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The Clean, Curious Eyeball of Bill Nericcio

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By Perry Vasquez / AGITPROP

Bill Nericcio’s work as a writer and theorist of cultural studies extends from the semiotics of Speedy Gonzalez to the film career of Rita Hayworth to the influence of the Homeric tradition on the Chicano novel. For Nericcio, the fluid barriers between high, low and Mexican and American cultures offer irresistible opportunities to thread his sharp observations through the often overlooked gaps in what we perceive to be the impermeable walls of cultural identity.

To his many students, Nericcio is best known as the director of the cultural studies graduate program known as MALAS (the Master of Arts in Liberal Arts and Sciences) at San Diego State University–the program, known as the “MA in Curiosity” is an interdisciplinary studies program open to undergraduates with degrees in all majors. Additionally, he serves as a Professor of English and Comparative Literature and a member of the faculties in the department of Chicana/o Studies (CCS) and the Center for Latin American Studies (CLAS).   [Read more…]

What’s Cookin’ at San Ysidro’s The Front?

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… A whole lot of artmaking in a one-of-a-kind visual arts space

By Linda Caballero Sotelo

If you haven’t made it out to the southernmost part of San Diego county, where the San Diego/Tijuana border meet, then you’ve been missing out on one of the most unique spaces and areas in San Diego: San Ysidro’s only space for art, culture, design and urbanism: THE FRONT.

Since its opening, THE FRONT has enabled the production of new social and cultural relations bringing together arts and social programming, affordable housing and urban research at the border, straddling San Diego and Tijuana.

THE FRONT is part of Casa Familiar’s Arts & Culture Division, under the able hands of its gallery Director, Leticia Gomez Franco, this space was conceived as a cultural think tank that would amplify the “neighborhood” of San Ysidro as a site of cultural production, while engaging local residents and claiming the border region as a unique artistic laboratory. The Salon is a second arts space in the area; housed in what was once a church, in fact, San Ysidro’s one hundred year old Catholic church. The structure was acquired by Casa Familiar and has been repurposed as a gallery and meeting space, serving as the second of Casa Familiar’s art galleries, and a part of an ambitious multi use development project entitled ‘Livingrooms at the Border’.   [Read more…]

“Everything Comes from the Streets” Filmmakers Seek Funding

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Local Lowrider Documentary Needs Help for Post-Production Costs

By Brent E. Beltrán

In my neighborhood of Barrio Logan lowriders are a ubiquitous presence. They’re part of the cultural fabric that sews this community together. It’s not a new phenomenon. They’ve been around here for decades and are part of the history not only of Barrio Logan but of San Diego as a whole.

Recognizing a need to document and tell that history local lowriding legend Rigo Reyes joined forces with professor Alberto Pulido to create a documentary on the beginnings of San Diego’s lowrider scene. Though the film, Everything Comes from the Streets, might be their first these two longtime San Diegans know their stuff when it comes to lowriders and Chicano history.

Rigo Reyes is a founder of Amigos Car Club, which organizes the annual Chicano Park Day lowrider car show, and the San Diego Lowrider Council, which have been in existence since the late 1970’s. Dr. Pulido is the chair of the Ethnic Studies Department at the University of San Diego. Both have been members of the Chicano Park Steering Committee for many years, Rigo since the takeover on April 22, 1970.

As a professor Alberto has come to recognize that all learning doesn’t happen inside the ivory towers of academia. A lot happens outside the hallowed halls of learning institutions. “As an educator one of the things that I’ve come to realize is that so much of the knowledge that we’re trying to do in the classroom is actually out in the community or like our film says its out in the streets.”   [Read more…]

Through the City Heights Looking Glass

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By Dana Driskill

With  a 41 percent foreign born population in City Heights, it’s easy to see how a sizable percent are refugees who have come to resettle in this neighborhood in San Diego.

Refugees’ presence can be seen and felt in various areas of the community- from currency exchange buildings to colorful murals at the schools to authentic Vietnamese, Mexican, and Ethiopian eateries, just to name a few. While refugees bring complex and beautiful traditions and practices from their culture to the area, the transition from their previous home to a new one isn’t always easy. As a result, City Heights provides various resources to help refugees resettle and assimilate to the new community.

One such organization is the AjA Project, an arts based program founded in 2000 for refugee and urban youth, and some adult populations. The name AjA is an acronym for the phrase, “Autosuficiencia Juntada con Apoyo” which means supporting self-sufficiency and represents the core philosophy of the organization.

  [Read more…]

Las Monthly Ondas September Edition: Spend a Weekend with Picasso

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Herbert Siguenza Returns as the Iconic Artist

By Brent E. Beltrán

Some may have thought that Pablo Picasso died at the gravely old age of 91 while entertaining friends at his home in France. That was not the case because the famous artist lives on here in San Diego.

This month you can see him live and in the flesh as Salvadoran actor Herbert Siguenza, of Culture Clash fame, captures the pure essence of the master himself in A Weekend with Picasso. From his mannerisms and speech to painting live Siguenza channels his inner Picasso and transforms into one of the most influential artists in modern history.   [Read more…]

Photo Gallery: The Urban Architecture Along I-15

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By Jim Bliesner

An excerpt from I-15 in City Heights: How a Freeway that Divided the Community Became an Urban Monument to Citizen Activism:

Something happened to create all of those [architectural developments bordering the I-15 freeway]. They didn’t just show up fully blown from an engineer’s sketch pad. It was the assertive voice of the people of City Heights that modified the design over a period of at least twenty years. The covers, in some people’s eyes, stand as an urban monument to citizen activism, focused on things larger than anything they might ever work on for their whole lives.   [Read more…]

Ron Hicks: Soul Guard at the Museum of Contemporary Art

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The Guard of Art or the Art of Guard

by Mic Porte

Intriguing new summer expositions surprise and delight at the MCASD, Museum of Contemporary Art  in downtown San Diego.

The Color Field  by Liza Lou  welcomes you into the old train station. Beautiful and inviting, shimmering with thousands of glass beads in perspectives of color geometry, the installation was a collective art event involving museum art volunteers.  I would have liked to walk around the floor piece and enjoy the effect, but was frustrated by the velvet guard rope holding us to a one directional view.  I was delighted when the red trolley went by in the background, suddenly animating the red rectangles, and the field of color transformed from a country into a cityscape.

In The Very Large Array room, movements in the  permanent collection  (less is more?) and some new “old” pieces by San Diegan artist Manny Farber.  His soulful grey reflections, early works, are thoughtful and I would like to see a retrospective of his life works one of these days.  I also very much enjoy our unique border town artists that the museum has been collecting.

Browsing around this part of the exposition leads to some big black doors. You enter a big black room, with large grey canvas panels on the walls–sober graves?– a screen and Ron Hicks, Soul Guard.     [Read more…]

Sam Woodhouse Talks about “In The Heights” at the San Diego Rep

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A Broadway musical about heart and “familia”

By Alejandra Enciso Guzmán for SDFP

The San Diego Repertory Theater opens its thirty-eighth season with the award winning musical In the Heights. Sam Woodhouse, San Diego Rep co-founder and artistic director, provided insight into the first resident production of the musical in San Diego:

“There are several factors here. One is the partnership with the San Diego School of Creative and Performing Arts (SCPA), the ‘fame’ high school of San Diego that allows us to do these big giant musicals in the summer. They bring us an orchestra of thirteen musicians and a bunch of actor/dancers, all terrific.”

“In The Heights is this wonderful collision and marriage of a very 21st century, modern American immigrant story, filled with all those desires and longings and dreams and quests that every immigrant community has, in the cocoon of an old fashioned Broadway musical” added Woodhouse.   [Read more…]

Las Monthly Ondas August Edition: Mesa College to Pay Tribute to Long Time Chicana Activist

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Event to Raise Funds for Gracia Molina de Pick Glass Gallery

By Brent E. Beltrán

In March I wrote about long time San Diego activist/educator Gracia Molina de Pick donating $80,000 to the Mesa College Chicana/o Studies Endowment. This month the San Diego Mesa College Foundation and the Mesa College Chicana/o Studies Department return the favor and will honor Sra. Molina de Pick with a tribute fundraising event.

“The Chicana/o Studies Department is partnering with the San Diego Mesa Foundation to create a tribute event to Gracia Molina de Pick in order to raise funds to commission a series of naming honors that will create the Gracia Molina de Pick Glass Gallery on the San Diego Mesa College campus in the rotunda area of the Languages, Humanities and Multicultural Studies Building,” said Chicana/o Studies chairperson César López in an email.   [Read more…]

Sex in San Diego: Could Porn Be Censored in America?

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By David Rosen / Alternet

On July 22, British Prime Minster David Cameron announced a plan by which, at year-end 2014, all UK Internet users would be required to formally register—“opt-in”—for access to porn sites on the web. Those who fail would be blocked from viewing such sites. His first step is to have Internet users install special programming filters to block access to such sites. Further, public venues like libraries, offices and cafes and nonregistered (read underage) users will be blocked from accessing porn sites.

“By the end of this year, when someone sets up a new broadband account the settings to install family-friendly filters will be automatically selected,” London’s Daily Mail reported Cameron announcing. “If you just click ‘next’ or ‘enter’, then the filters are automatically on. … Once those filters are installed, it should not be the case that technically literate children can just flick the filters off at the click of a mouse without anyone knowing.” (In the UK, like the U.S., most schools, libraries and businesses employ filters to block porn and other undesired content.)   [Read more…]

Adventures in Comic-Conlandia: A Nerds-eye View Day Three

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By Brent E. Beltrán

The third full day of San Diego Comic-Con International started off the same as the first three, with me walking from my neighborhood of Barrio Logan. It’s only 1.2 miles from my apartment to the Convention Center but after trekking all over Comic-Con for a few days it can feel light years away.

I’m not really one to map out my day at Comic-Con. Usually when I do something comes up (usually long lines) and I stray from the plan. On Saturday, I had three plans: get an autograph of former UFC lightweight champion Quinton “Rampage” Jackson, take tons of photos of cosplayers all dressed up showing off their costumes and walk a bit on 5th Ave. to check out what’s going on outside the Convention Center.

For some strange reason I ended up doing all of that. And I got to hang out a bit with my buddy Tri Huynh, his girlfriend Kelly Smith and her son Ty. Perhaps it was the Universes smiling on me.   [Read more…]

Adventures in Comic-Conlandia: A Nerds-eye View Day Two

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Story and Photos by Brent E. Beltrán

For the second full day of the greatest popular arts convention in the universe my wife Olympia and I had grand plans. We were going to spend the entirety of it in the Convention Center’s infamous Hall H.

Hall H is the largest programming room at Comic-Con. It seats 6000 or so people (not sure how many Wookies it might hold) and has the some of the best and most attended panels. And this Friday’s lineup was spectacular.

The two of us thought that if we got to the convention by 10am we might at some point get inside.

We were wrong.   [Read more…]

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