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Excavating Golden Hill: The Golden Hill Fountain Grotto

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By Jim Miller

For my last Golden Hill piece, I turned to the wisdom of my 9 year-old son Walter, who, in answer to my query about what he liked best about his neighborhood said, “It’s old and grungy, not fake like the suburbs.”  And of all his favorite places in the neighborhood, he chose the Golden Hill Fountain Grotto because, “It’s a ruin.  You can tell it used to be all fancy and now it’s falling apart with graffiti and stuff.  It’s like something they’d find if we became an extinct species.”

Walt also likes the surrounding Golden Hill Gateway Park because, “it’s where the wilderness meets the city.  There are animals that live there and secret paths and canyons that make you forget where you are.”  So off we went to investigate.   [Read more…]

Desde la Logan: Artist Mario Acevedo Reflects on Golden Hill

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By Brent E. Beltrán

Mario “Torero” Acevedo is one of those crazy cats that you look at and instantly think this guy is an artist. He rocks the cool shades with a stylin’ hat, neatly trimmed white beard and occasional outlandish, paint splattered threads.

But he’s more than just a crazy artist. He’s San Diego history. He is Chicano history even though he’s from Peru. And since he came to San Diego in 1960 he’s been an integral part of Golden Hill’s history.

Torero has a long history of being an artivist in San Diego. From the founding of Chicano Park and the Centro Cultural de la Raza to the Community Arts Center and Sol Arts Gallery to Reincarnation, the Art Station and more. He was instrumental in leading the effort to change the name of Crosby St. in Logan to Cesar Chavez Parkway. His artwork can be seen all over San Diego.   [Read more…]

Eating 25th Street in Golden Hill – Part III: Dinner

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By Emma Goldman

My eyes adjusted to the darkness of the dimly lit bar from the bright early evening sunshine outside as my husband and I crossed the foyer of the Turf Supper Club. Immediately, my stomach started growling as the aroma of charring steak wafted out from the inner room that holds a large grill table capped by a giant copper hood.

We shinnied up to the bar that dominates the right side of the front room and each ordered a Ballast Point Sculpin IPA, contemplating our dining options along with the eclectic displays of horse racing pictures, Dia de los Muertos skeletons, Christmas lights, and gleaming, jewel-like bottles of liquor.

A longtime denizen of Golden Hill’s 25th Street corridor, the Turf Club (as we’ve always called it) skirts the line between dive and trendy.   [Read more…]

Enterprise Zone Reform, Ban on Plastic Bags Getting a Chance in Sacramento

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By Doug Porter

The political will to reform California’s state enterprise zone (EZ) program has finally reached critical mass in the wake of the disclosures via a Public Records Act request documenting tens of thousands of dollars in tax credits going to Sacramento-area strip club owners.

A televised report by KCRA news, complete with footage shot inside an area strip club, has provided reform supporters with a boost. The State of California is losing out on $750 million in revenues annually due to EZ program….

Get ready for another PR assault on sanity, brought to Californians by a group calling itself the American Progressive Bag Alliance (APBA).

It seems as though the APBA and their allies haven’t been able to spread enough money around Sacramento to stop a Senate vote this week on Senate Bill 405, which would phase out plastic shopping bags. Two other bills with much the same purpose died in committee.

INSIDE: The Race to Replace Everybody’s Favorite Congressional Wacko   [Read more…]

Excavating Golden Hill: Between “South Park” and “the Other Side of the Freeway”

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By Jim Miller

The southern border of Golden Hill is clearly marked by the 94 Freeway that sets it off from what much of the city still refers to as “Southeast San Diego.”

Despite City Council Member George Stevens’s successful effort in 1992 to ban the use of that moniker in any official city business, it lives on in the cultural imagination of San Diego and, for many white suburbanites, stands in for “the bad part of town,” teeming with gangs, crime, and urban squalor.

Indeed, despite years of dropping crime rates and gentrification, the image of the southern part of Greater Golden Hill as a kind of liminal zone between “South Park” and the ‘hood persists in some quarters of San Diego’s culture of fear.

As someone who spent a lot of time visiting friends in the neighborhood back in the day, well before this current wave of gentrification began, I find this to be an amusing but sad phenomenon, as even when Golden Hill was grittier than it is now, it was never rough compared to other big American cities like Los Angeles or Oakland. What distinguishes Golden Hill from other parts of San Diego then is not crime, but race and class, as it is still browner and more working class than downtown, Bankers Hill, or “South Park.”   [Read more…]

Where Will Taxi Drivers, Hotel Maids, Grocery Clerks, School Aides and Retired People Live? A City Heights–Golden Hill Conversation

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The San Diego Free Press neighborhood focus during the month of May has been on Golden Hill, one of San Diego’s oldest communities. One of the most visible elements of Golden Hill is the elegant old mansions that comprise the historic district.

These mansions are a tangible reminder of individual wealth and power amassed in years past. Today, many of those mansions are still owner occupied, while some have been divided into rental units; others are now attorney offices or operated as half-way houses. These disparate uses reflect a more nuanced story about wealth, power and changing demographics in Golden Hill today.

I spent a few hours walking around Golden Hill, not along the historic or commercial district, but along one particular side street off of 25th Street that has been beckoning to me. I set off down a steep hill and explored streets that dead ended at the 94 Freeway or on the other end, at a flight of steps up to Broadway.   [Read more…]

San Diego’s Left Found a Haven in Golden Hill During the 1970s

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By Jim Miller

In the first part of my interview with Peter Zschiesche, he discussed Golden Hill past and present and described what he calls “the Golden Hill vibe.”   Much of that feeling came out the politics and culture of the late sixties and early seventies.  In this second and final installment of our interview, Peter talks about that time period and outlines some of the key places and players that made Golden Hill a vital, progressive community.   [Read more…]

Welcome to Golden Park Heights: “A Journey of 1000 Miles Begins with a Single Step”

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By Kelly Mayhew and Jim Miller

For those who know progressive politics in San Diego, Carlos and Linda LeGerrette are local legends. Starting with their roles in founding MEChA at Mesa College in the sixties and flowing through their deep involvement with Cesar Chavez and the farmworkers movement to their local community activism and fine work with the Cesar Chavez Service Clubs in our schools, the Legrettes’ great hearts and regard for their neighbors is boundless.

No one has done more for their community than Carlos and Linda LeGerrette, and they are greatly loved and respected by all those who they have touched over the years. It was our absolute pleasure to interview them on their lives, work, and deep roots in a place they jokingly call “Golden Park Heights.”   [Read more…]

Eating 25th Street in Golden Hill Part II: Lunch

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By Emma Goldman

After making your way back from Tobey’s 19th Hole Café, which I mentioned in last week’s column, it’s time to turn your feet—and your stomach—to lunch. The 25th Street corridor from Gateway Park to the bridge over 94 in Golden Hill has probably more places for lunch than for any other meal since it serves the offices of many lawyers, architects, small businesses, nonprofits, and the like as well as neighborhood denizens and students and staff at City College just down C Street. Thus, a plethora of tastes await you as you meander down the street.

If you’re in the mood for sandwiches, salads, baked goods, and an array of drinks such as coffees, teas, smoothies, homemade lemon and limeades, beer, and wine, then stop in at Krakatoa on the west side of 25th between B and C. Just a block from the park, and nestled in an old, olive green Craftsman cottage under a giant magnolia tree, Krakatoa beckons you to come relax awhile either outside on their wraparound wooden patio or inside their funky dining space.

As you walk up the front steps, pooches greet you from under their owners’ tables and students hunker over their laptops, tapping out term papers at the seating areas ringing the deck. The lines at lunch can be long, but it’s worth the wait.   [Read more…]

Field of View: A Journey Through the Golden Hill Historic District

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Written by Jim Miller; Photos by Annie Lane

To walk in Golden Hill is to wander through a patchwork quilt of history and wonder.  As a renter in a community full of grand old houses that I’ll never be able to afford to buy, I frequently think of Thoreau’s ruminations on ownership in Walden: “As long as it is possible, live free and uncommitted.  It makes little difference whether you are committed to a farm or the county jail.”

Indeed, the grand old houses of Golden Hill may now be well beyond the reach of most folks in the neighborhood to ever buy, but, if they have eyes to see, they can, as Thoreau says of the poet who truly sees the landscape, own the whole neighborhood.  And I think of that as I watch the working class families out for walks with their kids, apartment dwellers strolling with their dogs, halfway house residents stretching their legs, or even my homeless neighbors lounging on the steps by the manicured lawn and lush garden of some lawyer’s office.   [Read more…]

Excavating Golden Hill: The Japanese American Christian Church

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By Jim Miller

It’s easy to miss, tucked away at the elbow of 19th and E streets just above Interstate 5: the Japanese American Christian Church in Golden Hill. You’d most likely drive past this humble place of worship on the way up Broadway without noticing it, but if you happened to be on a stroll down E Street looking at the nice old houses, you’d stumble upon it after the bigger homes give way to a series of California bungalows. It’s there before E turns right into 19th. Across the street from the church, a chain-link fence lines the sidewalk above the 5 where the homeless set up camp on a regular basis before they are swept out and relocated only to return again when the police shift their attention elsewhere.

Historically, the church itself is a product of a relocation of a different sort. As my City College colleague, historian Susan Hasegawa informed me, it was originally founded as the Japanese Holiness Church by Christian Nikkei (immigrants and their descendents) in 1930 and located on Newton Avenue. Sponsored by the Oriental Mission Society, the church focused its efforts on outreach to Issei (first generation immigrant) farmers.   [Read more…]

Gravity’s Rainbow: From the Mariana Islands to Brooklyn Heights/Golden Hill/South Park

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By Jay Powell

“An unarmed Minuteman-3 intercontinental ballistic missile was test-launched (on April 7, 2006) from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The missile’s single, unarmed re-entry vehicle traveled approximately 8,200 km (5,100 miles), striking a pre-determined water target near Guam in the Northern Mariana Islands. The launch was part of a developmental test to demonstrate the weapon’s effectiveness at an extended range. The Minuteman-3 missile originated from the 564th Missile Squadron at Malmstrom Air Force Base, Montana.” (from various news releases including “The Mercenary Missileer’s Missile News”).

It is a little under 5,000 miles to the Marianas (just above the equator between Longitudes 145-165 E to Brooklyn Heights, San Diego (Lat 32.724, Long – 117.129 W). But more about that later. Now, about this “Do I live in Golden Hill or South Park?” controversy. As the old Americana saying goes: “you can call me Jay or you can call me Ray, just don’t call me late for dinner. “ For a variety of political and geographic and geologic reasons, place names evolve. Sometimes it is very much a matter of branding for real estate purposes.

This name of place issue kind of parallels the name of the community of City Heights which was taken in 1981 by the Community Development Corporation founders led by Jim Bliesner from the name of the largest subdivision in what had been the “Golden Rule” city of East San Diego. Later there were some residents of the City Heights neighborhood of Cherokee Point who thought they ought to be a part of North Park because they had a 92104 zip code. But it was still in the officially adopted community plan area of City Heights. Regardless of what the real estate salesperson or the post office, or the subdivision map or the City says, the people who live in their neighborhood get to call it whatever they want.   [Read more…]

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