San Diego CityBeat • Oct 21, 2015

2 · San Diego CityBeat · October 21, 2015

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October 21, 2015 · San Diego CityBeat · 3

Up Front | From the editor

Gun background checks, please

W

ould it surprise you that a poll taken earlier this year showed three out of four National Rifle Association members think the idea of gun background checks is on target? That large percentage makes a good bit of sense given that a whopping nine out of 10 American are for the idea. What defies logic, however, is why a bill like HR 3411 (the Fix Gun Checks Act of 2015) is sitting unsigned in Washington, D.C. HR 3411 would close the loophole in federal law and require background checks on all gun sales— including firearms purchased at gun shows and in private transactions—as well as urge states to submit records of prohibited purchasers to the National Instant Check System (NICS).

There are a couple bills kicking around Congress, including HR 1217, which was essentially penned in 2013 and now has strong bipartisan support. HR 1217 only expands checks to commercial sales, and that’s one reason national activist group The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence has identified HR 3411 as the stronger bill.

The Brady Campaign has more than 80 chapters around the country, including two dozen in California. Membership is swelling. A growing chorus of backers, all chagrined about each and every one of the 150 school shootings that have occurred in the United States since the Sandy Hook Elementary tragedy in December 2012, are calling for action.

The co-president of the San Diego Chapter of the Brady Campaign had a busy week. Carol Landale attended a fundraiser over the weekend that was attended by U.S. Rep. Susan Davis and San Diego City Councilmember David Alvarez. She also spoke at a University of San Diego conference on the topic of preventing gun violence.

Earlier in the week, Landale was part of a local press conference asking Congress to pass the House bill calling for universal background checks. One speaker at that press conference was San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce president and CEO Jerry Sanders. He’s a Republican and formerly held the titles of San Diego Mayor and Chief of Police.

“…Forty percent of those purchasing firearms are doing so in ‘no questions asked’ scenarios,” noted Sanders.

U.S. Rep. Scott Peters, a Democrat, organized that press conference. “Children shouldn’t have to fear that a crazy person with a gun is going to walk into their school and shoot them,” said Peters.

“Let’s start with something simple: close loopholes in our background check system to keep guns out of the hands of people who shouldn’t have them.”

Peters would welcome a vote on either House bill, according to a spokesperson.

Landale said she has no answer why, despite such seemingly overwhelming support, no bill has moved forward. “I can’t answer that question,” she said.

“It’s beyond my comprehension why we can’t get anything done at the federal level.”

Ironically, if HR 3411 passed it would bring the nation up to the current level of background checks mandated in California.

While the NRA leadership digs in its heels and continues to wield considerable financial and political pressure on a national level— seemingly because it fears if it gives an inch it will have to give a yard—the potential for more gun violence stands unabated. Background checks, most agree, will not eliminate school shootings completely. But they could lower Carol Landale the number of guns that might fall into the hands of the mentally ill, domestic abusers and criminals.

“The NRA’s tune to its members continues to be ‘the government wants to take away your guns,’” said Landale. “But the reality is that background checks are not about taking guns away. It’s about making sure that the 90 guns out there for every 100 Americans don’t fall into the hands of people who shouldn’t have them.”

Background checks are not a panacea but are a step in the right direction. Kudos to the Brady Campaign for attempting to eliminate the chance that tomorrow’s news report doesn’t lead with the death toll at your child’s school campus.

Write to rond@sdcitybeat.com

—Ron Donoho

This issue of CityBeat is not dedicated to yellow-bellied sea snakes washing up on beaches. Thanks, El Niño!

Volume 14 • Issue 11 Editor Ron Donoho Music Editor Jeff Terich Arts Editor Seth Combs Associate editor Joshua Emerson Smith Web Editor Ryan Bradford Art director Carolyn Ramos Columnists Aaryn Belfer, Edwin Decker, John R. Lamb, Alex Zaragoza

Contributors David L. Coddon, Beth Demmon, Andrew Dyer, Tiffany Fox, Michael A. Gardiner, Glenn Heath Jr., Peter Holslin, Jessica Johnson, Scott McDonald, Jenny Montgomery, Susan Myrland, Chad Peace, Jim Ruland, Ben Salmon, Tom Siebert, Jen Van Tieghem, Amy Wallen

Senior account executive Jason Noble Account Executives Beau Odom, Kimberly Wallace, Isaac Aycox Accounting Kacie Cobian, Sharon Huie, Linda Lam

editorial Interns Torrey Bailey, Nancy Kirk

Human Resources Andrea Baker

Production Manager Tristan Whitehouse

Vice President of Finance Michael Nagami

Production artist Rees Withrow

Vice President of Operations David Comden

MultiMedia Advertising Director Paulina Porter-Tapia

Publisher Kevin Hellman

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

4 · San Diego CityBeat · October 21, 2015

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Up Front | Letters

FEEDING THE HOMELESS Regarding the editor’s letter “Sandwiches and services” [Oct. 7], ignorance is bliss. I just can’t understand the pseudo powers that be have another stroke of genius. Don’t feed hungry people. If you don’t feed them you force them to come to our feeding centers where they will hear a lecture on hygiene.

Don’t share a sandwich and maybe a little time where you can get to know the individual. The geniuses are at it again. Shame on you Miles McPherson.

Roger Reed,

San Diego

On the

Cover

HEALING ART An artist dedicated to helping women that are “scarred” for life by cancer [“Breast assured,” Sept. 30]. Their lives and how they feel about their bodies are permanently changed. [Shane Wallin] helps these women feel beautiful in a new way, with a unique look that is their own. I hope you teach your art to many along the way.

Suzanne Elizabeth Callaghan Martin, via Facebook

VIVA LA COVER! [Art director] Carolyn Ramos kicked ass with that cover [“How Green is Todd Gloria?,” Oct. 7]. Give her a raise! I’m still trying to figure out how she did it.

David Batterson,

North Park

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This week’s cover image is actually two overlaid photos from nature photographer Rachel Cobb. One is of an Aeonium “Kiwi” succulent which is drought-resistant, while the other is of Phyllostachys vivax bamboo and requires heavy watering. Cobb took the contrasting photos at the San Diego Botanic Garden in Encinitas, where Cobb serves as art director and the garden’s principal photographer. “It is a joy to wander through the garden and call it work. I look forward to every visit,” says Cobb, who has traveled all over the world shooting for National Geographic and numerous other publications. Check out more of her work at weedyacres.com.

October 21, 2015 · San Diego CityBeat · 5

Up Front | News

Lefties remain optimistic, for now

Major challenges ahead for San Diego’s progressive movement

by Joshua Emerson Smith Clockwise from top left: Lorena Gonzalez, Nathan Fletcher, Todd Gloria, Toni Atkins and David Alvarez termined to have a Democrat on the ballot, but we do understand the demands on that candidate.”

The obvious choices to go up against Faulconer were Speaker of the Assembly Toni Atkins or City Councilmember Todd Gloria, both of whom decided to run in other races.

Many, including Busby, blame the reluctance to challenge the mayor on the city’s election system, where a candidate can win outright in a primary race if he or she receives the majority of votes. This system has often favored incumbents, especially conservatives, whose base is more likely to dominate low-turnout primary elections.

While on the City Council, Faulconer never faced a November general election.

Similarly, former Republican Mayor Jerry Sanders also secured all his victories early in primary races.

Busby says this undermines democracy in the city because general elections usually see significantly higher turnouts. She and others have said efforts are afoot to place a reform measure on the 2016 ballot.

“What we need to do is change the city’s charter,” she said. “This is a disservice to the people of San Diego, and it creates a difficult changeling election dynamic for anybody ever running against an incumbent.”

However, not everyone’s buying this excuse. Some see the left as unorganized, populated with factions that care more about specific causes than practical election strategy.

6 · San Diego CityBeat · October 21, 2015

“The fact that they do not have a candidate for mayor is a party disgrace,” said Carl Luna, professor of political science at San Diego Mesa College.

“On policy, they’re trying to advance things, but until you get friendly policy makers, it’s very difficult,” he added. “They can’t speak with the same sort of unified voice in the Democraticprogressive alliance that you see with the Chamber of Commerce and the business alliance.”

There’s more than just the mayor’s race at stake next year. Democrats now control a fivefour majority on the City Council, but that could quickly change.

While most seats are expected to retain party affiliation, District 1, a swing seat now controlled by Sherri Lightner, looks up for grabs. The contest is between Republican businessman Ray Ellis and Democrats Barbara Bry and Joe LaCava. A win for a conservative could give Faulconer the votes on the council to make significant policy changes.

Equally important is the City Attorney’s race, a position seen as a powerful counterbalance to the city’s strong-mayor system.

Democrats Gil Cabrera, Rafael Castellanos Write to joshua@sdcitybeat.com or follow and Mara Elliott will duke it out in the pri- him on Twitter at @jemersmith

“

The fact that they do not have a candidate for mayor is a party disgrace.

“

A

fter progressive former Mayor Bob Filner’s scandaldriven resignation on Aug. 23, 2013, conservatives seized the day. Besting Democrats in two City Council contests, the Republican establishment also installed former Councilmember Kevin Faulconer in the mayor’s seat.

In comparison to the ostensibly welloiled conservative machine, Democrats and progressives looked disorganized, even petty, as they bickered over whom to endorse for mayor. To the chagrin of Assemblymember and former labor leader Lorena Gonzalez, local unions rebuffed moderate hopeful Nathan Fletcher, embracing progressive City Councilmember David Alvarez.

After decades of political control, the Republican establishment, backed by a powerful and entrenched business community, lost its grip on the city for only a little over a year. While Alvarez had a surprisingly strong showing, the city’s nascent progressive movement seemed crushed by his loss.

Headed into the 2016 election cycle, progressives have licked their wounds and claim they’re ready to fight. However, it’s unclear how much fight lefties have in them. With the June primary elections already heating up, a Democratic challenger for mayor has yet to emerge.

“I am concerned,” said Francine Busby, chair of the San Diego County Democratic Party. “We are talking with people. I’m de-

mary, hoping Republican candidate Robert Hickey doesn’t grab the requisite 51 percent of votes and end the contest before it can get to November.

While these pivotal races provide progressives a chance to show their strength, many on the left are taking a longer view.

“In the last 10 years, there’s really been a switch in terms of voter registration and the sentiment of everyday San Diegans,” said Colin Parent, co-founder of the San Diego Leadership Alliance. “What we don’t have is the infrastructure from progressives to really capitalize on that shift of the voters.”

As of August, the city of San Diego had about 600,000 people registered to vote. Of those, 39 percent were Democrats, 26 percent Republican and 29 percent declined to state. It’s that last category of roughly one third of voters that has grown over the last decade while Republicans have seen declining enrollment.

However, low turnout has plagued progressives, whose candidates, according to critics, have often had a hard time generating real excitement among voters.

“The fact that you can’t ask the average San Diegan, ‘Who do you think is the Democrat in town? Who helps to lead the town?’ is significant,” Luna said.

“Republicans have a shrinking base, but they can get out the vote,” he added. “They can fund their candidates. They can keep their message pure while the Democrats squabble over each other.”

That’s changing, but it’s not going to happen overnight, said Parent, whose sixyear-old organization has been training young progressives eager to get involved in local politics.

“We need to develop a deeper bench of progressives across sectors in San Diego,” he said. “Solving that is going to take some time.

“You need people who are connected earlier in their careers so they can develop into those people who can fill those leadership rolls later on,” he added. “It is true that San Diego has been run by conservative business interests for a long time, and they have that infrastructure that gives them a lot of influence.”

Thirty-two-year-old Sean Elo graduated from the 10-week San Diego Leadership Alliance program last June. Having graduated from law school, he now works as the director of campaigns and policy for Mid-City Community Advocacy Network. He said many of his peers have rooted themselves in community activism, waiting for the right opportunity to burst onto the political scene.

“If the Republican Party and the right of San Diego thinks that not having a mayoral candidate right now means that the left isn’t active and fired up and really engaged and ready to make a difference here, they’re making a huge mistake,” he said.

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Up Front | opinion

divided state of

america

Josh Thompson / flickr

chad peace

Primary (election) responsibility

C

alifornia’s revolutionary top-two nonpartisan system, adopted as Proposition 14 in 2010, is not revolutionary at all. In fact, it’s almost the exact system we have had in San Diego for a long, long time—except for two critical differences here: --If a candidate gets more than 50 percent in the primary, we don’t even hold a general election.

In other words, if a majority of voters who come out to the polls in the June primary agree on any one candidate, the general election voters don’t even matter.

--We don’t include the candidate’s party preference next to their name—so uninformed voters don’t know which party a candidate prefers.

Those are the two differences.

That’s all. And while the nonpartisan primary has significantly advanced the rights of voters, it’s not without critics.

Third-party advocates, for ex-

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ample, argue that voters in the general election are less likely to be exposed to ideas that are outside of the mainstream, because third-party and independent candidates are less likely to be one of the top two vote getters in June.

Therefore, third-party and independent candidates are less likely to get into the general election debates. And they are less likely to influence the dialogue when the most people are listening.

Proponents of top-two nonpartisan primaries say the narrowing of the election to two candidates is good, because it prevents votesplitting and allows the public to focus on the “viable” options. They also point to the fact that (and the California Supreme Court has agreed) every voter, candidate and party is treated exactly the same under the law.

What is undeniable, therefore, is for the first time in California history there are no special favors

given to parties and their members that other voting citizens don’t get.

We could go back and forth all day about how third parties and alternative voices can or can’t use the power of coalition building to affect the dialogue, change the political discourse and earn their way into the top-two tier.

But that’s for a longer discussion.

At its foundation, elections are about serving individual citizens, regardless of their party preference. And now, parties and independent candidates are free to compete for the will of voters on a level playing field.

Removing the special rules and getting rid of the private primary process is not inapposite to the rights of political parties. In fact, those who believe in strong political parties should be the strongest advocates for removing their state-sponsored advantages.

If you’re trying to break up a duopoly in the marketplace, for example, that doesn’t mean you are anti-free market or antibusiness. In fact, it means you believe in a free market where businesses compete for customers on an equal playing field, not where the government decides what business it will prop up.

So when the Independent Voter Project says that nonpartisan reform is necessary for better government, the suggestion is not aimed at getting rid of political parties. Rather, that political parties should compete on a level playing field to win the support of voters.

If a political party’s talking head goes on TV and says a toptwo primary effectively eliminates minor parties from the process and reduces the amount of voice voters have, he or she would seemingly make sense.

That only makes sense, however, from the perspective of someone who thinks elections serve political parties first and voters second. It doesn’t hold water within the context of today’s political landscape.

The proper role of political parties is to bring forth ideas on public policy and how government should serve the people.

However, the two major political parties have erected institutional barriers around the two major parties that have reduced their accountability to voters. In turn, they have put the power of choosing viable candidates into the hands of political insiders instead

of voters. Think: gerrymandering, campaign finance and ballot access laws.

So today, as a result of these institutional barriers, more voters than ever have lost confidence in any political party to bring forth ideas on public policy that really serve the people. That’s why, on a national scale, the number of voters who self-identify as independent far outnumbers those who identify with either major political party. And here in San Diego, independent voters now outnumber Republicans by registration as well.

We should keep looking for ways to lower these institutional barriers, open the process to voters and encourage political parties to persuade voters into joining their team.

We can start right here in San Diego. As many people should know, San Diego has a 50-percentplus-one rule that allows a local candidate to win the election in June, effectively eliminating voter choice in our local elections at the general election stage.

Nothing reduces voter choice in the general election like having no choice at all.

And nothing can be more destructive to our political discourse than ending the conversation before most voters start paying attention.

Write to chadp@sdcitybeat.com.

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

October 21, 2015 · San Diego CityBeat · 7

Up Front | Opinion

Sordid

Edwin Decker

Tales

The Playboy right of passage

B

loody red clouds splatter the darkening sky.

Black smoke billows from the tops of burning buildings. Escaped zoo animals prowl the streets—ramming vehicles and goring pedestrians like a cartoon apocalypse scrawled by Gahan Wilson.

The man on the radio sobs as he reports the cause. “Playboy magazine,” he says, “will no longer feature photos of naked women.”

(And lo, the earth split open and into the fissure fell the masturbatory memories fondly held by every male over 35. Revelation 12:666) So why did Playboy decide to discard what Playboy is known for? Well, Internet porn of course.

According to Alliance for Audited Media (AAM), Playboy has plummeted from 5.6 million circulation in 1975 to the current readership of 800,000.

That’s still a high number when you consider that there still exists 800,000 wankers who forego the free and vast pornocopia of the Internet in favor of paying money to one-handedly flip the pages of an expensive two-pound magazine that doesn’t have any sex in it whatsoever.

Still, the news came as a surprise to some. Playboy invented mainstream nudity. It was a rite of passage for many American men (and metro-lesbians) who came of age before the digital revolution. And the fact that Playboy will be discarding the nudie pics like so many satin robes tossed at the feet of sleazy photographers is more shocking than when MTV stopped showing music videos; or when Woody Allen stopped making comedies; or when Ice-T stopped rapping about killing cops and became one on TV. Don’t get me wrong. It’s not like I’m going to miss it. I haven’t picked up a Playboy in 25 years. It’s just that the whole thing got me to thinking about what it’s like for kids today who—with one little misstep on the keyboard, or an autofill program gone rogue—can go from researching the Greek goddess Aphrodite to some hermaphroditic, anal, midget, donkey-bondage, Twister orgy website in a click and a blink.

Now, I’m no prude. But that instantaneous leap from innocence to eyes-wide-what-the-fuck? cannot be good for a young soul. Not to get all, “Things were better when I was a kid” on you, but I think it was better for our emotional and sexual health.

Because back then we had a long and slow pornography acceleration rate that began with the mildest erotic stimuli and gradually progressed to hermaphroditic donkey orgies on VHS. The progression almost always began with the Dictionary Stage. This is, for most pre-pubescent boys, our first encounter with pornography. In the dictionary we looked up words like “vagina,” “penis” and “intercourse,” which, to our delight and surprise, were actually in there.

Next came the Sears Catalog Stage—which, well,

even oversized, cotton mammary-hammocks have a certain je ne sais quoi in the right light. But eventually you want to see what lies beneath the cotton. So you moved to the next stage–National Geographic— in which you do see what lies beneath the cotton: aboriginal nipples, in all their stretched and holey glory.

But you don’t care. Because they are nipples!

Right there, on the cover, real and actual human nipples. The motherlode, you think. Until one day, playing hide and seek at your best friend’s house, the two of you come upon a hidden box of old Playboys in the basement. Everything changes then. It’s as if you find the treasure of Dread Pirate Hefner—the gold and silver shining from inside the chest, lighting your amazed and excited faces in the dim of the basement. From that point, every day after school, you and your chums sit around the chiffonier, meticulously flipping through every bejeweled page, running your flashlight along the cuts and angles of the most brilliant human diamonds upon which you have ever laid your filthy, little eyes.

After the Playboy Stage came the Penthouse Stage, which doesn’t only show photographs of nude women, their spreads actually depict actual, sex acts—each montage complete with its own relevant backstory and costumery.

Not to mention Penthouse Forum, in which you could read about so many fabulous, first person encounters that always begin with the author never thinking such a thing could happen to him—and then it does!

After Penthouse, came the most important level of the Pornography Consumption Acceleration Process, known as The Hustler Stage. What’s that you say? “Eww! Hustler!?” And yes, eww is right.

But that’s the point. Because it’s within the scummy pages of Hustler where you learn the limits of your depravity and, thankfully, that you are not as perverted as some people.

Finally, after it has become apparent that photos are no longer going to do the trick, you graduate to the VHS Stage, followed by real sex with real women which, well let’s be honest, never quite lives up to porn.

Joking!

The point is, today there is no healthy, graduation process for kids to consume pornography. They go from Googling “vagina” to finding themselves on the anal midget Twister site and completely miss that all-important early step of simply viewing the elegant poetry of a disrobed woman—who is not having anything done to her, nor doing anything to anyone—for its own sake.

“

It’s not like I’m going to miss it. I haven’t picked up a Playboy in 25 years.

“

8 · San Diego CityBeat · October 21, 2015

Sordid Tales appears every other week.

Write to edwin@sdcitybeat.com.

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Up Front | Food

by michael a. gardiner Michael A. Gardiner

the world

fare

From pita to pizza to Alforon

O

n its historic journey from the Northern Middle East to Italy, pita decided to stop over in the vicinity of Lebanon and become man’oushe. The journey from pita to pizza is no doubt a long one—more than just a couple of letters—so it’s easy to see why this flatbread decided on a rest stop.

At Alforon (5965 El Cajon Blvd.) in the College Area, owners George and Samia Salameh call the dish simply “flatbread.” The word “man’oushe” apparently inspired glazed eyes.

Flatbread, though, is such an overused term and so often uninspiring. Don’t be fooled. This is not the typical soulless flatbread served at every hipster hotspot on account of its astonishingly high profit margin. A better moniker might be its Turkish name “lahmacun” or the English-language equivalent “Turkish pizza.”

In Lebanon, man’oushe is nearly a national breakfast, served rolled, covered in za’atar (a Middle Eastern spice blend based on dried wild thyme, salt, sesame seeds and sumac) and suspended in olive oil. Alforon serves the dish more as a pizza (perhaps a nod to its College Area lo-

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cation), adding to the za’atar, chopped tomato, olive, mint and labneh (think Greek yogurt’s more robust, powerpacked cousin). The flatbread itself is chewy but with a crisp exterior, combining the headiness of the za’atar and richness of the labneh with just a bit of acid from the tomato. The effect is both homey and exotic.

Alforon also offers several other styles of man’oushe, such as lahm b’ajeen or “meat with Za’atar man’oushe dough,” which includes ground beef, fresh tomato, onions and spices. Alforon offers three variations— spicy, with eggs or with cheese. (Choose spicy.)

Where the za’atar man’oushe seems exotic this feels more familiar and reads easily as a pizza.

The chicken tawook man’oushe is brilliant: chicken marinated in lemon juice and garlic paste with some cheese and pickle garnishes.

Succulent, with sweet, funky, sour and rich flavors and an array of textures, it is a gorgeous dish, both exotic and comforting. The soujouk (spicy beef sausage) man’oushe is also good, the shawarma less so (fully cooked roast meat yields a topping on the jerky side of done).

There are other good items at Alforon but, with one exception, the thing to get is the man’oushe options. That one exception is the stuffed grape leaves. They arrive at the table warm—not, as seems so often the case, just out of the refrigerator—and are juicy and perfectly rolled with a ricebased filling that gives a star turn to a bit player: sundried tomatoes. A creative play on the classic use of dried fruit in dolmata, it is a brilliant little touch that takes the dish over the top.

But as good as those grape leaves are it’s the man’oushe that should make you stop at Alforon, much as the pita stopped in Lebanon on its way to pizza. It isn’t exactly pizza, of course, just as it’s more than pita. What it is in the end is well worth trying.

The World Fare appears weekly.

Write to michaelg@sdcitybeat.com.

October 21, 2015 · San Diego CityBeat · 9

Up Front | Food

by ron donoho ron donoho

back. Stencils of seafood, especially octopi, adorn the dark walls.

Zenteno’s charm is bottomless. He’s friendly and gracious, like a GM, but also peppy and cool like a neighborhood guy you want to sit at the bar and dish with. We can’t decide on a wine, so he brings us three glasses to sample—a Pinot Gris and two Sauvignon Blancs. We settled on the 2014 Sea Pearl Sauvignon Blanc. It seems like it might go with nearly everything on a menu that’s widely spread with tantalizing choices.

I debate going in the New York steak and potatoes direction of the neighborhood pasta. It changes every few days, but Zenteno effuses about tonight’s fettuccine alfredo with braised scallops and broccolini. Also tempting is the catch-of-the-day ceviche, served four different ways (Peruano, Chileno, coco and vegitariano). There are also three sushi rolls on Go off the beaten path to Sirena the menu—spicy scallop, octopus and a Sirena roll that includes shrimp, scallop and smoked ou can be mediocre and do well over on salmon.

India Street,” says Michael Zenteno, genMy gal goes with the salmon and aji. The eral manager of Sirena Gourmet (1901 salmon sits on a bed of roasted sweet potatoes Columbia St.). “Here, our concept is what brings and mushrooms in a sweet potato puree. The fish people in.” is coated with yellow aji, a Peruvian chili paste.

It’s a Saturday night in Little Italy. Sirena is The paste is mildly spicy and adds just the right a fusion eatery on the corner of Columbia and zing to salmon.

Fir streets. Here, the kitchen mixes Chilean and I haven’t ordered a hunk of red meat in at Peruvian cuisines, with a dab of Japanese. This least a year, but the New York steak and potatoes unpretentious restaurant is a little more than ropes me in. The steak rests on a bed of rosehalf full at the moment. It’s not packed like the mary roasted Peruvian potatoes. It’s topped by nearby eateries on India. On the way over, my caramelized onions, a viscous chimichurri sauce girlfriend and I had tried to stroll hand-in-hand and an egg (cooked to my liking, not too runny). I past Buon Appetito, Trattoria Fantastica and swiftly put away all 12 ounces.

Davanti Enoteca. But the waiting-list people on The restaurant is about to celebrate its oneIndia were part of a human obstacle course. year anniversary. A weekend brunch is now on, Sirena is not as busy as it should be. Foot Zenteno says. He’s a big reason Sirena is now my traffic seems to be an issue, but I take an immeyou-gotta-try-it recommendation, and why it’s diate and intangible liking to the place. You can my new resto besto. see out to the street through floor-to-ceiling glass walls. The interior is boxy, but cozy and Urban Eats appears every other week. welcoming. There’s a bar (beer and wine only) Write to rond@sdcitybeat.com. near the entrance and an open kitchen in the

urban

eats Y

10 · San Diego CityBeat · October 21, 2015

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Up Front | Drink

the

by andrew dyer

beerdist Swept away by Rip Current

I

’m occasionally caught off guard by breweries that fly under the radar. As a suburbanite, my exposure to local beer can be limited to what’s represented on the shelves of my local bottle shop.

I suspect this is the case with many consumers who might venture out to breweries but then favor familiar beers.

So I was fortunate when a planned family outing to Legoland was rained out, and we diverted to Rip Current Brewing Company (1325 Grand Ave.) in San Marcos.

Rip Current is fresh off its gold medal showing at the 2015 Great American Beer Fest, and the tasting room was abuzz with eager beer lovers looking for a taste of the Very Small Brewing Company of the Year.

The family-friendly tasting room was accommodating enough for my brooding 7-year-old. He was a little steamed to be at a brewery and not an amusement park, but the available board games were enough to keep him entertained while I got to work. In line with the recent trend of “San Diego-style” pale ales that are a little more “IPA” than “PA” was its Pearling Pale Ale. I’m not complaining. This Mosaic and Amarillo-hopped brew delivered serious hop flavor, punching way above its 5.5 percent ABV weight class. Rip Current’s Breakline Bock took home gold in the category, and its clean, robust flavor leaves little doubt as to why.

But if I had to name one beer that speaks to the brewing prowess behind the scenes at Rip Current, it would be the Caught in a Rip IIIPA. This 11.2 percent ABV bomb delivers a dangerously drinkable sledgehammer of hops with little to no booziness. Beer geeks may wait in hour-long lines for 8-ounce pours of Russian River’s Pliny the Younger every spring, but Caught in a Rip is

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andrew dyer

Rip Current Brewing Company a world-class triple IPA right in our own backyard. A North Park location, which opened earlier this year, means the long drive north is not required—nor are the lines, crowds and hype.

That could be changing, however. A medal at GABF can do funny things for a brewery. The staff at Rip Current estimated traffic in the San Marcos tasting room is up by at least a third, with out-of-town beer tourists making last-minute additions to their itineraries to facilitate a visit. And if my July column on Santee breweries wasn’t enough to motivate a trip east, perhaps the gold medal BNS Brewing (10960 Wheatlands Ave.) won in the crowded American IPA category for its Revolver IPA will.

There are now in the county, most of which you will not find clamoring for shelf space at BevMo. The Beerdist appears every other week.

Write to andrewd@sdcitybeat.com

October 21, 2015 · San Diego CityBeat · 11

Up Front | technology

all things

tech

by tom siebert

Go get an ad blocker. Now.

C

all me Judas.

Above all else, ad blockers’ growing threat I spent the past 15-plus years of my life to publishers and advertisers probably wouldn’t either working in advertising and mareven be a problem if the United States had broadketing or covering it, and I’m here to tell you band speeds that matched the world’s best. Inthe single best thing you can do right now to stead we rank 17th in Internet connection speed. improve your online experience is download ad If America had speeds that matched, say South blocking software.

Korea, Japan, Israel or…Latvia (?!?), web pages I won’t recommend any one of them specifiwould not be slowed while loading with a halfcally, since this isn’t an ad. Look into it yourself dozen banners or skyscrapers, a pop-up and a and get one if you haven’t already. pair of auto-play videos.

An ad blocker will dramatically decrease the But nobody’s complaining about Comcast or number of ads you see while web surfing. These Cox or Time Warner, who have slower speeds ads have been increasing in volume, frequency and and higher prices than pretty much any counintrusiveness while simultaneously slowing your try in the developed world (except Canada; poor online experience.

Canada). They’re bitching about How many of you already use cheapskate consumers. an ad blocker? According to TechAnd that’s the second thing: In Crunch, only about 10 percent of their increasingly urgent efforts to Americans do right now, though make up revenue losses that come the publication makes it sound with the decreasing circulation of like we’re late to the party: There physical magazines, as well as diare more than 200 million people minished prices for online adverworldwide who use one. tising, publishers are cramming That’s probably at least parmore and more ads on to pages in tially because corporate media has order to make up the difference done a good job keeping converin lost revenue. Then, since data sation and buzz about online ad says people like video, they startblocking software largely out of its ed adding autoplay video, which coverage until recently. slows page loads dramatically.

I only discovered it over the “It’s this more intrusive adverTen percent of Americans tising that needs to go away, that’s summer thanks to a brave piece in use an ad blocker.

Business Insider by Jim Edwards driving ad blocker acceptance,” (one of the best and most trustworthy business says Steve Hellbusch, media director at San Diego reporters around, and worth following if you care digital agency Mindgruve. “It’s supposed to be enabout such things). gaging, but it’s just distracting.”

But once I did, my download speeds for web So is it unexpected that readers would want pages went from tricycle to motorcycle. It was a to escape an onslaught of advertising that slows revelation, if not a revolution. and diminishes their digital experience, as well Up until now, most ad blocking software has as tracks their online movement? Of course not. been designed for personal computers, but the I suspect, in the end, it will be publishers who bytes really hit the fan when Apple announced make it impossible for users of ad blockers to new ad blocking technology for mobile, allowread their content who will suffer. ing iPhone users who update to iOS 9 (the new Fortunately not everybody in the digital ad iPhone operating system) to block all ads seen world has got a nervous twitch about ad blockers. through the phone’s Safari web browser.

Andreas Roell, chairman of San Diego’s programThat news was received by many in the mobile matic ad-buying firm, Katana, takes a longer and more pragmatic view. ad world with a panic like Godzilla had parachut“Digital advertising has always been a bit of a ed in on 9/11. Apple’s got about half the world’s cat-and-mouse game that marketers have had to smartphone market, and mobile web use passed computer Internet use just last year. deal with,” he points out. “There’s always a cerThe ad-blocking tension between publishers tain percentage of ‘something’—fraud, misalignand consumers is also escalating fast, with Germent of ads—you have to deal with.” man publishing company Axel Springer—which Roell also points out another statistic that’s eirecently acquired Business Insider, incidentally— ther overlooked or ignored by ad-blocker critics: announcing last week that it will be blocking “Time spent online continues to go up, so even if readers who use ad-blocking technology. you have 10 percent of the people seeing fewer There’s been a lot of hand-wringing from the ads, the other 90 percent are spending more and usual scolds of the corporate-ocracy about how more time online, so you’ve got more and more inventory for that 90 percent.” consumers are being selfish, they’re getting this As long as penetration sticks at 10 percent, content for free, they should take all this advertising and like it. That’s bullshit and here’s why.

Roell can probably afford to stay sanguine.

What nobody’s saying is that the pipes are getBut the hope is if you’ve made it to the end of ting clogged by all this advertising because the this column, the next thing will be to make it 10 pipes aren’t that great. percent plus one.

12 · San Diego CityBeat · October 21, 2015

#SDCityBeat

EVENTS

SHORTlist

ART

the

THREE YOU HAVE TO SEE

DOWNTOWN

1 IN FLIGHT

Wanna see a bespectacled music snob get really excited? Ask him or her about Brian Eno. While not exactly a household name, the iconic musician, producer and original member of glam-rock pioneers Roxy Music is an artist’s artist; underrated and underappreciated, but beloved to those who know him.

Eno is often credited for creating “ambient” music with the 1978 instrumental electronic album, Ambient 1: Music for Airports.

Bassist Robert Black is one of the founding members of the Bang on a Can All-Stars, a New York-based collective of classical musicians that was formed in 1992. Black remembers that Eno’s Music for Airports was one of those albums that all of the musicians could agree on.

“As we were talking to each other, it became clear that was one of those really important, seminal musical experiences that everyone had,” Black says from his home in New York. “The idea emerged

WAYNE LABAT / HAPPY DRAGON PHOTOGRAPHY

#SDCityBeat

ESCONDIDO

3 TRASH INTO TREASURE

Bottle caps aren’t exactly the ideal material for creating an elegant dress, but organizers of the annual Recycled Materials Runway Event hopes its participants create things just like that. Like a treehugger’s Project Runway, fashion-minded participants use thrifted, recycled and trashed materials to create garments and accessories that are at least 75 percent recycled. Garments in the past have been made out of dried and dyed coffee filters, bicycle innertubes, dog food bags and shower curtains.

Some of the recycled designs will be available for purchase, along with beer, wine and food. Proceeds from the event support the free programs offered at local schools by the Escondido Municipal Gallery, where the event will be held (262 E. Grand Ave.) on Saturday, Oct. 24 at 6 p.m. Tickets are $25 or $35 for reserved seating. escondidoarts. org Recycled fashion

ESCONDIDO ARTS PARTNERSHIP

TED Talks are known for the wheelturning speakers who can bump up your world perspective in a mere 30 minutes. Still, 30 minutes can sometimes feel like a long time, so how about jam-packing all that enlightenment into five minutes? That’s what Ignite San Diego #5 hopes to do on Thursday, Oct. 22. Eighteen San Diego speakers have been chosen from 80 submissions to spit knowledge on a range of topics and will be accompanied by a slide show. Speakers include Amy Lisewski from Finest City Improv, a 13-yearold named Yasha who will talk about political bipartisanship, and Erin Holko who owns local honey shop Bee Happy.

If all that insight makes you thirsty, there’ll be beer from Ballast Point.

The show runs from 6 to 9:30 p.m. at the Central Library Neil Morgan Auditorium (330 Park Blvd). Tickets are $12. ignitesandiego.org Jill Badonsky of KaizenMuse Creativity Coaching

SETH COMBS

that, well, maybe we could make a live version of it.”

They did. Debuted in 1998, Bang on a Can AllStars Performing Brian Eno’s Music for Airports is a live classical concert experience that has been performed all over the world. Appropriately enough, the six-piece ensemble has performed the concert at airports in Liverpool and Brussels, but the two concerts at the San Diego International Airport (3225 N HarPETER SERLING bor Dr., Terminal 2) on Tuesday, Oct. 27, at 7:30 p.m. will mark the first time it has been played at a U.S. airport.

The fact that Music for Airports is made up of several movements, much like a classical music piece, made it easier for the individual All-Star players to reinterpret electronic muBang on a Can All-Stars sic as classical. There’s help from a keyboard and a sampler, but Black says the group has Eno’s blessing.

“I don’t think he had high hopes for it at first, but then he came to a performance, I think it was in London, he was moved to tears,” he says. “He’s been to several performances since.”

Tickets for the concert are $40. artpower.ucsd.edu

EAST VILLAGE

2 THINK FAST

COORDINATED BY

HMedium Festival of Photography at Lafayette Hotel, 2223 El Cajon Blvd., North Park. The fourth annual, four-day photography event includes portfolio reviews, artist lectures, signings, speakers and much more. See website for full list of events and times. From 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 22, 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. Friday, Oct. 23, 9:30 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 24, and 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 25. $20-$200. 619296-2101, mediumsandiego.org Photograph at MiraCosta College, 1 Barnard Dr., Oceanside. New works from David Emitt Adams and Claire A. Warden that calls into question the definition of a photograph. Adams makes photographs on found objects and Warden uses photography as an abstract medium. Opening from 4 to 6 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 22. Free.

760-435-3065, miracosta.edu/gallery Yellow Butterflies & Flowers Altar Installation at New Americans Museum, 2825 Dewey Road, Point Loma. As a homage to Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Márquez, international students and professor Dr. Flores will create an altar installation and discuss Day of the Dead and its traditions. From 5 to 7:30 p.m.

Thursday, Oct. 22. Free. 619-255-8908, newamericansmuseum.org HOccidente Nuevo: Recycled Tijuana at Woodbury School of Architecture, 2212 Main St., Barrio Logan. Laura Migliorino and Anthony Marchetti will showcase a series of photographs documenting the recycled San Diego homes that traveled across the border to Tijuana. Includes a discussion with the photographers. Opening from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. Friday, Oct. 23. Free. 619-2352900, architecture.woodbury.edu Dia de los Muertos Skull Art Show at La Bodega Studios and Gallery, 2196 Logan Ave., Barrio Logan. The third annual show devoted to the traditional icons with skulls from over 60 regional artists including Acamonchi, Lana Chromium, Optimus Volts and more. Opening from 5 to 10 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 24. Free. instagram.com/labodegagallery Ritual at Visual, 3776 30th St., North Park. New works from Paul Vargas aka Stencil Face who specializes in spray painted dark art created on found objects and reclaimed surfaces. Opening from 6 to 9 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 24. Free. 619501-5585, visualshopsd.com HSien Collective: Sweeping Close at Space 4 Art, 325 15th St., East Village.

An exhibition of photographic works from Siobhán Arnold and Meagan Shein that explore present-day mythologies using historic processes including cyanotype, the paper negative and hand sewing.

Opening from 6 to 9 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 24. Free. sdspace4art.org HSize Matters at Low Gallery, 1878 Main St., Barrio Logan. In conjunction with the Medium Festival of Photography, this juried exhibition will feature small (no more than 10 inches) photographic works by 35 artists including Ann Marie Donahue, Will Gibson, Hans Gindlesberger and more.

Opening from 6 to 9 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 24. Free. 619-348-5517, lowgallerysd.com HVasana at Madison Gallery, 1020 Prospect St., La Jolla. Recent works from local artist James Verbicky, who is well known for his mixed media works using vintage paper and resin, as well as highly colorful collage pieces. RSVP required. Opening from 6 to 9 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 24. Free. madisongalleries.com

BOOKS HAvi Spiegel at Warwick’s Bookstore, 7812 Girard Ave., La Jolla. The writer will

H = CityBeat picks

sign and discuss his new book, Young Islam: The New Politics of Religion in Morocco and the Arab World. At 7:30 p.m.

Thursday, Oct. 22. Free. 858-454-0347, warwicks.com HHarrowing Halloween Heretics at Mysterious Galaxy Book Store, 5943 Balboa Ave., Ste. 100, Clairemont. A night of horror fiction with local and regional authors including Alex Matsuo, Matthew Pallamary, Melissa Buell, Marc Shapiro, and CityBeat’s own Ryan Craig Bradford. All authors will sign their respective books. At 7:30 p.m. Friday, Oct. 23. Free. 858-2684747, mystgalaxy.com Monsters! Clubhouse Story Hour at San Diego Museum of Man, 1350 El Prado, Balboa Park. Author and co-curator of Monsters!, Melanie Dellas, will be reading and signing copies of her storybook, Fantastic, Fabulous Creatures & Beasts Volumes 1, 2 and 3. At 12:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 24. Free-$12.50. 619-239-2001, museumofman.org Author Talks: Ingrid Croce at Carlsbad City Library, 1775 Dove Lane, Carlsbad.

Ingrid Croce will discuss, I Got a Name, the biography of her husband and the late songwriter, Jim Croce. At 2 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 24. Free-$25. 760-602-2049, carlsbadca.gov HStates of Terror Vol. 2 Reading at Digital Gym Cinema, 2921 El Cajon Blvd., San Diego, North Park. This book release of States of Terror Vol. 2 includes readings from Zack Wentz, Heather Fowler, Ben Segal and more. Attendees welcome to BYOB. From 5 to 7 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 24. $5 suggested donation. 619-230-1938, facebook.com/ events/1694149200804493/ Martin Limón, Timothy Hallinan and Jeffrey Siger at Mysterious Galaxy Book Store, 5943 Balboa Ave., Ste. 100, Clairemont. The mystery and thriller authors will sign their respective new titles, The Hot Countries (Hallinan), The Ville Rat (Limón) and Devil of Deplhi (Siger). At 7:30 p.m.

Monday, Oct. 26. Free. 858-268-4747, mystgalaxy.com Michaela Haas at Warwick’s Bookstore, 7812 Girard Ave., La Jolla. The international reporter, lecturer, author, and consultant will discuss and sign Bouncing Forward: Transforming Bad Breaks Into Breakthroughs. At 7:30 p.m. Monday, Oct. 26.

Free. 858-454-0347, warwicks.com HAlé Garza at Mysterious Galaxy Book Store, 5943 Balboa Ave., Ste. 100, Clairemont. The local comic book illustrator will sign, Get Jiro: Blood and Sushi, his collaborative graphic novel with chef Anthony Bourdain. At 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 27.

Free. 858-268-4747, mystgalaxy.com HJim Trotter at Warwick’s Bookstore, 7812 Girard Ave., La Jolla. The longtime NFL reporter stops by to discuss his new biography, Junior Seau: The Life and Death of a Football Icon. At 7:30 p.m.

Tuesday, Oct. 27. Free. 858-454-0347, warwicks.com Julie Checkoway at Warwick’s Bookstore, 7812 Girard Ave., La Jolla. The author and documentary filmmaker will sign and discuss her new book, The Three-Year Swim Club: The Untold Story of Maui’s Sugar Ditch Kids and Their Quest for Olympic Glory. At 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 28. Free. 858-454-0347, warwicks.com

COMEDY Margaret Cho at Balboa Theatre, 868 Fourth Ave., downtown. The three time Grammy and Emmy nominee stops by on her current psyCHO Tour. At 7:30 p.m.

Thursday, Oct. 22. $26-$48. 619-5701100, sandiegotheatres.org

EVENTS CONTINUED ON PAGE 14

October 21, 2015 · San Diego CityBeat · 13

THEATER

DAREN SCOTT

affectionate interpretation of The Weir.

It’s directed by Kristianne Kurner on a cozy pub set by Kelly Kissinger that practically begs you to hop right onto it, the better to order a Guinness and join the conversation. Some of that conversation’s a might difficult to understand early on, so thick are the Irish brogues (especially Ron Choularton’s, who plays Jack). But once all the characters are on stage (Max Macke’s Brendan, Tom Deak’s Jim, Tom Stephenson’s Finbar, Samantha Ginn’s Valerie), the ghost stories begin and the uneasiness ramps up. If you’ve read or seen The Weir, you know that Valerie’s true-to-life story ends up out-horrifying any of the others’ colorful tales, which may be born of imagination and drink as much as fact.

There’s an uneven pace to this lengthy one-act play, with the camaraderie-filled The cast of New Village Arts Theatre’s The Weir first 30 minutes not nearly as engrossing as what follows. Watching the barflies go Bottom’s up at a ghostly pub through beer and whiskey as if it were Doomsday’s Eve seems more important f you’ve spent any serious time (or not named Brendan. One dark, windy night, than what they’re actually saying. But this so serious time) with pals at a corner there’s drinking and storytelling aplen- elegantly appointed production’s cast is bar you know that the more booze or ty in his place: from salty philosopher an estimable one, with Ginn and Choularwhiskey consumed, the taller the tales. If Jack, who runs a garage; from sad-sack ton proving genuinely sympathetic (you’ll that bar happens to be in Ireland you can handyman Jim; from smug businessman be hard pressed to keep a stiff upper lip count on the tales being spooky. In Conor Finbar, and from Finbar’s companion, a when Valerie tells her story), and the othMcPherson’s The Weir, produced many lovely young newbie to the neighborhood ers are pro’s pros from start to finish. By times in Europe and in the U.S. since it named Valerie. curtain, The Weir isn’t really a ghost story was written in 1997, the bar is a rural Irish Atmosphere is as much front and at all, but one of flesh and blood, and shelpub run by a good-natured innkeeper center as the plot in New Village Arts’ ter from the storms inside us.

I

EVENTS CONTINUED FROM PAGE 13

DANCE HShaping Sound at California Center for the Arts, 340 North Escondido Blvd., Escondido. This contemporary dance troupe blends dance styles and musical genres under the direction of Emmynominated choreographer, Travis Wall. At 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 22. $30-$65.

760-839-4190, artcenter.org HIMAGOmoves: The Mapping Games (part 2) at White Box Live Arts, 2590 Truxtun Rd., Studio 205, Point Loma. This sensory performance integrates contemporary dance, live music, animated visual imagery, and light and shadow. Directed and choreographed by Yolande Snaith.

At 8 p.m. Friday, Oct. 23 and Saturday, Oct. 24, and 7 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 25. $10-$20. 619-225-1803, imagomoves.com The Great Gatsby at San Diego Civic Theatre, 1100 Third Ave., downtown. The California Ballet teams up with choreographer Septime Webre and a live jazz band for a fresh take on the Fitzgerald classic. At 7 p.m. Friday, Oct. 23, 2:30 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 24, and 2:30 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 25. $25-$110. sandiegotheatres.org HMOMIX: Alchemia at California Center for the Arts, 340 North Escondido Blvd., Escondido. The inventive company of dancer-illusionists present a multimedia spectacle exploring themes of invention, beauty, sensuality and humor. Choreographed by Moses Pendleton. At 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 24. $25-$65. 760839-4190, artcenter.org

FASHION HRecycled Materials Runway Event at Escondido Municipal Gallery, 262 E. Grand Ave., Escondido. This fashion show

features eco-friendly garments made out of recycled materials, such as shower curtains or palm fronds, and promotes sustainability. Benefits the gallery’s educational arts programs offered at local schools.

At 6 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 24. $25-$35.

760-480-4101, escondidoarts.org

FOOD & DRINK San Diego Beer and Music Festival at NTC Park at Liberty Station, 2455 Cushing Road, Point Loma. A beer fest with over 75 craft beers and ciders to choose from, as well as live music from Red Jumpsuit Apparatus, DJ Paradice, David Ely and more. From 7 to 10 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 24. $35-$60. 619-573-9260, sandiego-beerfestival.com

HALLOWEEN HHaunted Aquarium: Shipwrecked Science at Birch Aquarium, 2300 Expedition Way, La Jolla. Enjoy live music, costume raffles, games and spooky encounters of the fishy kind at the Aquarium’s annual Halloween event. From 6 to 9 p.m. Friday, Oct. 23 and Saturday, Oct. 24. $12-$19. 858-534-FISH, aquarium.ucsd.edu HauntFest on Main at downtown El Cajon, El Cajon. The fourth annual, family friendly event in downtown El Cajon features two stages of live music, carnival rides, games areas, a Kidz Zone with outdoor movies, magic shows, pumpkin patches and more. From 5 to 10 p.m. Friday, Oct. 23. Free. hauntfestonmain.com Autism Friendly Halloween Carnival at Nobel Park, 8810 Judicial Dr., University City. The fifth annual Halloween Carnival for autistic children includes games, crafts, bounce houses, a giant slide, treats, prizes, and much more. From 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Saturday, Oct. 24. $6.50-$10. nfar.org

14 · San Diego CityBeat · October 21, 2015

HSouth Bay Howl-O-Ween at Savoie, 2015 Birch Rd., Ste. 720, Chula Vista. The Halloween party for pooches and their people includes dog costume contests, prizes, food and complimentary pet sketches.

Benefits the Chula Vista Animal Care Facility. From 6 to 8 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 28.

Free. 619-591-5757, savoieeatery.com

HEALTH & WELLNESS Moms Meet WOW Summit 2015 at Town & Country Hotel, 500 Hotel Circle N., Mission Valley. The two-day healthy living and parenting conference includes interactive workshops, keynote speakers and samples of health-focused products.

From 2 to 10 p.m. Friday, Oct. 23 and Saturday, Oct. 24. $30-$95. 619-2917131, greenmomsmeet.com

MUSIC Callithumpian Consort at Conrad Prebys Music Center, UCSD, La Jolla.

The contemporary classical ensemble founded by pianist and conductor Stephen Drury in the 1980s presents works

by Lei Liang and Roger Reynolds, as well as a number of student composers. At 7 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 21. Free-$15.50. musicweb.ucsd.edu La Santa Cecilia at Price Center Ballroom, UCSD, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla.

This Los Angeles band is a hybrid of Latin culture, rock and world music, and won a 2014 Grammy for Best Latin Rock. From 8 to 10 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 22. $30. 858246-0809, artpower.ucsd.edu HA Tribute to Nina Simone: High Priestess of Soul at Westgate Hotel, 1055 Second Ave., downtown. A one-night-only tribute concert to the late soul singer featuring an all-star band that includes Ed Kornhauser, Charlie Weller, Dean Hulett, and

The Weir runs through Nov. 1 at New Village Arts Theatre in Carlsbad. $32-$35. newvillagearts.org

—David L. Coddon

Theater reviews run weekly.

Write to davidc@sdcitybeat.com.

OPENING: Beauty and the Beast: A children’s production of the Disney Broadway musical about a young woman who falls in love with a grouchy, good-onthe-inside prince who just happens to look like a stooped lion-man. It opens for four performances Oct. 22 at the Moonlight Amphitheatre in Vista. broadwayvista.biz Mud, River, Stone: A staged reading of Lynn Nottage’s dramedy about an African-American couple who are taken hostage by a bellhop while vacationing in Africa. Presented by Intrepid Theatre Company, it happens Oct. 26 at the Encinitas Library Community Room. intrepidtheatre.org Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: A full cast reading of Robert Louis Stevenson’s original novella about an ambitious doctor with a double personality. Presented by Write Out Loud, it happens Oct. 26 at the Old Town Theatre. writeoutloudsd.com

For full listings, please visit “T heater ”

at sdcitybeat.com

Lorraine and Gilbert Castellanos. From 7 to 10 p.m. Friday, Oct. 23. Free. 619-2381818, westgatehotel.com

featuring selections from Beethoven, John Cage and Charles Ives. At 7 p.m. Monday, Oct. 26. Free. musicweb.ucsd.edu

Beethoven and Adams at Copley Symphony Hall, 750 B St., downtown. The San Diego Symphony and guest conductor perform “Harmonielehre,” John Adams’ dream-inspired landmark, as well as Beethoven’s famous Violin Concerto. At 8 p.m. Friday, Oct. 23 and Saturday, Oct. 24, and 2 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 25. $20-$96.

619-235-0804, sandiegosymphony.org

HBang on a Can All-Stars - Brian Eno: Music for Airports at San Diego International Airport, 3225 North Harbor Drive, Midtown. The U.S. airport premiere of the contemporary classical quintet’s live interpretation of Brian Eno’s classic ambient album, Music for Airports. At 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 27. $12-$40. artpower.ucsd.edu

German Romantics Classical Concert at Sacred Heart Catholic Church, 655 C Ave., Coronado. Pianist Sofia Gulbadamova makes her U.S. debut with works by Schumann, Brahms and Schubert, and accompanied by the professional choir Musica Vitale. From 7:30 to 9 p.m. Friday, Oct. 23. $15. 619-4353167, musicavitale.com Home Free at Balboa Theatre, 868 Fourth Ave., downtown. The country vocal band and champion of NBC’s The Sing-Off stops by on their current Don’t It Feel Good Tour.

At 8 p.m. Friday, Oct. 23. $32.50. 619-5701100, sandiegotheatres.org Louis Valenzuela Trio at Villa Musica, 10373 Roselle Street, Ste. 170, Sorrento Valley. The jazz trio kicks off the “Jazz at The Villa” concert series held in Villa Musica’s recital hall. Guitarist Louis Valenzuela is joined by bassist Mack Leighton and drummer Isaac Crow. From 8 to 9 p.m. Friday, Oct. 23. Free-$10. 858-550-8100, villamusica.org PianoPalooza! at San Dieguito UU Fellowship, 1036 Solana Drive, Solana Beach, Solana Beach. San Diego’s first all-day piano festival includes recitals, masterclasses, music lectures, raffle prizes, food and more. From 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 24. $25. 760-5791279, amateurpianists.org HStephen Drury at Conrad Prebys Music Center, UCSD campus, La Jolla. The pianist and conductor will perform a solo recital

PERFORMANCE HHorror UnScripted at North Coast Repertory Theatre, 987 Lomas Santa Fe Drive, Solana Beach. Impro Theatre takes a “stab” at creating an entire play in the style of ‘80s horror films. At 7:30 p.m.

Monday, Oct. 26. $20-$25. 858-4811055, northcoastrep.org

POETRY & SPOKEN WORD HUCSD New Writing Series: Ben Doller at UCSD Visual Arts Facility Performance Space, 9500 Gilman Dr., La Jolla. The American poet and writer has written four poetry books, including Radio, Radio, which won the 2000 Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets. From 4:30 to 6 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 21. Free. 858534-2230, literature.ucsd.edu/news-events/ new-writing-series/nws-fall2015.html A Night of Dark Tales at Hennessey’s of La Jolla, 7811 Herschel Ave., La Jolla.

A Halloween-themed, three-minute-limit open mic for original scary stories or actors reading classic scary scenes and monologues. At 7 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 22. $5. 619-758-7743, sandiegowriters.org Halloween Fiction Spectacular at 3rdSpace, 4610 Park Blvd., University Heights.

Part of the Body Parts Magazine Reading

#SDCityBeat

EVENTS Balboa Park. A lecture, film screening and discussion centered on Paul Bockhorst’s documentary, Design for Modern Living: Millard Sheets and the Claremont Art Community 1935-1975. From 5 to 8 p.m.

Thursday, Oct. 22. $10. 619-239-0003, mingei.org HBarry Edelstein In Conversation with Michael Riedel at Old Globe Theatre, 1363 Old Globe Way, Balboa Park.

The Old Globe Artistic Director (Edelstein) and the theatre columnist for the New York Post (Riedel) will explore the current state of Broadway and the American theatre. At 6 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 22. Free.

619-231-1941, theoldglobe.org HIgnite San Diego at Central Library, 330 Park Blvd, downtown. This event features 18 local speakers offering face-

paced talks about a variety of topics.

Speakers include Amy Lisewski from Finest City Improv, Erin Holko from local honey shop Bee Happy and many more From 6 to 9:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 22. $12. 619-236-5800, ignitesandiego.org Art from the Land of Diamonds at San Diego Museum of Art, 1450 El Prado, Balboa Park. Makira Sardar, the associate curator of Southern Asian and Islamic art, will introduce and discuss art from the Deccan sultanates. At 3 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 24.

Free-$20. 619-232-7931, sdmart.org/ Literature Talk: Don Quixote at Central Library, 330 Park Blvd., East Village.

UCSD prof Jorge Mariscal discusses the greatness, radicalism and relevance of what is considered perhaps the greatest novel ever. From 6:30 to 8:30 p.m.

Wednesday, Oct. 28. Free. 619-2365800, sandiego.gov/public-library

WORKSHOPS Thriller Choreography at Culture Shock Dance Center, 2110 Hancock St., Bay Park. A Michael Jackson impersonator will teach the original choreography from the iconic “Thriller” music video. From 7:45 to 9:30 p.m. Friday, Oct. 23. $25. 619-2992110, cultureshockdancecenter.org Family ArtLAB at MCASD - La Jolla, 700 Prospect St., La Jolla. Gallery educators lead art-related conversations meant to inspire and encourage artistic collaboration among family members. From 2 to 4 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 25. $15. 858-4543541, mcasd.org/

“Citta Samtana Diptych 137” by James Verbicky is on view in Vasana, a solo show opening from 10 to 6 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 24, at Madison Gallery (1020 Prospect St. #130) in La Jolla.

Series, this new spoken-word variety show includes horror stories, local booksellers and mingling with writers and artists. From 7 to 9 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 24. Free. 619255-3609, bodypartsmagazine.com

POLITICS & COMMUNITY HOpen Government Under a Full Moon at Central Library, 330 Park Blvd., East Village. Pianist Ben Sidran leads a jazz band at this special concert to raise money for Californians Aware, a nonprofit organization established to help keep journalists and Californians aware of what they need to know to hold government accountable. From 5:30 to 8:30 p.m.

Tuesday, Oct. 27. $100. 619-236-5800, calaware.org

SPECIAL EVENTS Beers and Cheers for Autism at Hess Brewing, 7955 Silverton Ave., Mira Mesa.

Raise money for autism over dinner, five beer tastes and a silent auction. Benefits Camp I CAN!, a summer camp for children with autism that is offered by Mission Valley YMCA and the San Diego Autism Society. From 5 to 9 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 22. $35-$40. facebook.com/autismsocietysandiego HBorrego Days Desert Festival at Palm Canyon Drive & Christmas Circle, 700 Christmas Circle, Borrego Springs.

The 50th annual, three-day event has a parade, beer garden, carnival, car shows, a music festival and arts and crafts galore.

From 5 to 10 p.m. Friday, Oct. 23, 10 a.m. to midnight Saturday, Oct. 24, and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 25. Free.

619-233-5008, borregodays.com HBike the Boulevard at Pack Ratt Records and Junk, 4952 El Cajon Blvd., Rolando. Start at Pack Ratt for a communal bike ride with stops at the YMCA, Tiger!

Tiger!, a BikeSD pop-up event and ending at Live Wire. Treats, drinks and entertainment along the way. From noon to 6 p.m.

Saturday, Oct. 24. Free. 619-581-9168, theboulevard.org HDay of the Dead Celebration at Centro Cultural de la Raza, 2125 Park Blvd., Balboa Park. The annual event celebrating the Mexican holiday features an art exhibit, face painting, children’s activities, pan dulce and more. From 7 to 10 p.m.

Saturday, Oct. 24. Free. 619-235-6135, centroculturaldelaraza.com/ HOpen House: Lions, Tigers & Bears at Lions, Tigers & Bears, 24402 Martin

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Way, Alpine. Members and guests can visit the sanctuary to meet the newest rescue, a tiger cub. Donations benefit LT&B’s continued efforts to save wild animals from captivity. From 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 24. $15-$25. 619-659-8078, lionstigersandbears.org The Arc of San Diego Fall Fest at Arc of San Diego’s North Shores Vocational Center, 9575 Aero Dr., Serra Mesa. An event fun for all ages featuring crafts, carnival games, food and live music to raise funds to support the programs and facilities of The Arc of San Diego. From 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 24. Free. 858715-3780, arc-sd.com UN Day Gala Luncheon at The Prado, 1549 El Prado, Balboa Park. Commemorate the seventieth birthday of the United Nations. Guess of honor is Ford Roosevelt, Grandson of President Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt and the keynote speaker is Khaled Abol Naga, UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador to Egypt. From 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 24. $70. 619-557-9441, unasd.org HWalk for Farm Animals at Embarcadero Marina Park North, 1 Marine Way, downtown. Walk to support Farm Sanctuary, a farm animal shelter. Includes guest speaker Matt Ball, prizes, music, kid’s activities and free vegan food. At 10 a.m.

Saturday, Oct. 24. Free-$25. walkforfarmanimals.org HHold On To Your Butt Awareness Day at Belmont Park, Mission Blvd. & W. Mission Bay Drive, Mission Beach.

Across from Belmont Park in Mission Beach, volunteers will hold rally signs and distribute personal pocket ashtrays and stickers to bring awareness to cigarette butt pollution. From 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 25. Free. sandiego. surfrider.org

SPORTS Pink Pink Pink Golf Tournament at Riverwalk Golf Club, 1150 Fashion Valley Road, Mission Valley. This tournament encourages golfers to wear pink, with an opportunity to win “Most Pink Person.” Tournament is followed by a buffet dinner and benefits Susan G. Komen for the Cure.

From 11:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 24. $45-$89. riverwalkgc.com

TALKS & DISCUSSIONS HDesign for Modern Living at Mingei International Museum, 1439 El Prado,

October 21, 2015 · San Diego CityBeat · 15

rachel cobb

yasuhiro fujiki

Culture

The Japanese Friendship Garden in Balboa Park Courtesy of The Water Conservation Garden

WATER WORKS

How San Diego’s public gardens are surviving the drought

by Seth Combs Cork trees at the San Diego Botanic Garden

J

ulian Duval isn’t your typical president and CEO. During an interview at the San Diego Botanic Garden in Encinitas, he wasn’t sitting behind a desk or mulling over finance reports. Rather, he appeared to be getting into the Halloween spirit.

“It does look like I’m carving a jack-o’lantern, doesn’t it?” asks Duval, as he gets down to start scraping out the insides of a giant succulent plant from South Africa.

The 500-pound plant was recently donated by a member of the garden, but may have been damaged in the transfer. Duval and his staff have been down on their hands and knees almost every day trying to save the plant by scraping out large parts of rot from the inside.

“It’s the largest type of this succulent I’ve ever seen outside of pictures,” says Duval, who has worked at the garden for more than 20 years. “It’s heavier than it looks.

It’s a big water-storing bag, is what it is.”

Water is always on Duval’s mind, but more so lately. When you run a 37-acre garden during one of the worst droughts in California history, it’s hard not to think about it.

And even though much of the garden features drought-resistant plants and ones native to California, nine of the 26 individual garden displays, such as the rainforest and bamboo gardens, do require a lot of water to sustain.

“I’m sure you’ve heard that phrase from Mark Twain, ‘Whiskey is for drinking— water is for fighting over,’” Duval says.

“Water is a huge, huge issue and the garden has taken its use of the water seriously from the very beginning. Not just because we wanted to be conservation-minded, but it’s our second largest expense in operating this place, after staff expenses.”

Duval says that the garden’s water costs have risen significantly, but that the Botanic

Gardens have always been water-wary and went out of their way in the past in order to be prepared for times like this. For example, the individual gardens that are the most water-hungry are all concentrated to one area of the entire garden in order to prevent wasteful usage. More importantly, one-third of the garden is watered using a recycled water irrigation system, set up 15 years ago with help from the San Elijo Joint Powers Authority. While Duval says the quality of the recycled water wouldn’t work in the rainforest section due to the seth combs

Julian Duval high level of salts in the water, he does want to expand the recycled water system to the majority of the garden.

The Botanic Gardens is not the only public space that relies heavily on water and is feeling the heat to conserve. Paul Johnson is the senior gardener at the Japanese Friendship Garden in Balboa Park. He

16 · San Diego CityBeat · October 21, 2015

says the garden has had to scale back irrigation from three times a week to two.

“It’s hard with a Japanese Garden, because you associate it with being really green and lush,” says Johnson, who says the garden recycles water from the ponds and fountains, but that changing the irrigation system or coming up with other ways to conserve has been an ongoing bureaucratic process.

“The wheels are moving slowly,” he says. “We have a 40,000-gallon tank down in a canyon that’s supposed to be used for collecting the runoff rain water and filter it, but I think we ran into cost problems and it’s just been sitting there for three years. I think we can figure out a way to get it hooked up.”

John Bolthouse, executive director of the six-acre Water Conservation Garden in El Cajon, says he’s seen a lot more visitors lately. Opened in 1999 next to Cuyamaca College, the quaint botanical garden was designed to serve as an educational complex on how people could save money and help the environment with drought-resistant landscapes.

“The attendance of the garden has gone up a little bit, but every single one of our educational classes are sold out,” Bolthouse says. “People are really engaged.

The financial reason is what drives most people, but some people just love gardens and want to transition from water-sucking turfs to something that’s native to the region.”

Back at the Botanic Garden in Encinitas, Duval is approached by a local couple, Lance and Judy, who mention they’re at the garden to look at plants they could use to create a drought-tolerant landscape at their home. Duval gives them a brief overview of things like “mounting” and “contouring” before Lance mentions that a landscaper wanted $15,000 to create a

The Water Conservation Garden’s “End of the Pipeline” display drought-friendly landscape at the couple’s home. Duval scoffs and assures them that not only can they do it themselves, but that they’ll be better off for it.

“Lawns are the default landscape, but most people don’t need them,” says Duval.

“I tell people all the time that gardening is a process, but if you get into it, you’ll love it. You’ll save money and you’ll feel better knowing you’re doing your part.”

Water saving tips from garden experts “One of the strategies in being waterwise for your landscape is to concentrate the high-water-requiring plants in one spot so that you don’t have to water the whole garden.”

Julian Duval, San Diego Botanic Garden “I’ve found that what works well is a lot of ground cover and a lot of shade.

Covering everything really well with plants like mondo grass or vinca major (periwinkle) so it holds a lot of the moisture.”

Paul Johnson, Japanese Friendship Garden “No matter what type of drought-tolerant plants you use to start your garden, you are going to have to use a little more water in order to get them established, so be prepared for that. You can’t just plant them and walk away.

But once they’re established, the maintenance on them is so much less.”

John Bolthouse, Water Conservation Garden

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October 21, 2015 · San Diego CityBeat · 17

Culture | Art seth combs

Seen Local future value

O

“I thought to myself, ‘Oh, my God, is this really going to be my big break? Being in the video about Percocet and strippers?’” says painter Annie Lou Maybituin, cracking herself up in the process. “But really, I was so happy.”

It’s easy to see the irony in what the South Park painter (who goes by Annie Lou) is saying. She’s a health nut who drives to Carlsbad to pick up alkaline drinking water and eats four ashitaba leaves a day. So she found it very surprising that her painting, aptly titled “Take Your Vitamins,” was used prominently in the background of the music video for “The Percocet & Stripper Joint” by Atlanta rapper Future. She says an old friend of hers who moved to Atlanta to work in the music business was responsible.

“He always loved the painting and I insisted he take it as a going away present,” Annie Lou says. “He told me, ‘Hey, I’m going to work in the industry and I’ll get your art in somewhere.’ One day, he hit me up out of the blue and told me that Future said it was a perfect painting for his video and next thing I knew, my friend sent me release forms.”

Even though Annie Lou prefers “old-lady music” like jazz and bossa nova to trap-style hip-hop, she agreed and the video now has over a million views.

Annie Lou And while she’s proud of “Take Your Vitamins,” she’s more into painting portraits on her front lawn.

“I paint an amazing amount of babies and puppies,” says Annie Lou, laughing. “My mom was like, ‘What the hell? Why don’t they pick the dog ones?’

The average person likes puppy paintings, but not for a music video.”

She does want to ride a bit of the momentum of her painting appearing in a platinum-selling rapper’s video, but whatever she does next, she says she doesn’t want that to become what she’s known for.

“I’ve always wanted to branch out, but I get stuck in the portraiture. I still really like it, but I’m a bit scared. I just need to do it.”

—Seth Combs

In this semi-regular column, we ask some of our favorite local artists and curators what new shows or artists are worth checking out. Whether it’s a particular piece, an entire exhibition or just a current obsession, here are some artsy options from eyes we trust.

Jennifer DeCarlo Owner, jdc Fine Art “Women’s Work: Masculinity and Gender in Contemporary Fiber Art at the San Diego Art Institute (sandiego-art.org) is a strong show. It tackles what for many are issues not to be discussed, and it does so without fear, reservation or judgment. The approachability of the media is not lost on viewers and many of the materials the works are made from are from our everyday materials: stockings, blankets, thread and clothing. Additionally, there’s an exhibition handout that works a bit like a personal manifesto, but more importantly becomes a model through which those new to art-appreciation (or not) can engage the work. The show indeed tears down the desire to subscribe traditional gender roles.”

I saw his ‘Legways’ at the New Children’s Museum.

So to go from these metal pieces at MCASD to these wooden chariot things, it made me think this guy has range. My husband and I ended up buying one of his pieces at a show at Quint Gallery. He took wood and bent it around in these very unique shapes. All of his pieces look as if they’re courtesy of neil shigley in motion somehow. For me, he’s always being relevant for the time, and the fact that he’s always changing makes him relevant at any time.”

Ann Berchtold Founder/Director, Art San Diego “I recently had the opportunity to slip into Bread & Salt (facebook.com/breadandsaltsd) and experience Neil Shigley’s ‘Invisible Drawings and Prints’ in almost complete solitude and with no distractions. Many of the works in the exhibition are portraits of San Diego’s homeless population and are largescale block prints on paper mounted on panels. Looking “Mark 46” by Neil Shigley into the eyes of a person on the streets is sometimes hard to do. It can be unsettling and create mixed feelings. Standing in front of ‘Mark’ and looking into his eyes had an unexpectedly strong impact on me. I felt a strong deSheryl White sire to know more about his life. Shigley (neilshigley.

Vice Chair, City of San Diego Commission com) has an amazing ability to capture the characfor Arts and Culture “I first really fell in love with Roman de Salvo’s ter of people living on the streets in such a raw way. work when I saw his light and metal sculptures that Their soul emanates from the work.” he has at the stairwell at the Museum of Contem —Seth Combs porary Art in downtown. A couple years after that,

20 · San Diego CityBeat · October 21, 2015

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Culture | Voices

There she

alex zaragoza

Goz

The sound and the K-pop fury

T

he Staples Center was lit up by thousands of little yellow torches. About 20,000 individual screams created one cacophonous wave that filled the darkened arena like a raging monsoon. The throngs were jumping up and down, waving handmade signs and chanting words I didn’t understand.

You’d think I was in the middle of the French Revolution, waiting to savagely snatch Marie Antoinette’s wig like a pissed-off drag queen. Not on this night, though. On this night, the mood was more electrically hormonal than bloodthirsty.

There among thousands of tiny, well-dressed Korean teens and tweens and some chaperoning moms, my best friend Michelle and I stood more than a decade older, and in her case a foot taller than 95 percent of the crowd, basking in the aural/visual explosion that is Bigbang. We looked like narcs.

For the uninitiated, Bigbang is a South Korean pop (also known as K-pop) group composed of five heavily made-up dudes blessed with what Michelle describes as “cheekbones that could shuck an oyster.” K-pop stars are known for their incredible street style and for creating music that heavily borrows from American hip-hop, pop and electronica. All these genres often meld into one multi-climactic pop jammer that seems mastered to make your head—or ovaries—explode. I’m forever indebted to Michelle for introducing me.

While waiting in line to buy $12 Bud Lights, eruptions of cheers flooded the concession stand.

Young girls holding candy and Cokes looked frantic, hoping they weren’t missing G-Dragon, T.O.P., Taeyang, Daesung and Seungri’s grand entrance.

When it became clear Bigbang had hit the stage, two girlfriends threw down their chips and drinks and sprinted to their seats, their poor mothers trailing behind them. I held onto my shitty beers and continued waiting. Brews before dudes.

I’ve experienced this level of screeching teenage fandom up close before. When I was 12, I attended my very first concert: Enrique Iglesias. This was back when the Latino-pop megastar sang only in ethpañol.

For years I buried this tidbit of trivia for fear of losing my punk cred, particularly in high school when my punkness was already dangling by a thread thanks to my mom’s homemade packed lunches.

My mom and tia dropped my cousin and me off at what was then the San Diego Sports Arena. I was high off my excitement and the confidence gifted to me by the velvet flared pants I was rocking like a prepubescent Steven Tyler. Girls screamed and fainted and threw themselves onto the stage, wailing for Enrique’s love. It seemed insane even to my kid brain, but it also looked pretty fun. So I joined in on the hysteria. (This is how cults gain followers.)

Just as I had gulped the Kool-Aid when I was 12,

I chugged my Bud Light and went for the full fangirl concert experience. Michelle and I danced and screamed for the Bigbang boys (who are actually well into their 20s), glancing at each other and fanning our sweaty faces like a pair of ovulating spinsters.

“Which one is that?” I breathily asked Michelle while pointing at a lanky pretty boy dancing in a tailored Piet Mondrian-inspired suit and rapping huskily in Korean.

“That one’s T.O.P.,” she answered knowingly.

My girl follows many Tumblr pages dedicated to Bigbang.

I decided then that T.O.P. is totally my favorite and immediately pictured his name scribbled in my notebook with hearts all around it. My Google image search was going to be filthy with T.O.P. photos.

In my 12th year and now again in my 31st, I dived joyfully into the deep end of teen fandom. How could I not? This concert was a mondo stage spectacle with explosions, lasers, a stage that shifted over a crowd of fans and five young men working their asses, and their foundation, off. And boy did they know how to work the crowd. They individually addressed the audience between songs, flirting shamelessly in their adorable broken English inflected with the “Oh, hey girl” twang of an R&B singer.

“Hey L.A.! Can I have some noises?” The arena fills with screams. “I jus’ wan’ to say I don’t like you, L.A.” Pause for effect. “I love you!” This causes an outbreak of screams, including my own embarrassing adult ones.

It dawned on me that time will never change a young girl’s ability to lose her shit when a boy band hits the stage. Whether it’ s Beatlemania, Bieber Fever, Backstreet Boysiritis or Bigbangarosis you’re infected with, we are connected in our feverish obsession with cute boys that can harmonize. That fever transcends time, age, language and location.

What was also fascinating was the magnitude of the crowd. Popular music in America isn’t just what you hear on the radio. It’s not even limited to the English language. We are a country full of people from all over the world, and we have our music that can be shared and enjoyed across all barriers. With the Internet and streaming services we’re even more closely connected and able to commune in a musical experience than ever. The entire back catalog of a K-pop boy band is at your fingertips. Take a listen, pick up some concert tickets and feel free to Google image search. You may look like a creep, but you won’t regret it.

There She Goz appears every third week.

Write to alexz@sdcitybeat.com.

“

In my 12th year and now again in my 31st, I dived joyfully into the deep end of teen fandom.

“

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October 21, 2015 · San Diego CityBeat · 21

Culture | Film

Mother and son

Room

Kidnap drama Room has all the ingredients of an awards contender

by Glenn Heath Jr.

D

amaged mother. Check. Precocious kid. As one would expect, being thrust from a routine of Check. Adorable dog. Check. Lenny Abraha- terror into the open world would cause a mosaic of mson’s Room has all the necessary ingredi- reactions and emotional tumult. Jack’s expectedly ents to cause the kind of waterworks that might fix confused assimilation to a new reality feels rightfully Mad Max’s little hydration problem. Throw in the separate from his mother’s complex experience trytraumatizing subject matter, insufferably sentimen- ing to cope with the guilt and regret. tal music and one faux-happy ending, and you’ve got Except the film isn’t interested in giving these the audience winner at Toronto International Film moments space to breathe. In fact, the exact opposite Festival and an early favorite for multiple Academy happens; Abrahamson tries to make every single shot Awards. feel like a turning point. The intrusive hand-held Based on Emma Donoghue’s best selling novel, camerawork and invasive score leave no emotion up Room explores the rollercoaster relationship be- to chance, instead communicating an exact psychotween kidnap victim Joy (Brie Larson) and her Sam- logical framework for the audience to experience. son-haired young son Jack (Jacob Tremblay). Both Similar pandering can be found at the end of are prisoners in a garden shed outside the house Abrahamson’s wretched Frank, which attempted to of their captor, a bearded loner express profound thoughts about named Old Nick (Sean Bridgers) mental illness through indie grit. who visits occasionally to inflict But Room is even more problemroom sexual abuse on Joy and bring atic in that it churns hard realities Directed by Lenny Abrahamson them much needed supplies. This into weepy mush. Joy’s unforgiveis the only world Jack knows, and able character arc late in the film Starring Brie Larson, his mother has fittingly constructexposes all of the film’s worst virJacob Tremblay, Joan Allen, ed an alternate narrative for him tues. Great character actors like and Sean Bridgers to comprehend such a terrible Joan Allen, Tom McCamus and Rated R situation.

William H. Macy are left idling on In the early scenes there’s an the sidelines. unwillingness to shy away from Removing the complexity and the inherent discomfort populatnuance from Joy and Jack’s expeing every corner of the room. Peeling paint lines the rience enables the viewer to experience the drama walls. A single bed and jaundiced toilet flank what simply and without true measure of the lasting conamounts to a small makeshift kitchen. Only a small sequences surely at play. In turn, we get multiple skylight produces a window into the outside world, statements of solidarity that exist within a space just which Jack knows as “outer space.” Joy accidentally as fictional as the one Jack grew up with. “No one is burning toast produces one of the film’s most stress- strong alone” becomes the film’s weighty treatise. ful exchanges. There’s no escape.

While this may be a strong if not simplistic mesEven though Jack’s fragile psyche has been pro- sage, Room, which opens wide in San Diego on tected behind a fabricated and delusional perspec- Friday, Oct. 30, never truly understands what the tive, the film still forces us to see the pain in Joy’s words actually mean. Larson’s ability to shield her eyes. Larson’s incredibly patient and detailed per- pain is matched only by Tremblay’s insistence on formance carries the first act as a result. At one point addressing it head on. Standing in their way is a dishe sings a labored version of “The Big Rock Candy rector who’d rather paint by numbers than take any Mountain” that is both beautiful and terrifying, a chances telling a story brimming with cinematic glimmer of hope that defies easy categorization. potential.

Unfortunately, Room dovetails into simplistic melodrama once Jack and Joy are freed from their Film reviews run weekly. prison thanks to an elaborate ploy that fools Old Nick. Write to glennh@sdcitybeat.com.

22 · San Diego CityBeat · October 21, 2015

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Culture | Film

Experimenter

Limits of control

P

sychologist Stanley Milgram made waves at Yale University in the early 1960s by conducting a controversial obedience study that highlighted mankind’s uncanny ability to follow orders. In the early goings of Michael Almereyda’s Experimenter, a strikingly unconventional biopic starring Peter Sarsgaard as the infamous scientist, subjects are asked to dole out increasingly higher charges of electric shock on another participant when that person answers a memory question incorrectly.

The findings conclude that almost two-thirds of people carried the experiment to its most extreme point simply because they were asked to by someone of authority. Milgram found parallels between his results and horrific past history. The Holocaust

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weighs heavily on both the psychopathy being addressed and the volatile reaction from the court of public opinion.

Almereyda doesn’t try to solve the riddle of Milgram’s life and obsession, but simply provide a context to understanding what made him tick. While the subject’s personal life with wife Sasha (Winona Ryder) is less developed, the film does recognize her impact on Milgram’s later experiments that dealt with staging scenarios testing human response to racism and gender dynamics.

Experimenter, which opens Friday, Oct. 23, at the Ken Cinema, refuses to play by the biopic rules. Gaps and contradictions in Milgram’s story subvert the notion that his life can be explained in a linear fashion. The film’s artifice appears front and center, represented in the form of fantastical touches (an elephant walks casually down a hallway), classic Hollywood rear-screen projection and direct-address narration.

Stylistic flourishes like these bring life to Milgram’s ongoing persistence as a surveyor of human interaction. Unlike Danny Boyle’s Steve Jobs, a noncinematic and repetitive vision of

genius unplugged, Experimenter relishes in the ambiguity caused

by Milgram’s decisions and never lets its character off the hook.

This is best expressed through his own words: “We choose our reality when we choose another person.”

—Glenn Heath Jr.

Opening Experimenter: Michael Almereyda’s strange biopic about Stanley Milgram (Peter Sarsgaard) looks at the execution and consequences of the famed psychologist’s obedience study. Screens through Thursday, Oct. 29, at the Ken Cinema.

German Currents San Diego: The fifth annual celebration will showcase the latest discoveries of German cinema in both narrative fiction and documentary. Screens Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 24 and 25, at various venues in Balboa Park, including the Natural History Museum and Museum of Photographic Arts. For more information visit germancurrentssd.org.

Jem and the Holograms: Based on the popular cartoon, this coming-of-age fantasy concerns a small-town girl who is catapulted into fame after her underground music videos gain international recognition.

Olvidados: Damían Alcazar stars in this politically charged thriller set in Bolivia during the Operation Condor mission backed by the U.S. government. Screens through

Thursday, Oct. 29, at the Digital Gym Cinema in North Park.

Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension: Again? Really?

Rock the Kasbah: Bill Murray plays an aging music manager who discovers a teenager with an extraordinary voice, then takes her on to Afghanistan to compete in the popular television show, Afghan Star.

Room: A mother and her young son are held hostage by a kidnapper for years, then escape to discover the outside world in this adaption of Emma Donoghue’s best-selling novel. Opens in San Diego Friday, Oct. 30.

Tales of Halloween: A horror film anthology populated by ghouls, aliens and killers prowling the streets on one fateful Halloween night. Directors John Skipp and Andrew Kasch will be on hand for a special Q&A at 10:45 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 24. Screens through Thursday, Oct. 29, at the Digital Gym Cinema in North Park.

The Last Witch Hunter: Vin Diesel makes sure the profession of Witch Hunter never falls out of fashion.

For a complete listing of movies, please see “F ilm Screenings” at sdcitybeat.com under the “E vents” tab.

October 21, 2015 · San Diego CityBeat · 23

kevin warnock

Music

BACK

Legendary San Francisco punks make some new noise

BY JEFF TERICH

F

lipper’s reputation precedes them.

The San Francisco punk band became legends for their slow-churning, noise-addled sound, which mixes a DIY hardcore spirit with a penchant for feedback and the occasional fit of aggressive atonality.

Flipper’s uncompromising sound ultimately led them to become known as a band more confrontational than most.

A 1985 article in Spin described them as “the band you love to hate,” a sentiment later echoed in Stephen Blush and George Petros’ book, American Hardcore: A Tribal History.

And in the liner notes to the 1995 reissue of the group’s Sex Bomb Baby, Mudhoney frontman Mark Arm described the band as “unusually slow, sloppy and messed up.”

The intense, unconventional approach Flipper took to music might explain how they’ve seemingly gone down in history as antagonistic toward their audience. However, the band’s drummer, Stephen DePace, says in a phone interview that this doesn’t reflect the reality of their early days. In fact, he says the Bay Area scene in the 1980s was more cordial and positive than people realized.

“We played a lot of shows with hardcore bands in the ’80s, and I don’t remember there being much of a problem or clashing,” he says. “We did our thing and they did theirs.

We all hung out and played the same clubs together.”

Infamous lore aside, Flipper’s uniquely abrasive sound has elevated them to punk royalty, and demand for their fun-loving bruising has risen anew. After a promoter in Italy contacted the band about playing a series of shows there, the group reunited to play their first of live shows since 2012. DePace, founding guitarist Ted Falconi and longtime bass player Bruno DeSmartass are all on the lineup, as is The Jesus Lizard frontman David Yow. Yow fills in for founding vocalist Bruce Loose, who retired from tour-

24 · San Diego CityBeat · October 21, 2015

From left: Stephen DePace, Ted Falconi, David Yow and Bruno DeSmartass ing after a back injury made it too painful to endure the physical demands of live performing.

It’s easy to listen to Flipper and come to the conclusion that it’s a physically taxing style to play. In the late 1970s and early ’80s, Flipper went against the grain of punk rock by moving at a much slower pace, their songs lurching forward with a mixture of sardonic humor and pure menace.

Their lengthy 1980 song “Sex Bomb,” featuring a simple, repeated riff and squawking saxophone, became an underground favorite and was covered numerous times. And in the ’90s, the band saw a renewed interest thanks to an endorsement from Kurt Cobain, who cited Flipper as a major influence on his music.

When the group first launched, however, DePace says nothing about their music was premeditated.

“You never come at it with a preconceived notion of what you want to sound like,” he says. “Each one of us individually brought our own influences, and that kind of comes out in your own style. So when we all started, it was as simple as you get four people in a room, and everyone plugs in and turns on and cranks it up and makes noise. What comes out comes out and you kinda go with it. It sounds the way it comes out. And that’s what came out: this slow kind of dirgey melodic…what came to be known as grunge, sort of.”

Flipper has taken on many shapes and forms over the years, having gained and lost different members with each incarnation. Original bass player Will Shatter died in 1987, and his successor John Dougherty died in 1992. When the band toured in 2006, however, they brought Nirvana bass player Krist Novoselic to fill in the low end. And now with

Yow on board, the band begins a new chapter. With each new stage of their career, DePace says, the names might change, but the feeling is still intact.

“Flipper...the way it’s shaken out is that over all these years, is at its core it’s a certain style of music and a certain kind of attitude,” he says. “And the people that have come into the band fit that attitude and style we’ve established as our own. Having said that, with each new person that comes into the band, there’s a new dynamic and a new chemistry.

“At its core I think we’ve maintained the same essence,” he continues. “And with each version of the band there’s some difference in style and performance and presentation.”

The journey from being a scrappy group of troublemakers in San Francisco in the late ’70s to the band they are today has been a long one. But despite setbacks, changes in lineup and long intervals of inactivity, something keeps pulling the band members back together. DePace says more than anything, they simply enjoy having the opportunity to make some noise again.

“We’ve been rehearsing every day long hours, and I love it,” he says. “I want to do it every day. And as it should be, the longer you play an instrument the better you get at it. We all feel like we’re playing the best in our lives, and with all these years of experience behind us, you should be playing better today than you did 20 years ago. If you’re not, you’re doing something wrong. We’re going to do it until the wheels fall off, or it’s not fun anymore.

Write to jefft@sdcitybeat.com or follow him on Twitter at @1000TimesJeff

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#SDCityBeat

October 21, 2015 · San Diego CityBeat · 25

Music

notes from the smoking patio chris burkard

locals only

S

witchfoot frontman Jon Foreman has announced 25 solo shows in San Diego.

There’s an interesting twist to this series of live performances.

They’re all happening on the same day. To coincide with a series of newly released EPs titled The Wonderlands, which feature a total of 25 songs, Foreman will play 25 unconventional shows across San Diego county within a 24-hour span. Foreman says in a phone interview that the idea came from after-show sets he’d perform while touring with Switchfoot.

“This whole project for me was born from after-shows,” he says. “Switchfoot would finish a set, and I’d still have music in me. So I’d play in an alley behind the venue, or in a coffee shop.”

Some of the shows will happen in conventional venues, like the Spreckels Organ Pavilion in Balboa Park. Most will be in unusual places, like a Mexican restaurant, where a Mariachi band will join Foreman. There will be a handful of ticketed events, with proceeds going to the Bro Am Foundation, which benefits music education programs.

Not every show will be easy to attend.

“It’s kind of a cross between a concert and a flash mob,” he says. “Each set will be unique. I’m playing

Jon Foreman at a wedding. There’s also a show that will take place in a taxi cab. I don’t know how many people will be able to fit in there.”

Foreman will announce the locations of the performances via Twitter. Even though the guerilla nature of the shows seems spontaneous, it took a lot of planning.

“You know that Dolly Parton quote, ‘It takes a lot of money to look this cheap?” he asks. “Well, it takes a lot of planning to embrace this level of chaos.”

Jon Foreman’s 25 Shows in 24 Hours will begin at 11 a.m. on Saturday, October 24.

—Jeff Terich

album review Battalion of Saints s/t (Southern Lord)

L

ong before Drive Like Jehu, Rocket from the Crypt, The Locust or The Plot to Blow Up the Eiffel Tower, there was Battalion of Saints.

Founded in San Diego in 1978, the band rose up in the shadow of the Los Angeles punk scene, delivering a raw, homegrown style of hardcore that made them underground legends. In their first incarnation, the band lasted seven years, having broken up in 1985 after the release of their sole album, Second Coming. But Battalion of Saints reformed a decade later, and since then has undergone lineup change after lineup change, delivering their hardcore assault for a while as Battalion of Saints A.D. before once again hitting the brakes in 2012.

You can’t keep good punks down, however, and as of this year, the Saints have reformed, helmed by original vocalist George Anthony. They’ve hit the ground running with a new 7-inch EP, comprising three songs and six and a half minutes. Across those six minutes and change, the band comes out of the gates strong, restating their sense of purpose with a crunchy and crusty hardcore punk sound that’s fierce enough to have been played

26 · San Diego CityBeat · October 21, 2015

by a much younger band, but delivered with the kind of efficient expertise that only veterans can pull off.

The three tracks on the EP are all pretty similar in approach: loud guitars, breakneck tempos and a ferocious bark from Anthony, all in less than two and a half minutes a pop. It’s to Battalion of Saints’ credit that they’re able to get as much out of that simple set up as they do. The 95-second first track “Darkness” sets the pace with an almost toofast, careening hardcore gallop that comes to a halt just as it seems like the whole thing’s going to fall apart. “Nightmare” is a more groove-heavy standout that sets their hardcore menace against a surf-rock rhythm, and “Bombs” is a highly explosive (pun intended) and endlessly thrilling closer.

There’s nothing all that new about what Battalion of Saints do on their new self-titled EP. It’s an extension of what they’ve been up to for more than 35 years, but it feels a little bit louder and a little bit faster. As hardcore goes, it does absolutely everything right, proving that old punks can stay relevant long after the scene has moved on.

—Jeff Terich

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#SDCityBeat

October 21, 2015 · San Diego CityBeat · 27

28 · San Diego CityBeat · October 21, 2015

#SDCityBeat

Music

Jeff Terich

If I were u A music insider’s weekly agenda Wednesday, October 21 PLAN A: Mr Twin Sister, Timothy the DJ, Wizard Woes @ Soda Bar. Last year, Twin Sister changed their name to Mr. Twin Sister, and with the change came a transition toward an ethereal disco sound.

That metamorphosis was for the better, as their 2014 self-titled album is a wonderful mixture of sophisticated pop and big electronic beats. BACKUP PLAN: Small Black, Painted Palms, DJ Keith Sweaty @ The Casbah

Thursday, October 22 PLAN A: Flipper, Widows, Stalins of Sound @ The Casbah. Read my feature this week on San Francisco punk legends Flipper. They’ve reunited, this time with David Yow of The Jesus Lizard on vocals, and they’re bringing some grungy fun from the Bay Area. PLAN B: D.R.I., Doll Skin, Santa Claus, Dead Vengeance, Dizaster Inc @ Brick by Brick. D.R.I. are pioneers of “crossover thrash,” a style of music that combines hardcore punk with thrash metal, and you better believe it’s as fun and relentless as that sounds. Get in the pit! BACKUP PLAN: The Sword, Kadavar, All Them Witches @ Belly Up Tavern.

Mudhoney’s longevity is impressive. The Seattle outfit has been cranking out their Stooges-inspired ruckus since the late ’80s, and they haven’t lost any of the sarcastic spark that made them so much fun in the first place. BACKUP PLAN: White Shit, Beehive & The Barracudas, DJ Quon Solo @ The Hideout

Saturday, October 24

Tuesday, October 27

PLAN A: Natalie Prass, Promised Land Sound @ Soda Bar. Natalie Prass’ self-titled album, released earlier this year, is one of my favorite records of 2015. It’s a gorgeous blend of subtle pop and orchestrated, cinematic soul that comes across like Joni Mitchell jamming with Al Green’s band.

Yeah, it’s amazing. PLAN B: Mudhoney, Tar Halos, The Grids @ The Casbah.

PLAN A: Cobalt Cranes, The Lulls, Garden Echo @ The Merrow. L.A.’s Cobalt Cranes make a noisy, cosmic blend of psychedelia, shoegaze and garage rock that’s just the right amount of disorienting. There are no bad trips here, just vibes for days.

BACKUP PLAN: Prom Body, Hikikomori, The Littlest Viking, Hot Nerds (DJ set) @ The Hideout.

Mr. Twin Sister

Sunday, October 25

PLAN A: MS MR, Jack Garratt, Tigertown @ House of Blues. MS MR doesn’t really do subtlety. The duo does big, danceable pop blended with the theatrics of FlorFriday, October 23 ence and the Machine, and it’s a flashy, PLAN A: Red Fang, Whores, Wild Throne showy spectacle. When it comes to pop @ The Casbah. Portland’s Red Fang don’t music, though, that’s not necessarily a bad do anything fancy—they just rock really thing, especially with catchy-as-hell songs hard, with lots of beefy stoner rock riffs to like “Criminals.” BACKUP PLAN: Cotton spare. They’ve also got a lot of great videos, Jones, Quiet Life, Taken by Canadians, which range from stunt driving in “Wires” James Wallace @ Soda Bar. to beer-can LARPing in “Prehistoric Dog.” This’ll make your Friday night a lot more fun, guaranteed. PLAN B: Bully, Heat, Monday, October 26 Dead Soft @ The Hideout. Nashville’s PLAN A: The Vibrators, Peacers, Elisa Bully are still pretty young, but their debut Ambrogio @ Soda Bar. Is this a great week album Feels Like has a confident and pow- for old-school punks or what? The Vibrators erful sound beyond their years. If loud, me- got their start in the ’70s in the UK, with a lodic rock that recalls The Pixies and The blend of power pop hooks and raw, distorted Breeders is your thing, be here. BACKUP punk. They released their debut Pure Mania PLAN: Sound of Ceres, Mike Adams At in 1977, beating the Sex Pistols to the punch, His Honest Weight @ Seven Grand. and they’re still causing a ruckus.

#SDCityBeat

October 21, 2015 · San Diego CityBeat · 29

Music

Concerts HOT! NEW! FRESH!

Warren G (Music Box, 10/31), Curren$y, Freddie Gibbs (Observatory, 11/8), The Avengers (Casbah, 12/3), White Reaper (The Hideout, 12/7), Nik Turner’s Hawkwind (Til-Two Club, 12/9), Agnostic Front (Til-Two Club, 12/12), Wayne Hancock (Soda Bar, 12/18), Littler (Soda Bar, 12/20), Richard Cheese (HOB, 1/29), Ottmar Liebert and Luna Negra (BUT, 2/10), Ani DiFranco (BUT, 2/25), Gary Clark Jr. (HOB, 3/11), 5 Seconds of Summer (Sleep Train Amphitheatre, 9/9).

GET YER TICKETS No Knife (Casbah, 10/31), Kris Kristofferson, John Prine (Civic Theatre, 10/31), ‘Night of the Shred’ w/ Windhand, Danava (Quartyard, 10/31), Ghost (Observatory, 11/2), King Diamond (Observatory, 11/4), HEALTH (Casbah, 11/10), The Menzingers, mewithoutYou (Observatory, 11/10), The Fall of Troy, Kylesa (Irenic, 11/10), Yo La Tengo (Observatory, 11/12), Soulside (Casbah, 11/12), Mayhem, Watain (Observatory, 11/13), Born Ruffians (Soda Bar, 11/13), Youth Lagoon (BUT, 11/14), Ty Dolla$ign (HOB, 11/14), The Cult, Primal Scream (HOB, 11/19), YOB (Brick by Brick, 11/19), Skinny Puppy (Observatory, 11/20), Lucero (BUT, 11/22), Sturgill Simpson (Observatory, 11/22), Chance the Rapper (SOMA, 11/23), X, Mike Watt (Casbah,

30 · San Diego CityBeat · October 21, 2015

11/27-28), Maruta, Vattnet Viskar (TilTwo Club, 11/27), Venom Inc. (Brick

by Brick, 11/28), Girl Band (Soda Bar, 11/28), Grouch & Eli, Chali 2na (Observatory, 12/1), Nikki Lane (The Irenic, 12/1), The Bad Plus (Music Box, 12/8), The White Buffalo (HOB, 12/10), Three Mile Pilot (Casbah, 12/10), Agnostic Front (Til-Two Club, 12/12), Reverend Horton Heat (Observatory, 12/13), Ghostface Killah (Observatory, 12/17), Macy Gray (BUT, 12/17), Rick Springfield (HOB, 12/18), Bone Thugs N Harmony (Observatory, 12/18), Vince Staples (Observatory, 12/19), Cracker, Camper Van Beethoven (BUT, 12/27), Ozomatli (BUT, 12/28), Chet Faker (Observatory, 12/29), Donavon Frankenreiter (BUT, 12/29-30), The Academy Is… (Observatory, 12/30), Los Lobos (BUT, 12/31), Jerry Seinfeld (Civic Theatre, 1/15), Josh Ritter (Observatory, 1/18), Ladysmith Black Mambazo (BUT, 1/19), Killing Joke, The Soft Moon (BUT, 1/26), The English Beat (BUT, 2/5-6), Aaron Neville (Balboa Theatre, 2/11), Joe Satriani (Balboa Theatre, 3/1), Galactic (BUT, 3/3), Keb’ Mo’ (Balboa Theatre, 3/4).

October Wednesday, Oct. 21 Eagles of Death Metal at Belly Up Tavern (sold out). Colony House at The Loft.

Thursday, Oct. 22 Insane Clown Posse at Observatory North Park. D.R.I. at Brick by Brick. The Sword at Belly Up Tavern.

Friday, Oct. 23 Red Fang at The Casbah. Frank Turner

at House of Blues. Bully at The Hideout.

Mac DeMarco at The Observatory North Park (sold out). Skylar Spence at Soda Bar. Z-Trip at Belly Up Tavern. Ryan Adams at Copley Symphony Hall.

Saturday, Oct. 24 Natalie Prass at Soda Bar. Elefante at Music Box. Gerard Way at House of Blues (sold out), Mudhoney at The Casbah.

Sunday, Oct. 25 Owl City at Observatory North Park.

Monday, Oct. 26 Marilyn Manson at House of Blues (sold out). The Vibrators at Soda Bar. Madeleine Peyroux at Belly Up Tavern (sold out).

Tuesday, Oct. 27 The Neighbourhood at House of Blues (sold out). Diiv at The Casbah.

Wednesday, Oct. 28 Matt Pond PA at The Casbah. Shakey Graves at Observatory North Park (sold out). Tobias Jesso Jr. at Belly Up Tavern. Potty Mouth at Soda Bar.

Thursday, Oct. 29 Prayers at The Irenic. Fear Factory at Brick by Brick. Failure, …And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead at Music Box. Coheed and Cambria at Observatory North Park. Gehenna at Che Café.

Madonna at Valley View Casino Center.

Parkway Drive at House of Blues.

Friday, Oct. 30 Knuckle Puck at Moniker Warehouse.

The King Khan and BBQ Show at Soda Bar. Catharsis, Thou + The Body at 5335 Market.

Saturday, Oct. 31 ‘Night of the Shred’ w/ Windhand, Elder, Danava at Brick by Brick. Kris Kristofferson, John Prine at Civic Theatre. No Knife at The Casbah. Warren G at Music Box.

November Sunday, Nov. 1 Trey Anastasio at House of Blues. Sergio Mendes at Belly Up Tavern. B Side Players at Music Box.

Monday, Nov. 2 Ghost at Observatory North Park.

Tuesday, Nov. 3 Jonny Lang at Belly Up Tavern. Girlpool at Che Café. Antemasque at Observatory North Park. Spirit Caravan at Brick

by Brick. Scott Weiland and the Wildabouts at Music Box.

Wednesday, Nov. 4 King Diamond at Observatory North Park. Spencer Moody at The Casbah.

Thursday, Nov. 5 The Internet at The Loft at UCSD. Of Montreal at The Irenic.

Friday, Nov. 6 Leon Bridges at Observatory North Park (sold out). Drinks at Soda Bar. Bob Schneider at Belly Up Tavern.

#SDCityBeat

Music Saturday, Nov. 7 Fortunate Youth at Belly Up Tavern.

Beat Connection at The Loft at UCSD.

Sunday, Nov. 8 Tim Flannery at Music Box. Curren$y, Freddie Gibbs at Observatory North Park.

Tuesday, Nov. 10 The Menzingers, meWithoutYou at Observatory. The Fall of Troy, Kylesa at The Irenic. HEALTH at The Casbah.

Moon Taxi at Belly Up Tavern.

Wednesday, Nov. 11 Raheem Devaughn and Leela James at Music Box. Tops at The Hideout. Desaparecidos at Belly Up Tavern. Collective Soul at House of Blues. The Underachievers at Observatory North Park.

Thursday, Nov. 12 Dave and Phil Alvin at Belly Up Tavern.

Godsmack at Open Air Theatre. Yo La Tengo at Observatory North Park. Soulside at The Casbah.

Friday, Nov. 13 Born Ruffians at Soda Bar. The Album Leaf at The Casbah. Mayhem, Watain at Observatory North Park. Circa Survive at House of Blues.

Saturday, Nov. 14 Ty Dolla$ign at House of Blues. Dead Feather Moon at Music Box. In the Valley Below at The Casbah. Modern Baseball, Pup, Jeff Rosenstock at Lamppost Warehouse. Youth Lagoon at Belly Up Tavern.

Sunday, Nov. 15 The Front Bottoms at The Irenic. Puro Instinct at Soda Bar. Squeeze at House of Blues.

Monday, Nov. 16 City and Colour at House of Blues. Atmosphere at Observatory North Park.

Tuesday, Nov. 17 Keep Shelly In Athens at The Casbah.

Psychedelic Furs at Belly Up Tavern.

Wednesday, Nov. 18 Mac Miller at House of Blues.

Thursday, Nov. 19 Big K.R.I.T. at Observatory North Park.

Weatherbox at Soda Bar. YOB at Brick

by Brick. The Cult, Primal Scream at House of Blues. Ryan Bingham at Belly Up Tavern.

Friday, Nov. 20 Ryan Bingham at Belly Up Tavern.

Havok at Soda Bar. Skinny Puppy at Observatory North Park.

rCLUBSr

710 Beach Club, 710 Garnet Ave., San Diego. Pacific Beach. Wed: Agents of Ware. Thu: Karaoke. Fri: Ballyhoo!, Bad Neighborz, Fayuca. Sat: The Heroine, Gunner Gunner, Wicked Tounges. Sun: Karaoke.

98 Bottles, 2400 Kettner Blvd. Ste. 110, San Diego. Little Italy. Thu: Big Flavor.

Fri: The Benedetti Trio Air Conditioned Lounge, 4673 30th St., San Diego. Normal Heights. Wed: ‘Cul-

#SDCityBeat

ture’ w/ DJ Ele. Thu: ‘My 80s Vice’ w/ DJ Girth. Fri: DJ Junior the DiscoPunk. Sat: ‘JUICY’ w/ DJ Mike Czech. Sun: ‘Church’ w/ DJs Bass Exotic, Vinnassi.

American Comedy Co., 818 B Sixth Ave., San Diego. Downtown. Wed: Open mic. Thu: DeRay Davis, DeRay Davis. Fri: DeRay Davis, DeRay Davis. Sat: DeRay Davis, DeRay Davis. Sun: DeRay Davis, DeRay Davis.

Bang Bang, 526 Market St., San Diego.

Downtown. Thu: J. PHLIP. Fri: Mija, Bones.

Bar Pink, 3829 30th St., San Diego.

North Park. Wed: Sick of Sarah, Lost Element, Sad Robot. Thu: The Heartbeat Trail, Mittens, Super Buffet, Cougar Del Mar. Fri: ‘80s vs. 90s’. Sat: Gone Baby Gone, Bella Novella. Sun: ‘Rat Sabbath’.

Mon: Tori Roze and the Hot Mess. Tue: ‘Tiki Tuesday’ w/ DJ Marshall Islands.

Beaumont’s, 5662 La Jolla Blvd., La Jolla. Thu: The Heart. Fri: Modern Day Moonshine. Sat: Rare Form.

Belly Up Tavern, 143 S. Cedros Ave., Solana Beach. Wed: Eagles of Death Metal, Gram Rabbit (sold out). Thu: The Sword, Kadavar, All Them Witches. Fri: Z-Trip, 9 Theory. Sat: Dead Man’s Party, Total Distortion, DJ Richie. Sun: Mason Jennings, Adam Topol. Mon: Madeleine Peyroux Trio (sold out). Tue: TV Broken 3rd Eye Open, Barbarian, AJ Froman.

Boar Cross’n, 390 Grand Ave., Carlsbad. Fri: ‘Club Musae’.

Brass Rail, 3796 Fifth Ave., San Diego.

Hillcrest. Wed: Karaoke. Fri: ‘Hip Hop Fridayz’. Sat: ‘Sabado en Fuego’ w/ DJs XP, KA. Mon: ‘Manic Monday’ w/ DJs Junior the Disco Punk, XP. Brick by Brick, 1130 Buenos Ave., San Diego. Bay Park. Thu: D.R.I., Doll Skin, Santa Claus, Dead Vengeance, Dizaster Inc. Fri: Dead Horse Trauma, Saturate, Kaveat, Malison. Sat: Act of Defiance, Allagaeon, Vanguard, Monarch.

Cafe Sevilla, 353 Fifth Ave., San Diego.

Downtown. Wed: Aro Di Santi. Thu: Malamana. Fri: Joef & Co. Sat: Aire. Sun: Aire.

Mon: Perla Negra. Tue: Perla Negra.

Croce’s Park West, 2760 Fifth Ave., #100, San Diego. Bankers Hill. Wed: Stacy Antonel. Thu: Clay Colton Duo. Fri: Todo Mundo. Sat: Curtis Taylor Quartet.

Sun: Todo Mundo. Mon: Nina Francis and Leonard Patton. Tue: Pat Dowling.

Dirk’s Nightclub, 7662 Broadway, Lemon Grove. Lemon Grove. Fri: Serious Guise. Sat: DJ Raymond.

Dizzy’s, 4275 Mission Bay Drive, San Diego. Mission Bay. Sat: ‘Tribute to Chet Baker’. Sun: Allison Adams Tucker.

F6ix, 526 F St., Downtown., San Diego.

Downtown. Thu: Kirko BangZ. Fri: DJ Rico. Sat: DJ Kurch. Sun: ‘Magnum Sunday’.

Fluxx, 500 Fourth Ave., San Diego.

Downtown. Fri: Carter Cruise. Sat: DJ Brett Bodley.

Gallagher’s, 5040 Newport Ave., San Diego. Ocean Beach. Thu: So Cal Vibes.

Fri: Ent Kings, DJ R2. Sat: Funk’s Most Wanted. Mon: ‘Mic Check Monday’.

Henry’s Pub, 618 Fifth Ave., San Diego.

Downtown. Wed: AOK Muzik. Thu: DJ Junior the DiscoPunk. Fri: ‘Good Times’.

Sat: DJs E, Yodah. Mon: DJ Antonio Aguilera. Tue: Big City Dawgs.

House of Blues, 1055 Fifth Ave., San Diego. Downtown. Wed: Seether, Saint Asonia, Shaman’s Harvest. Thu: SoMo, Jordan Bratton, Kirko Bangz. Fri: Frank Turner and the Sleeping Souls, Skinny Lister, Beans On Toast. Sat: Gerard Way, Tape (sold out). Sun: MS MR, Jack Garratt, Tigertown. Mon: Marilyn Manson, September Mourning (sold out). Tue: The

Neighbourhood, Bad Suns, Hunny.

Kava Lounge, 2812 Kettner Blvd., San Diego. Midtown. Wed: ‘This n That’. Sat: ‘Purps and Turqs’. Sun: ‘For the Love of Hip Hop’.

Kensington Club, 4079 Adams Ave., San Diego. Kensington. Mon: Lights Out Comedy.

Mc P’s Irish Pub, 1107 Orange Ave., Coronado. Coronado. Wed: 3 Guys Will Move U. Thu: Ron’s Trio. Fri: The Upshots. Sat: 4-Way Street. Sun: Ron’s Garage.

Music Box, 1337 India St., San Diego.

Little Italy. Thu: Slower. Fri: Dread Mar I. Sat: Elefante, Said Aguilar.

Numbers, 3811 Park Blvd., San Diego.

Hillcrest. Thu: ‘Wet’. Fri: ‘Uncut’. Sat: ‘Club Sabbat’. Sun: ‘R&B Divas’. Tue: Karaoke Latino.

On The Rocks, 656 E St., Chula Vista.

Mon: Mojo Workin Mondays Onyx Room / Thin, 852 Fifth Ave., San Diego. Downtown. Fri: ‘Rumba Lounge’.

Sat: ‘Go Wild Party’. Tue: ‘Neo Soul’.

Patricks Gaslamp, 428 F St., San Diego.

Downtown. Wed: The Upshots. Thu: Bill Magee Blues Band. Fri: The Trackdowns.

Sat: RedWave. Sun: The Fuzzy Rankins Band. Mon: The Groove Squad. Tue: Paddys Band Jam. Rich’s, 1051 University Ave., San Diego.

Hillcrest. Wed: ‘Mischief with Bianca’.

Thu: ‘LEZ’. Fri: DJs Dirty Kurty, Moody Rudy. Sat: DJs Taj, Hektik. Sun: DJs Matt McCarthy, Cros.

Riviera Supper Club, 7777 University Ave., La Mesa. La Mesa. Wed: ‘Boss Jazz’ w/ Jason Hanna. Thu: Second Cousins. Fri: Visitours. Sat: Little Kings.

Tue: Karaoke.

Side Bar, 536 Market St., San Diego.

Downtown. Wed: Kyle Flesch. Thu: DJ XP. Fri: DJ Brett Bodley. Sat: Epic Twelve.

Soda Bar, 3615 El Cajon Blvd., San Diego. City Heights. Wed: Mr Twin Sister, Timothy the DJ. Thu: Sara Petite, Grant Langston, David Serby, Maurice Tani, Iron Outlaws. Fri: Skylar Spence, Kero Kero Bonito, Sound of Ceres, Mike Adams At His Honest Weight. Sat: Natalie Prass, Promised Land Sound. Sun: Cotton Jones, Quiet Life, Taken by Canadians.

Mon: The Vibrators, Peacers, Elisa Ambrogio. Tue: Tricot, Birth Defects, Death Eyes.

SOMA, 3350 Sports Arena Blvd., San Diego. Midway. Wed: All Time Low, Sleeping With Sirens, Neck Deep, One Ok Rock.

Thu: Matthew Espinosa & Friends, Alec Bailey, Chris Miles, The Gabbie Show, Tez, Brandon Bowen, Jake Foushee.

Spin, 2028 Hancock St., San Diego.

Midtown. Fri: Mr. C. Sat: Harvey McKay. Sun: ‘Reggae Sunday’.

Sycamore Den, 3391 Adams Ave., San Diego. Normal Heights. Thu: The Shifty Eyed Dogs, Daniel Schraer Trio. Sun: Tim Mudd, Sam & Stacy.

Tango Del Rey, 3567 Del Rey St., San Diego. Mission Bay. Sun: Mercedes Moore Live at The Hep Spot.

The Balboa, 1863 Fifth Ave., San Diego.

Bankers Hill. Fri: The Peripherals, High Rolling Loners. Sat: Raf Deza & The Avenue, G Burns Jug Band.

The Bancroft, 9143 Campo Rd., Spring Valley. Spring Valley. Wed: Karaoke. Fri: Focke-Wolves, Godspeed McQueen, Walk Proud, Big Dictator. Sat: Kathryn Dean.

The Casbah, 2501 Kettner Blvd., San Diego. Midtown. Wed: Small Black, Painted Palms, DJ Keith Sweaty. Thu: Flipper, Widows, Stalins of Sound, El Dusty,

music CONTINUED ON page 32 October 21, 2015 · San Diego CityBeat · 31

Music music CONTINUED from PAGE 31

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

Latin Lovers, Bob Green. Fri: Red Fang, Whores, Wild Throne. Sat: Mudhoney, Tar Halos, The Grids. Sun: William Fitzsimmons, Jake Phillips. Mon: Nobunny, The Kabbs, Kooties. Tue: Diiv, No Joy, Sunflower Beam.

The Tin Roof, 401 G Street, San Diego.

Gaslamp. Wed: Pat Hilton & Mann. Thu: New Kingston, Animo Cruz, Iya Terra. Fri: Coriander. Sat: K. Emeline Band. Sun: ‘G Street Sessions’. Mon: Mango Habanero, HotStop. Tue: Big Lewinsky.

The Che Cafe, UCSD campus, San Diego. La Jolla. Sat: The Saddest Landscape, State Faults, Griever.

Til-Two Club, 4746 El Cajon Blvd., San Diego. City Heights. Thu: Cloud Catcher, Loom, Slow Season. Fri: Sic Waiting, Caskitt, Western Settings, Bainbridge.

Sat: Child, Giant Surprise, Vinyl Mill.

The Hideout, 3519 El Cajon Blvd., San Diego. City Heights. Fri: Bully, Heat. Sat: White Shit, Beehive & The Barracudas, DJ Quon Solo. Tue: Prom Body, Hikikomori, The Littlest Viking, Hot Nerds (DJ set).

The Irenic, 3090 Polk Ave., San Diego.

North Park. Sun: The Royal Concept, Parade of Lights.

The Loft @ UCSD, Price Center East, La Jolla. La Jolla. Wed: Colony House, Coin.

Fri: Alfredo Rodriguez Trio.

The Merrow, 1271 University Ave., San Diego. Hillcrest. Wed: Tones, Hughes and Barclay Trio, Dolan Brotherhood.

Thu: Green Death, Ashen Earth, Nukem.

Fri: Angels Dust, KAUS & DJ Inform, Max Carnage, Pengineer, DJ Tramlife. Sat: Sentinel, Ruines Ov Abaddon, Temblad.

Sun: The Algorithm, Angel Vivaldi, Save Us from the Archon. Mon: The Foreign Resort, Light FM, The Slashes, Moonpool. Tue: Cobalt Cranes, The Lulls, Garden Echo.

The Office, 3936 30th St., San Diego.

North Park. Wed: Sleeping Ghost. Thu: ‘No Limits’ w/ DJ Myson King. Fri: ‘After Hours’ w/ DJs Adam Salter, Ikah Love. Sat: ‘Strictly Business’ w/ DJs Kanye Asada, Gabe Vega.

Sun: ‘Uptown Top Ranking’. Mon: The Natives, Geneva Bedlam, La Ayahuasca, DJ Mike Delgado. Tue: ‘Trapped’.

32 · San Diego CityBeat · October 21, 2015

Tio Leo’s, 5302 Napa St., San Diego. Bay Park. Wed: Hot Rod Trio. Thu: The Fremonts. Fri: Suspicious Minds. Sat: Creatures of Cinema.

Tower Bar, 4757 University Ave., San Diego. City Heights. Wed: Serial Hawk, Cryptic Languages, Beira. Sat: Sawyer Family, Brass Hysteria, Delmartians.

Ux31, 3112 University Ave., San Diego.

North Park. Wed: DJ Mo Lyon. Thu: ‘Throwback Thursday’. Fri: Lee Churchill.

Sat: DJ Junior the DiscoPunk. Mon: DJ Bacon Bits. Tue: Karaoke.

Whistle Stop, 2236 Fern St, San Diego.

South Park. Thu: ‘Not Happy’ w/ Taffy, DJ Jon Blaj. Fri: Mr. Tube and the Flying Objects, Dani Bell and the Tarantist, DJ Al Howard. Sat: ‘Booty Bassment’. Tue: ‘Videodrome’.

Winstons, 1921 Bacon St., San Diego.

Ocean Beach. Wed: SM Familia, DJ Carlos Culture. Thu: Tony Trischka Territory, The Homesick Hitchers. Fri: The Concrete Project, RNR, The Lique. Sat: Lafa Taylor with AABO, Boostive, Taurus Authority. Sun: Karaoke. Mon: Electric Waste Band. Tue: Sneaky Pete and the Secret Weapons.

#SDCityBeat

Last Words

Brendan Emmett Quigley

He who hesitates Across 1. Home run hit 6. Historical stretch 10. Soup with soy cubes 14. Columbus’s caravel 15. Knick Anthony’s nickname 16. In the mouth 17. Website with the threads “What to look for in a funeral home?” and “Is there life after death?”

19. Ratted (on) 20. Gems on Precious?

22. One who knows every word on every album 25. ___ feeling 26. “When I get my hands on you!”

27. Bayer painkiller 29. Warm up, as leftovers 32. Fancy style 36. Cerveza often served with a lime 38. Throw out there, as a simple-to-answer question 40. Ren Faire time 41. Undeclared earnings?

44. “Gimme ___” 45. Velvet Underground’s drummer Tucker 46. Ronald of many TCM flicks 47. Gets licked 49. “... go on” 51. Food, clothing, and shelter, e.g.

52. “Why ___ even talking about this?”

54. Georgia Dome team: Abbr.

56. Timecard division 57. Tell a rival of the Crips to “give in”?

63. Duff, slangily 64. Bounce off a seraglio wall?

68. Round waffle Last week’s answers

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69. “I got it, I got it” 70. Blue hue 71. Animal in headlights 72. Change for a Benjamin 73. Thing squeezed on a salad

Down 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

Blocking letters Nintendo avatar ___ Taylor (women’s clothing store) It may have a point in the forest Some fancy lamps 2015 Baseball Hall of Fame inductee John Country where the potato originally came from 8. Homecoming V.I.P. 9. Royal beef order request 10. Chopper, e.g.

11. Scrap ___ 12. Inventory clearing event 13. Your technologically clueless parents, with “the” 18. Winter bug 21. Uno e due 22. Mud application, maybe 23. Spanish Formula 1 racer Fernando ___ 24. Butterflies 28. Entertainer whose work is never seen 30. “Irrational Man” director 31. “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” X-Wing pilot ___ Dameron 33. Appeared threateningly 34. Group of battleships 35. Microscopic 37. Sharpshooter’s skill 39. Big name in lighters and pens 42. Flapper costume piece 43. From parts elsewhere 48. George W. Bush Presidential Center sch.

50. Killer robots on “Doctor Who” 53. “Can we turn on the A/C?” 55. Waits at a concert 57. Drove like hell 58. Compelling itch 59. Rockers ___ the Elephant 60. Blaze up 61. #23 on the Cavs, familiarly 62. Befuddled state 65. Mojito ingredient 66. Galleon treasure 67. Chess pieces

October 21, 2015 · San Diego CityBeat · 33

34 · San Diego CityBeat · October 21, 2015

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October 21, 2015 · San Diego CityBeat · 35