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Opening of the New San Diego Central Library: a Grand and Glorious Occasion

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Saturday, Sept. 28, will go down in San Diego history as the day the much awaited central library opened in San Diego.

The opening ceremonies started at 11 a.m. and lasted for about an hour. All sorts of dignitaries were seated on the platform, and many of them spoke. The event was presided over by Mayor pro tem Todd Gloria. The gay men’s chorus warmed up the crowd as if they needed any warming on such a beautiful sunny San Diego day. The navy band did their John Philip Sousa thing and the children’s choir sang the national anthem.   [Read more…]

Photo Gallery: Sneak Peek of the San Diego Central Library

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By Eva Posner

The San Diego Central Library, “a dream 30 years in the making” according to T-shirts worn by the staff, is a dream on the cusp of being realized as it opens for business Monday, Sept. 30, at 9:30 a.m.

The library, located on the intersection of 11th Avenue and Park Boulevard downtown, opened to the public for a sneak peek on Saturday to much hype.

A street fair surrounded the library with activities for kids, booths from local businesses, nonprofits and groups, as well as performers who sang, danced, and walked the street in costume.   [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…]

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…]

Summer Reads: Joyland, By Stephen King

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Joyland
Stephen King
Paperback, 283 pages
2013, by Hard Case Crime

 

Reviewed by Tom Hunter

“When you’re twenty-one, life is a roadmap. It’s only when you get to be twenty-five or so that you begin to suspect that you’ve been looking at the map upside down, and not until you’re forty are you entirely sure. By the time you’re sixty, take it from me, you’re fucking lost.” 

I read this book three times in a row.  It is so well put together that I spend too many hours trying to grok what made it so appealing.  I even wrote out kind of an outline/analysis of how the hell he pulled it off.   [Read more…]

Maria on the Wings of Time

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By Ernie McCray

Prologue:  I’ve had so many of what one might call moments in my life. Come from behind victories on playing courts and fields. Ovations on stage. Rich surprises. This list goes on and on. And now I find myself in a wonderful moment in time, enjoying a relationship with an incredible woman when, at one time, such a reality seemed unlikely for me. This is a poem I wrote for her 70th birthday party. Hey, I have a 70 year old foxy squeeze! How cool is that?

Feeling my way around
in a new place in life.
Had been to some dark places
had lost a wife,
my soul-mate, my queen,
in a haze, wondering and wandering,
how to move on to other things.
Looking at the world with tears in my eyes.
Breathing out.
Breathing in…   [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…]

Adventures in Comic-Conlandia: A Nerds-eye View

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By Brent E. Beltrán

It all started with Star Wars in 1977. My tia Maggie and her husband took me the year it came out. I was 7 years old at the time. Saw it at the Mission Valley Theater. That was followed of course by Empire and Jedi. I was hooked. Still am.

The Christmas it came out my parents bought me all kinds of Star Wars toys including a Landspeeder, an X-wing and the most badass toy one could hope for at the time, the Death Star. They also got me a bunch of action figures including Luke, Leia, Han, Chewy, Obi-Wan, Darth Vader, R2-D2, C-3PO, a Jawa, a Tusken Raider, Hammerhead, Walrus Man, Greedo, and a Stormtrooper….

…The summer of 1985 was a big year for me. It was the first time I had the opportunity to attend Comic-Con and I was super stoked! My buddy Tri Huynh and I planned to attend. I was in summer school at Clairemont High between my 9th and 10th grades. I was taking an extra class, Geometry, to get ahead. I took the city bus to school and that day I carried a small duffle bag filled with comics to get signed by my favorite writers/artists.

Back then the Con was held at the San Diego Community Concourse near City Hall. It was a much smaller event than today’s corporatized, Hollywierd monster. It was mostly comic book centered.   [Read more…]

The Game (A Rhyme Shared Before the Showing of “The Other Dream Team,” a Basketball Documentary)

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By Ernie McCray

I don’t know where
the Regular Joe is with games
but I have lived to play all the games.
Hey, what can I say,
starting when I was but a babe,
I spent the greatest part of my childhood age
catching something
or knocking somebody down
or vice-versa,
copping a Heisman Trophy pose
and sidestepping some clown
who’s trying to run you down
so he can knock you down…   [Read more…]

Tío Emilio and the Secrets of the Ancestors: Chapter 2 — A Warning

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“Your parents tried to create a protective shield around you to keep you isolated from the trouble going on around you in this neighborhood.”  Tío Marcos

 

By Richard Juarez

Bam!

The door slammed behind me. She almost hit me with it, but I didn’t care. She wanted me out of the house, and I was glad to get out of there. She had been crying all day, just like yesterday and the day before, crying and yelling. It seemed like it went on and on nonstop since two cops and the Coke delivery guy showed up. The three of them gave me a long lecture in front of my parents. The Coke guy said he would not press charges, but the cops said it would be on my record anyway, in case I ever did anything like that again.   [Read more…]

Las Monthly Ondas June Edition: Taco Shop Poets Dream of Sugar Skulls

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Read Tacos. Eat Poetry.

By Brent E. Beltrán

Has it already been twenty years since a band of guerrilla word slingers thought to share poetry with taco shop patrons? Apparently so, as the Taco Shop Poets are back in poetic motion for a gig at The Front in San Ysidro.

Founding Taco Shop Poets member Adolfo Guzman Lopez told me “it’s been 20 years since the idea for taco shop poetry was put in motion. We’re presenting the group’s 2011 book Sugarskull Sueños at the Tijuana book fair and what better place to reflect on our personal journeys as Mexican Americans, Chicanos, Latinos, cuarentones, border vatos, and fathers than a homegrown community space in San Ysidro.”

Originally started as a large, loose knit group of mostly Chicano and Latino raconteurs the Taco Shop Poets almost singlehandedly helped recreate the California spoken word poetry scene. They eventually whittled themselves down into a tight collective of border bards that have toured the nation and beyond. Their influence on the Chicano poetry world can still be felt today even though they’ve been relatively dormant the past few years.   [Read more…]

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