North Park Stories
"One unique part about our cocktail program,” says Dallas Juanes, General Manager for Verbena Kitchen, “is that we’re changing what it is to be a low-ABV cocktail bar. We have ...
On the night in question, The Air Conditioned Lounge in North Park is offering “Bootydew feat. Booty Selectors,” an electronic dance night featuring genres described on the venue’s website as ...
“I’m doing this guerrilla-style!” shouts Antonio Ley, also known as El Tony Tee, as I approach his taco truck. “We got kicked out because of the stupid bike lane last ...
Everything was going my way, including a cancer-free pathology report that finally came just hours before this event: the inaugural concert at the newly constructed Park & Market. It felt ...
North Park Stories
Since the 2.25-mile bike lane replaced over 460 parking spots on 30th Street from Normal Heights down to North Park last year — 34 businesses shut down, and some are boarded up, said Pat Sexton ...
The orange cat jumps into an older man’s lap like they’re best friends. I never catch the animal’s name, or at least I don’t retain it, because there are at least ten more of her ...
When Full Contact Rock-N-Roll owner Davit Buck tells me that KISS guitarist Ace Frehley once came into the store and asked if they carried any albums by his former band, I could feel my inner ...
December Nights Balboa Park Join your fellow citizens on December 2 and 3 for the City of San Diego’s largest free holiday festival in beautiful Balboa Park. The family friendly event brings San Diegans together ...
Oh yes. THIS is how to start your day. Fire-roasted Arabica coffee beans sending their smoky aroma up my nostrils, right beside a blue pylon of incense smoke. We’re talking coffee beans that have come ...
Bassist Sean Hicke didn’t always play the upright. In fact, the San Diego native got his musical start on its electric cousin. “I was playing in punk bands and whatnot in middle school,” says the ...
There was never any doubt I would try the place. Whether restaurateurs Cinzia Zolfanelli and Kuniko Holmes intended to be provocative when they mashed their names together to open CinKuni, it’s impossible to ignore the ...
I made it nearly nine years and a thousand Feast stories without ever having to reference the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. But that all ended the moment I walked into Gnarly Girl Pizza. The New ...
There was good beer in San Diego near the turn of the millennium, back when I was a newly legal drinker, just returned to San Diego from my years at college. But it took some ...
Tyler Ward is sitting behind a drum kit in a moderately sized band rehearsal space at the San Diego branch of the School of Rock in Liberty Station’s arts district. He’s attempting to break down ...
Guitarist/singer/songwriter Hugh Noble came to San Diego from the UK in 2014. Over the past eight years of gigging with his band Slum Summer (new album Living in Milk out now), he’s delineated the highs, ...
Just days before UFC Fight Night at the Pechanga Arena last month, Nathaniel Fox, who lives in North Park, had his own bouts — online. "I fell victim to a scam from a Craigslist listing," ...
Harpist Tasha Smith Godinez took advantage of her pandemic downtime to begin writing original music. “Before, I never really felt I had enough time,” she explains. “So I started writing these ideas down, and I ...
The monarch butterfly was added to the IUCN Red List as "now endangered" last month — for many reasons. The insect is eaten as an egg, caterpillar, chrysalis, or bright orange and black colored butterfly. ...
Alma Rodriguez, owner of Queen Bee’s, escorts me into the North Park venue for “Dark Euphoria.” Before the end of this July 23 night, the pulse of gothic electronica will have carried me through lessons ...
Once, when I was writing a news story about an early morning raid to arrest a drug dealer, a police officer explained to me that whoever who moved into the newly vacated house could expect ...
The allure of Ethiopian food, I once wrote, has as much to do with presentation as it does spice. I was but a baby writer at the time, living in Los Angeles, visiting the restaurants ...
Where is everybody? This was last Tuesday, in Oceanside. I was looking for food. Don’t look for food on Tuesday afternoons. So many places are closed. Specially last Tuesday, the day the whole nation fell ...
As we approach the Art Déco facade of Part Time Lover in North Park — where Bar Pink operated for over a decade — I remind my wife Shelley that I’m on assignment. Because Wednesday ...
“I watched a bandmember of mine almost die a couple of times, and I still didn’t get it,” says Sprung Monkey guitarist Will Riley. “I was a drug addict, and I didn’t understand that. A ...
“I’ve been chasing this specific award since I made the leap from homebrewer to brewery owner almost six years ago,” beams Kelsey McNair, founder and head brewer at North Park Beer Co., discussing his gold ...
“Eee-yew! Spongey!” cries my buddy Tim. “And you have to eat with your fingers? A mess! Why can’t we have a knife and fork like at any other place?” He has just unrolled a section ...
“It was so rad hanging with Tony Hawk,” says 27 year-old singer Dani Miller, whose band Surfbort recently released a video for their track “Open Your Eyes” featuring the members battling local skateboard legend Hawk. ...
“My debut album was lost to the unforgiving digital gods due to a fried hard drive in 2001, so I’ve come out of a 20-year slumber to start making music again,” says Jordan Snodgrass, whose ...
There are a lot of used-to-be’s on El Cajon Boulevard. The now-gentrified corner at Utah used to be a mattress store. The Red Fox Room used to be on the south side of the street. ...
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a music writer isn’t going to get rich plying his trade, but at least he’ll get free stuff: albums, concert tickets, swag, perhaps even the occasional backstage pass. ...
Trombone virtuoso and U.S. Marine Corps veteran Matt Hall is poised, after a Covid-caused two-year delay, to release his first album on the noted independent label Summit Records, one that features an all-star lineup of ...
How do you get the best out of happy hour? Mandy and I think we have the perfect in: Bleu Bohème in Kensington. She knows the place. It looks expensive and French, but she says ...
"I had a wooden baseball bat, a Louisville Slugger, in my car. And the plan was we both walk up, Patrick grabs the bike, and I watch his back just in case this guy is ...
As I drive along El Cajon Boulevard through North Park, a swirl of pink neon lets me know that it’s not just the same old deli making sandwiches within the ABC Market & Deli. Rather, ...
In my search for Ukrainian food, I end up on ECB - El Cajon Boulevard. Talking North Park here. I’m outside Pomegranate, the Georgian-Russian restaurant of Golden Hill fame. Georgian owner Mark was the jokingest ...
This is a story about the summer of ‘79, but it starts a year earlier, circa mid-’78. That’s when I first drove into San Diego. Within minutes of my arrival, I was almost murdered — ...
“I recall the show went very well, the band seemed to be in good spirits,” remembers XTC drummer Terry Chambers about the final concert that band ever played — in San Diego, circa March 1982. ...
Apartment construction in North Park sometimes pops up in unexpected places. Since there are no vacant lots, developers must buy an existing building. Then the building is demolished, and construction is scheduled. One example is ...
After a two-year hiatus, Queen Bee’s owner Alma Rodriguez is set to resume the annual Beatle Fair on March 26, promising a full day of music, talks, screenings, and shopping for all things related to ...
Singer/bassist Jin Salamack was originally from Hawaii before relocating to San Diego and co-founding pop-punk band Wanted Noise with San Diego singer-guitarist Suryendra Sherman. A seven song EP called Plate Lunch was released in 2017, ...
There was a five-year span in Greg Vaughan’s childhood that was little more than a whirlwind of commitments. He was playing soccer and baseball; pursuing his interests in music via voice, piano, and guitar lessons; ...
Digging concurrence Unfortunately have to concur with most of the digs (“The internet writers gang up on San Diego,” Cover Stories, January 19). Born in MA, grew up in NC, have lived in LA (total ...
New to the neighborhood, Wormwood introduces itself as an absinthe-focused bar. After greeting me, Ben Marquart busts out a beginner’s lesson on absinthe. He decides Le Frappe is a good place to start. “It’s an ...
As of late January, work crews had finished installing the last leg of buffered bike lanes along 30th Street, in North Park. I noticed the new lanes, added just south of Adams Avenue, while slurping ...
It’s been a couple years since the alt-weekly San Diego CityBeat and its blend of local news, irreverent columns, and cultural coverage went silent. The paper disappeared after a cascade of events, starting when Times ...
A week or so after Christmas Eve parties and two days after New Year's Eve, piles of trash sitting in and around Republic Services dumpsters and trash bins throughout our county have yet to be ...
Justin Greenwood 619 Spirits North Park 3015 Lincoln Avenue North Park A pretty candy-red cocktail adorned with a sprig of green, the Blood of the Scorpion comes served with a warning. “It’s based with our ...
Renovations of historic buildings often move at a snail’s pace. An example is the former Woolworth’s store in North Park, standing vacant for many years. Located at 3067-3075 University Avenue, its last tenant was a ...
New construction in North Park/University Heights has been expected for years now, and it’s now in full swing. Along central El Cajon Boulevard, from near 30th Street and beyond, the changes are beginning to reshape ...
About two weeks ago, several North Park dwellers reported accidents on University, a couple of blocks east of Texas Avenue. Bob LaRose, who lives closer to Morley Field, emailed Councilman Stephen Whitburn on November 9. ...
Major nonprofit thrift stores in San Diego have been around for decades. Then along came Covid and took its toll. Two longtime San Diego Rescue Mission thrift stores (North Park and City Heights) closed down. ...
On September 28, City of San Diego personnel installed reflective bollards along Pershing Drive by the Balboa Park Golf Course across the street from the Morley Field Golf Disc Course by North Park. "The dividers ...