San Diego CityBeat • July 9, 2014

Jschool ohn Men who buy sex from prostitutes face their behavior head on in court-ordered program • by Joshua Emerson Smith

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Care P.4 Cybercrime P.14 Circus P.20 Coherence P.23

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July 9, 2014 · San Diego CityBeat · 3

Murrieta spectacle far worse than ‘ugly’ In a Sunday editorial, U-T San Diego called the immigration protests this past week in Murrieta “understandable but ugly.”

Understandable? Seriously? No, there’s nothing understandable about a snarling, ignorant, xenophobic mob of extreme nationalists shouting at busloads of mothers and children and waving American flags as if shouting at busloads of mothers and children is what being American is truly about.

Ugly? That’s closer, but we’d choose an uglier word: Revolting. Repugnant. Disgusting. Vile. Sickening. Nauseating. Gross. The thesaurus is filled with appropriate words for what we saw. The U-T just needs to try harder.

A better description was found in the Chicago Tribune, where columnist Rex W. Huppke referred to what happened in Murrieta as yet another sign— along with nuts openly brandishing guns inside stores and restaurants and jackasses purposely belching black exhaust from their pickup trucks— of the “drunk uncle-ization of America.”

Huppke’s point was that these “knuckleheads” comprise an extreme minority of Americans, but we’re letting them define us amid fervent media attention.

So, congratulations, Murrieta: Led by your loathsome Mayor Alan Long, you are this week’s shining example of the worst of what our country offers.

Take a bow.

Perhaps even more galling than the protest was the fact that the United States government and police in Murrieta allowed a throng of rabid protesters to call the shots. Why weren’t people who were blocking the buses arrested for interfering with federal-law enforcement activities? How were they allowed to successfully turn back the vehicles? It blows the mind.

Well, at this point, if the Border Patrol has conceded defeat to these extremist freaks, it should do so. No more busloads of relief-seeking immigrants should be subjected to that kind of abuse, unadulterated hate and pathological lack of empathy.

On the other side of the spectrum from Murrieta and Mayor Long is Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins, who offered to take 2,000 unaccompanied immigrant children from overburdened Border Patrol facilities and put them up temporarily in more comfortable quarters. (In Texas, the county judge isn’t so much a judge as the chief executive of county government.) Jenkins is taking heat for using his act of goodwill as a political fundraising tool, but

that was after he was attacked for it, and we have no problem with anyone using a good deed in a reelection campaign.

You know what we’d like to see? San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer following suit. Several hundred immigrants have already been transported from Texas to San Diego for processing as they wend their way through the system toward an asylum hearing before a judge. Faulconer should offer to take as many as we can find unused facilities for and enlist more help from the nonprofit advocacy groups that are already trying to make life a bit more tolerable for these kids and the relatively few adults who have accompanied some of them.

By doing so, Faulconer can lend more credence to the notion that he’s a new kind of California Republican—one who’ll do the right thing and won’t pander to frothing, anti-immigrant zealots. At the risk of helping the Republican Party with its serious Latino-voter problem, this would be one way to mitigate the damage of 30 years of scorched-earth anti-Latino policy advocacy. We’d even allow him to use it to court independents in mailers and fundraising emails.

Let’s back up a second: These are not adults just sneaking into the country in hopes of making a buck and taking advantage of our services—although the hope of a better life was long a hallmark of immigration to the United States. As detailed in the Vox report that Huppke referenced, these are children fleeing violence in Central America (do the Murrieta loudmouths even know where that is?) and risking their lives (sometimes dying) and facing sexual exploitation during perilous journeys through Mexico, mostly with plans to turn themselves in to authorities should they make it safely across our border.

Ask yourself how bad conditions must be in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador for children to leave their homes and their families and travel more than 1,500 miles.

We can debate how open our country should ultimately be to these human beings. We can debate whether to make it harder for them to get across the line. We can debate what to do with them if they manage to get in. But for goodness’ sake, can we just treat them with some dignity and kindness while they’re here? Honestly, they’ve earned it.

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

This issue of CityBeat’s mugshot got it a modeling contract with “Barely Legal Alt Weekly.”

Volume 12 • Issue 48

Cover illustration by Grant Reinero

Arts Editor Kinsee Morlan

Contributors Ian Cheesman, David L. Coddon, Seth Combs, Michael A. Gardiner, Glenn Heath Jr., Nina Sachdev Hoffmann, Peter Holslin, Dave Maass, Scott McDonald, Jenny Montgomery, Susan Myrland, Mina Riazi, Jim Ruland, Ben Salmon, Jen Van Tieghem

Staff Writer Joshua Emerson Smith

Intern Natalie Eisen

Web Editor Ryan Bradford

Production Manager Tristan Whitehouse

Art director Lindsey Voltoline

Production artist Rees Withrow

Columnists Aaryn Belfer, Edwin Decker, John R. Lamb, Alex Zaragoza

Vice President of Operations David Comden

MultiMedia Advertising Director Paulina Porter-Tapia

Publisher Kevin Hellman

Editor David Rolland Associate Editor Kelly Davis Music Editor Jeff Terich

Senior account executive Jason Noble Account Executives F. Scott Berman, Beau Odom, Kimberly Wallace Circulation / Office Assistant Giovanna Tricoli Accounting Alysia Chavez, Linda Lam, Monica MacCree 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 2014.

4 · San Diego CityBeat · July 9, 2014

July 9, 2014 · San Diego CityBeat · 5

The wrong diagnosis Regarding your May 21 editorial about Veterans Affairs hospitals: Obama’s demand that all patients be seen within 14 days initiated the current situation, the result of a decree rather than a solution.

It has resulted in a mess, but the current congressional and media frenzy to place blame on the system and put more money and doctors, nurses and personnel into the system is flawed. There’s a public perception that the system is turning its back on young, injured war veterans. Nothing could be further from the reality. In point of fact, young vets are generally offered a fast track and serious illness in any vet requiring urgent care is expeditiously provided. I believe we can say with pride that the system provides care equal to any available in the private and academic sector. At the moment, it’s just not as fast as it could be, because of well recognized difficulty meeting the demand.

Most of the patients are Vietnam-era with ubiquitous degenerative conditions. Whether it’s politically correct to say so or not, much of the hypertension, diabetes, atherosclerotic and arthritic conditions currently overwhelming the system are exacerbated by issues such as obesity and smoking and even by social factors such as secondary gain (such as VA disability claims and other reimbursement schemes essentially paying patients to be ill).

I question the wisdom of making an implicit promise to any and all who ever served any time in the military that subsequent medical conditions in life, no matter their service connection, would be addressed at government expense. Your prediction is correct: This will get worse with time.

What the VA healthcare system needs is a strong

6 · San Diego CityBeat · July 9, 2014

definitive eligibility and triage algorithm, not a blanket bottomless promise. The idea that pouring more resources into this system as it currently operates will allow it to eventually catch up with the load is unrealistic and ruinous. The only solution is to correct a national inclination to overmedicalize and a realistic approach to separating the wheat from the chaff and reducing patient load.

Bruce L. Ehni, M.D., Michael E. DeBakey Veterans Affairs Hospital, Houston, Texas

We have our own crazies Regarding “The pyschos are back” [“Editorial,” June 18]: Funny how an offensive by organized crazies on the other side of the world causes so much concern.

We have mass shootings happening weekly, an armed posse waiting to battle BLM officers on federal rangeland, guys like Ted Nugent waving military weapons around while calling the president a mongrel and whole parts of legislatures trying to write their version of religious law onto the books. Seems like we have a fairly high level of sectarian conflict here.

Too bad the warmongering wing of the GOP doesn’t ever look stateside to see what our own version of the Taliban is up to. But they’re only concerned with two goals: maintain the empire that funds their investments and continue to support the biggest scam in modern U.S. history—that Dubya was a functioning American president.

Bill Shaw, Clairemont

Grant Reinero

Jschool ohn Men who buy sex from prostitutes face their behavior head on in court-ordered program by

S

ome men look embarrassed as they walk from the parking lot through the back entrance of a two-story office building on University Avenue in City Heights, which the San Diego Police Department refers to as the Multi Cultural Storefront. Others chat more casually as they walk through a hallway and into a room past a sign that reads, “Court Ordered Impact Panel.”

A hipster wearing a trucker cap strolls up to a police officer sitting behind a folding table checking IDs and collecting $200 from each person. The payment has to be in a cashier’s check or money order, which the officer explains the young man can get at the 7-Eleven down the street.

An overweight middle-aged white guy in a yellow T-shirt and jeans hands the officer the proper payment and is directed to get in line for mandatory HIV testing, the results of which will be provided immediately.

By 6 p.m. about 30 men representing a wide range of ages and ethnicities, although none looking obviously affluent, silently fill several rows of chairs facing a table with a microphone at the back of the room. The last row of chairs is reserved for non-English speakers, for whom the presentation will be translated through headsets.

A tall, slender, middle-aged black man in a blue blazer and white trousers walks up to the front of the room and, in an English accent, speaks to the audience sympathetically.

“I’m going to say something that may sound a bit unusual, but I’m glad you’re here,” he says. “I’m glad you’re here because it’s an opportunity for you to get educated.

It’s an opportunity for you to learn about

S

the impact of a behavior that may appear to be a one-on-one transaction.”

Acting as the night’s moderator, the softspoken man is one of nine volunteers helping to put on the program, which includes local homeowners, former prostitutes and recovering sex addicts. With programs every other month, volunteers from the community rotate involvement.

Created by the Mid-City Prostitution Taskforce in 2002, the program is called the Prostitution Impact Panel. Established to educate men arrested for buying sex on the realities of the sex-trade industry, its message is straightforward: The sex trade in San Diego is dangerous and demeaning, and a disturbing number of girls who walk the streets have suffered severe trauma as young children, often molestation at the hands of family members.

“You’re dealing with damaged people,” Crystal, a former prostitute tells the audience. “And what happens in the transaction is not only damaging the society, the neighborhood, but it’s damaging the damaged individual further.”

Under long, curly blonde hair, her face bears the marks of anguish and heavy drug use, a habit she explains she supported with prostitution. Given marijuana and raped by her step father at the age of 7, she says such experiences are common among sex workers, many of whom are controlled by violent pimps and gangs.

“Nobody goes out on the corner and sells their body because they want to,” she says.

“There’s not one person that I’ve ever met, and I deal with a lot of survivors—not one

Joshua Emerson Smith

of them was ever out there because they wanted to. We make you believe that we want to so that we can get more money out of you, but it’s not because we want to.”

In a deal only for first-time offenders, participants attend the three-hour panel of speakers in order to get their solicitation charge substantially reduced. That way, prospective employers and others may never know they were arrested for buying sex.

However, statistics suggest that participants may be leaving with more than just a favorable plea deal. Since the program started, less than 3 percent of offenders—32 of 1,155 participants—have been rearrested and convicted of solicitation or a similar crime, according to the San Diego City Attorney’s office.

The program’s gravity came as a surprise for Grant, a former Navy officer now in his early 40s. (CityBeat honored a request not to use his real name.)

“When you’re out there, you never think about how this girl has a pimp and she’s being abused,” he told CityBeat. “The only thing you’re thinking about is, I can help her, and she can help me.”

Sitting on the edge of his seat during the program, Grant appears rapt as he listens to a recovering sex addict named Paul. The bald, middle-aged man describes growing up with an alcoholic father who kept an accessible collection of porn in the front room. From a young age, Paul developed a serious habit of using sex and masturbation to numb feelings of neglect.

“I’ll tell you what this disease will do,” he told the audience. “I caught chlamydia

from a sex worker. I went to the county and got the disease fixed. I’m driving around. I see the same sex worker. I go to her again, and get the same damn disease. Now, I’m not a stupid person, but the power of this disease made me do that again.”

For Grant, who was having sex with up to four women a night, the story had a powerful impact.

“I was in awe,” he said later. “I wanted to hear everything he had to say and how he got his problem fixed, because that was me.”

When Grant was 17, he was stationed with the Navy in the Philippines, and like many of the guys in his crew, while in port he had sex with numerous prostitutes. A tall, good-looking guy, he didn’t need to pay for sex, and he quickly developed a habit of going out to clubs and picking up women.

Often, he’d sleep with a different person every night for weeks on end.

However, despite having regular girlfriends, he continued to frequent prostitutes for oral sex both overseas and here in the States.

“I knew that I must have had a problem because my girlfriend would be at home, and then I would leave the house and go pick up a street walker, you know,” he said.

“Then go back home, and we might have sex. It’s like a high.”

In late March, he was arrested for soliciting an undercover cop. For years, he had frequently picked up girls on 32nd and Main streets in Barrio Logan, where prostitutes regularly wait for Navy officers. As

Johns CONTINUED ON PAGE 9 July 9, 2014 · San Diego CityBeat · 7

spin cycle

john r.

lamb Sierra Fight Club “If everything seems under control, you’re just not going fast enough.”

—Mario Andretti San Francisco-based Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune announced on Monday that—as a 50th-anniversary nod to the federal Wilderness Act— he and his family “will be hitting the road this week to experience some of America’s most scenic wild places first hand.”

An accompanying map indicated that Brune had settled on a northerly trek, dashing any hope he’ll drop by San Diego, currently the wildest of the wild places among cities that have a Sierra Club chapter.

Brune may be headed into the forest just to get away from John Stump v. Sierra Club, a civil lawsuit that pits one of San Diego’s most venerable activists (and a

bevy of high-profile character witnesses) against one of the world’s most venerable environmental-advocacy organizations.

Stump is a regular fixture at City Hall, but last week he found himself a few blocks away, seated before Superior Court Judge Katherine A. Bacal with his attorney, Bob Ottilie. Michael Ward, an Oakland-based attorney flown in to represent the Sierra Club national office, sat alone opposite the pair.

At issue, Stump would explain later, is how much autonomy local chapters of national organizations like the Sierra Club are afforded in choosing their own leaders and priorities. In the case of the Sierra Club, Stump clearly believes not so much.

“One of the biggest dangers in democracy is if a group can gain power and then become a tyrant and suppress the rights of the minority,” Stump told Spin Cycle.

8 · San Diego CityBeat · July 9, 2014

“The message here is, ‘Don’t stick your head above the line because we’ll whack you, little mole.’”

Stump served a brief tenure as chairman of the local Sierra Club chapter’s Executive Committee in 2012 before being notified by the national office that he had been removed from that position—as well as a key national advisory post—and banished from seeking any elected position in the Sierra Club for life.

In February, the national Sierra Club board voted to suspend the San Diego chapter for four years, citing “ongoing conflicts and divisions.”

The reasons given for Stump’s original suspension, Ottilie told the court, were threefold: threatening an employee, threatening and harassing club members and an unspecified financial allegation.

But months later, after an investigation conducted by the national office, the reasons for Stump’s ultimate banishment changed. The employee-threatening charge couldn’t be corroborated, despite claims of “multiple witnesses,” Ottilie said. That particular reason became: “Interac-

John R. Lamb

date back well before Stump joined the club in 2008.

The problem with this case, Ottilie noted, is that the national office has made little effort to back up its allegations with any evidence. The argument put forth last week

by Ward, the Sierra Club’s attorney, was focused squarely on whether the court had jurisdiction over the decisionmaking process of a private organization.

“I’ve done hundreds of court cases,” Ottilie would say later. “I’ve never been in the situation where the other side doesn’t have any evidence.”

Conversely, Stump subJohn Stump at the courthouse mitted 10 exhibits and 32 with his favorite hiking stick letters of support from a tions with the club’s employee spectrum of San Diego leaders, Richard Miller that created the volunteers and friends, includperception that Miller’s job was ing former City Councilmember threatened.”

Donna Frye and Regional Airport The other reasons given were Authority CEO Thella Bowens. “lack of fiduciary oversight over “When the honor roll of publicchapter’s improper payment of interest servants in San Diego is individuals working for the chap- called, John’s name will be on it,” ter,” “a leadership approach that said former City Attorney Mike contributed to a schism within Aguirre in his letter. the chapter” and “forwarding of Ottilie argued that national Siinformation about Richard Miller erra Club officials violated their during the investigation that the own bylaws, providing neither club deemed irrelevant and dam- evidence to support the charges aging to Miller.” nor Stump an opportunity to apIn a declaration, Stump said peal his ouster. The Sierra Club, it was not he who forwarded he said, basically argued, “We 18-year-old court records that are a lawless organization that showed Miller—the local club’s doesn’t even have to follow our development and communica- own rules that we created.” tions director—had pleaded guilty Ward countered that Stump to a drug-sales charge involving had his opportunity to make his methamphetamine. Bill Powers, case at the national level. Ottilie a Stump supporter and former argued that Stump faced the same Executive Committee member, person at appeal who notified him said he provided that information of his suspension. to the national office because he Ward said case law prevents was uncertain Miller had men- courts from “interpreting laws of tioned the conviction when he a private organization,” whereby applied for the job and because “you’re interfering with that orthe drug sales occurred near his ganization’s autonomy to do that daughter’s school. for itself.”

Spin Cycle reached out to Stump, however, said the alMiller for comment, but there ternative raises the question of was no response. whether an organization like SiDavid Grubb, the current chap- erra Club is run “from the bottom ter chairman, had no comment re- up or the top down. Is it grassgarding the lawsuit and would say roots or Astroturf?” only this about the personal nature In the end, Judge Bacal on of the internal squabble: “I think Tuesday decided she would make you are smart enough to know no ruling, Ottilie told Spin as when you are being played.” He CityBeat went to press. “She said declined to elaborate. there was no ‘ripe’ controversy for Stump contends that it’s the court to rule on. She’s wrong Grubb and Miller who have cre- on that because he’s been banned ated the most recent adversarial from holding office for life.” atmosphere at the local Sierra Ottilie declined to say whethClub chapter. As far as schisms er the non-decision would be apwithin the chapter are con- pealed. cerned, he and other past leaders note that such splits are the rule Write to johnl@sdcitybeat.com rather than the exception and and editor@sdcitybeat.com.

Johns CONTINUED from PAGE 7 a result of getting caught, he was forced to face his behavior.

Fearing ridicule, Grant had kept his actions largely secret from everyone in his life, never seeking help. During the impact panel, he’s introduced for the first time to the idea that sex addiction is a treatable disease.

“When I went to [Sexaholics Anonymous], I realized I couldn’t fix myself by myself,” Paul tells the audience. “But when I went to SA, I found an entire community of people who were willing to help me on

my journey.

“If I can save you from doing the stupid shit that I have done, I didn’t waste a Monday night coming here,” he adds. “This is perfect. This is exactly what I need to do.”

The testimony had a powerful impact on Grant, who said he’s now determined to get help. But since attending the program, Grant has continued to engage in prostitution.

“I want to slow it down to where I can have one girl to be with and I don’t have to think about another girl,” he said. “I pray for that every night. Every night, I pray that I can just meet a girl, fall in love with her and just want to be with her.”

The stories of those speaking on the

impact panel have different details. With little preaching, each person shared their individual narrative: Some folks used more drugs; others had more vicious encounters with rape and near-death.

However, nearly all the panelists shared the common experience of severe early-chilhood trauma, their cautionary tales depicting failed attempts to deal with deep-rooted pain through drugs and other means of escape.

Almost unconsciously at the end of his interview with CityBeat, Grant mentioned his own trauma.

“My mom never hugged me,” he said solemnly. “Maybe that’s the reason I treat women the way I do, because I’m getting

back at them, you know.”

Having grown up with his grandmother, Grant revealed feelings of abandonment that mirrored, to a degree, much of the pain that the panelists had shared with him.

“I feel lonely,” he said. “It’s kind of strange. I have all these women, but I still feel lonely. I never have been honest in a relationship. I’ve always cheated.”

He paused for a moment.

“I’m probably going to have to do the classes. I’m going to have to address the issue.”

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

July 9, 2014 · San Diego CityBeat · 9

edwin

sordid tales

decker Ocean Beach would prefer not to be cornholed On June 14, I received an email from Frank Gormlie, letter was so effective on me is because of my LIMO publisher of the OB Rag, asking Ocean Beach resisensibilities (Libertarian in Mind Only). I do believe dents to sign a petition because the city of San Diego in the power of a nearly free market and recognize has been allowing certain beachfront property ownthat a nearly free market does have certain self-corers to build larger houses than Ocean Beach permits. recting characteristics. However, I also know that the I saw that email and thought, Bollocks on that! sales pitch for a truly free market—as in, no regulation As a longtime Ocean Beach resident and property whatsoever—is the biggest lie ever uttered since Rogowner, I’m in love with the Ocean Beach mystique. er Daltrey said he hoped he’d die before he got old.

And these large houses are blocking views of the Anybody who has a brain in their head that hasn’t beach and inconsistent with the OB aesthetic. Why been mangled in a General Motors faulty-ignitionon Earth would we want to turn this neighborhood switch collision knows that checks and balances are into another Denny’s- and Dominoes-dominated, necessary to keep capitalism from cornholing sociFartburger-franchising, one-hundred-and-elevenety in the cornhole hole.

7-Eleven-having, no-beach-seeing, mom-and-popWith unfettered capitalism, you get BP dumping shop massacre that is Pacific Beach? a planet’s worth of sludge into the Gulf of Mexico.

About a week later, I received more bad news in With unfettered capitalism you get all the media a letter from Attorney David Stebbins. owned by a handful of conglomerates.

“Recently during a community plan update a With unfettered capitalism, you get corporate, small group of individuals attempted to restrict monoculture farm subsidies and Satan’s minister of your ability to rehab or rebuild your property by reagriculture, Monsanto. stricting or eliminating the variance process.”

With unfettered capitalism, you get the oblitI saw that letter and thought, eration of net neutrality (coming Bollocks on that! As a longtime soon to a cornhole near you).

Now, the reason Ocean Beach resident and propWith unfettered capitalism, erty owner, I’m offended by any you get shadow banking, predathat Stebbins’ attempts to control what I can and tory lending, negligent mortgage pro-development can’t do on or with my property, bundling and the crash of 2008. and this sort of big-government inWith unfettered capitalism, letter was so effective trusion really gets my—. Oh, wait. you get a military industrial comon me is because of He’s talking about the same plex, the horror of tort reform, a thing. Well played, Mr. Stebbins. mysterious Federal Reserve Sysmy LIMO sensibilities You manipulated me into thinking tem, colony-collapse disorder (I (Libertarian in I was against my own position. guarantee greed will be found as Mind Only) The issue at hand is complithe cause) and towering hotels like cated and tedious, so let me sumgiant cash registers protruding marize in a way that everyone, from the sands of Miami Beach. including me, can understand. Basically, Satan and With unfettered capitalism, you get Pacific his conglomerate minions want to cornhole the little Beach, with its vast stretches of strip-mall suckosity people of Ocean Beach. and all the character of a cat lady’s yard sale.

OK, maybe that’s an oversimplification. How Now, I’m not saying I’m against multinational about this?: Ocean Beach, like most boroughs, has corporate inclusion in the community. The truth is, what’s called a community plan. Community plans unfettered liberalism isn’t any better. If conservaoutline what it is we property owners can and can’t tives weren’t around to keep liberals in check, all of do with our land, such as, you know, converting my our sodas would be served in a sieve, your yard guy would have tenure and the New York Giants would be family’s rental property into a free-range crocodile called the New York Big Persons because gigantism and pit viper petting zoo. is a serious disorder that shouldn’t be demeaned.

In the 1970s, in an effort to prevent developers So, yes, there should be, and is, some corporate from cornholing OB, our hippie forefathers institutgrowth in OB; just don’t turn us into PB—which, ed a restrictive floor-area ratio (FAR) into the comyou know, has all the character of a geriatric potato munity plan. In a nutshell, FAR is the ratio of the auditioning for the role of “floating space turd” in square footage of the building to the square footage the upcoming sequel to Gravity. of the lot. The smaller the FAR, the less of a monPart of the charm of OB—the thing that makes strosity you’re permitted to build, which is why we us different—is our commitment, nay, ferocious don’t see those Pacific Beach-like multistory homes devotion to our retro aura and attitude, historical “essentially walling off the ocean,” as Giovanni Inbuildings, mom-and-pop shops and all the funky, golia, a member of the Ocean Beach Town Council whacked-out residents and small-time property Board of Directors, put it to me. owners who may not own property at the ocean but Long story short: Ocean Beach’s beloved, peosure have as much right as anyone else to see it. ple-friendly FAR is in danger of being weakened, and the battle is underway between the haves and Write to edwin@sdcitybeat.com the have-lots. and editor@sdcitybeat.com.

Now, the reason that Stebbins’ pro-development

10 · San Diego CityBeat · July 9, 2014

by michael a. gardiner Michael A. Gardiner

If Laja is overrated, please give me a list of similarly overrated restaurants. Our recent meal (with wine pairings) began with two amuse bouches: flawlessly roasted beets garnished with a dollop of yoghurt (simple but delicious) and a silky and perfectly well-rounded gazpacho elevated by a twist of preserved lemon. These were followed by a lettuce salad with green apple, nectarine and elderberry that reminded me how good a lightly dressed salad can be when the ingredients are perfectly fresh.

The elderberries provided a surprising accent. It was a Chez Panisse moment.

Those dishes were but a prelude to a crudo of callo de hacha (a clam that’s similar to diver scallops) and sea snail Oven-roasted lamb with vegetable risotto with lightly (and ever-so-slightly spicy) pickled cucumbers, cherry tomato slices and scallions with avocado in an herb-infused vinaigrette. It was a symphony of complementary flavors and contrasting textures.

A vegetable ravioli with chicken broth and preserved lemon was less spectacular but had subtle charms. While the crafting of the ravioli Still a proud tall poppy was slightly off in filling quantity and form, the flavors were spot-on. Moreover, Blanco’s pairing The tall-poppy syndrome is a social phenomeof the dish with his Ulloa Pinot Noir picked up non—prominent in Australia, New Zealand and brilliantly on the floral qualities on the plate and Canada—in which people of distinction (“tall elevated the experience. poppies”) are cut down for the simple “crime” of If the crudo wasn’t the dish of the evening, elevating themselves above their fellow citizens those honors must go to the oven-roasted local through their accomplishments. It’s a syndrome lamb with vegetable risotto. A single, thin, exthat appears to be alive and thriving in the Baja pertly roasted carrot from Laja’s garden and a and Southern California food scenes. beautifully roasted and perfectly pink lamb chop Laja restaurant in the Valle de Guadalupe were the visual foci of the plate. A cheese-less (Carretera Ensenada-Tecate km. 83, lajamexico. fresh vegetable risotto was a nice counterpoint. com) was one of the first of the new Baja restauBut the real prize was the less-fancied bits of the rants to gain international attention. Chef Jair lamb braised till they fell off the bone, pressed Tellez and then-wife Laura (the restaurant’s overnight in refrigeration, cut into blocks and name comes from the first two letters of each of seared to caramelized deliciousness. A reduction their names) bought land in “the middle of noof the braising liquid sauced the plate. where,” as Tellez described it in an Eater interA series of pre-dessert and dessert courses view, to create a destination restaurant. But Laufollowed, ranging from refreshing to excellent. ra and Jair divorced, and Laura’s front-of-house The white-chocolate royale with mascarpone role was assumed by winemaker Andres Blanco. was a standout. But, truly, after the crudo and Meanwhile, Tellez began spending more time at lamb dishes, these weren’t even necessary. his Mexico City venture, MeroToro. Soon, long Laja overrated? Hardly. Long live the tall popknives were out for the tall poppy. Whispers py. ¡Viva Laja! suggested that Laja lost focus, foodies found Write to michaelg@sdcitybeat.com new darlings and one Chowhound discussion and editor@sdcitybeat.com. labeled the restaurant “WAY OVERRATED.”

the world

fare

July 9, 2014 · San Diego CityBeat · 11

By Jen Van Tieghem

bottle

Rocket This Zin Roxx

It’s a mystery how I, a big fan of Lodi Zinfandels, haven’t explored Oak Ridge Winery’s offerings in depth before now. The oldest operating winery in Lodi, it established the first tasting room in the area, and with that in mind, I dove into the deep end with Oak Ridge’s 2011 Ancient Vine Zinfandel, called Moss Roxx.

The label itself has an interesting “ancient” appeal, adorned with a cave-painting-like bear figure in gold foil, and the bottle was noticeably heavier than most (or maybe I just need to lift some weights).

Lodi is known for having a classic Mediterranean climate, well-suited for growing a variety of grapes, from Viognier to Cabernet, and is especially well-known for its Zins. I’m quick to pick up anything red from the area and wines denoted “old vine” typically rank high on my list. So, of course, “ancient vine” caught my eye.

12 · San Diego CityBeat · July 9, 2014

Impressively, some of the oldest vines at Oak Ridge are around 125 years old, and the vines for Moss Roxx average 105 years old.

(Note: Neither “old vine” nor “ancient vine” designations are regulated on labeling, but many good wines are available that are cultivated from older vines—just make sure to do your homework.)

The wine immediately gives away its deep character with an array of lingering scents. Bold cherry on the nose yields to subtle touches of tobacco and hints of anise—a lot to take in before even taking a sip. Luckily, the decadent flavor profile matches the bouquet with lots of berry and jam layers. While the taste and aromas are complex, it manages to not feel too heavy or overpowering, leaving one wanting more instead of invoking a sensory overload.

Moss Roxx is the type of wine I enjoy on its own, unadulterated, in order to appreciate its subtleties.

It’s easily drinkable with a smoothness betraying its 14.5 percent ABV. Whether it’s the experienced winery, the century-old vines, the ideal climate, or a bit of each, wine this good will never get old.

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

by Mina Riazi mina riazi

than a pound, so if you’re feeling really ravenous, go for the Sunshine, Scripps, Hungover or Machaca.

The La Jolla burrito is another heavy-hitter. Filled with pollo asado, fries, salsa, sour cream and cheese, it tastes best with extra drizzles of salsa in between bites. Far from soggy, the La Jolla struggled with dry and generally bland chicken pieces. Perhaps, had I been fueling up after a beach run or wrestling a stubborn hangover, I wouldn’t have noticed that the burrito was also slightly under-stuffed. Top-grade burritos rely just as much on the proportion of ingredients as they do on the quality. So far, a supremely simple yet endlessly seductive Don Carlos’ fish and rolled tacos bean ’n’ cheese from Rigoberto’s has come the closest to achieving a perfect balance of ingredients.

Next on the list of most addictive Don Carlos eats are the rolled tacos. Chunky guacamole—not the toothpaste-smooth version you sometimes eye at the supermarket, but never actually buy— blankets the taquito trio. Chicken, beef and potato Burrito bonanza are the options, and I ordered one of each. Once again, the chicken was a too-dry disappointment.

Few foods are more terrifying than soggy burritos.

Tender and flavorful, the beef version definitely After slowly steaming in their tortillas, the onceimpressed, though. I must admit that my favorite distinct ingredients are rendered flavorless and part of any deep-fried food is the crunchy, starchy texture-less. Imagine my shock when I learned of outer layer. Taco traditionalists will scoff, but I Burritobox. The bright-orange vending machine say channel your inner toddler and greasily sepadeposits ready-to-eat burritos and probably sperate the corn tortilla from the filling. Enjoy them cializes in the soggy kind. Mildly depressed that separately for a new twist on the rolled taco. such a contraption exists, I decided to combat my Impressively—if I do say so myself—I didn’t sadness in the only way possible: by devouring a stop there. The Don Carlos fish taco came next, hot, hulking, freshly made burrito. flaunting a generously battered slab of moist, A La Jolla fixture since 1984, Don Carlos flaky fish. Dressed with a few blobs of guacamole Taco Shop (737 Pearl St., eataburrito.com) is a faand a squirt of lime, it tasted exquisite. vorite among famished beach-goers and college On my way out, I noticed an older, aproned kids sniffing out cheap, filling eats—oftentimes, woman scooping out the bright-green flesh of they’re the same people. The extensive menu avocados into a bucket. A few steps behind her, offers several iterations of the San Diego-born a young guy, perhaps in his early 20s, helmed the California burrito, as well as breakfast burritos, grill. Hypnotized by the mouth-watering smells rolled tacos, enchiladas and quesadillas. and sizzles, I nearly forgot that somewhere, On a late Sunday afternoon, the small, three-tasomeone was probably paying $3 for a soggy vending-machine burrito. ble joint was filled with a few other patrons. Most people come for the burritos, which are cubit-long Write to minar@sdcitybeat.com gut-busters overflowing with a cast of familiar, and editor@sdcitybeat.com. flavorsome ingredients. Some even weigh more

One Lucky

Spoon

July 9, 2014 · San Diego CityBeat · 13

[T echnology ] no life

offline

by dave maass

The year in San Diego cybercrime (so far) When I first heard that next January, CBS will start airing CSI: Cyber, the latest spin on its longrunning, scientifically questionable forensic crime drama, I thought to myself: What a boring, boring idea for a show. Episode after episode would be FBI analysts sitting in front of their computers, running analysis tools on seized hard drives and grimacing every time a piece of child porn flashes across their screens. Then, when they go to arrest the guy, he takes a plea deal in 10 minutes. Isn’t that how it always goes?

Nope. This week, I scanned the last six months’ worth of San Diego cybercrime stories and press releases (the headlines from which television writers love to rip). I was wrong: From Ghanaian witchcraft to scary clowns, cybercrime is as weird as anything in the real world: Jan. 16: San Diego police arrested Randolph Jenks, who allegedly posed as an iPhone buyer on Craigslist, then tried to short-change sellers on the agreed price. If they argued back, he allegedly whipped out a gun, stun gun or pepper spray.

Feb. 10: Hector Carreon, a nurse’s assistant, was sentenced to 50 years for child pornography, including sharing files of an 8-year-old being molested by a clown. When the feds raided his home, they literally found him with his pants down—with a minor—and more than 1,400 illegal images and videos on his computer.

Feb. 28: Although this was announced by the U.S. Attorney’s office the day arrests were made, the indictment was only unsealed on July 2. Basically, three guys from Tijuana are alleged to have hacked into a mortgage broker’s system and stolen mortgage applications (chock full of sensitive personal information) in a conspiracy that went on for two years. They’re accused of committing fraud with that information, including setting up Sam’s Club and Walmart credit cards.

March 27: A San Diego man, who had previously lived in St. Louis, was sentenced to 15 months for hacking into Nefesh B’Nefesh, an Israeli organization. He also bragged about it on Twitter at @_AnonymouSTL_ (which no longer exists). According to Hackmageddon.com and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the Anonymous-affiliated attack gathered up 594 names, addresses and encrypted passwords.

April 1: Eight people were indicted for abusing one of my favorite websites: the state’s unclaimed-property database. Basically, this is a site containing all the chunks of money that are owed to people but haven’t been claimed. Most of the time, if folks don’t claim it, it just ends up going into the government budget through a process called escheatment (we’ve written about how that’s kind of theft in itself ). These people allegedly pretended to be the rightful owners and collected $1.5 million in unclaimed money.

April 15: San Diego Superior Court sent out a warning that phishers were sending virus-laden emails to San Diegans claiming they were official messages from the court.

14 · San Diego CityBeat · July 9, 2014

April 30: Howard Willie Carter was sentenced to 14 years in prison for having 600 child porn images on his computer and trying to upload at least one to YouTube.

May 9: The San Diego County Sheriff’s Department announced the results of “Operation. com,” in which 19 people were arrested in a scheme to sell drugs online through Facebook and Craigslist. According to the Los Angeles Times, the drug dealers used “code names like ‘roofing tar’ for heroin and ‘Roxy board shorts size 30’ for 30 milligrams of Roxicodone.”

May 23: Three men were indicted as part of a fraud scheme orchestrated from Internet cafes in Ghana. They’d buy stolen credit-card details off the Internet, then use those cards to purchase vehicles (including from an El Cajon KIA dealership) for resale in Ghana. The most interesting element is that, according to the FBI, “All three defendants are alleged to have been involved with ‘Sakawa,’ which is a Ghanaian practice that combines modern Internet-based fraud practices targeting foreigners with traditional African religious rituals.”

June 10: Michael Gonzales, a 23-year-old student in Spring Valley who apparently went by the username “Metatron,” was sentenced to 10 years for child pornography. In all, prosecutors said he had 170 videos and 22,300 images, including six involving bondage.

June 16: A San Diego judge ruled that Kevin Bollaert, the proprietor of ugotposted.com, would face trial for allegedly running a scam in which he’d charge people (usually women) up to $350 to get naked pictures of themselves removed from his site.

Prosecuted by Attorney General Kamala Harris, it’s being promoted as the first criminal case brought against a “revenge porn” site. Ugotposted.com now forwards to the National Conference of State Legislature’s page for “State ‘Revenge Porn’ Legislation.”

July 1: The San Diego Sheriff’s Department “officially” launched its new Cyber / Financial Crimes Investigations Unit. According to U-T San Diego, the head of the unit refuses to have a Facebook page.

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

the

SHORTlist

ART

COORDINATED BY KINSEE MORLAN

rendered in pencil, inks, charcoal and stencil—by chief curator Kathryn Kanjo and Drake himself.

The gallery has 10 walls covered in art, each of which “evolved” into separate “chapters,” Drake says. “Sometimes that would be drawings of historical artists. There’s one that has a lot of Hispanic and Central American cultural iconography. Visually they have their own character.”

After the tour, guests can converge on the North Plaza, a newly renovated outdoor space across the street. Folks will have a chance A past TNT event to create their own drawings inspired by the installation and pin them up on the spot. The food truck Tortally Tasty will be onsite, as The gallery walls of the Museum of Con- will be $5 beers and $6 cocktails and live music by temporary Art San Diego’s Downtown local rock bands Stone Horse and Gunner Gunner. location (in the Jacobs Building at 1100 The exhibition will also include a selection of Kettner Blvd.) will be papered over this week with pieces from the museum’s permanent collection exactly 1,242 12-by-24-inch drawings by local artist from earlier in Drake’s career, which range from James Drake. For each day during the last two-and- sculpture to photography, much of which focuses on a-half years, Drake kept what he calls a “visual diary.” the social conditions of life on the border.

“I measured all the walls on the museum, and Admission is $8 for students and seniors and that’s exactly what fit on the walls,” Drake says. “The $10 for everyone else (free for museum members). whole idea started with, ‘I’ll do 1,000 drawings.’ Ba- mcasd.org sically, it was going to be a stream of consciousness.”

The latest in the museum’s quarterly series TNT (Thursday Night Thing) happens from 7 to 10 p.m.

Canvas Gallery (1150 Seventh Ave., Thursday, July 10, and kicks off the exhibition AnatDowntown) is a no-holds-barred venue, omy of Drawing and Space (Brain Trash). The event inperfect for the upcoming Performance cludes a guided tour of the compositions—which are Series. With the pretense-free basement gallery as the backdrop, a lineup of performance artists will be allowed to play and experiment. Multidisciplinary From 1821 to 1867, the Ether Dome was artist Kristopher Apple will kick things off at 7 p.m. the operating room at Boston’s Massa- Friday, July 11, with “Collide / Escape,” a piece he’s chusetts General Hospital and the set- directing that combines poetry, short stories, instruting for the first use of ether as an anesthetic in 1846. mental music, sound experiments and interactive That historical event is the basis of a play, Ether video. At 7 p.m. Saturday, July 12, Apple will perDome, by Elizabeth Egloff that was first staged in form with fellow members of LIVE, a group of per2011 at the Alley Theatre in Houston. Now it’s hav- formance artists, in an improvisational dance-anding its West Coast premiere at La Jolla Playhouse— sound piece called “Composing My CorpoReality.” opening on Sunday, July 13, and running through At 7 p.m. Sunday, July 13, Pittsburgh-based violinAug. 10. The play zooms in on the relationship be- ist and composer Joey Molinaro will wrap things up tween dentist Horace Wells, a pioneer in anesthesia with a set of what he calls “acoustic grindcore” muwho unsuccessfully used nitrous oxide on a patient sic. Admission is $8 per show.

TIM RICHARDS at the Ether Dome in 1845, and his student, the fameand-fortune-seeking opportunist William Morton, who successfully used ether the following year. Tickets range from $15 to $45. lajollaplayhouse.com

1

WALLPAPER

3

2

FREE TO FLOW

A KNOCKOUT

JAMES YOUMANS

A model of the Ether Dome set

Leslie Seiters (left) and Kristopher Apple

HArtist Talk: Jamex and Einar De la Torre at The Front, 147 W. San Ysidro Blvd., San Ysidro. The De la Torre brothers will discuss the creative process behind their new body of work, Whysidro, inspired by their connection with the U.S./Mexico border. At 5:30 p.m. Thursday, July 10.

619-428-1115, facebook.com/thefront147 Shore Thing at MCASD, 700 Prospect St., La Jolla. Back for a second year, the MCASD galleries will be open late every Thursday. Guests can enjoy cocktails on the terrace, live music, tours of current exhibitions and more. From 5 to 8 p.m. Thursday, July 10. 858-454-3541, mcasd.org HTNT (Thursday Night Thing) at MCASD, 1001 Kettner Blvd., Downtown.

Check out the new exhibition, James Drake: Anatomy of Drawing and Space (Brain Trash) at this art and music mash-up. Dive deeper into the art with tours, art-making activities, live music on the plaza, cocktails and eats. From 7 to 10 p.m. Thursday, July 10. $8-$10. 858-454-3541, mcasd.org James Drake: Anatomy of Drawing and Space (Brain Trash) at MCASD, 1001 Kettner Blvd., Downtown. The new exhibition is a culmination of two years of active creation, reflecting imagery from throughout the artist’s 40-year career. Opens Thursday, July 10, on view through Sept.

21. $5-$10. 858-454-3541, mcasd.org HCulture & Cocktails: Sorolla and America at San Diego Museum of Art, Balboa Park. SDMA’s semi-regular soiree celebrates Sorolla and America, complete with signature cocktails by Ballast Point, a seafaring photo booth, tabletop shuffleboard, a candy bar, music and more nautical-themed treats. At 6 p.m. Thursday, July 10. $20. 619-232-7931, sdmart.org #ArtExpoSD Auction & Raffle at The Local, 1065 4th Ave., Downtown. Join local artists and designers for a silent auction and fundraiser, with proceeds benefitting ArtExpo, a curated exhibition of work by emerging artists happening July 24-26.

At 6 p.m. Thursday, July 10. facebook. com/events/1468703826705490 HJorge Tirado and Miguel Rojas at Graffiti Beach, 2220 Fern St., South Park.

The local pop-surrealist painters will show off new work. Plus, enjoy complimentary craft beer and vinyl jams from DJ Professor Shadow. Opening from 6 to 9 p.m.

Friday, July 11. shopgraffitibeach.com HThomas DeMello at Ice Gallery, 1955 Julian Ave., Barrio Logan. A site-specific sculptural installation by the San Diegobased artist and the first show for the new location of Ice Gallery. Opening from 5 to 9 p.m. Friday, July 11. icegallerysd.com Espacio Abierto at Distrito Diez, Av. Hipodromo #15-E Col. Hipodromo, Tijuana. A new exhibition of paintings, drawings and metal-based work from local artist Cesar Vazquez. Opening from 8 to 11 p.m. Friday, July 11. facebook.com/distrito10ea Frida Kahlo Art Show at Casa Artelexia, 2419 Kettner Blvd., Little Italy. View works by 50 artists, all inspired by Frida. Enjoy paletas by Viva Pops, music by DJ Toni Colon and more. Opening from 5 to 9 p.m.

Saturday, July 12. $5. artelexia.com

Grand Ave., Escondido. Explore Southern California through the eyes of artists like Darrel McPherson, Alex “Sasha” Babic, Cedar Lee and Bradley Kaskin. Opening from 7 to 9:30 p.m. Saturday, July 12.

760-580-2300, arttraditiongallery.net HWhy the Long Face at Visual, 3776 30th St., North Park. New paintings from local artist Eric Wixon, which celebrate the pursuit of happiness with whimsical characters composed of loose abstract marks and continual lines. Opening from 7 to 10 p.m.

Saturday, July 12. visualshopsd.com HWaving the Flag at Art Produce Gallery, 3139 University Ave., North Park. New mixed-media works from local artist William Feeney, who explores American ideology and what he calls “superficial patriotism.” Opening from 6 to 9 p.m. Saturday, July 12. 619-584-4448, artproduce.org Michelle D. Ferrera at Caption Boutique & Gallery, 495 10th Ave., East Village. New works from the local artist who specializes in paintings on wood. There’ll also be live acoustic music from Christopher Masino.

Opening from 6 to 8 p.m. Saturday, July 12. 619-204-2539 HSelina Calvo & Chikle at Chicano Art Gallery, 2117 Logan Ave. #1, Logan Heights. The married couple will have their first art show together, debuting new paintings and mixed-media work. Opening from 5 to 10 p.m. Saturday, July 12. facebook.com/ChicanoArtGallery ArtHatch Studio Artists at Distinction Gallery and Artist Studios, 317 E. Grand Ave., Escondido. Check out a wide range of work including paintings, photography and mixed-media. Opening from 6 to 10 p.m. Saturday, July 12. distinctionart.com HFrom Concrete To Canvas at Casa del Tunel, 133 Calle Chapo Marquez Col. Federal, Tijuana. Works from muralist and visual artist Ugo Villegas, who uses found and repurposed objects to create new pieces of art. Opening from 7 to 11 p.m.

Saturday, July 12. 011-52-664-682-9570 Local Color: Year of the Horse at Escondido Municipal Gallery, 262 E. Grand Ave., Escondido. The exhibit features equestrian artwork from local artists chosen by the show’s juror Ilona Radelow.

Opening from 5:30 to 8 p.m. Saturday, July 12. 760-480-4101, escondidoarts.org HMostly Mortal at Opportunity Gallery, 2825 Dewey Road, Building 202, Suite 103, Point Loma. An exhibition of new portraits by painter Vicki Walsh and six emerging artists. Opening from 5 to 8 p.m. Saturday, July 12. vickiwalsh.com HObjects in Mirrors at The Lab Salon, 3034 University Ave., North Park. Photography and mixed-media exhibition from local artist Monica Hoover. Opening from 6 to 9 p.m. Saturday, July 12. thelabasalon.com Soul Manifest at Thumbprint Gallery, 920 Kline St., #104, La Jolla. Cool pop-surrealist drawings and paintings from Andrew McNamara, who’s influenced by social situations, textile patterns and cultural differences. Opening from 5 to 10 p.m. Saturday, July 12. thumbprintgallerysd.com Cowabunga: A TMNT Art Show at Basic, 410 10th Ave., Downtown. With the new movie coming out, what better time to have a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle art show? From 7 to midnight. Tuesday, July 15. thumbprintgallerysd.com

Ray at Night along Ray Street between University and North Park Way in North Park. Galleries will be showing exhibitions, there’ll be street performances and food vendors. Highlights include All Hail the Queen at Ray Street Custom Framing featuring photographs by Kelly Fitzgerald of drag queens in San Diego and at Wigstock in San Francisco in the ’90s. From 6 to 9 p.m. Saturday, July 12. rayatnight.com

Lynn Sherr at Warwick’s Bookstore, 7812 Girard Ave., La Jolla. The author and former ABC reporter will discuss and sign Sally Ride: America’s First Woman In

The Art of California from Sea to Desert at Art Tradition Gallery, 321 E.

CONTINUED ON PAGE 16

BOOKS

July 9, 2014 · San Diego CityBeat · 15

Space. At 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, July 9.

858-454-0347, warwicks.indiebound.com Surf Dog Ricochet at Barnes & Noble Mira Mesa, 10775 Westview Pkwy., Mira Mesa. The San Diego pup will be putting his pawtograph on copies of Ricochet: Riding a Wave of Hope With the Dog Who Inspires Millions. At 7 p.m. Wednesday, July 9. surfdogricochet.com Mary Pearson at Mysterious Galaxy Book Store, 7051 Clairemont Mesa Blvd., Clairemont. The award-winning young adult author discusses her latest novel, The Kiss of Deception. At 7 p.m. Friday, July 11. 858-268-4747, mystgalaxy.com Michael Lieberman at Warwick’s Bookstore, 7812 Girard Ave., La Jolla. Part of Warwick’s ongoing Weekend with Locals program, the San Diego author will discuss and sign The Lobsterman’s Daughter, a tale of murder and deceit in five generations of a Maine family. At noon Sunday, July 13.

858-454-0347, warwicks.indiebound.com Jojo Moyes at Warwick’s Bookstore, 7812 Girard Ave., La Jolla. Moyes will be promoting her new novel, One Plus One, about a single mother trying to find love.

At 7:30 p.m. Monday, July 14. 858-4540347, warwicks.indiebound.com N.K. Jemisin at Mysterious Galaxy Book Store, 7051 Clairemont Mesa Blvd., Clairemont. The Clarion instructor and author of The Inheritance Trilogy and Dreamblood Series discusses the writing process. At 7 p.m. Wednesday, July 16.

858-268-4747, mystgalaxy.com HLaurel Braitman at Warwick’s Bookstore, 7812 Girard Ave., La Jolla. The author and senior TED fellow will discuss her latest, Animal Madness: How Anxious Dogs, Compulsive Parrots, and Elephants in Recovery Help Us Understand Our-

selves. At 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, July 16. warwicks.indiebound.com

COMEDY Natasha Leggero at American Comedy Co., 818 B Sixth Ave., Downtown. The actress, writer and stand-up from the series Burning Love was recently on The Comedy Central Roast of James Franco. At 8 p.m.

Thursday, July 10, and 7:30 and 9:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday, July-12. $24.

619-795-3858, americancomedyco.com HJ. Chris Newberg at Mad House Comedy Club, 502 Horton Plaza, Downtown.

The guitarist/songwriter-cum-comedian combines his offbeat observations on life with original acoustic guitar songs. At 7:30 and 9:45 p.m. Friday and Saturday, July 11-12. $20. madhousecomedyclub.com Some Magnificent Thing! at Finest City Improv, 4250 Louisiana St., North Park. Finest City Improv performers create an irreverent, socially charged romp through some of San Diego’s beloved landscapes. At 8 p.m. Saturday, July 12. $10. 619-306-6047, finestcityimprov.com

DANCE HCollide / Escape at Canvas Gallery, 1150 Seventh Ave., Downtown. A multimedia performance directed by Kristopher Apple and featuring artists Marisol Benter, Christian Kjeldsen, Rachel Merfalen, Stephen Silke, Ariana Warren and Chris Warren. At 7 p.m. Friday, July 11. $8.

FASHION Jill Courtemanche Trunk Show at Rica Boutique, 7456 Girard Ave., La Jolla. Jill

Courtemanche Millinery and RICA Boutique are teaming up for a trunk show for Opening Day at Del Mar. From noon to 6 p.m. Thursday, July 10. 858-876-6353, jillcourtemanche.com Arturo Rios Trunk Show at Village Hat Shop Hillcrest, 3821 Fourth Ave., Hillcrest.

View Rios’ headwear collection at this annual fashion event ahead of Del Mar Opening Day. There will be complimentary champagne, wine, raffles and a fashion show. From 3 to 6 p.m. Saturday, July 12. 613-683-5533, villagehatshop.com

HSausage Fest at LOUNGEsix, 616 J St., Downtown. Ten chefs present their favorite sausage recipes. Enjoy live music by The Tighten Ups, Lost Abbey’s “The Road to Helles” beer and a take home mug. From 6 to 9 p.m. Wednesday, July 16. $10. 619531-8744, sdsausagefest.com

MUSIC

will present four concerts. At 7:30 p.m.

Thursday, July 10, through Saturday, July 12, and 2:30 p.m. Sunday, July 13. $15-$51. 760-633-2748, encinitas.tix.com Ballad Mongers at Bird Park, 28th & Thorn, North Park. The local adult-alternative band will play a show in the park as part of the Bird Park Summer Concerts series. From 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Saturday, July 12. concerts.northparksd.com

FOOD & DRINK

#HACKINGIMPROV at Space 4 Art, 325 15th St., East Village. Composer and performer Blair Robert Nelson explores over a century of audio technology alongside violinist Kristopher Apple. At 7 p.m. Wednesday, July 9. $10. sdspace4art.org

HGrain & Oak Fest at Jsix Restaurant, 616 J St., Downtown. Taste premium brands of scotch, whiskey and rye, including a first look at Jsix’s signature Woodford Reserve, and enjoy bites from Chef Christian Graves. From 6 to 9 p.m.

Thursday, July 10. $20. 619-531-8744. nightout.com/events/grain-oak-fest

Twilight in the Park Summer Concerts at Spreckels Organ Pavilion, Balboa Park. This week: R&B from Breez’n on Wednesday, July 9, ‘50s Latin Big Band music from Bi-Nacional de Mambo Orchestra on Thursday, July 10, and San Diego Jazz Quintet on Wednesday, July 16. At 6:15 p.m. balboapark.org

First Anniversary Extravaganza Join Modern Times Beer for a celebration of their first year. From noon to 5 p.m. Saturday, July 12, at the Lomaland Fermentorium (3725 Greenwood St.) and Sunday, July 13, at the North Park Flavordome (3000 Upas St. Ste. 102). $10-$40. moderntimes1year.bpt.me

HStarvelab at Helmuth Projects, 1827 Fifth Ave., Downtown. Starvelab plays what they call modular synthesis music made of sounds that are dreamy and served with doses of noise. With special guests Bobby Bray (innerds, The Locust) and Kyle Wright (Dysthmia). At 8 p.m. Wednesday, July 9. helmuth-projects.com

Ballast Point 18th Anniversary Beer Festival at Maritime Museum of San Diego, 1492 N. Harbor Drive, Downtown.

Board the Star of India, the Berkeley ferry, and all the museum’s historic vessels and sample Ballast Point beers, including some rare and limited options. There will also be live music and food for purchase.

From 1 to 5 p.m. Sunday, July 13. $40.

619-234-9153, sdmaritime.org

Sunset Poolside Jazz Series at Westgate Hotel, 1055 Second Ave., Downtown. This week: Sue Palmer, San Diego’s “Queen of Boogie-Woogie.” From 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. Thursday, July 10. $20 minimum food and beverage purchase.

619-238-1818, westgatehotel.com

Athenaeum Summer Festival at Athenaeum Music & Arts Library, 1008 Wall St., La Jolla. Celebrated pianist Gustavo Romero returns for a four-part concert series celebrating Beethoven. At 4 p.m.

Sunday, July 13. $35-$50. 858-454-5872, ljathenaeum.org

iPalpiti Festival at Encinitas Library, 540 Cornish Dr., Encinitas. Five young virtuoso musicians from other countries

Salute to Opera and a Few Feisty Divas at Women’s Museum of California, 2730 Historic Decatur Road, Barracks 16, Point Loma. La Jolla Pen Women present a special concert featuring opera-inspired piano, jazz, selected arias and more. From 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. Sunday, July 13. 619233-7963, womensmuseumca.org

HGregory Page at Keys Creek Lavender Farm, 12460 Keys Creek Road, Valley Center. Enjoy the scent of lavender in the air while listening to Page’s engaging lyrics and soothing melodies reminiscent of the 1920s sweet jazz era. At 7 p.m. Saturday, July 12. $25. mindfulfitness.com Pops Goes Classical: A Night in Hungary at Embarcadero Marina Park South, 111 W. Harbor Drive, Downtown. Part of the Symphony’s “Passport to the World” concert series, conductor Matthew Garbutt will lead the symphony through a journey of Hungary with music from composers like Franz Liszt. At 7:30 p.m. Sunday, July 13. sandiegosymphony.org The Composer Alive in His Music Series at New Central Library, 330 Park Blvd., East Village. Part two in a three-part music series highlighting the music of Manuel de Falla. At 2:30 p.m. Sunday, July 13. 619236-5800, sandiegolibrary.org

HJoey Molinaro at Canvas Gallery, 1150 7th Ave., Downtown. The Pittsburgh-based violinist, composer, improviser, multimedia artist, and performance artist returns to San Diego for a night of solo violin works. At 8 p.m. Sunday, July 13. $8.

Wyatt Smith at Spreckels Organ Pavilion, Balboa Park. The Spreckels Organ Society’s Summer International Organ Festival presents this rising star of the organ world. At 7:30 p.m. Monday, July 14. sosorgan.com HTrio Gadjo at New Central Library, 330 Park Blvd., East Village. The gypsy jazz trio, with special guest Claudia Gomez, will perform. At 6 p.m. Wednesday, July 16.

6192365800, sandiegolibrary.org HSteve Poltz & Tolan Shaw at Birch Aquarium, 2300 Expedition Way, La Jolla.

Part of the Green Flash Concert Series, enjoy live music from the local singersongwriter along with food and drinks and amazing sunset views from the aquarium’s Tide-Pool Plaza. From 5:30 to 9 p.m.

Wednesday, July 16. $31-$36. 858-534FISH, aquarium.ucsd.edu

PERFORMANCE HSan Diego International Fringe Festival at various locations. Artists from across the U.S. and around the world participate alongside home-grown talent in art forms like theatre cabaret, comedy, circus, dance, film, spoken word, puppetry, music, visual art and other types of artsy-ness. Free-$10. Through Sunday, July 13. 619-382-8206, sdfringe.org HYour Song, Your Story at Copley Symphony Hall, 750 B St., Downtown. The

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July 9, 2014 · San Diego CityBeat · 17

THEATER

More and more Barrymore

John Barrymore, legend of stage and screen, may have died in 1942, but he’s been making a comeback, at least in North County theaters. In the North Coast Repertory Theatre’s world premiere Faded Glory, Bruce Turk portrayed a young, boozing Barrymore full of mischief; now, in Intrepid Shakespeare Company’s production of Paul Rudnick’s I Hate Hamlet, stentorian-voiced Ruff Yeager is playing a dead but boozing and full of mischief Barrymore, who’s come back as a ghost to empower an insecure TV actor named Andrew Rally (Francis Gercke).

In both productions, the Barrymore character commands every scene he’s in, but much more so in I Hate Hamlet, in which he is the heart and soul of the show.

Yeager has an actor’s field day (the real Barrymore had a lot of those, of course) in this production, directed by Christopher Williams. It costars Gercke, Tom Stephenson (recently so stellar in Intrepid’s far more sober All My Sons), Gerilyn Brault (as a real-estate agent who sounds like a brassier Rhoda Morganstern), dignified Dagmar Fields as Andrew’s agent and winsome Brooke McCormick Paul as the avowed 29-year-old virgin who has Andrew’s frustration button blinking red.

This lightweight comedy’s conflict concerns whether Andrew will forgo a mega-big TV-series deal (playing a schoolteacher with superpowers by night) or go the serious-actor’s route and perform the role of Hamlet in New York’s Shakespeare in the Park. Adding to his psychological conundrum is the fact that he’s residing in the late John Barrymore’s NYC apartment—as is Barrymore’s ghost, which, for some reason, a few of the characters can see while others can’t. Gercke is adequate in the angst and anxiety department, DAREN SCOTT

but he is dwarfed (literally and figuratively) by the towering Yeager in every scene they share.

Rudnick’s living-room comedy, produced on Broadway way back in 1991, does raise some questions about what it means to be an actor—in this case, is it better to fail at Shakespeare than to succeed at hawking a snack food on TV with a puppet? Much of the time, though, it’s merely rambunctious ghost-in-the-house silliness. Could be sitcom material after all.

I Hate Hamlet runs through July 19 at the SDA Performing Arts Centre in Encinitas. $25-$35. intrepidshakespeare.com

—David L. Coddon Write to davidc@sdcitybeat.com and editor@sdcitybeat.com.

OPENING Ether Dome: The West Coast premiere of a play, based on true events in the 19th century, about two pioneers of surgical anesthesia—a trailblazing dentist and his ambitious student.

Opens July 13 at La Jolla Playhouse. lajollaplayhouse.com In a Forest, Dark and Deep: Neil LaBute’s tense play explores the complex relationship between a university dean and her redneck carpenter brother. Opens July 11 at Patio Playhouse in Escondido. patioplayhouse.com Into the Woods: A reinvented version of the musical that brings together classic fairy-tale characters returns to where it premiered in 1986. Opens July 12 at The Old Globe Theatre in Balboa Park. oldglobe.org Jade Heart: A drama that jumps backward and forward in time to tell the story of a Chinese girl who was adopted as an infant by an American woman. Opens in previews on July 11 at Moxie Theatre in Rolando. moxietheatre.com Middle School Sessions: A free staged reading of a new play about a mother intent on protecting her son from bullying. It happens at 7:30 p.m. Monday, July 14, at North Coast Repertory Theatre in Solana Beach. northcoastrep.org Pageant: Each show’s audience picks a winner from six contestants in a beauty-and-talent competition in this musical comedy. Presented by Cygnet Theatre, it opens in previews on July 10 at The Old Town Theatre. cygnettheatre.com Romance / Romance: This is a musical that’s really two short plays—in Act 1 and Act 2—about (yep, you guessed it) romance, relating to each other only with one shared song. It opens in previews on July 9 at North Coast Repertory Theatre in Solana Beach. northcoastrep.org

For full listings,

please visit “T heater ”

Ruff Yeager (left) and Francis Gercke completion of a two-year San Diego Symphony project culminating in a powerful performance that highlights San Diego’s diversity of San Diego. Performers include Kumeyaay Youth Bird Singers, Mariachi Garibaldi, Malashock Dance Company and more. At 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, July 9. And at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, July 16, at Embarcadero Marina Park South, 111 W. Harbor Drive, Downtown. Free, but RSVP online: yoursongyourstory.org Off-Broadway Cabaret at Visionary Dance Theatre, 8803 1/2 La Mesa Blvd., La Mesa. Marc Caro and cast showcase music from Broadway shows such as The Wild Party, Songs for a New World, Reefer Madness, Everyday Rapture and more. At 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, July 1112. $10-$15. VisionaryDanceTheatre.org HLUV Madonna: Music of the Material Girl at Balboa Theatre, 868 Fourth Ave., Downtown. The San Diego Gay

18 · San Diego CityBeat · July 9, 2014

at sdcit ybeat.com

Men’s Chorus’ Pride Week kickoff will feature over-the-top sets, costumes, dancers and choral arrangements of Madonna’s most popular songs. At 8 p.m. Saturday, July 12, and 3 p.m. Sunday, July 13. $29-$70. 877-296-7664, sdgmc.org Sex, Booze & Tattoos at Victory Theater, 2558 Imperial St., Logan Heights. Technomania Circus presents this new art and circus variety show embracing taboo topics.

Includes circus performances, music, a drunken painting contest, kink demonstrations, food and booze. At 5 p.m. Saturday, July 12. $15. technomaniacircus.com HInsect Festival at San Diego Botanic Garden, 230 Quail Gardens Drive, Encinitas. Entomologists and bug experts answer questions about thousands of creepy-crawlies including live insects, lizards, snakes and other creatures. From 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, July 12.

Free-$14. 760-436-3036, sdbgarden.org

HComposing my CorpoReality at Canvas Gallery, 1150 7th Ave., Downtown.

LIVE, an affiliation of performing artists, will perform their new composition, which they describe as “the sound/move of dancing/sounding is the music/dance.”

At 7 p.m. Saturday, July 12. $8. brownpapertickets.com/event/737977

POETRY & SPOKEN WORD Know Thyself Spoken Word Contest at Bamboo Lounge, 1475 University Ave., Hillcrest. Spoken-word artists will have three to five minutes to deliver their piece.

There will be seven events, and each night a winner will be selected by audience applause and will defend their title each until the finals, From 7 to 9 p.m. Friday, July 11. $7. 619-327-8846

HLong Story Short: I’m a Superhero at Broke Girls’ Coffee Bar, 3562 Adams Ave., Normal Heights. Long Story Short offers a platform for anyone to tell a story, without notes, for five minutes or less.

This month’s theme centers around stories of the superheroes in our lives. From 7 to 9:30 p.m. Sunday, July 13. 619-5468302, sosayweallonline.com

HMakers Market at Row Collective @ Flower Hill Promenade, Del Mar. The launch of this new quarterly series highlighting the Row Collective’s small businesses (Lone Flag, M-Theory, A Ship in the Woods, etc.) and artisans. There’ll be in-store promotions, local vendors and a lemonade bar by Sea & Smoke. From noon to 4 p.m. Sunday, July 13. flowerhill.com

SPECIAL EVENTS

Building Prosperity for Women in Poverty at Great Hall La Jolla, 4275 Campus Point Court, La Jolla. Women’s Empowerment International (WE) holds its annual celebration, which includes presentations by San Diego women, ethnic food, Brazilian folk music by Nos de Chita, wine and light refreshments. From 2 to 4 p.m. Sunday, July 13. 619-333-

HMOPA Remix Nights at Museum of Photographic Arts, Balboa Park. Each Thursday (with a few exceptions), MOPA will stay open late and feature a mix of entertainment. This week, they’ll have a special “Photo Remix” night. Bring photos from home to use in this fun photo transfer activity. From 5 to 9 p.m. Thursday, July 10. $6-$8. 619-238-8777, mopa.org

0026, womenempowerment.org Maps & Beer at World Resources Simulation Center, 1088 3rd Ave., Downtown.

Check out the work of PLAN SAN DIEGO, which uses Geographic Information System to engage the map-making community in San Diego, while sampling beers from Stone, Automatic and Karl Strauss.

From 6 to 8:30 p.m. Monday, July 14. $5. 619-865-5904, wrsc.org

SPORTS Over-The-Line-Tournament at Fiesta Island, E. Mission Bay Drive, Mission Bay. The annual tournament combines elements of beach baseball, softball and cricket. It’s celebrating its 61st birthday with more teams, more matches and spe-

cial permitting so fans can BYOB. From 7:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday, July 12, and Sunday, July 13. ombac.org HSurf Dog Competition at Imperial Beach Pier Plaza, Seacoast Drive, Imperial Beach. The most fearless dogs will jump on their boards, paddle out and hang 20. Other dog-friendly and familyfriendly activities include sandcastle sculpting, a kid’s zone, dog wash, beer garden food trucks and more. From 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sunday, July 13. unleashedby.petco.com/surfdog HWorld Cup Viewing Party North Park’s section of 30th street will be closed along Lincoln Avenue so World Cup fans can watch the championship match on a Jumbotron or in one of the neighborhood’s bars and restaurants. At 9 a.m.

Sunday, July 13. wcnp2014.com

TALKS & DISCUSSIONS Sharks Without Borders at Birch Aquarium, 2300 Expedition Way, La Jolla.

Scripps shark expert Dan Cartamil dives into the ecology and behaviors of migrating sharks and how they’re threatened by commercial fishing in their habitats. From 6:30 to 8 p.m. Monday, July 14. Free-$8.

858-534-FISH, aquarium.ucsd.edu

For full listings,

please visit “E vents” at sdcit yb eat.com

Throw Down for a Cause at Rich’s, 1051 University Ave., Hillcrest. Join others at this annual event to watch ladies wrestle in kiddie pools filled with Jello to benefit at-risk youth. From 5 to 9 p.m. Friday, July 11. $20-$50. td4acause.com HDoggie Street Festival at NTC Park at Liberty Station, 2455 Cushing Road, Point Loma. The ultimate dog lovers’ event also helps increase dog and cat adoptions countywide. Enjoy food, music, unique pet products and much more. From 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, July 12. 323445-5087, doggiestreetfestival.org Christmas in July at Old Montessori School, 4070 Mission Ave., Oceanside.

The 37th annual art fair with over 150 artisan booths, live entertainment, food court, kid’s zone, silent and live auctions, rummage sale, farmer’s market, beer garden and a bake sale. All proceeds go directly to the school. From 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, July 12. 760-757-3232, christmasinjulyartisans.com HSouthern California Astronomy Expo at Oceanside Photo & Telescope, 918 Mission Ave., Oceanside. Astronomers of all sorts can attend free lectures, look at the sun through filtered telescopes, and enter raffles and giveaways for a chance to win astronomy and camera equipment. From 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Saturday, July 12, optscae.com She Fest at North Park Community Park, Polk Avenue & Oregon Street, North Park.

Celebrate and support the talents and contributions of women while fostering meaningful connections within the LGBT community. Festival includes a music stage, workshops, booths, and sports opportunities. From 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday, July 12, sdpride.org HTijuana Architecture & Design Trip at San Ysidro Port of Entry. An informative day-trip exploring the places and spaces of Tijuana illuminating Mexico’s continuing transition to a vibrant and successful economy and culture including the Tijuana Autism Clinic, Art Center and more.

From 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, July 12. $50 includes transportation and lunch. aiasandiego.org Neon Dash 5K at Qualcomm Stadium, 9449 Friars Road, Mission Valley. Run, walk or dance this 5K course as you’re covered in brilliant neon colors. Wear anything that blinks and glows and stick around for the After Dash Bash filled with UV blacklight, music, and entertainment.

From 6 to 10:30 p.m. Saturday, July 12. $30-$40. neondash.com Open House at Junipero Serra Museum, 2727 Presidio Drive, Old Town. Celebrate the museum’s 86th anniversary, the site of the birthplace of California, with a gun salute, costumed historians, family activities, music and more. From 4 to 6 p.m. Sunday, July 13. sandiegohistory.org

July 9, 2014 · San Diego CityBeat · 19

e h t n i o j ) e r ( o t f f o g n i n n u R

rn Street Circus’ return

Cindy Zimmerman

an announce Fe John Highkin and Cindy Zimmerm

by Kinsee Morlan ost evidence of John Highkin and Cindy Zimmerman’s former circus lives is gone or hidden away.

A few visible traces remain: a pair of juggling clubs on a wicker end table outside; hand-painted circus signs leaning against a wooden fence; a toy piano beside a sofa.

For the most part, though, Highkin and Zimmerman could pass as an average, albeit artsy, married couple edging closer to their calm, comfortable twilight years.

“We’re in a big transition,” an energetic Highkin says, shattering the quiet façade as he heads inside the couple’s North Park home, which, starting this month, will double as an office for Fern Street Circus, the nonprofit they founded in 1990 and are in the midst of resurrecting.

“Today’s the first day of the rest of our circus lives,” Zimmerman adds as she settles in next to Highkin, who’s in front of a computer loaded with a slideshow featuring images from the circus’ long, proud past.

For 20 years, Fern Street Circus put on popular performances and became well-

Bob Greis er

Pietro “Pop” Canestrelli, a sixthgeneration circus acrobat who signed on with Fern Street Circus just a few years after the organization launched

known for its after-school program, which offered free circus-arts education to kids in Golden Hill, with satellite locations throughout the region. In 2010, however, years after both Zimmerman and Highkin left the organization in the hands of a new management team, the circus put on its last show. By 2011, the board voted to officially close.

Dissolution of a nonprofit can take years, however, so when Highkin recently approached the organization’s last executive director, Laura Stansell, Fern Street Circus was still a few weeks away from fully shutting down.

“I told her I’d be interested in at least taking a whack to revive it,” Highkin says.

“And she said, ‘OK.’” Money was owed to Fern Street Circus performers and designers, so everything the organization owned—mainly, thousands of dollars’ worth of equipment— was auctioned off to help pay down part of those debts. That means Highkin and Zimmerman are essentially starting from scratch. All they have is the name, the reputation, the intact nonprofit status Bob Greiser and the computer on their diningroom table. But coupled with their energy, will to succeed and deeprooted connections to the local circus community, the two say they’re confident Fern Street Circus will be ready for its full-fledged return by spring of 2015.

Jamie Adkins, one of the founding Fern Street Circus performers, balancing on slack wire

20 · San Diego CityBeat · July 9, 2014

Juggler David Kamatoy

olorful photos of clowns, jugglers, tightrope walkers and aerial acts reflect off the lenses of the couple’s black-framed glasses as they flip through photos of Fern Street Circus’ early days.

“It was kind of a DIY thing,” Highkin laughs, looking at a photo taken in 1991 at Fern Street’s inaugural performance at Grape Street Park in Golden Hill. Highkin homes in on the whimsical wooden columns that were handcrafted from disassembled pieces of a set The Old Globe Theatre had tossed in a dumpster.

“I don’t mind going back to that,” Zimmerman says, “but I want

a real ring curb; I don’t want to go back to that chalk.”

It took a few years for Fern Street to earn enough income, through grants and fees collected from performances at private and public events, to purchase proper equipment, including sidewalls to enclose the circus, the ring curb that separates the audience from the performers, a floor mat, rigging for aerial acts, trampolines and more.

“I loved that floor cloth,” Highkin says, flipping to a photo of a large, bright-blue circular mat with a big red star in the center. “The Pickle Family Circus up in San Francisco gave that to us.”

Highkin rolls up his left sleeve to show off his only tattoo—a red star.

Yet even before Fern Street Circus had the fancy equipment, the community had embraced the group—seemingly starved for a circus because the only real acts at the time we’re confined to the occasional street performances inside Balboa Park.

It’s estimated that 500 people showed up to their inaugural performance at Grape Street Park.

Aside from annual, two-weekend shows, which eventually moved to Balboa Park, plus the other one-off performances at events like the Linda Vista Multi-Cultural Fair, people became increasingly fond of and reliant on Fern Street Circus’ afterschool program.

“It changed my life,” says Molly Murcia, who, with her partner, Rebecca Starr, tours internationally with her aerial act.

Murcia’s parents drove her 40 minutes twice weekly, from age 7 to 17, to take advantage of Fern Street’s free training program. She says the skills she gained were useful from a technical standpoint, but she also learned self-discipline, to practice until close to perfection and to overcome challenges through hard work. Those lessons influenced the way she views and navigates the world.

“I mean, it gave me my career,” says Murcia, who started making a living through her act as soon as she graduated high school. “But it taught me so much more beyond circus.”

Kinsee Morlan

John Highkin and Cindy Zimmerman ighkin pulls up a black-and-white image of Fern Street Circus’ original hand-drawn logo.

“We’re actually going back to that,” he says.

“I don’t know if we are; you think we are,” Zimmerman laughs. “I just think that for every old idea we had 25 years ago, we need to match it with a new idea. For every old strategy, for every old performer we had, we need a new one.”

During the next few months, Highkin and

Zimmerman will work on reconnecting with people they’ve worked with in the past—folks like Cheryl Lindley, who went on to open Sophia Isadora Academy of Circus Arts in North Park. They’ll also reach out to a new generation of circus performers who’ve sprung up in San Diego since they left the scene.

While Highkin and Zimmerman assemble a crew, which will include musicians to provide a live score for the bigger performances, they’ll also be fundraising, grant-writing and

otherwise securing funding to keep the organization viable long-term. For several years in its heyday, they say, the circus enjoyed a relatively robust budget.

Highkin says he knows where some of Fern Street Circus’ old equipment ended up after the auction, so he’ll work to at least borrow enough for their planned first show next spring, which they hope will take place in Balboa Park just in time for the park’s centennial celebration and Fern Street Circus’ own 25th anniversary.

Highkin recently left his job as executive director of Young Audiences of San Diego, which works to connect the arts with education, to pursue his dream of reviving Fern Street Circus. Zimmerman, a visual artist and community college arts professor, will keep her career but plans to invest a significant amount of time and energy in the project.

They’ve named themselves co-directors as they continue defining their individual roles and determining the scale and scope of the new Fern Street.

“I know how to create and sell the circus,” Highkin says. “I can hold it in my hands, and people can see it and it gets in people’s guts and it gets in their hearts and it gets in their heads. Bringing it back just more and more started making sense to me…. It just seemed to be this thing, at least in my head, that was steamrollering.”

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

July 9, 2014 · San Diego CityBeat · 21

Seen Local

Michael Raymond Photography

The embattled Front Praise for the whimsical Whysidro exhibition featuring Jamex and Einar de la Torre, on view at The Front arts center and gallery in San Ysidro, continues to reverberate through the local art scene and beyond. The world-class exhibition, on view through August, comes at a time when the nonprofit organization that runs The Front, Casa Familiar, is experiencing financial difficulties.

Two of the three employees at The Front— gallery and exhibitions director Leticia Gomez Franco and arts-and-culture consultant Linda Caballero-Sopelo—recently announced their departures. Luz Camacho is the sole remaining part-time employee tasked with running the gallery and its programs, which include a popular annual Dia de la Mujer juried exhibition and other forums, workshops and events that’ve gained traction in recent years.

Andrea Skorepa, Casa Familiar’s chief executive officer, says the organization is short on money thanks to the loss of several sources, including city funds and grants. She says that all of the organization’s services have been affected.

“Everybody in the agency took a hit, including myself, who’s going without a salary for six months,” she says.

Skorepa says she’s been reducing hours and limiting the scope of programming across the board. As for The Front, she offered Franco and CaballeroSopelo reduced hours. She says both employees were already part-time, so they opted to pursue full-time opportunities elsewhere.

At 5:30 p.m. Thursday, July 10, the de la Torre brothers will give a talk on their Whysidro exhibition at The Front (147 W. San Ysidro Blvd.). Franco

Ice Gallery reemerges

From left: Leticia Gomez Franco, Einar de la Torre, Linda Caballero-Sotelo and Jamex de la Torre is helping facilitate the event, but after the current show’s programming ends, Skorepa says the gallery will continue with a narrower focus.

“We have a whole agency that will continue to work on the progress we’ve made as a gallery and add to it,” she says, “but we’ll probably pull in a little bit closer to the community, as opposed to becoming another contemporary art gallery. But we do have some exciting things planned.”

Franco is considered the public face of The Front.

She says she’s proud of the work that she and her colleagues have done in elevating the gallery and earning the reputation as an exciting, sometimes edgy cultural hub that hosts top-notch exhibitions alongside grassroots community events. One of her main objectives during her seven years at The Front was to help demystify the arts for the local community.

“I think we did that,” Franco says. “We defined The Front as a place where the community could get comfortable with the idea that art is something for all of us, not just a luxury for others to enjoy.”

—Kinsee Morlan

aside, electrical boxes were torn out and Armstrong Between 2001 and 2012, Ice Gallery popped in and spearheaded most of the rest of the transformation, out of existence inside a small, dilapidated storefront which included building new walls, replacing half of near the corner of 30th and Upas streets in North the floor and turning an old exhaust fan into a skyPark. The Gallery was seemingly done for good when light. Armstrong says he spent nearly $10,000 of his Michael James Armstrong the old building was torn down to own money on the space. make way for the North Parker, He isn’t interested in being a a mixed-use project that opened gallery owner, though, and he’s not earlier this year. in it for money (Ice Gallery will Yet, Ice Gallery is set to rise rarely sell work). His goal is simply again with an opening reception to give artists the chance to experifrom 5 to 9 p.m. Friday, July 11, ment by doing site-specific instalinside Bread & Salt (1955 Julian lations. He mentions big names Ave. in Logan Heights). like Richard Allen Morris, Tom The gallery will reignite with Driscoll and Philipp Scholz Rita site-specific exhibition by termann when asked about artists Thomas DeMello, one of the arthe’d like to show in the space. ists behind Ice Gallery’s earlier “Working that way, site-condiincarnation. While DeMello still tionally—having no idea until you helps with the space when he can, get into the space and spend time the tight-knit foursome that once there and, eventually, something backed Ice Gallery has been whitcomes to you—that’s the most Thomas DeMello installs work interesting way to work,” Armtled down to just one. at the new Ice Gallery. strong says. “Until I got a chance Artist Michael James Armstrong began refurbishing a beat-up corner of the to do work like that, I didn’t know how fun it was.”

Bread & Salt warehouse in June 2013 after Jim —Kinsee Morlan Brown, the architect who owns the building, offered him an affordable lease. Industrial sifters left over Write to kinseem@sdcitybeat.com from the site’s former days as a bakery were moved and editor@sdcitybeat.com.

22 · San Diego CityBeat · July 9, 2014

Me, myself and I Sci-fi film pits characters against themselves

by Glenn Heath Jr. Imagine a water molecule that never stops splitting. Endless variations of the original careen through space until, after some time, one version becomes indistinguishable from the other. James Ward Byrkit’s Coherence creates the same scenario but with a cast of characters, beginning as a quasi-The Big Chill for the hipster set before splinterEmily Foxler has to figure some stuff out. ing into a hundred different realities and personalities crashing against each other. characters to all reaches of the frame and still retainIt might not seem like it at first, but Coherence ing a level of clarity. However, this rationality should works deftly within the science-fiction genre where always be questioned, as Em quickly figures out time remains a fluid concept. Whether it’s a dys- when certain discrepancies in her friends’ actions topian or utopian vision, the future is always now, raise red flags as to their true identities. metaphorically or otherwise. But what if our underIn that sense, Byrkit’s film owes a lot to the seamstanding of temporality (and story) broke down and less menace created in both versions of Invasion of timelines began to co-exist side-by-side, exposed by the Body Snatchers. People’s words and actions are a celestial event that comes along once in a lifetime? decoys for unsettling motivations, their skin simply Coherence dares to jump down such a rabbit hole. a mask to instill trust in others. Even when Em starts Stylistically innocuous, the film opens like so to piece together the specifics of what’s happening, many indies do these days, with hand-held camera we’re not even sure we can trust her perspective. Too shots that should come with a prescription for Dra- many chess moves have already been made to distinmamine. Em (Emily Foxler) drives toward a dinner guish hero from villain. party where she plans to meet her husband Kevin Coherence walks a fine line that few films would (Maury Sterling) and some of dare, playing with overlapping their old friends. There’s refernarratives in clever ways that Coherence ence to a comet flying overheard eventually cement into a sandDirected by James Ward Byrkit as she talks with her significant box of infinite possibility. Byrkit Starring Emily Foxler, Maury other on the phone. When the line exploits each character’s hidden Sterling, Nicholas Brendon goes dead, overwhelmed by static, emotions and past traumas to popwe get a first inclination that this ulate the film with tense interacand Elizabeth Gracen rare phenomenon might have an tions. At first, it all feels like a cosRated R impact on tonight’s plans. mic joke, happenstance jacked up Upon arriving at the home of to level 10. But it’s all by design. “Is Mike (Nicholas Brendon) and Lee (Lorene Scafaria), anything really random tonight?” one character asks, Em settles in for an awkward get-together that fea- playing the role of sage when they should be worried tures one of Kevin’s sultry ex-girlfriends. Hints of about their doppelganger waiting in the wings. anxiety and guilt start to boil to the surface, but the Tenacious worry turns into desperation, revealing hang-out session is almost immediately interrupted what Em and her friends are capable of when threatby a strange power outage. When two members of ened with other versions of their precious lives.

Em’s group venture into the suburban darkness to Coherence—which opens Friday, July 11, at Reading approach the only house in the neighborhood with Gaslamp Cinemas—then becomes a Shakespearean electricity, Byrkit starts to play puppet master. What contest of deception to see who can outfox the othfollows can only be described as a growing avalanche ers. Night may eventually progress to morning, but of panic, uncertainty and mystery. the appearance of sunlight does nothing to sway the Talking about Coherence’s plot threatens to ruin endless anxiety of people willing and able to destroy many of its surprises and virtues. So, we’ll sway left of reality in order to preserve the fantasy. specifics and head right to the tonal strangeness and serpentine script. From the onset, Byrkit displays a Write to glennh@sdcitybeat.com keenness for directionality and movement, sending and editor@sdcitybeat.com.

Performance art

Venus in Fur

Vanda (Emmanuelle Seigner) appears out of nowhere, born from thunder and lighting in the stormy opening moments of Venus in Fur. She arrives thanks to a long tracking shot that strolls through a rainy Parisian park before entering a desolate theater. Therein resides a smarmy stage director named Thomas

(Mathieu Amalric) who’s in the middle of casting the lead role in his version of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s 19th-century novel about sadomasochistic urges.

If Roman Polanski’s adaptation of David Ives’ famous play teaches us anything, it’s how quickly we can embrace our basest desires. At first, Thomas looks

CONTINUED ON PAGE 25 July 9, 2014 · San Diego CityBeat · 23

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down on Vanda, thinking her a brainless actor who knows nothing of the context surrounding his work. But as they begin reading scenes, he realizes that she’s so much more than a voluptuous brunette seeking a part. Their interactions slyly begin to mirror those of the characters on the page, eventually merging reality and fiction to the point where one is indiscernible from the other.

This creates a delirious space for artistic battle, where creator (or adapter) and performer tangle over discrepancies in motivation and meaning. Themes such as power, control, rage and sensuality come into play, all rendered through the precise pacing of, and reading of, sensual dialogue.

“Conversation itself was erotic,” says Thomas of the words spoken in the original 1870s piece, insinuating that every phrase carries with it a logistical weight and sexual explosiveness.

Unlike the self-serious Carnage, Polanski’s previous foray into theatrical revisionism, Venus in Fur—which runs for one week starting Friday, July 11, at the Ken Cinema—feels unrestricted from the confines of most stageto-screen adaptations. This openness acts as a distracting agent, masking a diabolical gender critique that reveals the sinister nature of passive-aggressiveness.

Through her cagey ability to subvert the male gaze, Vanda serves a helping of comeuppance that Thomas won’t soon forget.

—Glenn Heath Jr.

Opening Begin Again: When a forlorn singer / songwriter (Keira Knightley) breaks from her cheating superstar boyfriend (Adam Levine), she finds newfound success with a disgraced record executive (Mark Ruffalo) willing to take a chance on an unknown talent.

Le Chef: An aspiring chef faces off against a celebrity food star in this French comedy by director Daniel Cohen.

Coherence: A group of old friends gets together for a dinner party, only to see the night descend into chaos after a comet creates a disturbing celestial phenomenon. See our review on Page 23.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes: Ten years after a virus outbreak pitted apes against men, the two factions forge a fragile peace that’s tested by fear and aggression. It’s directed by Matt Reeves (Cloverfield) and stars Jason Clarke, Keri Russell, Gary Oldman and Andy Serkis.

Hellion: A delinquent teenager and his haggard father (Aaron Paul) must get their act together in order to convince social workers to reunite their family. Screens through July 16 at Digital Gym Cinema in North Park.

Hidden Universe: Blast off into the stratosphere with this documentary that

Blood and Sand: Tyrone Power plays a bullfighter who rises to fame from poverty, only to fall equally hard from grace.

Screens at 8 p.m. Monday, July 14, in the May S. Marcy Sculpture Garden at the San Diego Museum of Art in Balboa Park.

Robot & Frank: An ex-jewel thief living in the near future receives a robot butler as a gift, only to find an unlikely cohort and companion. Screens at 6 p.m.

Tuesday, July 15, at Point Loma / Hervey Branch Library.

Begin Again uses real images captured from telescopes to examine the vast reaches of space. Screens at the Reuben H. Fleet Science Center in Balboa Park.

Venus in Fur: Roman Polanski adapts David Ives’ sultry play about an actress (Emmanuelle Seigner) trying to convince a director (Mathieu Amalric) that she’s perfect for a role. Screens through July 17 at the Ken Cinema. See our review on Page 23.

One Time Only And So it Goes: Michael Douglas stars as a egomaniac Realtor who’s suddenly tasked with taking care of his estranged grandchildren. Directed by Rob Reiner and co-starring Diane Keaton, it’s presented by the New York Film Critics Circle with a taped Q&A to be projected after the movie. Screens at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, July 9, at Digital Gym Cinema in North Park.

A Hard Day’s Night: The Beatles play rambunctious versions of themselves in Richard Lester’s iconic 1964 movie musical. Screens at 7 p.m. Thursday, July 10, and 11 a.m. Sunday, July 13, at Reading Gaslamp and Grossmont Center cinemas.

Sharknado: The Rifftrax team skewers the ridiculously awful horror film about a shark invasion that terrorizes Los Angeles during a hurricane. Screens at 8 p.m.

Thursday, July 10, at various theaters.

Visit fathomevents.com for details.

Niagara: Tempers come to a boil when two couples visit Niagara Falls and the tension between one husband and his wife spins out of control. Screens at 8:30 p.m.

Thursday and Friday, July 10 and 11, at Cinema Under the Stars in Mission Hills.

Cartas de Sorolla: A portrait of Spanish painter Joaquín Sorolla, who constantly sent letters to his wife while completing a commission for the Hispanic Society of America. Screens at 7 p.m. Friday, July 11, at the San Diego Museum of Art in Balboa Park.

Rebecca: Alfred Hitchcock’s first American film delves into the psyche of a fragile new bride who’s tormented by the memory of her husband’s deceased ex-wife.

Screens at 8:30 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, July 12 and 13, at Cinema Under the Stars in Mission Hills.

The Room: Imagine you spent millions of dollars on equipment to make the worst movie ever. Screens at midnight on Saturday, July 12, at the Ken Cinema.

Her: In the future, you might fall in love with an operating system. Who needs flesh and bone? Screens at 6 p.m. Sunday, July 13, at the Point Loma / Hervey Branch Library.

The Pretty One: Laurel idolizes her twin sister, and when tragedy strikes, she gets a chance to change her life forever. Screens at 6:30 p.m. Monday, July 14, at the San Diego Public Library in East Village.

48 Hour Film Festival screenings: Watch the latest crop of mini-masterpieces produced from the rigorous twoday filmmaking competition. Screens at 6:30 and 9:30 p.m. Tuesday, July 15, through Thursday, July 17, at Reading Gaslamp Cinemas.

Daughters of Dolma: Documentary about the lives and religious pursuits of Buddhist nuns living in Tibet. Screens at 7 p.m. Tuesday, July 15, at Digital Gym Cinema in North Park.

Jaws: Every summer, this film reminds people why swimming is a potentially deadly activity. Screens at 8:30 p.m.

Tuesday, July 15, at Wavehouse in Pacific Beach.

Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy: Stay classy, San Diego. Screens at 8:30 p.m. Tuesday, July 15, at Stone Brewing World Bistro & Gardens in Point Loma’s Liberty Station.

Grand Piano: The worst malady for a concert pianist has to be stage fright, and Elijah Wood’s impresario suffers from it mightily. Screens at 7 p.m. Wednesday, July 16, at the Scripps Ranch Library.

Pete Seeger: A Song and a Stone: A portrait of legendary folk singer and political activist Pete Seeger, who spent decades fighting against the Vietnam War, pollution and inequality. Screens at 7 p.m.

Wednesday, July 16, at Digital Gym Cinema in North Park.

Now Playing America: From the mastermind behind 2016: Obama’s America comes another hyperbolic documentary that imagines a scenario where the United States lost the Revolutionary War and America did not come to exist.

Deliver Us From Evil: A New York City police officer (Eric Bana) and an unconventional Catholic priest (Edgar Ramirez) team up to solve a series of supernatural crimes terrorizing the city.

Earth to Echo: The found-footage film has finally found its way to the children’ssci-fi genre in this adventure about an alien who recruits a group of friends to help it return home. I’m sure E.T. is suing for copyright infringement.

Los Insolitos Peces Gatos (The Amazing Catfish): A young woman meets a sickly matriarch in the hospital, only to become close with her family after embarking on a road trip together. Ends July 10 at Digital Gym Cinema in North Park.

Life Itself: A documentary portrait of Roger Ebert, legendary film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times who revolutionized television with his popular review show with Gene Siskel.

For a complete listing of movies, please see “F ilm S creenings” at sdcit yb eat.com under the “E vents” tab.

July 9, 2014 · San Diego CityBeat · 25

Youth

of

at breakneck speed before offering some lyrical misdirection at the end, as Baldi sings, “I know there’s nothing left to say” four times in the outro. “Quieter Today” and “Psychic Trauma” find the frontman’s scratchy howl squarely in the Cobain Zone, while the chorus of “Giving into Seeing”—the word “swallow” screamed over and over—sounds like it could’ve

by Ben Salmon been plucked from the second half of Nirvana’s Incesticide.

Elsewhere, the marble-mouthed melody of “I’m Not Part of a good line about his decision to ditch life as a saxophone Me” evokes The Replacements, and the frayed-punk spirit of The Wipers hovers over everything. major at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland: There’s something particularly blue-collar about “I just started thinking, OK, if I finish this, I’ll just be massively in debt and will be able to play saxophone really Cloud Nothings’ music, a quality that can be traced to Baldi’s Midwestern work ethic. He says he lacks an “argood. What is the point?’’ he says. “So I just stopped.”

Jazz’s loss is a gain for lovers of rumbling, rough-hewn tistic temperament” and takes a “very utilitarian” aprock ’n’ roll, the kind that’s bursting with melody and be- proach to making music.

“That’s the only way I can feel like I’m actually doing somereft of frills. During the past four years, Baldi has steered Cloud Nothings from an unassuming indie-pop band to thing. Because I do like having goals and achieving those… the powerhouse behind two albums that were widely, rather than just being like, ‘Who knows what’s going to happen today, man?’” Baldi says with a chuckle. lavishly praised: 2012’s Attack on Memory “I have a sort of 9-to-5 mentality about what and this year’s Here and Nowhere Else.

I do. That sounds stupid and almost insulting The former was Cloud Nothings’ breakto people with jobs like that, but that’s how through, a collection of lean, punchy pop everybody that I grew up around and everysongs that showcased Baldi’s tuneful instinct, body that I know… has worked for a long time, even when he masked it with slurred lyrics Friday, July 11 so I treat it that way, too.” and screams. The latter is a step forward: Soda Bar To his credit, Baldi accepts the bad parts clearer but not too polished, more confident of the workingman’s toil with the positives but purposefully ragged, and muscular withcloudnothings.com of being in a successful touring band: It’s out overrunning the melodies. Guitars churn exhausting—but that’s a necessary part of and cymbals crash across its eight bracing tracks, which sound like being in a band.

Of course, as anyone with a 9-to-5 job knows, there are they’re headed downhill with no brake pedal to days when clocking out for good seems more appealing than be found. A pile-up is facing another day. It’s a feeling Baldi knew well before Cloud imminent—a brutal and Nothings gained traction, and one he still experiences.

“I’ll probably think about [calling it quits] tomorrow if beautiful pile-up.

The lead track, “Now I’m in the van for too long. That’s something that always Hear In,” buzzes along goes through my head,” he says. “But even when [the band] wasn’t going well, it was still like we made just enough money to get by, and it was still a better job than anything Poon else I could possibly be doing. And it was way better than eh Gh ana school, ’cause I hated school. So I was OK.” That’s good news, given the arc of Cloud Nothings’ career so far, a career built on a sound that Baldi talks about as if it doesn’t always make sense to him.

“I want to do something new with every record. I want to do something different. But somewhere, obviously, there’s some part of me that [keeps] making pop songs, which is not the kind of stuff I listen to all the time,” he says.

“It’s interesting to me that I’ve chosen that route for this band. I don’t know why I did it, but it feels like I just want to keep doing that better.”

America

Cloud Nothings work hard, play hard •

Let’s get this out of the way: Dylan Baldi, the founder and core of the Cleveland post-hardcore band Cloud Nothings, is 22 years old.

If you read an article about the band, there’s a good chance it will mention Baldi’s age in the first paragraph.

(And, yes, those odds just went up about 30 words ago.)

This doesn’t bother the preternaturally talented songwriter, who’s seen his age highlighted since he started Cloud Nothings when he was 18.

He does have a theory about why it happens, though.

“I think that’s something a lot of people do because there’s not much else to write about, really, with us, because we’re not sensational in any other way,” he says in a jet-lagged phone interview from a tour stop in Portland, where he’s just arrived from his home in Paris. “If people want to write about us, it’s not like we’re crazy, with some kind of wild story. …

The most insane thing is that I dropped out of college.”

Dropping out of college: not insane, though Baldi does have

Cloud Nothings

From left: Jason Gerycz, TJ Duke and Dylan Baldi

26 · San Diego CityBeat · July 9, 2014

Write to editor@sdcitybeat.com.

July 9, 2014 · San Diego CityBeat · 27

notes from the smoking patio Locals Only Six months after announcing their breakup, Mrs. Magician are getting back together.

The indie rockers initially split up at the end of 2013 because guitarist Tommy Garcia moved to New York City, in addition to other personal and professional conflicts.

But the band recently announced two high-profile shows in August, their first since December. On Aug. 16, Mrs. Magician will open for garage-rock legends The Sonics at The Irenic, and on Aug. 20, they’ll open for baroque-pop icons The Zombies at House of Blues.

Mrs. Magician’s Jacob Turnbloom (left) says Over a round of beers at the band will finish a new album by the end of the year.

Hoffer’s Cigar Bar in La Mesa, Mrs. Magician frontman Jacob Turnbloom says the Turnbloom says the band tentatively plans to time apart helped them figure out how to make the have a record ready by December or January. He also group work. says that fans can expect a familiar sound with some “It’s totally easier now,” he says. slight variations.

Although the band’s booked only two shows, “It’s… less relationship-driven,” he says. “The last Turnbloom says they’d like to schedule a tour and re- record is really silly; this one’s going to be a little cord some new material. Mrs. Magician released one more serious.” album on Swami Records during their time togethTurnbloom points to the group’s recently released er—2012’s Strange Heaven—but Turnbloom says the “Friday Night” / “Crosses” single as an indication of group owes the label two more albums, which they where the band might go next. In the meantime, he plan to record with label head John Reis. says he wants to keep the band alive as long as it’s Reis is “everyone’s friend—we just want to do still fun. what we said we’d do,” Turnbloom says of the “ca“Let’s just put out records, have a good relationsual” but “by the book” arrangement they have with ship and keep it open,” he says.

Swami. “Over the past six months, we realized it was —Jeff Terich kind of selfish to not do that.”

Adios, Che Café San Diego’s seen an unusually high number of temporary or permanent venue closures in the past yearand-a-half, including—but not limited to—4th and B, Anthology, The Griffin, The Ruby Room, The Void and Brick by Brick. And on Monday, July 14, there will be one more to add to that list: The Che Café.

The closure didn’t come as a surprise—the 35year-old all-ages collective battled for two months with UCSD over funding for building repairs and was then evicted by the university.

From a distance, the Che might just look like an old, wooden structure painted with leftist murals that just happens to host shows by anarchist punk bands. But it’s more than that. It’s a haven for hippies

28 · San Diego CityBeat · July 9, 2014

and punks, and you’ll probably see a dude wearing a skirt. In other words, it stands at odds with UCSD’s pristine image. And that’s partly why it’s a shame to see the venue shut its doors, possibly for good.

At a series of meetings in May, numerous volunteers gave passionate testimonials about how The Che Café changed their lives, and how it’s one of the most historically important music venues in San Diego, if not all of Southern California.

And they’re absolutely right; the Che has hosted a mind-blowing number of important bands, including Green Day, The Dismemberment Plan, Bon Iver and At the Drive-In. It’s credited on Wikipedia for being the venue that gave birth to the “screamo” subgenre of hardcore punk, and in the 1990s, the Che held a number of shows featuring now-legendary local bands like Drive Like Jehu and The Locust.

Legacy isn’t everything, though. The bigger loss is the disappearance of another all-ages venue in San Diego. As a 32-year-old married guy with a taste for bourbon and beer, I spend a lot of time watching live bands in bars—but I was thankful to have the Che as a youngster, and I saw some great shows there before I was allowed to set foot inside The Casbah.

The Che’s volunteers intend to keep up the fight, but whatever happens, it’ll be closed indefinitely on Monday. Maybe it’s just a building, but it’s one that meant a lot to a lot of people.

—Jeff Terich Write to jefft@sdcitybeat.com and editor@sdcitybeat.com.

July 9, 2014 · San Diego CityBeat · 29

if i were u

Fullbrook succeeds on that front. PLAN B: High Functioning Flesh, RedRedRed, Crocodiles (DJ set), DJ Mario Orduno @ The Hideout. Before EDM there was EBM, or electronic body music, which is basically

BY Jeff Terich industrial’s version of a dance-floor jam.

High Functioning Flesh are young enough to have probably not witnessed first-wavers Wednesday, July 9 like Nitzer Ebb, but they successfully chanPLAN A: Wye Oak, Pattern is Movement nel the hard-hitting beats and seductive @ Belly Up Tavern. Last week, I profiled darkness. BACKUP PLAN: Baltimore duo Wye Oak, who recently tran- Ilya @ Hard Rock Hotel. sitioned from scruffy indie rock to a more electronic, streamlined sound on new album Shriek. They’re an outstanding live Friday, July 11 act, and with some added diversity and an PLAN A: E-40, Fiyah Deez @ expanded dynamic to their sound, there’s Spin. You can’t mention Bay even more reason to pencil this show into Area hip-hop without talkyour plans. PLAN B: S. Carey, The Pines ing about E-40, an MC who’s @ The Casbah. Sean Carey has performed known for helping put hyphy as a member of Bon Iver, but I find him on the map, being a shamemore compelling as a solo artist, combining less self-promoter and one of folk, minimalism and jazz in a unique pack- the more prolific rap artists in age. BACKUP PLAN: Diatribes, TV Girl, recent years. There’s no way this show won’t be one hell Brothertiger @ Tin Can Ale House. of a party. BACKUP PLAN: Manuok, Little Tybee, LIFE @ Tin Can Thursday, July 10 Ale House.

PLAN A: Tiny Ruins, Børns @ Soda Bar. Tiny Ruins is New Zealand singer / songwriter Hollie Fullbrook, whose sound is se- Saturday, July 12 rene and gentle but thoroughly entrancing PLAN A: La Roux, Big Data @ House of without escalating in volume. I’m always Blues. U.K. electronic duo La Roux have a impressed by artists who can capture my much more impressive presence than many attention without raising their voices, and of their peers, and not just because of vocal-

30 · San Diego CityBeat · July 9, 2014

ist Elly Jackson’s bright-red, asymmetrical hair. Their synth-driven grooves call upon ’80s-era Prince, Bowie and Human League to deliver something contemporary and fun with just enough vintage appeal. PLAN B: Sister Nancy, Africanpostman, Irieality, Soulective @ Soda Bar. The name Sister Nancy might not ring a bell if you’re not a die-hard reggae fan, but the Jamaican-born Nancy Russell earned a reputation for being the first female dancehall DJ and released a series of underground hits including “Bam Bam.” If you’re not familiar, school yourself and hear Sister Nancy testify.

Deltas, Rebecca Jade and the Cold Fact, Javier Escovedo @ Soda Bar. Detroit outfit Jessica Hernandez and the Deltas rock pretty hard, and with plenty of soul to spare, but the real reason to check out this show is super-funky local super-group Rebecca Jade and the Cold Fact, who lay down grooves better than just about anyone else in town—save for maybe a few of their members’ other bands.

Monday, July 14

PLAN A: Octagrape, Oh Spirit!, Big Bad Buffalo @ The Casbah. Mondays are typically not a great night to go out and see a show, but we’ve got one rock-solid exception right here. Local garage-rock weirdos OctaSunday, July 13 grape are headlining a $6 show that’s worth PLAN A: ‘For the Fucking every penny. Why stay home when you can Kids Fest’ w/ Danny Tan- get freaky with psychedelic riff-mongers? ner, Retox, Kids, Sledding with Tigers, many more @ The Che Café. It’s hard not Tuesday, July 15 to feel a little bit emotional PLAN A: Goatwhore, Lord Howler, EuLa Roux about this Plan —this is the karyst @ Soda Bar. You don’t get that last show that’ll be held at The Che Café many opportunities to say you’ve seen a for the foreseeable future, thanks to a lack band called Goatwhore, and if that’s not of funding and the collective’s impending something to cross off the bucket list, then eviction from UCSD. But that doesn’t mean I don’t know what is. But you get the added they can’t put on one hell of a final blow- bonus of seeing a super-badass metal band out, and this one is going to be amazing. that combines death-metal ugliness with So far, Andrew W.K. isn’t playing, but I’m the hedonistic spirit of rock ’n’ roll. BACKholding out hope that he’ll come through. UP PLAN: Meg Myers, Gayle Skidmore PLAN B: Jessica Hernandez and the @ The Casbah.

HOT! NEW! FRESH! The Chain Gang of 1974 (Hard Rock Hotel, 7/17), Shannon and the Clams (Casbah, 8/3), The Murder City Devils (The Irenic, 8/25), E-40 (Porter’s Pub, 8/29), Colin Hay (BUT, 9/7), Metalachi (BUT, 9/12), Living Colour (But, 10/5), Angus and Julia Stone (HOB, 10/6), The King Khan and BBQ Show (Casbah, 10/6), Washed Out (North Park Theatre, 10/16), Charli XCX (HOB, 10/21), Tinariwen (BUT, 10/21), Dale Earnhart Jr Jr (BUT, 10/23), Daryl Hall and John Oates (Open Air Theatre, 10/25), Matisyahu (BUT, 10/26), Leon Russell (BUT, 10/27), New Politics (HOB, 10/30).

GET YER TICKETS The Antlers (BUT, 7/16), Arcade Fire (Sleep Train Amphitheatre, 8/5), Grouplove, Portugal the Man (Open Air Theatre, 8/17), The Zombies (HOB, 8/20), Nine Inch Nails, Soundgarden (Sleep Train Amphitheatre, 8/21), Built To Spill (The Irenic, 8/23), Buzzcocks (HOB, 9/18), Lykke Li (North Park Theatre, 9/22), Temples (BUT, 9/27), Pixies (Humphreys, 9/27), Foster the People (RIMAC, 9/27), Colbie Caillat (Humphrey’s by the Bay, 9/28), The Gaslight Anthem, Against Me! (HOB, 9/30), DJ Shadow, Cut Chemist (HOB, 10/1), Joyce Manor (The Irenic, 10/2), The King Khan and BBQ Show (Casbah, 10/6), Angus and Julia Stone (HOB, 10/6), Shonen Knife (Casbah, 10/7), Chromeo (SOMA, 10/8), Twin Shadow (BUT, 10/9), The Horrors (BUT, 10/13), The New Pornographers (BUT, 10/18), Metronomy (BUT, 10/19),

The Afghan Whigs (BUT, 10/24), Alt-J (SOMA, 10/24), Bonobo (HOB, 10/26), The Black Keys (Viejas Arena, 11/9), The Misfits (HOB, 11/16), Psychedelic Furs, The Lemonheads (BUT, 11/17), Bastille (Viejas Arena, 11/19), Ira Glass (Balboa Theatre, 11/22), Mike Birbiglia (Balboa Theatre, 12/5).

July Wednesday, July 9 Silver Snakes at Soda Bar. Wye Oak at Belly Up Tavern. S. Carey at The Casbah.

Thursday, July 10 The Fray at The Open Air Theatre. Braid Paisley at Sleep Train Amphitheatre.

Quiet Riot at House of Blues. Jefferson Starship at Belly Up Tavern.

Friday, July 11 Cloud Nothings at Soda Bar. Cher at Valley View Casino Center. Ringo Starr and His All Starr Band at Humphreys.

The Reverend Horton Heat at Belly Up Tavern.

Saturday, July 12 Behexen at Til-Two Club. La Roux at House of Blues.

Sunday, July 13 ‘For the Fucking Kids Fest’ w/ Danny Tanner, Retox, The Frights at The Che Café.

Tuesday, July 15 Goatwhore at Soda Bar.

Wednesday, July 16 Chris Isaak at Humphreys. The Antlers at Belly Up Tavern. Robert Francis and the Night Tide at The Casbah.

Thursday, July 17 Planes Mistaken for Stars at The Casbah. The Chain Gang of 1974 at Hard Rock Hotel.

Friday, July 18 Dwarves at Soda Bar. Craft Spells at The Hideout. Jurassic 5 at Del Mar Racetrack.

Saturday, July 19 Dwarves at Soda Bar. Bob Log III at The Casbah. Wolves in the Throne Room at The Che Café. Rita Rudner at North Park Theatre.

Sunday, July 20 Natural Child at Soda Bar. X acoustic at Belly Up Tavern.

Tuesday, July 22 The Neighbourhood at Open Air Theatre. Doobie Brothers at Humphreys.

Cayucas at The Casbah.

Wednesday, July 23 Doug Benson at House of Blues. Matt Pryor at The Casbah.

Thursday, July 24 Tori Amos at Humphreys. OK Go at Belly Up Tavern. Boris at The Casbah. The

CONTINUED ON PAGE 32

July 9, 2014 · San Diego CityBeat · 31

Aquabats at House of Blues.

Friday, July 25 Goo Goo Dolls at Harrah’s Resort. Guttermouth at Soda Bar. Jason Cruz and the Howl at Porter’s Pub. The Cult at Del Mar Racetrack.

Saturday, July 26 Say Anything at House of Blues. Donavon Frankenreiter at Harrah’s Resort. Slightly Stoopid at Sleep Train Amphitheatre. Kevin Gates at Porter’s Pub. The Muffs at The Casbah. Emily’s Army at House of Blues.

Sunday, July 27 Municipal Waste at The Casbah. Dierks Bentley at Sleep Train Amphitheatre.

Monday, July 28 Au Revoir Simone at The Casbah. Thee Oh Sees at Belly Up Tavern.

Tuesday, July 29 Foxy Shazam at Belly Up Tavern.

Wednesday, July 30 John Hiatt at Belly Up Tavern. Kidz Bop Kids at House of Blues.

Thursday, July 31 The Hold Steady at Belly Up Tavern. Blu at The Casbah.

rCLUBSr 710 Beach Club, 710 Garnet Ave, Pacific Beach. 710bc.com. Wed: Open mic,

32 · San Diego CityBeat · July 9, 2014

open jam. Thu: Live Band karaoke. Fri: Sam Hoskings (5 p.m.); Subliminal Trip, Uplift (9 p.m.). Sat: Random Radio, The Big Lewinsky, Indiana Jonesin. Sun: Karaoke. Mon: Battle of the Bands.

98 Bottles, 2400 Kettner Blvd. Ste. 110, Little Italy. 98bottlessd.com. Fri: Jamie Shadowlight. Sat: Joe Garrison and Night People. Sun: The Matt Smith Neu Jazz Trio.

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

Wed: Jay Larson. Thu-Sat: Natasha Leggero. Sun: Kris Tinkle. Tue: Open mic.

AMSDconcerts, 1370 Euclid Ave, City Heights. amsdconcerts.com. Sat: Led Kaapana.

Bang Bang, 526 Market St, Downtown. facebook.com/BangBangSanDiego. Fri: Overwerk, Mossberg Pump. Sat: Lee Foss, Lee K. Bar Pink, 3829 30th St, North Park. barpink.com. Thu: DJ Claire. Sat: Schitzophonics.

Beaumont’s, 5662 La Jolla Blvd, La Jolla. brocktonvilla.com/beaumonts.html. Wed: Trent Hancock. Thu: Aquile. Fri: Fish and the Seaweeds. Sat: Jones Revival. Sun: Joe Cardillo.

Belly Up Tavern, 143 S. Cedros Ave, Solana Beach. bellyup.com. Wed: Wye Oak, Pattern is Movement. Thu: Jefferson Starship, Jeff and Jesse, DJ Chris Cote.

Fri: The Reverend Horton Heat, Whiskey Shivers. Sun: The Pettybreakers. Tue: Barbarian, DJ Man Cat. Bluefoot Bar & Lounge, 3404 30th St, North Park. bluefootsd.com. Wed: ‘What the Frack’ w/ DJs Francy Pants, P Star.

Thu: ‘Good Music for Good People’ w/ Habitat. Fri: DJ W Steele. Sat: DJ Peso.

Sun: VJ JK. Tue: VJ Grimm.

Boar Cross’n, 390 Grand Ave, Carlsbad. boarcrossn.net. Thu: The Heavy Guilt.

Fri: ‘Club Musae’. Sat: City Reef.

Bourbon Street, 4612 Park Blvd, University Heights. bourbonstreetsd.com. Wed: VJ K Swift. Thu: ‘Wet’. Sun: ‘Soiree’. Tue: Karaoke.

Brass Rail, 3796 Fifth Ave, Hillcrest. thebrassrailsd.com. Fri: ‘Muscle’. Sat: DJs XP, KA. Sun: ‘Noche Romantica’ w/ Daisy Salinas. Mon: ‘Manic Monday’ w/ DJs Junior the Disco Punk, XP. Cafe Sevilla, 353 Fifth Ave, Downtown. cafesevilla.com. Wed: Aro Di Santi. Thu & Sat: Malamana. Fri: Joeff and Co. Sat: Sun: Oscar Aragon.

Comedy Palace, 8878 Clairemont Mesa Blvd, Clairemont. thecomedypalace.com.

Thu: Scott Bowman. Fri-Sat: Alex Ortiz.

Comedy Store, 916 Pearl St, La Jolla. lajolla.thecomedystore.com.

Fri-Sat: Steve Simeone.

Croce’s Park West, 2760 Fifth Ave., #100, Bankers Hill. crocesparkwest.com.

Wed: Josh Vasquez. Thu: Gilbert Castellanos and the Park West Ensemble. Fri: Allison Adams Tucker. Sat: Patrick Berrogain. Sun: Molly Tuttle Trio.

Dirk’s Nightclub, 7662 Broadway, Lemon Grove. dirksniteclub.com. Fri-Sat: Serious Guise.

Dizzy’s, 4275 Mission Bay Drive, Mission Bay. dizzyssandiego.com. Wed: The Charles Mingus Ensemble with Dr. James Newton. Fri: Diego Garcia. Sat: ‘Tribute to Pablo Neruda’. Mon: West City Big Band.

Epicentre, 8450 Mira Mesa Blvd, Mira Mesa. epicentreconcerts.org. Fri: Shaw-

shank Redeemed, Cavalist, Daily Individual, Vanguard, Sacred Cow. Sat: Hit the Lights, Such a Mess, At the Premier, Outlook, Guns of August.

Numbers, 3811 Park Blvd, Hillcrest. numberssd.com. Thu: ‘Varsity’. Fri: ‘Harness’. Sat: ‘Club Sabbat’. Tue: Karaoke Latino.

F6ix, 526 F St., Downtown, Downtown. f6ixsd.com. Sun: DJ Brett Bodley.

Onyx Room / Thin, 852 Fifth Ave, Downtown. onyxroom.com. Fri: ‘Rumba Lounge’. Sat: ‘Play Saturday’. Tue: ‘Neo Soul’.

Fluxx, 500 Fourth Ave, Downtown. fluxxsd.com. Thu: ‘IDGAF’ w/ Vinai, Mike Hawkins. Fri: E-Rock. Sat: DJs Ikon, Ricky Rocks.

Gallagher’s, 5040 Newport Ave, Ocean Beach. 619-222-5303. Wed: Joe Cardillo and Friends. Thu: Shamrocks and Dreadlocks. Fri: Andy Mauser, Rafael Moreno.

Sat: Open Arms, DJ Chelu.

Hard Rock Hotel, 207 Fifth Ave, Downtown. hardrockhotelsd.com. Thu: Ilya.

Sat: DJ Lucky Lou. Sun: ‘Intervention’ w/ Morgan Page.

Henry’s Pub, 618 Fifth Ave, Downtown. henryspub.com. Wed: Johnny Tarr, DJ Christopher London. Thu: Mark Fisher, DJ Yodah. Fri: ‘Good Times’. Sat: DJs E, Yodah. Mon: ‘Kinetic Soul’. Tue: Big City Dawgs.

House of Blues, 1055 Fifth Ave, Downtown. houseofblues.com/sandiego. Wed: Chevelle. Thu: Quiet Riot, Faster Pussycat, Bulletboys, Gilby Clarke. Fri: MattyB. Sat: La Roux. Sun: MKTO. Tue: Backtrack.

Kava Lounge, 2812 Kettner Blvd, Midtown. kavalounge.com. Thu: Ryat, Mast, Illuminauts, Mystery Cave, Mateo Silva, Ultragash. Fri: ‘Acid Varsity’. Sat: ‘Simpler Times’. Sun: ‘For the Love of HipHop’.

Mc P’s Irish Pub, 1107 Orange Ave, Coronado. mcpspub.com. Wed: Tone Cooking. Thu: North Star. Fri: Manic Bros. Sat: 4-Way Street. Sun: Gene Warren. Mon: Jason. Tue: Sophisticats.

Patricks Gaslamp, 428 F St, Downtown. patricksii.com. Wed: The Rayford Brothers. Thu: Trey Tosh. Fri: The Fuzzy Rankins Band. Sat: Mystique Element of Soul. Sun: Johnny Vernazza. Mon: The Groove Squad. Tue: Walter’s Chicken Jam. Porter’s Pub, 9500 Gilman Dr., UCSD campus, La Jolla. porterspub.net. Sat: 8Kalacas. Mon: DUBB, Devin Miles.

Red’s Saloon, 4190 Mission Blvd, Pacific Beach. facebook.com/RedsSaloon. Wed: Jay Larson.

Rich’s, 1051 University Ave, Hillcrest. richssandiego.com. Wed: DJ Kiki. Thu: Von Kiss. Fri: Throw Down for a Cause.

Fri: DJs Dirty Kurty, Will Z. Sat: DJ John Joseph. Sun: DJ Hektik.

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

Thu: Bob Wade. Fri: Little Kings. Sat: The Midnight Pine.

Seven Grand, 3054 University Ave, North Park. sevengrandbars.com/sd. Fri: Sure Fire Soul Ensemble, Marcellus Wallace.

Sat: Stevie and the Hi-Staxx.

Shakedown Bar, 3048 Midway Drive, Point Loma. theshakedownsd.com. Wed: Permacrush, Amigo, Gunner Gunner. Fri: Hell on Heels Burlesque Revue. Sat: Total D, Core.

Side Bar, 536 Market St, Downtown. sidebarsd.com. Thu: DJ Fries. Fri: Dee-

jay Al. Sat: JLouis. Sun: Dre Sinatra.

Soda Bar, 3615 El Cajon Blvd, City Heights. sodabarmusic.com. Wed: Action Andy and the Hi-Tones, My Revenge, The Cutaways. Thu: Tiny Ruins, Borns.

Fri: Cloud Nothings, Wytches (sold out).

Sat: Sister Nancy, Africanpostman, Irieality, Soulective. Sun: Jessica Hernandez and the Deltas, Rebecca Jade and the Cold Fact, Javier Escovedo. Mon: Fantino, Family Thief, Darrows. Tue: Goatwhore, Lord Howler, Eukaryst.

SOMA, 3350 Sports Arena Blvd, Midway. somasandiego.com. Thu: Rings of Saturn, Arsonists Gets All The Girls, Auras, Aenimus, Peace In Terror, Shawshank Redeemed. Fri: For the Win, Jeremiah Johnson, Cut Your Losses, It All Starts Here, Heavyweight, Cartographer. Sat: Bleeding Through, Winds Of Plague, Scars of Tomorrow, Lionheart, Seconds Ago. Stage Bar & Grill, 762 Fifth Ave, Downtown. stagesaloon.com. Thu: Van Roth.

Fri: The Disco Pimps, The Shakedown.

Sat: Hott Mess, Uncle Junkie, DJ Miss Dust. Sun: ‘How da Fuq to Rave’.

Sycamore Den, 3391 Adams Ave., San Diego, Normal Heights. sycamoreden. com. Thu: John Meeks, Roll Film. Fri: Doncat, Trent Hancock, Erik Canzona.

Sun: The Big Decisions.

The Bancroft, 9143 Campo Rd, Spring Valley. 619-469-2337. Wed: Karaoke. Fri: Junk Poets. Sat: NTNT, Dancing Strangers, Alpha Channel. Mon: Joey Molinaro, Platypus Egg, Penis Hickey.

The Casbah, 2501 Kettner Blvd, Midtown. casbahmusic.com. Wed: S Carey, The Pines. Thu: Aaron Embry, Hey King!.

Fri: Okapi Sun, Madly, The Fame Riot, Kevin Martin. Sat: Get Back Loretta, The Palace Ballroom, FLAGGS, Neighbors to

the North. Mon: Octagrape, Oh Spirit!, Big Bad Buffalo. Tue: Meg Myers, Gayle Skidmore.

‘Tin Can Country Club’ w/ Ashley Pond.

Tue: Bat Lords, Chinese Rocks, The Pheasants.

The Che Cafe, UCSD campus, La Jolla. thechecafe.blogspot.com. Thu: Cross Examination, Overdoser, Mother Speed, Beekeeper. Fri: Take Offense, Impulse, Suspect, Sleepwalk, MethxBreath, Drug Control, Slums of the Future. Sat: No Know, Penis Hickey, Trashaxis. Sun: ‘For the Fucking Kids Fest’ w/ Danny Tanner, Retox, Big Bad Buffalo, Sledding With Tigers, Age of Collapse.

Tio Leo’s, 5302 Napa St, Bay Park. tioleos.com. Thu: Nathan James. Fri: I-90 and Madman. Sat: Left 4 Dead.

The Hideout, 3519 El Cajon Blvd, City Heights. thehideoutsd.com. Thu: High Functioning Flesh, Prayers, Redredred, Crocodiles (DJ set), DJ Mario Orduno.

Fri: Lady Dottie and the Diamonds, Drop Dead Dames Burlesque Revue. Sat: Ziggy Shuffledust and the Spiders from Mars, Malchicks. Tue: Vows, Permanence.

The Merrow, 1271 University Ave, Hillcrest. themerrow.com. Wed: Open mic.

Thu: Lime Cordiale, The Havesix. Fri: Saint Diego, St. Cloud Sleepers, Kid Wilderness. Sat: ‘Hedonism’ w/ Jon Bishop.

Sun: Karaoke. Mon: Urizen, Dr. Awkward, Vic Viper, Space Chainsaw. Tue: Time Cat, Andrew Begin, Wicked Tongues.

Til-Two Club, 4746 El Cajon Blvd, City Heights. tiltwoclub.com. Wed: Rat City Riot, Victory, Assault and Battery. Fri: Aghori, Shattered Eyes, Calamitous Intent, Eukaryst, Relicseed. Sat: Behexen, Night Bringer, Ritual Combat, Infinitum Obscure, Vesterian, Verrater.

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

Wed: Diatribes, TV Girl, Brothertiger. Thu: The Lexicon, Sculpins, Plastic City Pariah.

Fri: Manuok, Little Tybee, LIFE. Sat: The Amalgamated, Mochilero All Stars. Mon:

Tower Bar, 4757 University Ave, City Heights. thetowerbar.com. Wed: The Ratt’s Revenge. Fri: Black Fork, Bumbklaatt, Dark/Light, International Dipshit.

Sat: Cold Stare, Down For Life, The Hardknocks, Pissed For Life, Footsoldier.

Mon: Rum Rebellion, Abject, At Fault, Acoustical Tendencies.

Turquoise, 873 Turquoise St, Pacific Beach. theturquoise.com/wordpress.

Wed: Tomcat Courtney (7 p.m.). Thu: The Jade Visions Jazz Trio (7 p.m.). Fri: Gabriela Aparicio (4 p.m.); Tomcat Courtney (7 p.m.); Afro Jazziacs (9 p.m.). Sat: Tomcat Courtney (4 p.m.); Son Pa Ti (9 p.m.). Sun: Sounds Like Four.

Ux31, 3112 University Ave, North Park. u31bar.com. Wed: Buddy Banter, Mini Death, Teenage Exorcists, The Stupid Daikini. Thu: 2Tone Disco, Boys Don’t Disco. Fri: Lee Churchill.

West Coast Tavern, 2895 University Ave, North Park. westcoatstavern.com. Wed: DJ Slowhand. Thu & Tue: DJ Clean Cut. Fri: Billy the Kid. Sat: DJ Decon.

Whistle Stop, 2236 Fern St, South Park. whistlestopbar.com. Wed: ‘Wu Tang Wednesday’ w/ DJ Cros One. Fri: Deadbolt, El Monte Slim. Sat: ‘Booty Bassment’ w/ DJs Dimitri, Rob. Winstons, 1921 Bacon St, Ocean Beach. winstonsob.com. Wed: Maiz, SM Familia.

Thu: Turkuaz. Fri: Dustbowl Revival. Sat: Todo Mundo, Sister Speak. Sun: Karaoke. Mon: Electric Waste Band.

July 9, 2014 · San Diego CityBeat · 33

Writer’s Block by Brendan Emmett Quigley

Across 1. Response to a crack 7. Big name in synthesizers 10. Pesky little bug 14. Paris Opera Ballet prima ballerina 15. Birthday many dread 17. King James’ name 18. Glowing application 19. French aunt 20. Soccer clean sheet 21. Right-angled joint 22. “¡___ es mio!” (“That’s mine!” in Spanish) 23. Untouchable?

25. Line up 28. Some sales come-ons 31. Sticks turndown 33. Go for the heart of 34. Like dark meat 35. Daily allowance 37. Get smart 40. Dark suit?

41. Sherpa’s jobs 43. Top cards 44. Wet body 45. Herbal ___ 46. More removed 50. Didn’t budge 52. Lose greenness 54. Vote for?

55. Performed 57. Blade dampener 58. Dairy Queen purchases 60. Bowlful with chips June 26 crossword answers

34 · San Diego CityBeat · July 9, 2014

63. Kid rocker 64. Scratch covers 65. Power source 66. “Where’s Daddy?” playwright 67. Faux innocent reply 68. Harasses

Down 1. “___ Skelter” (“White Album” song) 2. “Relax, dogface!”

3. Hang out with 4. Trumpeting legend Al 5. Sunblock additive 6. One with a protected nest egg 7. Attach, as a postage stamp 8. Punk rock legend Henry 9. Golf instructor, likely 10. They go sitting down 11. One who recently changed his or her name, perhaps 12. Come ___ price 13. Tweet of gratitude 16. ___ clip (pedal part) 20. Intrusive 23. The serpent, to Eve 24. MRI or radiograph alternative 26. Bar ___ 27. Seafood fishes 29. Comedian Steve 30. Ride hard 32. Rain check?

36. Time traveler’s destination 37. Weekly chore (or daily, if you have a toddler like me) 38. “Hadn’t thought of it that way” 39. Very hot 42. Jumped the broom 43. Not exactly tons 47. Name 48. Shoelace hole 49. Turns back the clock 51. Type of semiconductor or electron tube 53. Soda originally called “Brad’s Drink” 56. Genetic strands 58. “Dr. Feelgood” band, for short 59. Breakfast cereal 60. Belt with a netsuke 61. Bread with mattar paneer 62. Barely turned on 63. Barbecue throwaway

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36 · San Diego CityBeat · July 9, 2014

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38 · San Diego CityBeat · July 9, 2014

July 9, 2014 · San Diego CityBeat · 39