The Insider Scoop

I can’t imagine many folks making a special trip to visit Tweet Street, the city’s new “bird park” located on Date Street between 6th and 10th avenues downtown. But this tiny, not-quite-secret garden is almost certain to elicit smiles from residents of Cortez Hill who frequent it and any outsiders who happen to stumble upon it.

What’s there to smile about? First and foremost, there are the 10 birdhouses created by local artists and erected on poles along the path that now meanders through what not long ago was a blighted freeway overlook. Designed to accommodate the neighborhood avians (including house finches, western bluebirds, oak titmice, bewick’s wrens, and robins), the bird shelters range from the whimsical to the comedic. Birds aren’t the only fauna singled out for attention. Several “dog stations” are equipped with brightly painted fake fire hydrants as well as plastic poop-clean-up bags. And human toddlers can play on equipment that still looked shiny and new when I visited more than eight months after the park’s dedication in March of 2008.

The romance of the place would be perfect if the magic of inspired volunteerism had made it materialize, but the reality is more bureaucratic. The Centre City Development Corporation reportedly spent $1.7 million in redevelopment tax monies over the course of eight years to make it happen. Graphic artists Candice and Rafael Lopez, prime movers behind downtown’s Urban Art Trail, supplied a lot of the artistic direction and inspiration.

Balboa Park’s very first plantings and buildings (including a home for wayward women, an orphan’s home, and a pesticide storage facility) once occupied this area, before the interstate freeways slashed through and isolated this thin shard from the main body of the park. Today the cars and trucks and buses on the freeway still rule supreme. But on Tweet Street, the people are communing with a tiny piece of nature again, and there’s some satisfaction in that.

Sculpture gardens are a natural fit for San Diego, considering our weather, and we’ve got several standouts. One is in Escondido’s Kit Carson Park, where Niki de Saint Phalle’s pieces playfully explore California’s roots (mythic, historic, and cultural). The San Diego Museum of Art’s Balboa Park sculpture garden, though small, includes important pieces by Moore,  Miró, Calder, and other 20th Century artists. And going on a treasure hunt to find all the pieces in the Stuart Collection at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) is the coolest way I know to experience the campus.

Now another world-class installation is gracing the San Diego landscape — at least for the next 12 months.  “Waterfront Steel: The Tidelands Sculpture Exhibition” consists of 13 monumental steel sculptures by  French-born, Manhattan-based Bernar Venet, considered by some to be one of the world’s most important living sculptors. Scott White, Venet’s West Coast dealer, organized the exhibition in collaboration with the Port of San Diego. Venet’s works have been exhibited in major cities in the US, Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and South Africa.

For a complete listing of the works, see Robert L. Pincus’s insightful review in the Union-Tribune. The Scott White Contemporary Art gallery in Little Italy has also mounted an exhibition running now through January 3 that includes more sculptures, as well as pastel on paper drawings.

Detroit’s automakers and America’s car dealers aren’t the only parts of the car industry feeling the heavy hand of the current economic malaise. Business at Pasha Automotive Services at the National City Marine Terminal has been off by 30% this year, according to a Pasha spokesman.

In good times, the Port of San Diego has boasted that one of every eight new cars in the United States entered the country through the Pasha operation, with up to 400,000 vehicles first touching US soil in National City. Even now, the scene at the 150-acre site right after underloading of one of the giant waterborne automotive carriers is pretty staggering. The vehicles are shrink-wrapped in a tight white plastic material to protect them from seagull droppings,  salt air, and other environmental insults. Enough windshield is exposed so that the workers can drive the cars and trucks off the boats, rather than winching them off, an improvement that has shrunk the unloading by almost 90% and decreased wear and tear on the vehicles.

Once unloaded, the Hondas, Nissans, Mazdas, Audis, and other products undergo customization by the workers; Mitsubishi and Isuzu trucks receive the identifying badges that will distinguish them into five different brands. Anywhere between 30 and 100 workers may climb in and out of every vehicle before it moves on to its next journey.

For most of the cars, the destination will be a dealership somewhere in California, though a substantial minority travel farther — on to the Southeast, Midwest, and other parts of the Southwest. About half move out on trucks, while the rest are driven into special rail cars.

If and when Americans start buying cars again, the local facility has plenty of capacity to process them. The dock is roomy enough to accommodate five of the giant car-carrying ships at a time, and the terminal can accommodate 120 rail cars, capable of hauling away some 1500 cars, per day.

A rare opportunity to revisit one of the seminal influences in global surf culture will take place this coming Saturday, November 8, at 8 p.m. when filmmaker Bruce Brown presents a live narration of his 1966 classic, The Endless Summer. The screening/narration is the highlight of the California Surf Museum’s first California Surf Festival of Film. It’s being held in the old Crest Theater — now the Grace Chapel — at 102 N. Freeman Street in Oceanside.

Brown shot his classic work, in which two Southern California guys travel the world in search of the perfect wave, for $50,000, and began showing it with live narration in beachside auditoriums in the summer of 1964. By 1966 he’d added a recorded narration, blown the film up to 35mm, re-edited it, and found receptive movie theaters nationwide. Newsweek eventually put it among the top ten films of that year.

The upcoming event will reunite the 71-year-old Brown with the film’s two stars, Robert August and (San Diego native) Mike Hynson. General admission is $35.

A dozen other films will be included in the three-day festival, which opens Friday. For a full schedule, see www.californiasurffestival.com.

Think of American cities with robust African-American communities, and San Diego probably doesn’t spring first to mind. But maybe it should. The Black Historical Society of San Diego boasts of being the largest such society in the US, judged by their collections, special events, and diverse holdings. In June the society also unveiled the  first museum here dedicated to San Diego’s rich African-American history. Open every daily from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., it’s well worth a visit.

Although small, the permanent exhibition installed on the museum’s walls communicates a number of intriguing tidbits. Arranged chronologically, it points out that, at least mythologically, the  first inhabitants of the “island” of California were black Amazons “decked in gold and pearls with strong bodies and ardent courage” and governed by a Queen named Califia (aka Calafia). The 1510 Spanish romance novel that recounted all this helped motivate the first Spanish conquistadors.

From the exhibit, you can also learn who was the very first African-American to settle here (a slave otter-hunter who jumped ship in 1804), how the African-American governer of Mexican California (Pio Pico) enriched himself (by giving himself huge land grants that included much of what’s now Camp Pendleton and Coronado), and what percentage of black San Diegans had moved to Logan Heights from downtown by 1960 (82%).

Memorable African-American pioneers including Nate Harrison, who lived to 101 and spent much of his life in a rustic cabin on Mt. Palomar, and Fred Coleman, who kicked off San Diego’s gold rush in 1869, receive attention, as do the glory years in the 1920s, when parts of San Diego’s downtown were known as the Harlem of the West.

The latter is also the subject of a 45-minute walking tour given every Saturday at 11 ($5). Other regular tours include a monthly African American City Tour. The society also hosts a half dozen festivals, including the San Diego Black Film Festival and the Julian Delta Blues Festival. A tiny gift store in the new museum is a good place to look for historical documents and Afro-centric art and figurines. For more information, call 619/232-1480.

Water: H2O=Life, the exhibition currently featured at the San Diego Natural History Museum, was organized by the American Museum of Natural History and the Science Museum of Minnesota, but it seems particularly apt for viewing here. San Diego County’s nearly 3 million residents consume about half a billion gallons of water a day, but the vast majority of that (80-90%) doesn’t exist naturally here. Some of it comes from Northern California and some from the Colorado River, the latter traveling more than 1000 miles to get to Southern California, where it’s then transported along a 242-mile-long aqueduct before reaching local taps. 

A few encouraging new (for San Diego) sources are on the horizon; the nation’s largest drinking-water desalination plant recently was approved for construction in Carlsbad. Work on it is scheduled to start in 2009, with completion scheduled for 2011, and if all goes as planned, it will produce 50 million gallons a day, enough for 112,000 households. But given the  historically dry weather we’ve been having, water rationing is still looming.

As the Natural History Museum exhibit makes abundantly clear, however, the problem of having enough fresh water extends well beyond San Diego. Earth may be the water planet, but only 3 percent of the stuff that covers the planet’s surface is fresh — the type needed to sustain most life.  Furthermore, only a small fraction of that 3 percent is usable.

The exhibit does a masterful and entertaining job of saluting and explaining the many incarnations, impacts, and aspects of water. You can easily spend a good two hours absorbing it all (and that doesn’t include viewing the two complementary films screening in the museum’s giant-screen theater.)

Although the traveling exhibit will move on at the end of November, Water: A California Story will remain on exhibit at the Museum for at least two years. The special exhibition uses natural history specimens, live animals, photos, and interactive exhibits to explore the water issues facing southern California and Baja California.

Anyone who enjoys the beach should love The Map, the depiction of La Jolla Underwater Park and Ecological Reserve unveiled September 12 at La Jolla Shores.

Created on a once-unlovely 2300-square-foot corner of Kellogg Park between the park’s south comfort station and the playground, The Map lets visitors understand at a glance the orientation of the remarkable offshore canyons. The proximity of those canyons to the shore is the reason why Black’s Beach receives some of the most epic surf  in California and why La Jolla Cove has been called The Sleeping Giant. When the swell direction is right, the canyon depths allow the waves to build to awesome heights.

The park is also home to a rich assembly of marine life, so The Map is studded with life-size chromatically accurate depictions of resident animals and invertebrates, each keyed with a number. The walls of the adjacent restrooms hold photographs identifying each of them. You could have a lot of fun with kids there searching for the cast bronze creature corresponding to each of the 62 photographs; artists Lynn Reeves and Rick Sparhawk designed the animal reliefs with the idea of paper rubbings in mind.

But this isn’t just a place for children. Different colored recycled glass in the Lithocrete base material helps to indicate the canyon’s various depths. Beachside landmarks are represented, as are underwater dive spots. Short of putting on a wetsuit and spending an awful lot of time breaching pressurized oxygen, there’s no better way of getting better acquainted with the world just offshore.

Need a laugh? Think there’s nothing to laugh about in these troubled economic times?

Think again. One of the free San Diego Laughter Clubs could fix you up.

My first encounter with one of the clubs was in Balboa Park near the Organ Pavilion. I heard a group of people, standing under some nearby trees, roaring with laughter. As the belly laughs and guffaws continued unabated for several minutes, it began to sound like something unusual was going on. It was then that I spotted a sign announcing a “laughter yoga” session in progress, along with a schedule of weekly club meetings all over the county.

Since then I’ve learned that laughter yoga began in 1995 in Mumbai India. A family physician named Madan Kataria developed the concept, inspired by evidence that laughter affects health in a number of positive ways. He decided to start a club to reap some of these benefits, and initially he told jokes to provoke the mirth. But he soon ran out of material, and drawing upon research suggesting that the body cannot distinguish between fake and real laughter, he began using a variety of exercises in which participants simulate laughing.

Kataria started with just 5 people, but according to the website http://www.laughteryoga.org/, more than 6000 clubs in 60 countries have since been formed. The first one in San Diego got started in 2006, and since then about 10 groups have formed, meeting weekly. When I joined the one that assembles near Sixth and Spruce Saturday mornings at 9, I learned that the faked fun can morph quickly into geniune hilarity.

Although the session was free, I paid a small price in self-consciousness.  But the others present — about eight folks varying in age from 20s to 60s — seemed to take my presence in stride. A gentle young man in a UCSD t-shirt led us through exercises that in turn were silly and childlike and comical. We laughed and laughed, and at first I felt like an actress playing a character yucking it up. But the whole situation was so funny, it started cracking me up for real. We concluded by lying down on our backs on the grass, and for reasons I can no longer articulate, tears at one point were streaming down my face, I was laughing so hard. Eventually, this final exercise subsided into giggles and chuckles and deep, relaxed breathing.

Laughter yoga proponents say this kind of activity strengthens the immune system, releases endorphins, helps control blood pressure, clears mucus out of the lungs, massages the digestive tract and other internal organs, decreases stress-inducing cortisol, and increases catecholamines (improving alertness and memory.) It did feel good.

For a list of weekly gatherings in San Diego, go to http://www.laughinginsandiego.com/. And note that if you’re too shy to try one of the face-to-face sessions, there are even phone-based meetings daily.

Juan Cabrillo’s September 28, 1542 landing in San Diego has some historic heft.  It was the first time any European set foot on the western coast of what’s now the United States. It took place 78 years before the Mayflower reached the East Coast, and the event put all of California under the control of Spain. Yet no tour of San Diego visits the landing site. Most locals couldn’t tell you where it happened. 

The Cabrillo Monument at the end of Point Loma might come to mind. But that’s on the top of the point. Only seagulls land there. Nor did the explorer and his men disembark at the cliff base directly below the monument, where breakers create treacherous passage for anyone who’s not on a surfboard.

Instead the expedition made landfall in the calmer waters at the base of Point Loma inside the bay. Ballast Point, as the site is known, lies within the Naval Base that’s beyond the western end of Rosecrans Street. In the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, entrance to the base has been substantially restricted.  But every September 28, the Navy opens the gates to civilians interested in watching a re-enactment of Cabrillo’s consequential visit.

After living in San Diego for more than 34 years, I finally made it to the Cabrillo Festival yesterday. It’s an event that has an old-fashioned charm and scale.  A couple of food tents had been set up and volunteers were selling thematic items like Portuguese sweet bread and Spanish paella and Indian fry bread. (Cabrillo reportedly treated our natives with courtesy.)

The highlight of the afternoon was the moment when a rowboat skulled into view of  Smuggler’s Cove where the crowd of several hundred was gathered. At the water’s edge, a couple of fellows in conquistadorial and clerical garb clambored out and pretended to claim the beach for Spain. But truth be told, this was a low-tech, low-key highlight. The bayside setting is almost unrecognizable from Cabrillo’s day. A jumble of ugly dry docks, tacky apartment buildings, cranes, tennis courts, and other military flotsam have grown over the natural landscape, and the shoreline was long ago reshaped to meet the needs of a 20th-century harbor.

Fans of Cabrillo and old boats point out that there are plans in the works to add some class to one aspect of the celebrations. The San Diego Maritime Museum has announced plans to build a historically accurate, sailable replica of Cabrillo’s 200-ton galleon, the San Salvador.  They’re be laying the keel at the end of 2009, with launching planned for the fall of 2011.

1) It’s cheaper. Freeflight isn’t in business to make money from tourists.  It’s a place where exotic bird owners can board their large and often noisy feathered friends. A sign asks visitors for a $5 donation.  The zoo’s current one-day admission price is running almost five times as much ($34).  

2) You get up close and personal with the inmates. Sure the Zoo has a couple of nice big aviaries.  But I’ve never had any bird there climb onto my wrist and engage in a virtual necking session, the way the Freeflight birds do.  Not all of them are friendly. Biters sit on perches in a section segregated by ropes. But many parrots and macaws and cockatoos are extremely social creatures, who crave attention and even physical interaction with people.  That’s why Dr. Robert Stonebreaker, the veterinarian who owns Freeflight (as an adjunct to his Bird & Animal Hospital of Del Mar) decided to welcome the public. Having company makes the birds happier, he says. Some of the big vocal Freeflight birds nuzzle; others almost turn themselves upside-down to better position themselves for scratching.

3) Freeflight feels like a find; a place that only insiders know about.  Stonebreaker has created a tropical landscape on the property and staffed it with ladies who patiently answer questions (and supply birdseed for a dollar a scoop).  They advise that the best time to come is first thing in the morning, when the birds are eager for interaction, rather than burned out on it for the day. (Hours are 10 to 4:30 daily.)

Okay you can’t also see elephants and orangutans and tigers there, so it’s not a fair comparison. Still, Freeflight holds its own.