Highs and Lows

Posted on December 13, 2011 by jdewyze

I’ve written before about the unique pleasures of San Diego’s winter low tides, but last Friday I discovered another facet to them : biking on the wide, hard-packed sand.  My friend Howard Zatkin has organized an informal low-tide beach ride for years, but this was the first time I came to my senses and joined him. Every year, his group gathers at the end of the road that cuts off from La Jolla Farms Road and leads down to Black’s Beach.  We traveled from there up to Del Mar and then back the way we came. It was a workout (at least that last leg up the hill) of the very best kind: physically demanding in the midst of striking beauty.

Photos capture it best, and happily my friend Howard Rosen not only joined us but brought his camera.  Here are a few of the images he captured:

All photos by Howard Rosen

Posted in Free and fun, Great bike rides, On the Waterfront, The Natural World | Tagged , | Leave a comment

My Kind of Instrument (Town)

Posted on December 2, 2011 by jdewyze

The appropriately musical reception desk

Of course the center of the musical universe in California is LA — so much so it’s easy to assume San Diego has no status within that industry. But that’s mistaken. I and others have written about Taylor Guitars (and the wonderful free tours offered for so long by the El Cajon-based giant.) Both the Deering and Stelling banjo companies began here, and touring Deering’s Spring Valley facility is still on my To-Do list. Most impressive of all is the Museum of Making Music, which opened in Carlsbad in 2000 and just underwent a major remodel. Seeing the improvements has also been on my list since August, when they were completed. I recently got to it.

The facility is so impressive, an obvious question is: why is it there, on that rather isolated stretch of Armada Drive (just down the road from both Legoland and the ranunculus fields)? The answer is that the museum is the public face of the National Association of Music Manufacturers, the trade group for all those folks who make, buy, or sell all the pianos, guitars, bugles, piccolos, snare drums, harps, and other assorted instruments around the world. (The association claims about 9,000 members internationally).  Begun 110 years ago in New York City (then the epicenter for piano manufacturers), it moved to Chicago several decades later, and then to Carlsbad in 1983, as the industry shifted west. The association hosts trade shows (including a gigantic expo in Anaheim every January), and part of its mission is to promote the pleasures and benefits of music-making. On the first floor of the building, the museum serves the latter goal, while upstairs close to 80 employees toil at more prosaic industry-promotional tasks.

Military-issue piano

Exotic guitars

Hal Blaine's famous custom drum kit

Open Tuesdays through Sundays from 10-5, the museum’s general admission costs $8. It takes at least an hour to speed through all the galleries, which present the history of American musical instruments and music making chronologically. You could certainly while away a lot more time here. Some of the instruments are mundane, but some are strange and interesting collector’s items: the portable piano created for shipment to US troops during World War II; weirdly multi-necked guitars; the most famous drum kit in America (supposedly), used to record Return to Sender, Surfin’ USA, Dead Man’s Curve, I Got You Babe, Mr. Tambourine Man, California Dreamin’, Strangers in the Night, Galveston, Bridge Over Troubled Water, and other hits.

The remodeling added a whole new interactive music-making gallery… 

…as well as a cool interactive map that allows those who interact with it to hear both native musical sources and they ways in which they’ve taken modern forms.

The only thing that seems to be missing from the museum was crowds of visitors.  Probably they don’t know what they’re missing.

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Big Deal?

Posted on November 1, 2011 by jdewyze

Forbes Magazine recently published its annual list of America’s most expensive zip codes, and once again, Rancho Santa Fe showed up among the top 20. (With its two zip codes, it actually took two of those spots, with 92067 in the #14 position, and 92091  17th). The community east of Del Mar has ranked even higher in other years, and average home prices still tower over anyplace else in the county. Del Mar, 72nd, ranks next highest. La Jolla’s in 96th place, and Coronado doesn’t even make the list.

Besides the fact that the average Rancho Santa Fe home price hovers just under $3 million (for the 92067 folks, at least), I’ve always been amazed by how boring the place is. But I was there last Friday with a group of San Diego Professional Tour Guide Association members for a lightning tour led by a Rancho Santa Fe Historical Society docent. This reminded me of what the RSF does have going for it. In my view.

1) Great landscaping. People who can afford $3 million homes can afford lots of plants and gardeners to keep them at their best.

2) More sunshine than you get at the coast. This makes the plants look even more beautiful.

3) A modicum of history. The town boasts of being one of the first planned communities in California (yawn). This happened after gambling failures or drought or both drove the owners of the original Mexican land grant to sell the entire rancho to the Santa Fe Railroad Company. The railroad men tried to turn it into a eucalyptus farm. When that, too, failed, the company decided to develop it as a rural retreat for the wealthy, an idea that finally worked.

4) Architectural congruity. I think it’s nice that local gal Lillian Rice (born in National City, schooled at Berkeley) set so much of the tone for the town so many years before women architects became commonplace. Rice had some good ideas (fostering indoor/outdoor living; blending into the natural environment), and today a draconian covenant ensures that her anodyne designs and their imitators remain sacrosanct throughout much of the town.

5) More real-estate offices per square inch than anyplace else in California. I’m not sure that’s a fact, but it feels like it. So many properties appear to be for sale that you’ve gotta wonder if every storefront just displays different views of the same places. Whatever the truth, it makes me think the town slogan ought to be “Realtors R Us!”

6) The presence of Chino’s. I guess the gourmet farmers technically are located in Rancho Santa Fe.  I hung out there years ago, while writing about the Chino’s corn, and fell in love then with the family’s approach to farming. I loved the vegetable stand, too, as earthy and unpretentious as most of Rancho Santa Fe is not, the dark matter of the small universe that is this community. The fruits and vegetables are just as pricy and exquisite today:

Posted in Architecture, Rancho Santa Fe, Real estate | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Fresh Roasted Success

Posted on October 26, 2011 by jdewyze

I wondered if the little cloudburst earlier today would erase the happy chalked message that appeared in front of Bird Rock Coffee Roasters last weekend. But when I braved the drizzle to get my morning caffeine fix, the sign was still intact.  And even after it’s washed away,  the accomplishment will endure.

The message announces the fact that the business, which has been operating out of the storefront on La Jolla Boulevard for the past five years, has just won the Micro Roaster of the Year award from Roast, the Portland-based bimonthly trade journal that reports on the specialty coffee industry. Some 60 or so small (under 100,000 pounds per year) roasters competed for the honor, first answering a questionnaire about their business practices and philosophy. Three finalists then had to submit several one-pound roasted coffee samples that were blindly judged by a professional coffee cupper on such criteria as aroma, color, imperfections, and bean size.

Supposedly, it was Bird Rock’s Sumatra Lake Tawar beans that propelled the local enterprise first over the finish line. The big feature story in the November/December issue also notes that Bird Rock’s owner Chuck Patton has been an innovator in many ways.  (In the story, he’s cited for being “the first guy out of the box” to trade directly with small growers, and he’s now established relationships with farmers in Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama, Colombia, Eduador, and Bolivia.)

I’ve already written about the “cupping” sessions held regularly at the shop and the warm, lively community it has created in this once-barren street. Still, it’s gratifying to see coffee professionals elsewhere recognizing that something excellent is going on here.  As one friend notes, “And the world thought all we did was brew the best beer and make the best Fish tacos…”

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Pier One

Posted on October 18, 2011 by jdewyze

The cafe that’s out on the Ocean Beach Pier is one of those places I love intensely every time I’m there, but most of the time I forget about. When I do decide to go, I worry that it will have closed, but I can’t remember its name or phone number, so can’t call to check. I remembered it the other day, when I made a date with a friend for breakfast. When I arrived at the pier gates, the fog was dense. Moving into the eerie gray mist, I wondered not only if the cafe survived, but if everyone in San Diego had forgotten about the pier itself. And if the pier was deserted, how in the world could the cafe still be functioning?

After a long minute or so of walking, shapes began to emerge: a few scruffy fishermen, a jogger, seagulls. And there in the distance, some decrepit looking buildings loomed.

I shouldn’t have been amazed that the WOW (for “Walking On Water”) Cafe was indeed still open. It’s been here for decades, and it looks the same to me as I recall it looking at least a decade or two ago. Not a soul was in the joint, except for the single cook/waitress. But it still felt cozy, with those old wooden tables, snugged up against the huge windows.

I had the Pier Breakfast (buttermilk pancakes and bacon), which may be the only thing I’ve ever eaten here. My friend Neal had bacon and eggs. The food comes on paper plates and you eat it with plastic cutlery and wash it down with mediocre coffee. It was fine, if no bargain ($16.50 for the two of us.)

Looking at the menu, I was reminded this place is open every day of the week, serving breakfast, lunch, and dinner (burgers, tacos, fish and chips, and the like). I came away with a new item for my To Do list: devote a whole day to the pier food of San Diego County: maybe breakfast at Ruby’s out on the end of the Oceanside Pier, lunch at the WOW, and dinner at the original Tin Fish in Imperial Beach. For whenever I get to that, the WOW’s phone number is 619/226-3474. 

Posted in Beach Culture, Ocean Beach, On the Waterfront, San Diego Tastes | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

The Oldest Sleep in San Diego

Posted on October 11, 2011 by jdewyze

The Whaley House in Old Town touts its reputation as a haunted house, but when the restoration of the Cosmopolitan Hotel was completed last year, it seemed likely to be an even better place for conjuring ghostly glimpses of San Diego’s past.  The minute I saw the ten second-story rooms, I lusted to stay in one, awaken early, and peer down at the plaza, free of tourists in the light of dawn. The scene should be nearly indistinguishable from what it was 140 years ago, I figured.

In August, when circumstances forced Steve and me out of our home for a night, I seized the chance to live out my fantasy. Results were mixed.

We stayed in the last room on the right.

To my (admittedly inexpert) eye, the restoration seems impeccable. At a cost of $6.5 million, the restorers peeled back the cement and tile and stucco and discovered not only the original three- and four-foot-thick adobe walls but also fireplaces, stairways, and other antique features, which have been restored to structural soundness and architectural polish. Reportedly workers were able to use 98% of the original siding, doors, door trim, and windows in the upper veranda.

The hotel rooms were originally created in 1869 when stagemaster Albert Seeley bought the building from the heirs of the original builder, Juan Bandini. Seeley and his family lived in it and rented out the lodgings on the second story that they added. By the late 20th Century, the former hotel rooms were being used to store kitchen supplies for the Casa de Bandini restaurant.

With the hotel restoration, one concession to modernity is that all the guest rooms now have bathrooms. They still lack televisions and much in the way of floor and closet space. But while that might annoy someone unenchanted with the past, it didn’t bother us.

Instead, the biggest disappointment was the revelation of just how noisy Old Town is. Well after midnight, you hear the steady whoosh of traffic on nearby I-5 – something we’d never noticed amidst the clamor of visitors in the day and early evening.  It’s white noise, not disruptive of sleep but more than loud enough to shatter any illusions about leaving behind high-speed modern life.

The view of the plaza from the balcony. Note that you can see Interstate 5 (just to the left of the flagpole) as well as hear it.

Breakfast for two?

The hotel staffing also seemed disconcertingly skimpy. The same pleasant lady checked us in at the reception desk and acted as maitre d’ for the hotel restaurant. Since fewer than half the hotel rooms seemed occupied, that probably made economic sense. But the next morning’s breakfast (included with the room) seemed to verge on stinginess. (How much would an extra tablespoon or two of jam have set back the management?) We had no such complaints about dinner in the building’s lovely central courtyard.  It was tasty, fresh, and reasonably priced.

I’d eat there again. I’d probably even recommend the hotel to someone ga-ga about early California history. I think it’s cool that someone poured all that money into bringing the old place back to life as it was in its prime. I hope it keeps going.

Posted in Architecture, Looking Back in Time, Old Town, San Diego Sights | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Tat City

Posted on September 27, 2011 by Jeannette De Wyze

I’ve never lusted to have someone create indelible drawings on my own skin. But I kind of enjoy looking at other people’s tattoos.  And I have many questions about the larger tattoo culture, e.g.: why has it become so much more mainstream in the last few decades (at least for younger folk)? Why such a generational gap between those embracing it and those repulsed?

So the event at the Oceanside Museum of Art this past Saturday seemed irresistible: a “tattoo runway show” featuring the work of “world-renowned Southern California body artists.” Two performances were scheduled; Steve and I arrived at 5 p.m., holding tickets for the 6 p.m. show.

I have to confess I’d never been before to the Oceanside museum, which first opened in 1997 in the historic Oceanside city hall site (an Irving Gill building) and expanded three years ago. The remodel is a sleekly contemporary three-story structure that was open to the street Saturday night and filled with revelers: for the most part nicely dressed older art patrons mingling with cool black-clad younger sorts, many tattooed. It looked like a scene from some hipper city — Berkeley maybe, or at least Pasadena.

 

 

We learned this was the third year the museum was hosting a “Masterworks of Body Art” event.  Two earlier ones had focused on Japanese and Maori tattoo traditions, but this year the theme was traditional American-style tattooing. An accompanying exhibit of drawings and paintings shed some light on that style. We were struck by how much of the imagery seemed dark: lots of daggers and skulls and devils.  Even the pictures of voluptuous women stared out with cold, empty gazes.

I’d hoped to learn more from the pre-show lecture by tattoo scholar Jade Winn (also married to tattoo artist Chris Winn, the guest curator for the show). But though stuffed with scholarly dates and names, Winn’s talk didn’t cover most of what I wanted to know. Hugely more entertaining was the runway show. As Frank Sinatra crooned over the sound system, one living canvas after another mounted the runway to pose, pivot, and peel back parts of their clothing, each to resounding applause.

A few strutting young men and fire-engine-red-haired young women fit the exhibitionistic stereotype I’d assumed to be linked to this form of adornment. But just as many seemed nerdy and uncomfortable in the spotlight.

When the show was over, I walked away still burdened with questions. But I felt much surer about one thing: if any subject deserves to be celebrated in Oceanside’s art museum, tattoos and the people who create and wear them have to be near the top of the list.

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A Meal with a View

Posted on September 23, 2011 by Jeannette De Wyze

Considering how beautiful the coast is between the Scripps Pier and Ocean Beach,  there should be more places to eat where one can also gobble up the view. That’s been my opinion for a long time. So I was delighted to hear about the August opening of Caroline’s Seaside Café by Giuseppe.  That’s Giuseppe Ciuffa, the the enthusiastic and charming caterer/chef who’s been reliably turning out excellent fare at both the Museum of Contemporary Art in La Jolla and the Sculpture Court Cafe adjoining the San Diego Museum of Art in Balboa Park.

The new venture occupies the second floor of the Scripps Seaside Forum, the beautiful wooden structure that’s the southernmost building on the Scripps Institution of Oceanography campus (north of where El Paseo Grande turns east to connect up with La Jolla Shores Drive). Tables fill a large outdoor patio with sweeping views north to the pier and beyond and south to take in the whole sweep of La Jolla Shores, the sea caves, the Cove and beyond. You can practically count the seals at the Children’s Cove.

When I went there for lunch yesterday, a heavy marine layer was leaching most of the color out of the day. But the seascape still was alluring enough to make me want to sit outside.  I couldn’t have been happier with the food. Although the menu is not incredibly creative — the same salads and sandwiches and tuna melts and burgers that you can find at dozens of restaurants around town — for the ingredients, Giuseppe conscientiously focuses on “organic and sustainable resources, hormone-free meats and poultry, locally grown fresh produce, and seafood selections meeting nationally recognized sustainability criteria.” My Classic BLT was delicious, the ciabatta fresh and well made, the accompanying salad tender.  For $6.50, it felt like a bargain, as did my friend Leslie’s tasty $6.50 black bean soup and harvest chicken salad sandwich (made with Bartlett pears, celery hearts, pecans, and orange aoili).

By 12:15, every table on the outdoor deck was full. I imagine the crowds will grow denser as word spreads about the charms of this place.  Parking seems like it should be a nightmare, but actually there’s lots of street parking nearby, not to mention the big lots at La Jolla Shores, a short stroll away.

Caroline’s is open for breakfast and lunch daily, starting at 7 a.m. weekdays and 8 a.m. on weekends.

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Pagan Pride

Posted on September 12, 2011 by Jeannette De Wyze

In case you didn’t have a chance to stop in at Saturday’s ninth annual Pagan Pride celebration in Balboa Park, I did. It was too beautiful a day for me to dive too deeply into metaphysics, but I did come away with answers to at least a few answers, to wit:

Who IS a pagan nowadays?

Some are practitioners of Wicca (aka witchcraft).  Some are Druids.  (The San Diego Druidic Coast Oak Grove was formed in 2006, I learned). But there are also local Unitarian pagans who formed a group more than 20 years ago, today known as the Earth Centered Spirituality Circle. At yet another booth, a fellow sat selling t-shirts adorned with slogans written in Nordic runes.

What do pagans believe?

I’m on shakier ground here, but I think most consider themselves to be “Earth religions.” One Wiccan pamphlet informed me that Wiccans believe “all life is sacred and interconnected. Wiccans honor nature as the embodiment of divinity… Like the spiritual world view and practices of Native Americans and Shintoists, Wiccan spiritual practices are intended to attune humanity to the cycles of nature…” A friendly Druid explained that both Druids and Wiccans observe the same eight holidays each year (one every six and a half weeks). Both “believe that Deity is equally female and male,” and they’re polytheistic.  But whereas Druids are open and inclusive, Wiccans are more secretive and devote more attention to working magic spells. (That said, I picked up two free “river birch” wands from one of the Druids.)

So what do pagans do when they celebrate?

This year the locals staged three rituals and presented a bunch of workshops (“Past Lives,” “Herbs for Healing,” “Curses & Hauntings: Pop Culture,” were among them.) The entertainment included a pagan comic, belly dancing, a potato sack race, and more. And they shop.

What was there to buy?

I saw heavy little cauldrons for sale. Some vendors offered clothing evocative of the Renaissance.  In addition to herbs and spices, crystals and incense, the Dragonmarsh booth was selling a dozen or two spell powders.

Do you have to wait until next year’s Pagan Pride Day if you want to meet local pagans in person?

No way. On Saturday, November 5, the Unitarian pagans will be holding a ritual to “follow guides to the Underworld, where you’ll receive blessings from the Samhain Crone and witness the Dia de Los Muertos altar in full nighttime glory.” How multicultural is that?

At the Pagan Pride Day, I missed the performance of the pagan comic, but I got a chance to see the very cool "rocking unicorn" being ridden.

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Powerless

Posted on September 9, 2011 by Jeannette De Wyze

San Diego is normally a glowing, buzzing, light-filled place, at night as well as during the day, so when the power went out yesterday it transformed the place.  When it started, around 3:40, I assumed that the heat had caused some kind of a brown-out.  Checking in with Twitter set me straight. The information may not have been very accurate (were more than 4 million people really affected? Did the blackout really extend all the way to New Mexico?), but it was clear we were experiencing an event of some magnitude.  We cooked dinner; ate it on the patio in the golden light of sunset. Things only felt slightly creepy when we lost all cell-phone and i-Pad connectivity – I assume because AT&T was overloaded.

I read, sitting outside, while I still could.  By 7:20 the light was too dim for that, so I washed the dishes by candlelight. Shortly after 8:00, Steve and I took the dogs out for a long walk, and it was only then that I felt like I was traveling in someplace unlike home.

We studied our neighbors’ homes with bald curiosity, marveling at the few where we heard a mechanical clatter and saw the flicker of TV sets: who knew that some of us had generators? We wondered at the lifeless dwellings: Where were their inhabitants? What were they doing?

We dropped in unannounced at the home of our friends Lin and Lee, a few blocks away, and found them sitting in their living room in the blue light of a powerful fluorescent camping light, listening to KOGO on a hand-cranked Grundig radio. We turned down their offer of ice cream but gobbled up the news that the blackout seemed to have been caused by events cascading from an equipment-maintenance task in Arizona gone awry. At least as interesting was Lee’s report that when he raced to the Albertson’s, minutes after the blackout started, he found a guard barring the doors and managers unwilling to sell him the ice he sought. (A guard also greeted him at Vons, but there he was at least escorted in and permitted to make the ice buy.)

We left and walked south on Fanuel, passing only occasional fellow pedestrians, their features shadowy in the moonlight. The street reminded us of Halloween. Eventually, Garnet Avenue appeared a few blocks before us, normally a bustle of nocturnal activity but now only discernible by its heavier car traffic.

We turned west on Garnet, heading for the beach, and quickly realized we had joined a denser stream of people out for a stroll, mostly 20-somethings. Some shirtless young men zoomed through the gloom on skateboards. With no street lights and most businesses dark as tombs, the night felt post-Apocalyptic.   PB Miki Sushi was an exception, glowing with candles, filled with diners, the eerie night pressing in.

We found concentrated revelry a few blocks on, where drunk young men were hoisting blazing tiki torches at Plum Crazy and Cabo Cantina. Some staggered; some sprawled in doorways like Bowery bums. 

At Crystal Pier, we passed a staggering young woman who complained that she couldn’t take her wine on the pier. Turning north to return home along the beach, we saw no bonfires nearby but thought we could make out a huge one far to the south.  Probably OB.

The moon was still shining when we arrived home and sat on the patio to eat our own melting ice cream. We marveled at how much of a glow that moon gave the sky – all on its own, unaided by man-made illumination. Neighbors across the alley were partying to mysterious music: where did they get the power to broadcast it? We didn’t know.  But I understood why they might feel like dancing.

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