Chad Deal | Stories | San Diego Reader

Boys Are Petty

Gamer Girl at Nerdcore night says, “We all grew up on Nintendo and Star Wars.”

Bad Music Night in Logan Heights

It was a sad day for clowns when, last July, antiquated zoning regulations forced Technomania Circus to shut down their backyard performance space in Barrio Logan after seven years in business. Determined to continue juggling ...

Desert Daze

Coachella didn’t have what Desert Daze did.

Desert Hot Springs offered an unexpectedly cool alternative to Coachella’s music fest.

Metaphorical Maren

Maren Parusel’s revamped synth-driven sound is revealed on her new album, Tightrope Walker.

The Dragon Room at Wong's Golden Palace

The Wong Cup at the right price.

You’ve probably seen Wong’s neon towers glowing along the University Avenue corridor through La Mesa. You probably mistook the place for a drug front or maybe the entrance to a theme park. The truth is ...

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May Star’s Diamond Dust Debuts at Kitty Diamond

After nearly seven years of curating the monthly Fashion Whore (largely at the Ruby Room), Club Pop, and other club parties, promoter May Star is dropping her usual dance nights to initiate a new monthly ...

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Dose of Bass

For the past year and a half, electronic music collective Liquid Geometry has been cultivating San Diego’s beat scene with a monthly showcase at the Kava Lounge, curating local and out-of-town genre luminaries, including Free ...

Ye Olde Plank Inn, Imperial Beach

Chad Deal went looking for a drink (not a fight!) in SD’s second-oldest bar.

Tectonic Temple at Telemagica

“I have the habit of making seemingly insurmountable goals for myself,” says Joe Mousey, an art student, musician, and promoter who will be constructing a 20-foot-tall pyramid and six 4-foot pyramids for an upcoming outdoor ...

The Hole

“A pretty much world famous dive,” the Hole is a bar in its full glory on Thursdays — $4 Stoli and Bacardi all night. And on Mondays — $2 wells and the weekly wet underwear contest. And...

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Swing Out The Fill

Last November, I wandered into the Ruby Room in Hillcrest on a Tuesday evening and had an instant oh-shit moment. Oh shit, I remember thinking when I heard the free-jazz trio onstage shift seamlessly between ...

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Ziggy's Love Chicken

When Ezequiel “Ziggy” Pelayo says, “We started Yeah Buddy Fest because we really just wanted to barbecue and party and hang out all day,” you believe him. When the 30-year-old musical renaissance buddy isn’t pouring ...

In Cahoots

Let’s face it, line dancing is about as exciting as singing “Who Let the Dogs Out?” in American Sign Language, which is to say, not terrible, provided there is drink. Luckily, In Cahoots dancehall and ...

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Disposable Songs

After a year of intermittent recording between hard-drive crashes and rewrites, alt-country five-piece the Western Set released their debut LP, Country Music, on March 3 at the Tin Can Ale House. Vox/guitarist Patrick Conway calls ...

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Tin Can Guerrilla Burgers

The Tin Can Ale House in Bankers Hill recently completed a renovation including new sea-foam green flooring, a shortened bar to make room by the stage, a kitchen, and a revamping of the venue’s namesake ...

Stout Public House

Being a hockey fan in San Diego is like being a cow tipper in Delhi, which is to say, lonely. Sure, despite their Cool Runnings disadvantage (watch the movie), the Gulls were an impressive flock ...

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Bedtime Stories

Dixie De La Tour wants to hear San Diego’s dirty stories. The curator of the San Francisco–based Bawdy Storytelling started a monthly showcase of sexual (mis)adventures five years ago after finding inspiration at a Burning ...

Martinis Above Fourth

American humorist James Thurber once said, “One martini is all right. Two are too many, and three are not enough.” While most of us instinctively know this to be true, there’s no better place to ...

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Two Votes for Ron Paul

Traveling daredevils the Squidling Brothers are currently touring Europe before making their way to the Shakedown on Midway to court death with their entourage of rock-and-roll sideshow freaks. In anticipation of the preternatural pageant, Matterz ...

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Now You Know: Room E

Dan Harumi (aka Room E), a 26-year-old Bay Area native, recently released his debut full-length, Penguin Child, which makes use of live and electronic sounds in what he calls a “dilettante-style instrumentation” — a pastiche ...

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Basshenge

Burning Man is all about building rad things in the middle of nowhere, Nevada, partying in them for a week, and then dismantling or incinerating them at the end of the festival. It’s in this ...

Rose Wine Pub

Rose Wine Pub in South Park caught my attention when it opened about 16 months ago. It was a holiday walkabout night and the cozy bar, which seats about 30, was standing-room only. Wanting to ...

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Certain Girl Situations

“I think Hemingway and maybe Bukowski are the only writers who I’ve read all of their books,” says keyboard crooner Sean Davenport, whose new Hills Like Elephants (the name is a Hemingway reference) project is ...

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Major Label Machine

Kansas City native Jason “Captain Blackie” Blackmore has been playing guitar and singing in San Diego for over 11 years now, but before the Turf Club doorman began blowing the roof off of local venues ...

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Inner Vibration

in November, musicians/promoters Michael Mannino and Arian Banki threw a party called Inner Vibration at a private residence near Vista in celebration of a close friend who passed away in June. Preston Grover was a ...

Sonic Extravaganza at the San Diego Experimental Guitar Show

“A few years ago, there was talk in certain music publications about the death of the guitar,” says Sam Lopez, curator of the San Diego Experimental Guitar Show. “Notions were made that this archaic instrument ...

Tobacco Rhoda’s

The term “dive bar” is thrown around pretty loosely these days and, not unlike “dude,” “epic,” and “excessive force,” the essential meaning has been all but lost. Enter Tobacco Rhoda’s. Famous for its Filipina bartenders ...

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Now You Know: Clockart

“The San Diego scene for our sound is all right,” says Beejay Buduan, guitarist and songwriter in Clockart, over coffee at Twiggs on Park Boulevard. “It’s more of a rock city. It was getting pretty ...

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Future Sounds of San Diego

“Living in San Diego, you hear that there is no scene here, that there is nothing going on,” says musician and freelance graphic designer Miguel “Miguex” Vega, who recently compiled a glimpse of the local ...

"I Promise" Benefit Show

“San Diego is such a volatile music scene,” says Jesse Kranzler, an organizer of the three-day “I Promise” Che Café benefit show. “One venue or group of bands usually keeps it going, especially in the ...

Doing the Deed on a Pig Farm

A few weeks ago, Hank, a businessman in his 50s, invited about 30 people out to his rural estate in Valley Center to take part in the slaughtering of two large pigs. “My conclusion from ...

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Occupy's Liquid Asset

“We believe in the Occupy movement and others like it,” says Scott Stephens, manager and vocalist of local pop-rock entourage Liquid Blue. “We’ve been an activist group for many years. We’re really hyped to support ...

Analog Bar

Analog Bar’s slogan — “Good Food Strong Drinks” — is spot-on. The nu-retro music-themed bar’s cocktails are mixed (and priced) aggressively. The food is creative and, yeah, good, but not great, especially at prices that ...

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A Jung Technology

Carl Jung once posited, “The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.” It was ...

Inn at the Park

Built as a residential hotel in 1926, Inn at the Park (née Park Manor Suites) in Bankers Hill was bought by Shell Vacations in May and is currently undergoing renovations to give rooms a kitschy, ...

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Now You Know: Pal&Drome

Having grown up on the unevent horizon of suburban Rancho San Diego and rural Jamul, I was never accustomed to nightlife in my homogenized hometown. So it came as some surprise when, as a high ...

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Soul of San Diego

Three and a half years ago, singer/songwriter Tori Roze played her first show with her current band the Hot Mess at the now defunct Portugalia in Ocean Beach. “The owner loved the turnout, so we ...

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From Future Bass to Dubstep to Glitch-Hop to Wobble

In a city partial to its indie rock, Jamie Minotti is striving for balance. “A year ago, there was no way [Toronto-based progressive/electro/house DJ] Deadmau5 would be in local alt weeklies,” Minotti says. “It would ...

Downtown Johnny Brown’s

“We were the first bar to have Arrogant Bastard,” says Downtown Johnny Brown’s owner Todd Alexander. “Stone had their release party here. John Brown really embraced the local beer movement. When I bought the bar ...

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Raccoon Newsie Zombie

because Halloween is the greatest holiday of the year, especially when it falls on a Monday and, therefore, begins the previous Thursday, your humble crasher went to about 39 celebrations this All Hallows’ Eve megaweekend. ...

Last Call

Boasting a weekend happy hour from 2:30 to 5:30 p.m., Last Call’s slogan entreats you to “Go ugly early.” And while easily dismissed as another sketchy El Cajon Boulevard hole, Last Call proves to be ...

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Romeri's Got the Beats

“I’ve always been seeking out exploratory music,” says Santino (or Sonny, like in The Godfather) Romeri, a Golden Hill–via–Chula Vista experimental beat musician (Illuminauts), promoter, and overseer of boutique vinyl and cassette label Kill Quanti. ...

Monkey Paw Pub & Brewery

Unless you outright loathe good beer, you probably know the name Scot Blair. In fact, you’ve probably been to his University Heights, South Park, and City Heights bars, which specialize in select local and craft ...

Restaurant Reviews

Burrito Especial

At this Five Points hot spot, hefty helpings of flavorful carne asada and shrimp are packed into flour tortillas like a past-his-prime wrestler into fluorescent pink Spandex. It’s a fitting analogy for a venue that ...

Restaurant Reviews

Burger Time

Half-pound cheeseburger, $6.25 The champion bar burger, certainly for the money. It starts with the beef: fine grind, loose pack, superjuicy, good grill seasoning that keeps you taking bite after bite. A medium rare that ...

Beer Town

Passing by this constantly packed spot in the East Village, one would never guess the perseverance it took for owner Arsalun Tafazoli to force it down downtowners’ gullets. His goal was to provide the perfect ...

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Now You Know: Kata

“We’re a bunch of positive people playing dark stuff,” says Demetrius Antuna (vox, guitar) of the nine-piece, cinematic, art-metal band Kata. “It’s a release. A way to get it out. Something about darkness feels good ...

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Stories by Chad Deal