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More Than a Market: Exploring City Heights’ SuperMercardo Murphy

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SuperMercado Murphy
4580 University Ave.
City Heights, CA

By Judi Curry

One of the best times of my life was from 196­7-1980.  Every summer we would pack up the boat, the cars, and head to Mexico to camp in a very primitive area opposite Estero Beach in Ensenada.  I could regale you with tales of our annual visits, but this review is not about Tony’s Camp. Rather it about the wonderful experience my youngest – Stephanie – and I had today visiting the Super Mercado Murphy.

When we ran out of food at Tony’s, we had to take the boat to the mainland and shop in Ensenada. We usually shopped at “Lemon” and it was always fun.  The items offered were different than the ones in the US, and we would spend many hours just looking around.  Today took us back to those days in Mexico.

The Super Mercado Murphy is a market; an eating establishment; a butcher shop, etc.   [Read more…]

Out to Lunch in City Heights: Awash Ethiopian Restaurant

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AWASH Ethiopian Restaurant
4947 El Cajon Blvd.
San Diego, CA 92115
619) 677-3754

By Judi Curry

For someone that has not had Ethiopian food for many years, I wondered the wisdom of having dinner last night at “The Red Sea” and lunch today at “Awash.” While pondering what to do, I called my friend Joe and asked him if he would like to have lunch with me and he readily agreed. (Of course, we had discussed this already before I ate at the Red Sea.)

The outside of the restaurant is non-nondescript. It almost looks like a store front rather than a restaurant. Upon entering, the image changes dramatically. The first thing that you smell is incense – a pleasant odor, not over-powering. There are two sections to the dining room – one by the window that is very bright; the other in a more secluded area, and consisting primarily of individual booths rather than table.
  [Read more…]

The Red Sea Restaurant Reviewed: Delicious Ethiopian Food in City Heights

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The Red Sea
4717 University Avenue
San Diego, CA
619-285-9722

In keeping with the spotlight theme this month on City Heights, I gathered together a few friends to meet at “The Red Sea” for dinner.  Anna and Rich live in the City Heights neighborhood, and this restaurant was one of her recommendations.  Roshne was born in Ethiopia and just recently came back from a vacation to her country.  Although she was raised in Canada after the age of 5, her mother cooked the traditional Ethiopian food and she was anxious to try it here.  Bette had never had Ethiopian food before, and was game to try it.   [Read more…]

City Heights, Where the Wheels on the Bus Go Round and Round

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Transit Dependent Communities, Social Equity and Environmental Justice

By Anna Daniels

There is no trolley route through City Heights. This deficiency is not for a lack of trying. In the early 1990’s residents were advocating for significant mitigation to the construction of I-15 through the community. The proposed mitigation included the construction of a trolley line in the center of the freeway that would efficiently carry City Heights residents north and south to their jobs and concentrated employment centers.

The short story is that the steep freeway incline/grade made a trolley route infeasible. So while the heavily transit dependent community of City Heights does not have a trolley, it does have buses and will continue to rely upon buses. If you can get past trolley envy, buses become the workable solution to transit needs.

For decades, the highest bus rider ship in the whole Metropolitan Transit System (MTS) has been on the Number 7 bus. This one bus route carries a whopping 3,903,109 passengers annually. To put this in perspective, the Green and Orange trolley lines each record around seven million passengers annually. The Number 7 bus is a plodding workhorse, definitely not a racehorse.
  [Read more…]

CicloSDias San Diego – From Golden Hill to City Heights and Back

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Yesterday, Sunday, August 11th was CicloSDias in San Diego. Three friends and I – all on bikes – joined the celebrated 5.2 miles of open roads and streets just for bicycles and pedestrians, and we rode from Golden Hill, through North Park, over to City Heights – and back.

Weather was perfect, the streets were cleared of cars – except for the four that we counted along the way – and there was an enthusiastic turn-out for the event. Hundreds of San Diegans took part in the 6 hour free bike tour thr0ugh San Diego’s mid-city. Yes, hundreds – not the thousands that we wanted to see – came out. We wanted to see hordes on bikes – but were happy with what we saw and experienced.

Ever so often, there would be a few tents and the canopies of booths open to participants, some giving away gifts, others selling their bicycling-related products and services.
  [Read more…]

Field of View: A Walkabout in City Heights, Part I

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By Annie Lane

After spending a solid three hours wandering the streets of City Heights, I found that it’s possible to do so and still only see a fraction of what the charming, lived-in neighborhood has to offer.

Freeper and longtime City Heights resident Anna Daniels served as my guide, taking me on streets less traveled to see sights like the 47th Street Canyon, where a sign read, among other things, that no guns were allowed. We also visited the nearby Cambodian Buddhist Society of San Diego, its signature orange facade a stark contrast against the blue sky.   [Read more…]

City Heights From the Outside Looking In

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By Dana Driskill, SDFP Intern

Despite living only 60 miles north of San Diego for most of my life, I must admit that I feel like more like a tourist here than in Chicago where I’ve come to call home for the last two years. My name is Dana, and I’m a journalism and political science student at Northwestern University, spending the remaining weeks of my summer as an intern for the San Diego Free Press before I enter my third year of college. Before Chicago, I lived in the Murrieta/Temecula area, a stone’s throw north of the San Diego county line and right next to the Pechanga Indian Reservation.

My previous perception of San Diego is colored by my limited childhood and early adolescence experiences before graduating high school. When I hear San Diego, I think of Coronado’s endless white beaches, of Jason Mraz, of the Gaslamp District, of avocados and mouthwatering Mexican food, of Comic Con, of ill fated Padres games, and of my soccer playing years. What doesn’t come to mind, and what I’ve come to find out through a little exploration and the guidance of Google Maps, is that San Diego, like Chicago, is made up of dozens of communities with their own distinct attitude and history.

Driving along El Cajon Boulevard Tuesday, what I found most striking about City Heights is the absence of chain restaurants and stores. All my life, I’ve lived in areas where a Starbucks or McDonalds is on every street corner. Here, the main streets are lined with mom and pop shops, catering to every food taste and craving imaginable, from impossible to pronounce Vietnamese specialties to more familiar taquerillas and supermercados. The abundance of different cultures present in City Heights can best be exemplified by a Methodist Church that offers services in English, Cambodian, Vietnamese, and Spanish.   [Read more…]

CicloSDias Comes to City Heights Sunday August 11

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Sunday August 11 is a big day for bicyclists and a particularly big day for bicyclists in the Mid-City communities. Four years in the planning, “CicloSDias will be the city of San Diego’s first open street event” according to Sam Ollinger. Sam is the Executive Director and Board President of BikeSD. Sam goes on to say:

With this first event, San Diego will join the ranks of 90 other cities around the U.S. in an attempt to showcase an apparently wary San Diego that no disaster will befall our fine city if she opens her street to people and closes it off to multi-ton motor vehicles for a few hours on a Sunday.

This idea to introduce the city’s residents to the notion of reclaiming the public commons and experiencing it without fear of bodily harm that may come in the form of an automobile barreling toward them at high speed…

  [Read more…]

Welcome to City Heights!

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By Anna Daniels

It is hard to make generalizations about a community with over 75,000 residents. It is even harder to make generalizations about a community in which 41% of the residents are foreign born and those residents were born in over thirty different countries. City Heights must be understood in bits and shape shifting pieces.

To understand City Heights, it must be rolled across the tongue and savored in the local markets and restaurants. It must be heard in the cacophony of buses, street vendors, garbage trucks, music from quinceañeras and children’s voices. It must be felt on an early morning canyon walk.

The San Diego Free Press focus on City Heights will be delivered up over the next month as a fragmented incomplete narrative. Twenty-one percent of the residents here speak no or little English. It is a daunting challenge to provide a way for myriad disparate voices to be heard. In the upcoming weeks we’ll be covering a variety of topics and people.   [Read more…]

Mayor Bob Filner and the Shame that Has No Name

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By Anna Daniels

When Bob Filner was campaigning for mayor last year, he was a visible presence in City Heights. He showed up to support public transit initiatives; he attended the rally calling for George Zimmerman to be charged with murder in the death of Trayvon Martin.

Filner listened to mid-city youth advocating for a skate board park and free bus passes for low income students to get to school and work. He listened to taxi drivers advocating for livable wages and safe working conditions and called for additional library hours. He recognized the importance of streetlights and supported the needs of vets and the homeless.

These are all tangible meaningful issues in City Heights. For the first time in my memory, a mayoral candidate acknowledged not only the importance of our government in addressing these needs, but our government’s ability to do so–right here in City Heights.   [Read more…]

Wear Your Hoodie! Because the Trayvon’s Fight is Not Over

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Editors Note: Christina Griffin delivered this speech at the Stand With Trayvon rally in City Heights on Sunday July 15.  It came on the heels of powerful critiques of the fraught relationship between black residents and the police and reminders how the Drug War is the new Jim Crow.  There were speeches about curfews in City Heights and a call to parents to be prepared to intercede on behalf of their children at school and in the streets.  And then Christina Griffin spoke using the power of  language itself to remind us what is at stake and what we must remember and what we must do.  “You wear a hoodie for me.  I wear a hoodie for you.”   It was the most moving moment of that rally.

Many of us were here last March in 2012. Not even a whole month after the murder, we mourned the death of and lack of justice for a 17-year-old boy named Trayvon Martin.

Our efforts won the charge and trial of his murderer, George Zimmerman.

Last night, we mourned and rested. Today, we are all here because we want justice for Trayvon!

On that night in February, George Zimmerman took the law into his own hands, shot an innocent teenager, went to court and walked away, unscathed.

We Tweeted, Facebooked, Pintinterested, Vined, and blacked out profile pictures, but what will we do?

Mamie Till-Moble, mother of slaughtered Emmett Till once said, “We cannot afford the luxury of self pity. Our priority is to get on with the building process…” In other words we need to act, hoodies up!   [Read more…]

University Avenue: The Best Opportunity to Show What Cycling in San Diego Can Be

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North Park – Mid-City Bicycle Meeting – Tues., June 25 6pm

SANDAG seeks community input for selection of route and infrastructure to make East-West bicycle connections

By John P. Anderson

Tuesday evening SANDAG (San Diego Associations of Governments) will host the 3rd Community Advisory Group Meeting to discuss the North Park – Mid-City (NPMC) Bicycle Corridors Project.  Members of the public are invited to attend and voice their opinion on which routes would be best and which type of infrastructure is preferred (sharrows, bicycle lanes, cycle tracks, etc.).  The meeting will be held from 6:00 PM to 8:30pm at 5450 Lea Street, San Diego, CA 92105 (Teen Challenge Center).   [Read more…]

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