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AZTLECA, PRESENTE! Spiritual Farewell or Welcome with El Día de Los Muertos Just Around the Corner?

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by Remigia (Remy) Bermúdez

A solemn, indigenous Toltec commemoration of life will be celebrated at 5am at Chicano Park on Saturday, October 27, 2012, for Léon Magallán, widely known as “AZTLECA.” Historic Chicano Park is located in the Barrio Logan community, south of downtown San Diego, under the San Diego-Coronado Bridge, honored with so many colorful murals and surrounded by spiritual light and enchantment. (http://chicano-park.com)

AZTLECA passed away on September 19, 2012. A man of humble means who no matter what was going on in his life or how hard a hand destiny handed him, he was an active staple honoring the Spring Equinox and El Día de Los Muertos at Chicano Park for over 40 years. . Tommie Camarillo of the Chicano Park Steering Committee shared that AZTLECA deserves credit and honor. “He was very humble and yet in all the years, he ceremoniously honored and celebrated the Spring Equinox and El Día de los Muertos at Chicano Park. I highly respect him for that!” stated Camarillo.   [Read more…]

Art Seen: Painter Ernest Silva Wants Your Attention

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By Karen Kenyon

The deer in the painting wants help — or is he saying, “are you there? Do you see me?” He’s deep in aqua water, his orange-red antlers like firelight, the house in the background seems no refuge, the slim trees are bare. He looks straight at the viewer.

I recently viewed this painting (Deer, Falls, House) and others by Ernest Silva at Double Break Gallery on 5th Avenue in San Diego. Owners Louis Schmidt and Matt Coors opened their gallery 1 1/2 years ago, and are thrilled to now feature Silva, an artist they have long admired, and who is also their former professor at UCSD (both were in the MFA program in Visual Arts at UCSD).   [Read more…]

San Diego For Free: Balboa Park Trails – Beauty and Exercise in the Heart of San Diego

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A weekly column dedicated to sharing the best sights and activities in San Diego at the best price – free! We have a great city and you don’t need to break the bank to experience it.

Website: See here.
Neighborhood: Balboa Park
Best For: Runners, walkers, hikers, bicyclists, nature lovers
Hours: All day, every day, always free

In, through, and around Balboa Park are a multitude of trails and pathways for biking, running, and walking. The trails offer a wide range of sights and levels of difficulty and are a great way to feel out of the city without having to travel.

There are officially 65 miles of trails in the park, which are outlined in this detailed pdf map. If you haven’t been on the Balboa Park trails before I recommend taking a look at the map before you head out since some of the trails and turns are not clearly marked. You probably won’t get lost if you don’t have your entire route memorized but you may end up going further than you intended.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – Voting Rights; Don’t Take Them for Granted

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In case you haven’t noticed, San Diego Free Press has a terrific story up here about local efforts at “Poll Watching” underway via the Election Integrity Project and True The Vote, organizations with connections to the Tea Party movement. Our citizen journalists have been ‘watching the watchers’ over the past few months.

It’s pretty obvious from reading their materials that the underlying idea behind these ‘watchers’ is voter intimidation of certain classes of people that they have deemed to be suspicious. In practice—despite claims to the contrary—this has generally meant people of color, students, and other groups whose voting history runs counter to the conservative cause.

Despite promises from True The Vote founder Catherine Engelbrecht earlier this year to recruit and train a million volunteers to watch the polls, the group has fallen far short of that goal. For example, Election Integrity Maryland has only about 200 recruits. Nevada Clean Up the Vote has about 700. And our SDFP observers also report a sharp decline in volunteer participation in local efforts More Inside…

Also: LA Mass Transit Exploring San Diego Link, Encinitas’ Parents Still Threatening Legal Action Over Yoga Classes

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Pacific Beach or “Pee Beach”: Common Sense – You drink a lot, you pee a lot.

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By Sub-Committee

Thank God for the recent rains (and I mean that, God) because Garnet Avenue in Pacific Beach after 6 rainless months smelled like a dirty toilet. After the heavenly cleaning, the sidewalks are much brighter and even the scraped off vomit stains are slightly improved, and most of all it cut down on the underlying stench. It is not God’s fault that all the filth washed right down the storm drains 5,4,3,2,1 blocks to dump right on the beautiful sandy beaches of Pacific Beach, it is our fault.

Y’all understand that you shouldn’t really go swimming in the ocean after a rain because of unsanitary microbes, right? I would go so far as to say, don’t be touching the sand in the drain pipe areas either if you know what’s good for you and your children.

Welcome to Pacific Beach, or Pee Beach as we have begun calling it around here.   [Read more…]

Video Picks of the Week: Mitt gets a little sazón, conservatives stand athwart history yelling “Stop” and the privileged class turns peevish

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The United States is steadily shifting from a predominantly white country to one in which nonwhites will soon be a majority. In addition, a recent Pew report on religion in the U.S. reveals that a third of adults under the age of 30 are religiously unaffiliated today. This poses a challenge to the Republican party in which close to 87 % of registered voters are white.

The conservative response? Whinge. And lots of prayer…   [Read more…]

A Timeless Red Man Speaks

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Looking through words about California history, my mind wanders momentarily, and a tall timeless man with reddish brown skin and long braids ala Russell Means, appears in the periphery of my daydreams. He says:
They, these conquering men, stepped from their boats
wearing more clothes than was necessary,
shiny metal hats and vests,
heavy leather foot wear,
bearing swords and knives,
boasting of braveries
and discoveries
and some day living in the memories
of civilizations yet to be
and when they gazed our way
they never looked us in the eye
with any deep sense
of wonder
or human curiosity.   [Read more…]

San Diego Citizens Call on City to Enforce the 1985 Managed Growth Initiative

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Members of San Diegans for Managed Growth (SDMG), the original sponsor of the 1985 Managed Growth Initiative, will be joined tomorrow (Monday, October 22 at 12:30 p.m. at the City Hall Community Concourse Plaza, 202 C Street), by representatives of the League of Women Voters (LWV), Protect San Dieguito River Valley (PSDRV) and other organizations in calling on the Mayor, City Attorney and the City Council to enforce the initiative’s requirement for voter approval of urban development in certain agriculturally zoned open space areas of the City referred to as “Proposition A Lands” in the City General Plan.

At a news conference to be held in the Community Concourse near City Hall, speakers will outline the purpose and intent of the initiative, the threat posed by a proposed development which seeks to circumvent the voter approval requirement and the importance of following the policies and procedures put in place to provide certainty and confidence that the precepts of managed growth will be followed and that citizen’s initiatives will be respected.   [Read more…]

Are Parks Like SeaWorld Harming or Helping Killer Whales?

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Alternet / By Jill Richardson / Oct. 3, 2012

This article was published in collaboration with GlobalPossibilities.org.

To a child, SeaWorld can be a magical place. To many adults, it’s boring. To a killer whale — or orca — it might be hell. Nowadays, the show going on in Shamu Stadium is called Believe. Attractive trainers in blue wetsuits dance on stage, direct the orcas to do various stunts, and toss the whales treats of fish – but the trainers no longer do the “hot dog” stunts of flying out of the water and through the air on the rostrum of the ocean’s top predator. (The rostrum is the part of the whale you might imagine would be its nose.) People who saw these impressive stunts at SeaWorld on previous trips might anticipate them and then remember the reason the trainers are out of the water: a SeaWorld orca killed a trainer in February 2010.

When a male orca named Tilikum dragged Dawn Brancheau, one of SeaWorld’s most senior trainers, into his tank on Feb. 24, 2010, she became his third human victim.   [Read more…]

Being Poor Is Knowing Exactly How Much Everything Costs

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Editor’s note: Neither the presidential nor vice-presidential debates have addressed policies to help the growing poor underclass as more middle class people continue to slip into an impoverished state. Republicans continue to paint the poor as morally deficient–undisciplined, lazy and dependent upon big government. KPBS in San Diego is running a series about the poor among us. Tess Vigland interviews three families living in poverty in City Heights. Being poor is not easy.

Reprinted with the permission of at whatever.scalzi.com.

Being poor is getting angry at your kids for asking for all the crap they see on TV.

Being poor is having to keep buying $800 cars because they’re what you can afford, and then having the cars break down on you, because there’s not an $800 car in America that’s worth a damn.   [Read more…]

Sex In San Diego: If This Isn’t Porn What Is It?

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By A feleségül

Many times over the past several years, I have read about people responding to ads on craigslist.com only to find themselves in positions that have caused death, robbery, rape, etc. I decided to do a little research and find out what I could regarding this horrific statistic.

When I went to the craigslist.com site, there were so many individual listings – nine headings with more than 100 sub listings – that I decided to focus in on only one – Personals. There were nine sub-titles under this listing, and I will not discuss all of them, but for interest purposes the subheadings are Strictly Platonic, Women Seek Women, Women Wanting Men, Men Wanting Women, Men Wanting Men, Misc. Romance, Casual Encounters, Missed Connections and Rants and Raves.   [Read more…]

San Diego For Free: Amazing Campus Art at The Stuart Collection at UCSD

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A weekly column dedicated to sharing the best sights and activities in San Diego at the best price – free! We have a great city and you don’t need to break the bank to experience it.

The Stuart Collection at UCSD

Website: http://stuartcollection.ucsd.edu/
Neighborhood & Address: La Jolla; 9500 Gilman Drive, San Diego, CA 92093
Best For: All ages, modern art fans
Hours: All day, every day, always free

The University of California, San Diego (UCSD) sits on 1,200 acres above the Pacific Ocean about 10 miles north of downtown San Diego in the neighborhood of La Jolla. UCSD is the highest ranked university in San Diego, ranked #38 among national universities in the most recent U.S. News & World Report rankings.

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