kip says, pushing me past her, into the lounge, before I can narc us out any further.

The lounge is an exhibit of sad sacks whose significant others are in the stadium, enjoying Neil— who we haven’t yet seen and whose music has become a foreboding background soundtrack to the

evening that has afforded us so much access. And it’s that moment when I first consider our inadvertent deal with the devil.

Only the devil would allow the sole night where everything goes my way to occur at a Neil Diamond show.

Just then, two dudes and a lady enter the lounge, each wearing a homemade Neil Diamondstyle, silk shirt. The lady’s shirt has “ND” bejeweled across the back, off-center. Another shirt has tiny red pom-poms glued on, formed into a heart and located over a couple lines of pebbles. “Love on the rocks!” the dude says, and then: “These rocks are from my driveway. I picked each one out of my shoe.” I’ve never seen anyone so stoked to be adorned with detritus.

We finish $12 beers and—in the fashion of the evening—we’re ushered into the stadium. I make eye contact with security, and he nods.

Right this way, good sirs. Neil breaks into “Cherry, Cherry.” Excited fans rush past. Kip pushes me forward.

We end up a mere 30 feet from one of the 10,000 richest people who’ve ever existed.

On stage, there’s a giant, diamond-shaped screen behind the band, because of course there is.

There are also two stands for his water glasses. The secondary one is located at the back near the drums, which is useful for when he walks around, introducing his band. He needs that hydration after shimmy-traversing the stage to “Cherry, Cherry.”

One hundred twenty-five million records and two fucking water glass stands. I cannot shake this fact.

The song ends. He goes into a slow jam and the crowd moves back to their seats. We don’t have any so we go to the back and sit on the floor. Security guards allow us to do this because there’s a guy near us, wobbly-drunk and pinching the bridge of his nose to ease the spins. Kip talks loudly about how Neil looks like his landlord and the drunk guy tells us to “keep it down.”

I’ve never been shushed at a concert before.

When the synth violins of “America” start, an American flag fills the diamond screen, and that’s how we know that the terrorists haven’t won.

“This is, like, the least punk thing ever,” Kip says.

“Sweet Caroline” plays and old folks dance in the aisle. It’s sweet.

The show ends at 10:30. There is no encore. Kip buys a “Honk If You Love Neil Diamond” bumper sticker, which I kind of just want to stick to a piece of paper and turn in for this column.

“You know, we could’ve killed Neil Diamond tonight,” Kip says, afterwards, in my car. “We were that close.”

“

I’ve never been shushed at a concert before.

“

24 · San Diego CityBeat · June 3, 2015

Well That Was Awkward appears every other week.

Write to ryanb@sdcitybeat.com.

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Culture | Film

God only knows The genius and torment of Beach Boys legend Brian Wilson

by Glenn Heath Jr.

Y

oung Brian Wilson (Paul Dano) doesn’t like the limelight. He’d rather be left alone to write Paul Dano as Brian Wilson in Love & Mercy music while his fellow Beach Boys tour the globe, party with groupies and claim the fame. Older of close contact intimidation, much like Hou HsiaoBrian Wilson (John Cusack) doesn’t know which way Hsien’s insanely dense Millennium Mambo. Pohlad is up. He’s confused and medicated thanks to a de- spends a lot of time pinning Wilson’s body to the side bilitating drug regimen prescribed by the domineer- of the frame, giving us the sense that free will is no ing Dr. Eugene Landy (Paul Giamatti). One would be longer an option for this man.

Wilson’s scenes with Landry stand out as partichard-pressed to guess these are the same men.

A biopic split in two, Love & Mercy doesn’t try ularly scary. There’s something about the way Giato explain the expansive history in between these matti uses his entire frame to dissuade courage and separate events unfolding in the 1960s and 1980s, re- strength in other people, soaking in their energy for spectively. Instead, director Bill Pohlad weaves the his own gain. The moment Melinda breaks free of experiences together with the help of a soundtrack this spell is one of the film’s finer moments.

Despite its overall strong performances, Love & littered with popular hits. Thematically, each portion surveys Wilson’s ongoing attempts to break free of Mercy doesn’t always add up to a convincing whole. creative limitations and psychological abuses that are Certain scenes stand out as particularly profound, like the long take circling around as all encompassing as the voices young Brian as he performs raging in his head.

“God Only Knows” for the first love & mercy In the early goings, The Beach time before ending on the disBoys are seen doing promotions Directed by Bill Pohlad approving look of his wretched on sandy locales, performing for Starring Paul Dano, John Cusack, and spiteful father. The devaslive studio audiences, and paradElizabeth Banks, and Paul Giamatti tating conversation they have ing around in snappy sun wear.

Rated R after such a lovely song hints at Considering how hollow it all the striking lineage between anfeels, this could easily be mistaken ger and joy that defines Wilson’s as B-roll footage from Gidget. Brian is the obvious outsider living uncomfortably within this bubble of pop creative spirit.

Still, by the time the credits roll there’s a distinctly culture grandstanding. He attempts to regain control by moving forward with an audacious new album en- artificial vibe to how everything plays out for Wilson. titled Pet Sounds, much to the chagrin of his overbear- Unlike the 1960s segment, which has a beguiling undercurrent of surrealism and deep conflict, the tepid ing father and more conservative bandmates.

Flash forward a few decades and Wilson, as 1980s portion dominates the latter half of the film played by a comatose Cusack, meets a charming car since it represents the character’s redemption.

Love & Mercy, which opens Friday, June 5, might saleswoman named Melinda (Elizabeth Banks). The two take an immediate shine to one another despite not be a great biopic (they can’t all be Saint Lauthe omniscient and menacing presence of Landy and rent), but it has enough virtues to warrant attention, his goons. The narrative arc is less interesting here specifically Dano’s entranced performance. In his since there’s little mystery to Wilson’s creative pro- skittish eyes we see the duality of pop genius and cess, only the repetitive nature of rote melodrama the lengthy tumult that enabled such vision to be so pronounced. It’s shocking to consider this is the that has a predetermined ending.

The overt presence of mental abuse dominates man who wrote “Good Vibrations.” But that’s Brian both sections. Brian’s facial expressions and body Wilson for you. language seize up whenever his father or Landy Film reviews run weekly. come into frame. Love & Mercy respects the power Write to glennh@sdcitybeat.com.

Aloft lands with a thud

I

f you enjoy falcons, spirituality and serious performances from Jennifer Connolly, Aloft might seem—on paper—like the perfect film. Alas, Claudia Llosa’s mind-numbingly bad drama about a family ripped apart by tragedy and cowardice insults the potential cinematic value of all three. That’s pretty impressive by any critical standard.

In the early goings we see Nana Kunning (Connelly) traversing the windswept tundra of Northern Canada following

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a mystic named The Architect (William Shimell).

Her youngest son is ill and there’s hope he can be healed if given the proper New Age treatment. Eldest son Ivan is just along for the ride, resenting every minute he has to spend away from home.

Good thing he brought his pet falcon.

Llosa then jumps forward to adult Ivan (now played by the brooding Cillian Murphy) who’s approached by a French journalist (Melanie Laurent) hoping to get the

Aloft scoop on his now estranged mother. Nana has attained infamous shaman status (I’m not making this shit up) after disavowing her family and

aloft CONTINUED ON PAGE 26 June 3, 2015 · San Diego CityBeat · 25

aloft CONTINUED from PAGE 25 dedicating her life to the cause.

Various levels of convoluted drama proceed.

With its dual narrative unfolding simultaneously in such a heavy-handed fashion, Aloft lends even the smallest event a cataclysmic potential. Llosa often obscures plot information in favor of long passages of sulking and wandering, making good on the quote spoken by Nana late in the film: “Right now, everything is incomprehensible.”

Faith, beauty and regret are

Opening themes given obvious symbols throughout (Birds are majestic people!). Familial evolution and trauma hide under the various levels of snow pack. Llosa addresses these potentially complex ideas with the subtle touch of a jackhammer.

Despite being one of the worst films to come along in ages, Aloft does spawn an entirely new and unnecessary genre: Fowl miserablism. Put that feather in the cap.

—Glenn Heath, Jr.

Aloft: A conflicted single mother turned mystic must come to grips with the decisions she makes that will affect her children well into the future.

Entourage: The popular HBO show about a movie star and his childhood friends making it big in Hollywood gets the bigscreen treatment. Opens wide Wednesday, June 3.

Insidious: Chapter 3: Round three in the ongoing battle between white suburbia and the supernatural hereafter. Go! Love & Mercy: Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys gets the biopic treatment in a story that covers pivotal moments in the 1960s and 1980s. Starring Paul Dano and John Cusack.

Spy: Melissa McCarthy steps out from behind the desk and into the field in this spy comedy from director Paul Feig (Bridesmaids).

When Marnie Was There: The latest animation from the legendary Studio Ghibli tells the story of a shy young girl who meets the young occupant of a mysterious mansion. Opens Friday, June 5, at the Reading Gaslamp Cinemas.

One Time Only The Spectacular Now: A teenage alcoholic (Miles Teller) romances a fellow student (Shailene Woodley) and then realizes the difficulties of hatching a relationship. Screens at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, June 3, at the San Diego Public Library in East Village.

Almost Famous: A young rock journalist gets his first taste of the business in this great dramedy from Cameron Crowe.

Screens at 8 p.m. Wednesday, June 3, at The Pearl Hotel in Point Loma.

It Happened One Night: A reporter looking for a story stumbles upon a runaway heiress in Frank Capra’s classic screwball comedy. Screens at 8 p.m. Thursday and Friday, June 4 and 5, at Cinema Under the Stars in Mission Hills.

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off: Sometimes you just need to get away. Matthew Broderick’s iconic high school hero taught this important lesson to an entire generation of teenagers. Screens at 8 p.m. Saturday, June 6, and Sunday, June 7, at Cinema Under the Stars in Mission Hills.

Selma: This gripping biopic on a seminal moment in the career of Martin Luther King Jr. (played by David Oyelowo) chronicles his campaign to secure equal voting rights by marching from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama in 1965. Screens at 6:45 p.m. Monday, June 8, at San Diego Central Library in East Village, preceded by a free concert of Gospel Songs by the Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Choir of San Diego at 6 p.m.

Fracture: Ryan Gosling plays a young ambitious attorney hoping to gain notoriety, and finds an unlikely opponent in the criminal he is trying to prosecute. Screens at 6 p.m. Tuesday, June 9, and the Point Loma / Hervey Branch Library.

Caddyshack: Chevy Chase wreaks havoc at an exclusive golf course that is also being destroyed by a dancing gopher.

Screens at 8 p.m. Wednesday, June 9, at The Pearl Hotel in Point Loma.

now playing 24 Days: A young Jewish man is kidnapped for ransom in Paris, leaving his parents in a grip of fear as the police try to negotiate with the anti-Semitic perpetrators. Screens through Thursday, June 4, at the Digital Gym Cinema in North Park.

Aloha: Cameron Crowe tries to resuscitate his career with this long-delayed (not a good sign) drama about a military man based in Hawaii trying to rediscover love.

17th Annual San Diego LGBT Film Festival: Presented by FilmOut San Diego, this three-day film festival showcases the best in LGBT content, provides Q&As with filmmakers, and hosts engaging discussions about relevant social issues. Runs Friday, May 29, through Sunday, May 31, at The Observatory in North Park.

San Andreas: “What a disaster.”

—Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.

The Apu Trilogy: Pather Panchali (1955), Aparajito (1957) and The World of Apu (1959) make up this stunning cinematic achievement from one of India’s greatest filmmakers, Satyajit Ray. Screens through Thursday, June 4, at the Ken Cinema.

26 · San Diego CityBeat · June 3, 2015

The Seven Five: In the drug-riddled landscape of New York City in the 1980s, a group of corrupt cops take advantage of the chaos. This documentary tells their story. Screens through Thursday, June 4, at the Digital Gym Cinema in North Park.

In the Name of My Daughter: André Téchiné’s melodrama is set in the South of France and follows the sordid relationships of a casino owner (Catherine Deneuve) and her daughter.

Poltergeist: In this remake, the youngest daughter of a suburban family is captured by ghosts, leaving her family scrambling for ways to rescue her.

The Hand that Feeds: This documentary follows deli employee Mahoma López and his co-workers as they rally together to fight for fair wages and improved working conditions against their ruthless employer. Screens through Thursday, May 28, at the Digital Gym Cinema in North Park.

Tomorrowland: George Clooney and Britt Robertson star in Brad Bird’s space adventure about a young girl who finds a ring that opens up an alternate universe.

The 100-Year-Old Man Who Jumped Out the Window and Disappeared: An elderly man escapes his nursing home immediately before his 100th birthday hoping to rekindle his sense of adventure.

Opens Friday, May 15, at the Reading Gaslamp Cinemas.

Felix and Meira: Two lost souls attempt to find a romantic connection despite the obstacles presented by the neighborhood they inhabit.

Mad Max: Fury Road: George Miller’s infamous policeman-turned-road-warrior returns to the big screen in what looks like one long bonkers chase through a dystopic desert. Tom Hardy reprises the role made famous by Mel Gibson.

Saint Laurent: A strange and beguiling biopic about the famous French fashion designer, Yves Saint Laurent, portrayed with unflinching vulnerability by Gaspard Ulliel. Bertrand Bonello directs.

About Elly: While on a picnic in the north of Iran, a kindergarten teacher disappears, leaving her friends distraught with panic. From director Asghar Farhadi (A Separation).

Black Souls: Based on Gioacchini Criaco’s novel of the same name, this gripping mafia tale explores the tension and conflict between three brothers fighting for control of an Italian crime family.

Far From the Madding Crowd: Carey Mulligan and Matthias Schoenaerts star in Thomas Vinterberg’s adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s sweeping romance about a fiercely independent woman who struggles to choose between three suitors.

Hot Pursuit: An uptight cop played by Reese Witherspoon tries to protect the vivacious widow of a Mexican drug boss while being pursued through Texas by a collective of bad guys..

Noble: A feature film based on the true story of Christina Noble, an Irish children’s rights campaigner who traveled to Vietnam to make a difference.

Welcome to Me: A psychotic woman (Kristen Wiig) wins the lottery and decides to stop taking her meds and creates her own talk show. Opens Friday, May 8, at the Reading Gaslamp Cinemas.

For a complete listing of movies, please see “Film Screenings” at sdcitybeat.com under the “Events” tab.

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June 3, 2015 · San Diego CityBeat · 27

Music

shawn brackbill

the end of violence Ceremony sheds a hardcore mantle

by JEFF TERICH From left: Andy Nelson, Jake Cazarotti, Ross Farrar, Justin Davis and Anthony Anzaldo

H

alfway through a phone interview on a The L-Shaped Man is both the band’s most accessible May evening before his band heads out on tour, album, as well as the one that least resembles their earCeremony guitar player Anthony Anzaldo grows liest songs. It’s an album that bears almost no trace of ponderous. I’ve asked him whether he still feels hardcore. And the process of making it—and by extension, letting go of old habits—presented one of the biggest chalthe same connection to hardcore that he did when the band first started 10 years ago, in Rohnert Park, California. lenges the group has encountered.

He takes a moment before fleshing out his thoughts.

The L-Shaped Man is the “hardest, longest and most “That’s an interesting question,” he says. difficult thing the band has ever done,” Anzaldo It’s easy to understand his hesitation. says. “Songs we’d written in the past were a lot When Ceremony—which comprises Ansimpler. There’s not much to them. They’re zaldo, vocalist Ross Farrar, guitarist Andy just kind of one-dimensional. When you Nelson, bassist Justin Davis and drummer venture into this kind of music, and the Jake Cazarotti—released their debut alway Ross sings, there’s a lot less room for June 13 error. So there’s a lot more time spent writbum, 2006’s Violence Violence, they were Soda Bar ing and recording. There was just a long, a hyper-aggressive punk band, cramming long process.”

20 one-minute-long explosions of angst ceremonyhc.com Ceremony have embraced space and nuand distortion into one album. But over time, ance in a big way. More heavily influenced by that band has slowly evolved, and transformed post-punk bands like Joy Division and Echo and into one that barely resembles that team of young, reckless brutes. On their 2012 album Zoo, which was their the Bunnymen, The L-Shaped Man is more about melody first for long-running indie outpost Matador, they toned and atmosphere than uncompromising energy. It’s also down the heavier elements in favor of a more melodic, the band’s most melancholy album, informed heavily by garage-rock approach. And three years later, they’ve the end of a relationship Farrar was in. Suffice it to say, pushed even farther into slower, subtler sounds with The Ceremony eased off on the brawny power chords on this L-Shaped Man, released last month via Matador. one. In fact, the first song on the album—the slow, sad lul-

CEREMONY

28 · San Diego CityBeat · June 3, 2015

laby piano “Hibernation”—doesn’t even have any guitars.

And once those guitars do enter the frame on tracks such as “Exit Frame” and “Bleeder,” they’re less distorted, and more heavily treated with other effects, such as reverb, chorus or delay.

When it came time to record the album, the band retreated to CityBeat’s own backyard to work with producer John Reis, who the band met in 2013 when they played a show with Rocket from the Crypt in San Francisco. Farrar and Reis traded contact info to try and coordinate working on a project together, but it took a bit longer than expected for those plans to come together.

“Ross texted him, and John texted him back a year later,” Anzaldo says. “He was like, ‘I’m sorry I’ve been really busy, but I’d love to do it!’

“Before we recorded it, we went down to San Diego— don’t know if you’ve heard of it. Small town south of Los Angeles,” he adds, with an implicit wink. “We practiced in his home studio for four days. He essentially joined the band when we were kind of woodshedding all these songs. He really pushed us to make these songs a lot better. Some of them changed, drastically into different songs. Some of them are subtle, but really important changes. So his approach is very much songwriting-oriented. And...this was our first time recording live—all of us in one room.”

With as many stylistic changes Ceremony has gone through over the past decade, Anzaldo notes that the band itself hasn’t changed much outside of their sound.

They’re staying in hotel rooms instead of on people’s floors, and they’re selling more records than they did when they began, but their operating procedures and creative partnership is essentially the same as it has been since the beginning.

When Anzaldo does finally get around to reflecting on his relationship with hardcore, he’s quick to acknowledge its importance, both personally, and in terms of his band’s history. But after a decade of playing music with Ceremony, he’s also ready to admit that hardcore represents just one chapter of the band’s history. Whatever expectations may follow them, they’re going to keep making the music they want to make.

“We’re not just a hardcore band, and the music that we make isn’t hardcore anymore,” he says. “I think that our sound has been changing since the band started. If no one likes it, and no one cares, then drag. Maybe we might not be able to do more, but oh well.

“But it’s my favorite record we’ve ever done,” he adds.

“So what does that tell you?”

Write to jefft@sdcitybeat.com To hear a track, go to sdcitybeat.com and

search for “Ceremony”

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June 3, 2015 · San Diego CityBeat · 29

Music

notes from the smoking patio Getty images

Locals Only

A

local offshoot of the international Make Music Day (which takes place in 700 cities worldwide), Make Music San Diego will hold its inaugural festival on June 21 in Balboa Park.

The idea behind the festival is to bring people together to make music, with an emphasis on participation rather than spectatorship.

You can just watch if you want to, but the festival is planned around a series of group performances in which the audience is encouraged to take part.

Make Music San Diego director Andy Horwitz took on the role of planning the festival after moving to San Diego from New York, where he curated and produced the free River to River festival, which coincided with Make Music New York. After relocating, he wanted to bring a similar experience to San Diego.

“This is our first year doing it,” he says. “I’m hoping it’ll become an annual thing. The first year, we’re going to construct it...around bringing people together, and just figure out, ‘How does that look?’

There’s still a lot of room for expansion.”

The festival includes a series of “Mass Appeal” events, in which people can join in on a bluegrass jam, a group harmonica performance or a Mariachi group. There will also be several satellite events,

A “Mass Appeal” event from Make Music New York which will be held throughout the city. Each event will be unique to San Diego’s character.

“Our priority for the festival is to reflect the depth and breadth and diversity of the culture in San Diego,” Horwitz says. “It’s a culturally complicated, rich city. That’s what we want to celebrate.”

The schedule is still being finalized, but the participatory “Mass Appeal” events have already been scheduled and are ready to go for those who want to join in.

“If you just show up, and want to play ukulele or bluegrass, you can come do it,” he says. “There’s lots of stuff for people to do.” makemusicsd.org —Jeff Terich

ALBUM REVIEW Ultragash Is This Love or Confusion? (Self-released)

T

he first song on Ultragash’s Is This Love or Confusion? is titled “Space Oddity.” And yes, it is indeed a cover of the famous David Bowie ballad from 1969. But outside of the title, this isn’t a fact that becomes immediately apparent for at least a good 45 seconds into the song. It bristles and throbs with harrowing blasts of distortion and static. It’s chaotic and tense and messy, and it’s not until Brennan Gervasi, the sole artist behind Ultragash, sings “Ground control to Major Tom,” that it’s obvious or even halfway apparent that this the “Space Oddity” and not just a song of the same name.

Throughout the new album, Gervasi makes entry points into his confrontational and sensory-overloaded electro-psych both challenging and elusive. By putting a familiar song at the beginning of the album—even if it’s not necessarily recognizable in the form that Gervasi presents it— Ultragash does the listener a solid. Things are about to get out of hand soon, and it helps to have something comforting there to anchor this excursion into manic digital punk.

30 · San Diego CityBeat · June 3, 2015

Challenging as Is This Love or Confusion? might be, it’s also a thrilling listen. This has almost everything to do with Gervasi’s ability to turn a blustery storm of distortion and noise into an unexpectedly compelling melody with the flick of a wrist.

His songs are alternately immediate and impenetrable, sometimes at the same time. “Beautiful Cannibal” juxtaposes thudding electronic beats with a nursery-rhyme chant in a way that comes across like a schoolyard version of Death Grips. Meanwhile, on “Home to the World,” it’s Gervasi’s own nervous yelps that immediately serve to put the listener on edge, while the impending explosion of bass and beats are ultimately what turn the song into an absolute banger.

It’s hard to figure out where, exactly, Ultragash’s music fits.

It’s not rock music, but it certainly thrashes and throttles. It’s not really dance music, either, but in his best moments, Gervasi has what it takes to get asses moving. Ultragash’s music doesn’t always make sense; that’s what makes it so damn exciting.

—Jeff Terich

Write to jefft@sdcitybeat.com.

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Music

Jeff Terich

If I were u A music insider’s weekly agenda Wednesday, june 3

is one of the greatest metal bands to come up in the ’90s, and their album Odd Fellows Rest is one of the best melodic sludge albums you’re likely to hear. It’s slow, it’s raw and it’s amazing. PLAN B: “June Gloom” w/ Innerds, Tron, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Self Esteem, DJ Operating Thetan @ The Hideout. Sam Lopez has really been ramping up the Stay Strange events lately, and fans of dark, leftfield music should take note. This one is loaded with some gnarly electronic bands that’ll make your Thursday evening weirder, and therefore better.

BACKUP PLAN: The Rentals, Rey Pila, Radiation City @ The Irenic.

PLAN A: Royal Thunder, Wild Throne, Beira @ The Hideout. Read my feature on Royal Thunder (search the band name on sdcitybeat.com) to learn more about this Atlanta band, which went through some big personal and stylistic growth for new album Crooked Doors. They’ve evolved into a hell of a rock ‘n’ roll band, so if you like guitars and raw power, be here. PLAN B: Active Child, Low Roar @ The Irenic.

Active Child rides that blurry line between alternative R&B and chillwave, which might be enough to call this thing off altogether.

But the man’s got some hypnotic, soulful gems, so if you’re looking for a more sultry evening, this is the one. BACKUP PLAN: Friday, june 5 Ghoul, Dr. Know, Phobia @ Til-Two Club. PLAN A: Christopher Owens, Devon Williams @ The Casbah. Christopher Thursday, june 4 Owens is the former frontman PLAN A: Crowbar, Battlecross, Lord Dy- for San Francisco’s Girls, and ing @ Til-Two Club. New Orleans’ Crowbar he’s been known to write some

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powerfully emotional, psychedelic rock songs. His solo material has been a little all over the place, but if he’s done it before, he can do it again. PLAN B: Mrs. Magician, Mr. Tube and the Flying Objects @ Soda Bar. Hey look—it’s a Mr. and Mrs. show!

Two great local bands with great sounds, paired up for a night of jams and debauchery. BACKUP PLAN: July Talk, My Goodness @ The Hideout.

Saturday, june 6

PLAN A: Dispirit, Lycus, Volahn @ The Merrow. More doom? More doom! I’m convinced you’re not getting enough of the recommended daily intake, so get a boost of it with Oakland’s Lycus, whose epic, slowmoving metal will roar throughout University Ave. PLAN B: Patrick Watson, Villagers @ The Casbah. Singer/songwriter Patrick Watson recently released Love Songs for Robots, a haunting album that combines the ambiance of dream pop with the sad sincerity of great country ballads. He’s a great songwriter, though even better than his songs are his arrangements, which are elaborate and gorgeous. BACKUP PLAN: Agent Orange, Henchmen, Authentic Sellout, Surrounded by Thieves @ Brick Christopher Owens by Brick.

Sunday, june 7 PLAN A: Sam Prekop, Panabrite, Bit Maps @ The Casbah. Sam Prekop is best known as the vocalist for The Sea and Cake, though his solo material is in a similar vein—breezy, jazz-influenced pop with electronic elements. His latest album, The Republic, is much weirder and more experimental, but either way, it’s well-crafted, impressive stuff. BACKUP PLAN: Little People, Yppah, 9 Theory @ Soda Bar.

Monday, june 8 PLAN A: Everymen, La Ballena de Jonas, The Thief’s Lineage, Chatterbox and the Latter Day Satanists, Pennyfarthing Gang, Marrissa @ Soda Bar. I count six acts on this bill, which might be a lot to take, but it’s worth going for Florida’s Everymen, who play upbeat bluegrass punk that reminds me of 16 Horsepower. Definitely not a bad thing.

Tuesday, june 9 PLAN A: AJ Froman, Sycamore, Daniel Schraer @ Soda Bar. AJ Froman isn’t a person, it’s a band, though I can see why you might reach that conclusion. Anyhow, AJ Froman is also a very good band, with some psychedelic, bluesy, atmospheric vibes that hit all the right notes.

June 3, 2015 · San Diego CityBeat · 31

32 · San Diego CityBeat · June 3, 2015

#SDCityBeat

MUSIC

CONCERTS HOT! NEW! FRESH!

Astra (Brick by Brick, 6/21), Vic Mensa (Observatory, 6/27), The Drowning Men (BUT, 7/16), Rasputina (Soda Bar, 7/29), Stiff Little Fingers (BUT, 7/30), Lucy’s Fur Coat (Casbah, 7/31-8/1), Kevin Costner and Modern West (BUT, 8/11), Jeff Rosenstock (HOB, 8/15), Snarky Puppy (BUT, 9/23), Swervedriver (Casbah, 9/28), Beirut (Open Air Theater, 10/6), The Fratellis (HOB, 10/6), Bolzer (The Merrow, 10/13), Misterwives (Observatory, 10/16), Of Monsters and Men (Open Air Theater, 10/17), Of Montreal (The Irenic, 11/5), Tommy Castro and the Painkillers (BUT, 1/9).

GET YER TICKETS Joey Bada$$ (Observatory, 6/11), King Sunny Ade (BUT, 6/12), Lupe Fiasco (Observatory, 6/15), Jonathan Richman (BUT, 6/16), Jungle (Observatory, 6/22), Slayer, King Diamond (Sleep Train Amphitheatre, 6/26), Best Coast (Observatory North Park, 6/26), Mac Sabbath (Brick by Brick, 7/3), Jurassic Five (Humphreys, 7/8), Brian Posehn (HOB, 7/8), The Aquabats (HOB, 7/9), Built to Spill (BUT, 7/17), Charli XCX, Bleachers (Observatory North Park, 7/21), Soul Asylum, Meat Puppets (HOB, 7/23), The Adolescents (BUT, 7/23), Melt Banana, Torche (Casbah, 7/28-29), High on Fire, Pallbearer (Casbah, 7/30), Spank Rock (Soda Bar, 7/31), Bill Maher (Humphreys, 8/2), Coliseum

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(Soda Bar, 8/2), Milky Chance (Soma, 8/3), Hurray For the Riff Raff (BUT, 8/5), Echo and the Bunnymen (Humphreys, 8/6), !!! (Casbah, 8/10), The Alabama Shakes (Open Air Theatre, 8/12), Buddy Guy (BUT, 8/12), Nicki Minaj (Sleep Train Amphitheatre, 8/13), Toadies, Fuel (HOB, 8/14), Raekwon and Ghostface Killah (HOB, 8/16), Screaming Females (Soda Bar, 8/17), Jill Scott (Humphreys, 8/25), Lee “Scratch” Perry (BUT, 9/1), Ducktails (Casbah, 9/6), The Psychedelic Furs, The Church (Observatory, 9/9), Ariana Grande (Sleep Train Amphitheatre, 9/9), ZZ Top (Humphreys, 9/13), The Who (Valley View Casino Center, 9/14), Future Islands (Observatory, 9/22-23), Foo Fighters (Sleep Train Amphitheatre, 9/24), Death Cab for Cutie (Open Air Theatre, 9/25), Florida Georgia Line (Sleep Train Amphitheatre, 10/3), alt-j (Open Air Theatre, 10/13), Luke Bryan (Sleep Train Amphitheatre, 10/16), ZZ Ward (HOB, 10/18), My Morning Jacket (Open Air Theatre, 10/19), Mudhoney (Casbah, 10/24), Gerard Way (HOB, 10/24), Tobias Jesso Jr. (BUT, 10/28), Madonna (Valley View Casino Center, 10/29), John Waters (Observatory, 11/30).

JUNE WEDNESDAY, JUNE 3 Walk Off the Earth at Observatory North Park. Ghoul at Soda Bar. Kids in the Hall at Balboa Theatre. Awolnation at House of Blues. Ron Sexsmith at The Casbah. Stranger at Belly Up Tavern.

THURSDAY, JUNE 4 Miami Horror at Soda Bar. Crowbar at Til-Two Club. Eddie Izzard at Civic Theatre. The Rentals at The Irenic. ‘June

Gloom’ w/ Innerds, Tron, Zsa Zsa Gabor at The Hideout.

FRIDAY, JUNE 5 Mrs. Magician, Mr. Tube and the Flying Objects at Soda Bar. July Talk at The Hideout. Dustin Kensrue at The Irenic.

FRIDAY, JUNE 6 Brad Paisley at Sleep Train Amphitheatre. Unwritten Law at House of Blues.

Common Sense at Belly Up Tavern.

SUNDAY, JUNE 7 ‘X-Fest’ w/ Pennywise, Cold War Kids, Public Enemy at Sleep Train Amphitheatre.

MONDAY, JUNE 8 Zella Day at The Casbah.

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 10 The Weepies at Belly Up Tavern.

THURSDAY, JUNE 11 Joey Bada$$ at Observatory North Park.

The Warlocks at The Hideout.

FRIDAY, JUNE 12 Steel Panther at House of Blues. Anuhea and Etana at Observatory North Park. King Sunny Ade at Belly Up Tavern. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah at The Casbah. Goatwhore, Ringworm, Black Breath at Soda Bar.

SATURDAY, JUNE 13 1349 at Brick by Brick. Jedi Mind Tricks at Observatory North Park. Pres-

CONTINUED ON PAGE 34

June 3, 2015 · San Diego CityBeat · 33

MUSIC CONTINUED FROM PAGE 33 ervation Hall Jazz Band at Belly Up Tavern. Zero Boys at Til-Two Club. Ceremony at Legend Records.

SUNDAY, JUNE 14 Robin Trower at House of Blues. UK Subs at Soda Bar.

MONDAY, JUNE 15 Motopony at The Casbah. Lupe Fiasco at Observatory North Park.

TUESDAY, JUNE 16 Jonathan Richman at Belly Up Tavern.

Brit Floyd at Civic Theatre.

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 17 The Original Wailers at House of Blues.

James McMurtry at Belly Up Tavern.

THURSDAY, JUNE 18 Dead Feather Moon at Belly Up Tavern. Jen Kirkman at The Casbah. The Slackers at Observatory North Park.

Death Valley Girls at The Hideout.

FRIDAY, JUNE 19 J Boog at Observatory North Park.

SATURDAY, JUNE 20 Surfer Blood at The Casbah.

SUNDAY, JUNE 21

dlee’s Postmodern Jukebox at Belly Up Tavern. Jungle at Observatory North Park.

TUESDAY, JUNE 23 Ed Sheeran at Valley View Casino Center.

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 24 Joseph Arthur at The Casbah. Leo Kottke at Belly Up Tavern.

Gang Green at Soda Bar. Scott Bra-

WEDNESDAY, JULY 8 Veruca Salt at Soda Bar. Jurassic Five at Humphreys by the Bay. Brian Posehn at House of Blues.

THURSDAY, JULY 9 One Direction at Qualcomm Stadium.

The Aquabats at House of Blues.

FRIDAY, JUNE 26 Best Coast at Observatory North Park.

Wild Wild Wets at Soda Bar. Slayer, King Diamond at Sleep Train Amphitheatre.

SATURDAY, JUNE 27 Bootsy’s Rubber Band at Belly Up Tavern. Nickelback at Sleep Train Amphitheatre. John Doe at The Casbah. Vic Mensa at Observatory North Park.

SUNDAY, JUNE 28 Mono at The Casbah.

FRIDAY, JULY 10 Lady Antebellum at Sleep Train Amphitheatre.

SATURDAY, JULY 11 Kevin Smith and Ralph Garman at House of Blues. Cattle Decapitation at Brick by Brick. Porcelain Raft at Soda Bar. Cherry Glazerr at The Irenic. Needtobreathe at Humphreys by the Bay.

SUNDAY, JULY 12

MONDAY, JUNE 29

Anjelah Johnson at House of Blues. Go Betty Go at Soda Bar. Keb’Mo’ at Belly Up Tavern.

Big Business at The Casbah.

JULY

MONDAY, JULY 13

WEDNESDAY, JULY 1 Jacco Gardner at The Casbah. Don Most at Belly Up Tavern.

THURSDAY, JULY 2

Keb’Mo’ at Belly Up Tavern. Memory Tapes at Soda Bar.

TUESDAY, JULY 14

Tavern.

Kevin Fowler at Belly Up Tavern. Barrington Levy at Observatory North Park.

Mac Sabbath at Brick by Brick. The Appleseed Cast at Soda Bar.

Sublime with Rome at Sleep Train Amphitheatre. Dick Diver at Soda Bar. The Drowning Men at Belly Up Tavern.

John Mayall at Belly Sannhet at Soda Bar.

Up

Astra at Brick by Brick.

MONDAY, JUNE 22

TUESDAY, JULY 7 Bleak at Soda Bar.

FRIDAY, JULY 3

34 · San Diego CityBeat · June 3, 2015

THURSDAY, JULY 16

rCLUBSr

710 Beach Club, 710 Garnet Ave, Pacific Beach. www.710bc.com. Wed: Open mic. Thu: Live band karaoke. Fri: The Big Lewinsky, Fooz Fighters. Sat: Jordan T, AOK. Sun: Karaoke.

98 Bottles, 2400 Kettner Blvd. Ste. 110, Little Italy. www.98bottlessd.com. Thu: Errolyn Healy. Fri: Andrew Steele, Rhea Makiaris, Whitney Shay. Sat: Ginger Cowgirl and the Silver Spurs.

American Comedy Co., 818 B Sixth Ave, Downtown. americancomedyco. com. Wed: Open mic. Thu: Joe Machi.

Fri: Joe Machi. Sat: Joe Machi. Sun: Full Throttle.

Bang Bang, 526 Market St, Downtown. www.facebook.com/BangBangSanDiego.

Fri: Human Life, Lee K, Matt Osentjuk.

Sat: Dave Aude.

Basic, 410 10th Ave, Downtown. barbasic.com. Tue: Pop Art Show: Big Trouble in East Village.

Bassmnt, 919 Fourth Ave, Downtown. bassmntsd.com. Sat: Markus Schulz.

Beaumont’s, 5662 La Jolla Blvd, La Jolla. http://www.brocktonvilla.com/beaumonts. html. Thu: Adam Block Duo. Fri: Fish and the Seaweeds. Sat: Jewel City. Sun: Sando.

Belly Up Tavern, 143 S. Cedros Ave, Solana Beach. www.bellyup.com.

Wed: Stranger, Todo Mundo, Pasadena. Thu: Puddles’ Pity Party. Fri: The Pettybreakers, Desperado. Sat: Common Sense, Bad Neighborz.

Sun: Zoso-The Ultimate Led Zeppelin Experience. Tue: Nancarrow, Sam Outlaw, Jake Loban.

Boar Cross’n, 390 Grand Ave, Carlsbad. boarcrossn.net. Thu: The Dirty Work. Fri: ‘Club Musae’. Sat: Psydecar.

Brick by Brick, 1130 Buenos Ave, Bay Park. brickbybrick.com. Wed: Media Solution, Race No More. Thu: Moneypenny, Behind the Fallen, Riboflavin, Black Chapter, DONA NOVA, Redmond. Fri: Three Bad Jacks, Gamblers Mark, Radarmen.

Sat: Agent Orange, Henchmen, Authentic Sellout, Surrounded By Thieves. Mon: ‘Metal Monday’.

Cafe Sevilla, 353 Fifth Ave, Downtown. http://www.cafesevilla.com. Sun: Aire.

Croce’s Park West, 2760 Fifth Ave., #100, Bankers Hill. www.crocesparkwest. com. Wed: Alvin Paige. Thu: Curtis Taylor Quartet. Fri: Teagan Taylor. Sat: Gilbert Castellanos and the Park West Ensemble.

Sun: Afrojazziacs. Mon: Liz Grace. Tue: ‘Tribute to Dave Brubeck’.

Dirk’s Nightclub, 7662 Broadway, Lemon Grove. www.dirksniteclub.com. Fri: Teaser. Sat: DJ Alex.

Dizzy’s, 4275 Mission Bay Drive, Mission Bay. dizzyssandiego.com. Sat: The Benedetti Trio.

Duck Foot Brewing Company, 8920 Kenamar Dr. Suite #210, 4S Ranch. duckfootbeer.com. Sat: Duck Foot Brewing Grand Opening.

Epicentre, 8450 Mira Mesa Blvd, Mira Mesa. epicentreconcerts.org. Fri: Essex Class, 3XA, Radio Active, Odakota, Caitlin Ashley. Sat: ‘Sick and Heavy Fest’.

F6ix, 526 F St., Downtown, Downtown. f6ixsd.com. Fri: DJ Nemo. Sat: DJ Kurch.

Sun: DJ Dynamiq.

Fluxx, 500 Fourth Ave, Downtown. fluxxsd.com. Thu: Diamond Pistols. Fri: Kevin Dillon. Sat: Jayceeoh.

#SDCityBeat

MUSIC Henry’s Pub, 618 Fifth Ave, Downtown. www.henryspub.com. Wed: AOK Musik.

Thu: DJ Junior the Disco Punk. Fri: ‘Good Times’. Sat: DJs E, Yodah. Mon: DJ Antonio Aguilera. Tue: Big City Dawgs.

House of Blues, 1055 Fifth Ave, Downtown. houseofblues.com/sandiego. Wed: AWOLNATION. Fri: Idlehands. Sat: Unwritten Law. Mon: Nico and Vinz. Tue: The Kooks.

Kensington Club, 4079 Adams Ave, Kensington. 619-284-2848. Fri: Little Fixtures, Cedar Fire, Daddy Issues. Sat: Neighbors to the North, Subsurfer, Saint Shameless, Social Club, Plastik Deer, Trevor McSpadden.

Mc P’s Irish Pub, 1107 Orange Ave, Coronado. www.mcpspub.com. Wed: The Goodall Boys. Thu: North Star. Fri: Mystique. Sat: Trunk Monkey. Sun: Gonzology. Tue: Glen Smith.

The Casbah, 2501 Kettner Blvd, Midtown. casbahmusic.com. Wed: Ron Sexsmith, Alice Phoebe Lou. Thu: Bob Log III, Schitzophonics, Gloomsday. Fri: Christopher Owens, Devon Williams. Sat: Patrick Watson, Villagers. Sun: Sam Prekop, Panabrite, Bit Maps. Mon: Zella Day, Nicky Venus, Hot Sands. Tue: Ivan and Alyosha, Kris Orlowski.

The Hideout, 3519 El Cajon Blvd, City Heights. http://www.thehideoutsd.com.

Wed: Royal Thunder, Wild Throne, Beira.

Thu: ‘June Gloom’ w/ Innerds, Tron, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Self Esteem, DJ Operating Thetan. Sat: Octagrape, Cotillion, Andy Human and the Reptoids.

The Merrow, 1271 University Ave, Hillcrest. theMerrow.com. Wed: Sunset Sons, Social Club, The ShyFox. Thu: Brass Hysteria, The Tramplers, Fanny and the Atta

Boys. Fri: Y.Y.Zed, Time Machine, Moxie.

Sat: Dispirit, Lycus, Volahn. Tue: The No Name Gang, Kulteir, American Rust.

The Office, 3936 30th St, North Park. www.officebarinc.com. Wed: ‘Friends Chill’. Thu: ‘No Limits’ w/ DJ Myson King.

Fri: ‘NiteMoves’ w/ DJs Beatnick, Este.

Sat: ‘Strictly Business’ w/ DJs EdRoc, Kanye Asada. Sun: ‘Uptown Top Ranking’ w/ Tribe of Kings. Mon: Nite Lapse, Citrus and Katie, DJs Dom, Mike Delgado.

Tue: ‘Trapped’.

The Tin Roof, 401 G Street, Gaslamp. http://www.tinroofbars.com/Home/SanDiego. Wed: Pat Hilton and The Mann. Thu: Cassie B Project. Fri: Redwave, Charlie Rae Band. Sat: Jonathan Lee Band. Sun: ‘Jazz Brunch’ w/ Normandie Wilson. Mon: Warped Tour Battle of the Bands. Tue: Roots Covenant.

Til-Two Club, 4746 El Cajon Blvd, City Heights. www.tiltwoclub.com.

Wed: Ghoul, Phobia, Dr. Know. Thu: Crowbar, Battlecross, Lord Dying. Fri: Creature and the Woods, Kenneth Brian Band, Ashley Pond. Sat: Toothless George, One Man Band, Screamin’ Yeehaws.

Tio Leo’s, 5302 Napa St, Bay Park. www.tioleos.com. Thu: Rockin’ Aces.

Fri: Karaoke. Sat: Bump N Brass. Tue: Michele Lundeen.

Tower Bar, 4757 University Ave, City Heights. www.thetowerbar.com. Thu: We the Heathens, Escape from the Zoo, Thief’s Lineage, Insomniac Collective.

Fri: ‘Hip Hop vs. Punk Rock’. Sat: Midnight Track, Lexicons, Agent 86, Whiskey Avengers. Mon: Saint Shameless. Tue: Sniper 66, AD Seg, Creeps AD.

True North Tavern, 3815 30th St, North Park. Wed: Bourbon and Cigar Dinner.

Ux31, 3112 University Ave, North Park. u31bar.com. Wed: DJ Mo Lyon.

Thu: ‘Throwback Thursday’. Fri: Lee Churchill. Sat: DJ R-You. Mon: DJ Fishfonics. Tue: Karaoke.

Whistle Stop, 2236 Fern St, South Park. whistlestopbar.com. Wed: ‘St. Vitus Dance Party’ w/ DJ Handsome Skeleton.

Sat: ‘80s vs 90s’ w/ DJs Gabe Vega, Saul.

Mon: ‘Everything Is Terrible’.

Winstons, 1921 Bacon St, Ocean Beach. www.winstonsob.com. Wed: Psydecar, Pali Roots, DJ Carlos Culture. Thu: Locness, Destructo Bunny, Brendan B, Audios. Fri: Piracy Conspiracy. Sat: London Souls, Diego’s Umbrella. Sun: Karaoke. Mon: Electric Waste Band. Tue: Modern Day Moonshine.

Numbers, 3811 Park Blvd, Hillcrest. http://www.numberssd.com/. Thu: ‘Wet’.

Fri: ‘Uncut’. Sun: ‘R&B Divas’. Tue: Karaoke Latino.

Onyx Room / Thin, 852 Fifth Ave, Downtown. www.onyxroom.com. Thu: ‘Tea Party’.

Fri: ‘Rumba Lounge’. Sat: ‘Onyx Saturday’.

Rebecca’s Coffee House, 3015 Juniper St, South Park. www.rebeccascoffeehouse.com. Wed: Storytellers of San Diego: Good Times and First Times.

Rich’s, 1051 University Ave, Hillcrest. www. richssandiego.com. Wed: ‘Mischief with Bianca’. Thu: ‘Lez’. Fri: DJs Dirty Kurty, Will Z. Sat: DJs Taj, K-Swift. Sun: ‘Stripper Circus’.

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

Wed: Westside Inflection. Fri: Black Market III. Sat: Baja Bugs. Tue: Karaoke.

Seven Grand, 3054 University Ave, North Park. sevengrandbars.com/sd. Wed: Gilbert Castellanos jazz jam.

Side Bar, 536 Market St, Downtown. www. sidebarsd.com. Wed: DJ Brett Bodley.

Thu: DJ XP. Fri: DJ Dynamiq. Sat: Kyle Flesch. Sun: ‘Five/Ten’ w/ Cheyenne Giles.

Soda Bar, 3615 El Cajon Blvd, City Heights. www.sodabarmusic.com. Wed: Emily Wolfe, Bangladesh, Jimmy Ruelas.

Thu: Miami Horror, De Lux, Dirty Radio (sold out). Fri: Mrs. Magician, Mr. Tube and the Flying Objects, DJ Richie Lauridsen. Sat: Barb Wire Dolls, The Touchies, Rum for Your Life, Revolut-chix. Sun: Little People, Yppah, 9 Theory. Mon: Everymen, La Ballena de Jonas, The Thief’s Lineage, Chatterbox and the Latter Day Satanists, Pennyfarthing Gang, Marrissa. Tue: AJ Froman, Sycamore, Daniel Schraer.

SOMA, 3350 Sports Arena Blvd, Midway. www.somasandiego.com. Thu: Sleeping With Sirens, The Summer Set, Nick Santino. Sun: Of Mice and Men, Crown the Empire, Volumes.

Spin, 2028 Hancock St, Midtown. www. spinnightclub.com. Sat: ‘A Pile Palace fundraiser’. Mon: Improv night.

Stage Bar & Grill, 762 Fifth Ave, Downtown. www.stagesaloon.com. Thu: Superbad. Fri: Disco Pimps, DJ Slynkee. Sat: Hott Mess, DJ Miss Dust. Mon: Karaoke.

Sycamore Den, 3391 Adams Ave, Normal Heights. www.sycamoreden.com. Thu: Jesse Lamonaca and the Dime Novels, Michael McGraw Music. Sun: Gary Hankins, Gregory Michael Theilmann, Hezekiah Aaron Bussey.

The Balboa, 1863 Fifth Ave, Bankers Hill.

619-955-8525. Fri: Buddy Banter, Causers.

Sat: Le Ra, Some Kind of Lizard.

The Bancroft, 9143 Campo Rd, Spring Valley. 619-469-2337. Wed: Karaoke. Thu: ‘Darkwave Garden’. Fri: SlickIdiot. Sat: BuzzMutt, Philosopher’s Ray Gun, Beach Goons, Sandy Cheeks. Tue: Eskimo Brothers DJs.

#SDCityBeat

June 3, 2015 · San Diego CityBeat · 35

Last Words

Brendan Emmett Quigley

TWO STATE SOLUTION

Across

1. ___ del Sol 6. Planner headings, for short 11. Booster seat user 14. Invite to the living room, say 15. Helvetica’s cousin 16. “Just sayin’,” briefly 17. Like horror/sci-fi writer Neil after going to the beach?

19. It keeps the fire burning 20. Barely make (out) 21. Delibes opera 22. Acts all emo 24. Schlumpy male physique 26. Brand in the bathroom or the candy aisle 27. Sleeping sickness you can get from mescal?

33. Sentimental one 36. Strong bridge opening with a balanced hand 37. Horse trainer Baffert 38. Letters from Greece 39. “___ sera!”

40. It can make you you 41. Time in between gigs, seemingly, to an impatient freelancer 42. Supports on Kickstarter 43. Nor’easter forecast 44. Red 8-Down that brings out the crab in you?

47. PSAT taker, sometimes 48. Goes around the world?

52. ə 54. “The Hobbit” setting 57. Org. with a ping pong ball lottery 58. “I’m full, thanks” 59. Yellowish creature that leads the cheers?

Last week’s answers

36 · San Diego CityBeat · June 3, 2015

62. ___-ball pens 63. Egg served with chorizo 64. Artist Margaret whom Amy Adams portrayed in “Big Eyes” 65. No-hitter, say 66. Joined forces (with) 67. Mails off

Down 1. Like MMA fights 2. Universal Studios Japan city 3. Engaged in a biathlon 4. Comic Heidecker 5. Comparison 6. Hockey goalie’s protection 7. Vehicle making pit stops?

8. See 44-Across 9. Teensy bit 10. Go it alone, metaphorically 11. Aggressive stinger 12. Stumblebum’s reassurance 13. Walker’s charges 18. Squat 23. Sch. in the Rolling Stone rape story fiasco 25. Cuckoo bananas 26. CNN’s Bash or Fox News’s Perino 28. Give a guarantee 29. Japanese mushroom 30. Group whose youngest member joined at age 2 31. ___ Rucker of WeTV’s “Love Thy Sister” 32. Aid partner 33. Unleash an invective 34. “Pick me, pick me” 35. Mortal Kombat instruction 39. “The Art of Fugue” composer 40. Superficially fluent 42. Indirect routes 43. Runs uncovered 45. “Buy It ___” (eBay button) 46. Typical amount 49. King Pachacutec, e.g.

50. Govt. security issue 51. Quenches 52. Comfortably under a comforter 53. Bamboo stick 54. Put the pedal to the metal 55. “___ you ever been in a Turkish prison?”

56. Lacoste rival 60. “Another Labatt’s Bleue?” response 61. “It’s like this...”

#SDCityBeat

#SDCityBeat

June 3, 2015 · San Diego CityBeat · 37

38 · San Diego CityBeat · June 3, 2015

#SDCityBeat

#SDCityBeat

June 3, 2015 · San Diego CityBeat · 39