SDSO & Toni Braxton Opened 2010 Summer Pops

There is a couple of hurricane off the western Mexico coast that is sending thick clouds over San Diego this weekend. It makes for a great outdoor weather for sun-sensitive me (I have SLE that loves to flare up when that big ball of helium gets to shine without any cover in the summer months). All the same, I was expecting a warmer weather while walking around the Marina District yesterday afternoon looking for a good photo shot to send to my Aussie friend.

Where do you go in the Marina District of downtown San Diego for a good photo shot? The Top of the Hyatt Lounge on the 40th floor of the Manchester Grand Hyatt's Harbor Tower, of course...


I looked down on the Embarcadero Marina Park - South (there are two of them enclosing the Marriott Marina) and spotted the tent stage and grandstand they had erected for the San Diego Symphony's Summer Pops season and couldn't resist dropping in to see if there was still any cheap ticket left available (the symphony itself rarely sells out, but this weekend they are teaming up with pop's soulful queen Toni Braxton to open the season... that makes for a different ballgame!). To my surprise, the place was only a quarter full and there were plenty of seats available so I grabbed on in the Cabaret section on the lawn in front of the stand...

One new feature for the summer pops this year.... They actually force-check your camera. Not that that prevented photo-taking inside the concert aria since most cellphones these days come equipped with a camera. Most people are good about not taking photo of the performers during the show... They mainly just take photos of themselves (and most didn't use flash, thanks goodness!).

The concert opened with a virtual battle of the brass with two different brass sections (the scaled down SDSO was joining forces with the Civic Youth Orchestra, East County Youth Orchestra, and San Diego State University Young Artists Symphony) flanking the stage with Giovanni Gabrieli's 1597 Canzon septimi toni #2, a rarely heard number that, while quite obviously fun for Matthew Garbutt to conduct, gave plenty of evidence of the reasons for its neglect (the thing even ended on a hanging note without any resolution).

They SDSO' string section then took over the stage for the first movements from Mozart's 1st Symphony (in E flat major) and the famous serenade, Eine kleine Nachtmusik. As much as I love the SDSO, I must confess that their violin section is the most soulless bunch of technical perfectionists of the symphonies I've heard yet... They can make technically demanding pieces sound easy, but for all their virtuoso proficiency I fail to hear any point to the strings of notes they play. It is actually more frustrating than hearing someone trying to muddle through a piece of music that is beyond their ability to technically cope with. It reminds me of a much conjectured line that goes; 'God gave me the talent to sing, and so I sing'. To which I wish a question is added; 'But aren't you interested in the 'Why?' of it? Why did 'god' give you the ability to sing... if not to actually communicate something to those who may hear your sound?'

The sound amplification system was also rather ill-balanced for the orchestra with the brass and double basses getting too much unneeded help while the lighter strings were often nearly drowned out. I guess having to share the playbill with a pop band didn't help the set up.

The most objectionable thing about this night at the symphony, though, was this 50 minutes long intermission that came with an awkward rich-section-only donation auction. While most people in the audience were impressed by the promotional video that both depict the ritual handing off the baton from Jahja Ling to Matthew Garbut via a bunch of enthusiastic-kids-in-relay and the Bridgepoint Education music reach out program to young kids, the pandering-to-the-rich-in-total-oblivious-to-the-rest-of-the-audience donation auction that followed it was especially TASTELESS considering today's sociopolitical climate.
                                                     

   
The majority of the audience was forced to sit and watch as partly tuxedoed CEO's held the stage while asking their chums in the rich 'Champagne' seating section to pledge anywhere from $250 - $5,000 donations via a paddle that no other seating sections had (the good folks in front of me in the Cabaret were seriously considering donating when they realized that they weren't equipped with any auction paddle or other goodies the auctioneer was talking about). I realize that the symphonies and the operas in the USA are mostly subsidized by their wealthier patrons rather than by ticket sales, but all the same... Couldn't this sort of thing have been done in a more private setting before the performance? Why should the general and less well cashed audience have to sit through this money-flaunting business for 50 minutes while waiting to hear the concert they had paid to attend?

The crowd had thinned to about a fifth of total capacity when Toni Braxton - now sporting a very sexy short blond hairdo - and her familiar band arrived on the stage, thankfully, with a more inclusive attitude and a greater ability to inject fun into even a cold and cloudy evening gathering of symphony goers. Her seductively dark and husky voice seems still recovering from a recent illness and I was rather alarmed to almost mistake her voice for that of the late Michael Jackson (a lot of 'Uh!..Uh! with not very audible something in between) and her diction was pretty indecipherable at first. She warmed up after a while, though, and sounded quite good in the not so heavily accompanied selections of old hits (Unbreak My Heart, Man Enough, etc) and new songs from the recently released CD, Pulse.



The lass has a star presence and easy-to-love down-to-earth personality that managed to get the mostly symphony-going crowd swaying and waving and even attempting to sing along (not as loudly as she'd like, I'm afraid. Most of us didn't know the lyrics even to her mega hit 'Unbreak My Heart'.... That's how pathetically unhip we classical music heads are!). Her little black dress was feeling the night chill, however, and kept trying to slip off as she tried to dance. I dare say that most of the men in the audience wouldn't mind it if she had let the thing drop, but it was a rather drafty and cold night so that would have been quite unpleasant, temperature-wise, for the first lady of the show...

By the final number the lackluster opening symphonic act was largely forgotten, overshadowed by the Braxton bomb that could still rock the park even when not firing on all cylinders. Vocally she was far from perfect, but she connected fully even with an unfamiliar crowd and communicated loud and clear that her first tour after a long absence is something to look forward to.

San Diego Bay lighted both naturally and unnaturally

It's the holiday season in San Diego. I was missing the snow and cold of winter until I went to see the 'Parade of Lights' on the bay Sunday night and realize how nice it is here this time of year. Back in the Midwest the Mississippi and the Missouri would be mostly frozen by now!
This is a favorite little hidden corner between the Convention Center and Embarcadero Marina Park - South. A glimpse of lingering autumn?

Anyhow, I got to downtown rather early at the cost of missing the football game. :oP I was rewarded by views like these, though...

Embarcadero Marina Park - South, looking northeast toward the Manchester Grand Hyatt Hotel.

The Fishing Pier jutting into the San Diego Bay at the tip of the park

It doesn't get any more romantic a setting than this, does it?

This was the 38th edition of the Parade of Light and quite a few San Diegans showed up to cheer on the procession of lighted boats of every denomination (there were even some lighted kayaks out there along with the yachts, sail boats, and tall ships!)... after having watched the San Diego Chargers snatched victory from the charging jaws of the Cincinnati Bengals to clinch their NFL division, of course.

In the background is the lighted San Diego-Coronado Bridge.

So... if you hear "Go Chargers!" being roared around in the midst of all the Christmas noels being sung in the clip below, now you know why.


Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to one and all!
Joyeux Noël à tous!
Frohe Weihnachten an Alle!
Buon Natale a tutti!

Cannon battles on San Diego Bay (Sept 2009)

Been busy moving and didn't get around to posting this... from the last weekend of September rather than this first weekend of October. The Maritime Museum had another good smoke cannon shoot out between the Californian (the State's official tall ship) and the visiting Lynx.



I'm afraid both ships were staying up in the Crescent area close to Harbor Island, so I, stuck at the end of Broadway Pier and way too lazy to walk that far up, didn't have very good shots of them. The video parts of the clip were as close as I could get it (this cheap-ish camera can't zoom that far).


The revenue cutter Californian is the taller ship with cleaner (ahem.. or whiter, if you will) sails. The priveteer Lynx is a bit smaller, but no less feisty. They were shooting at anything that moved.... cruise ships and yachts included.

A nocturnal stroll through downtown San Diego

Ever since I made the fateful decision to work night shift at a local nursing home to fund my college education many years ago, my biological clock has never been the same.

So, here is a musical slide-show of what I see when I go out and walk around downtown San Diego this time of year. I'm afraid I use an amateur camera... and kept the flash off (which was quite a pain since I'm not that good at keeping my hands still these days). The photos look brighter than it really is... and the clouds (which is actually what the locals here call 'marine layer') don't look that devilish to the naked eye.



Downtown is pretty heavily patrolled by the local police... And on a week night like this, it is pretty quiet by the time midnight comes around. I took off from home in East Village area and stopped at Albertson's store to pick up some snack before heading west (toward the bay) through the northern part of the Gaslamp Quarter and the Core-Columbia District (along Broadway).

You really don't run into as many homeless folks while walking around town at night... Though I still did manage to run into this wacky dude who seems to find a new camera cellphone in the trash bin every week (I've been running into him walking around town for years now). Broadway west of 4th Avenue is really quite nice at night, though I tend to stay to the south of it (made a brief excursion for the sake of getting a shot of the Civic Theater, home of the San Diego Opera, though).

One thing about walking around the Columbia District (where the tall buildings are) and the Embarcadero (waterfront) at night, though, is that they actually let freight trains thru... And those thing are REALLY long! I had the appropriately bad timing to arrive at Santa Fe Depot as one was passing to the south.... for 15 minutes. I finally got to cross to the Embarcadero side of the track at 11:15PM and was quite surprised to catch 2 planes landing at Lindberg Field (San Diego International Airport) since I thought they have a no-flight between 10PM-6AM policy.

The downtown bank of the San Diego bay doesn't boast any beach, but a long concrete hiking/cycling path called the Embarcadero Promenade. It is lined with artsy modern sculptures... well.. I don't know if I should call them that since they are made of various sorts of materials and some are really pretty flimsy. Most are pretty amusing, though, like that giant octopus you see by Anthony's Fish Grotto in this video. Some are more... serious (?) like that bronze Pele not far from the Maritime Museum (where all those historic tall ships are). During the day it is a busy bay with all sorts of ships (row boats, canoes, fishing boats, water taxi, bay cruisers, sail yacht, cruise ships, navy cutters, etc) roaming about... not to mention the speed boats that patrol North Island Naval Air Station on the opposite bank. During the night, though, it is beautifully still and quiet (I'm sure the Navy speed boats are still doing their patrolling, but they stick pretty close to their shore that you can't really hear them from the downtown side).

Anyhow... if there is anything in this city that can remind me of the sense I get staring out into the grassy plain of eastern Missouri at night it is sitting along the Embarcadero Promenade and gazing over the dark water of the San Diego Bay. After a while you can even see the water birds flying about noiselessly and you wonder why time ever matters at all.

A lazy June walk through downtown

I like June in San Diego, California. It's comfortably cool. It's cloudy. The tourists aren't here yet and the flowers and trees are still glowing in their not-that-dusty-yet new leaves and flowers. From this, you would rightfully conclude that I'm not a native Californian. Frankly, I find it endlessly irritating how the weathermen here keep talking wistfully about the prospect of a sunny heatwave at the end of the week... You know, the same sort of thoughts that occur to fishermen in the Grand Banks when they hear on the radio the voice of the forecaster gleefully reporting that the malevolent hurricane has now veered 'safely' off to sea...

Anyhow. I got to go out a bit in the comfortably hazy weather earlier in the week and took a few video and photo shots with my little Kodak camera... and putting them together into the video below. The quality is a bit iffy (after all I took it with a photo camera and not a camcorder), but it should give you an idea of what it's like to walk around Downtown San Diego in June.

We start at the little park on the bayfront between the famously sail-roofed San Diego Convention Center and the Hilton Hotel. My favorite haunt, actually... It's nicely quiet there most of the time even when there is a big convention going on or a fair at the Embarcadero Marina Parks or Seaport Village nearby. I won't be visiting there much once the cloud cover leaves town in summer... No shade anywhere for a smorg to hide in!

From the top of the Convention Center you can see quite a lot of the bay and Coronado 'not an' Island on the opposite shore. Just north of the Convention Center is the curved reflective towers of the Marriott Hotel and its marina, flanked by the Embarcadero Marina Parks (north and south). The blue bridge is, of course, the San Diego-Coronado Bridge... 2 miles long and 200 ft tall at its dogleg bend (to allow battleships to pass under). Coming down the north side of the Convention Center gives you a great view of the Historic Gaslamp Quarter (and a bit of Petco Park baseball stadium, home of the San Diego Padres). This is the part of town where hip young folks come to party and keep the brewery industry in business. They aren't very good at keeping all the brew in for more than a few hours, though. You really have to keep an eye on the sidewalk when you walk around here in the morning hours to keep from stepping in stains of various degrees of yuckiness (made by man and his best friends ).

The Gaslamp Quarter is where the trendy restaurants and boutique shops are (not as chic as what you'd see in La Jolla or on Coronado, but also not quite as expensive). Anchoring the northwest corner of the area is psychedelic Horton Plaza... the colorful mess of a building where you wouldn't want to be lost in just when you have a real need to use the restroom. Taking the elevator to the top floor (Level 5) and you can have a good rooftop look of the surrounding downtown, too. The angular tall buildings of the Columbia Districts to the north really aren't that tall... The Phillips screwdriver top one is One America Plaza, the tallest building in downtown at 500 ft (which is right at the building limit since Lindberg Field, San Diego's international airport, is really close by).

The last few seconds of the clip takes you southeast of downtown proper to the border of Logan and Sherman Height neighborhoods where you'll find historic Villa Montezuma (Est. 1887) at the southwest corner of 20th Avenue and K Street. It's one of the few historic buildings in the area that the San Diego Historical Society is still taking care of (the lack of funding had caused them to drop Marston House north of Balboa Park a while ago ). It costs $5 to get in for adults and $4 for seniors...I didn't go in there (the shots were taken on Sunday afternoon when the place was closed). It is looking rather worn - with cracks on the stained glass windows and the terracotta exterior is chipped and look ready to fall out. And man, does that yard need some work or what? It is still a magnificent looking Queen Anne house, though, and well worth the entry fee to visit when you are in downtown area. It isn't too long a walk from the Trolley line. You can actually see Petco Park from there, just across I-5.

I'd love to move back to the more leisurely Midwest one day, but man... I'll really miss those windsurfing seagulls... and a few other things.

The first full week of May 2009

I spent a lot of time on various buses last week riding around town collecting photos and info on various tourist attractions. We San Diegans really have the best MTS bus drivers around! They all know the area and the various bus routes so well that they can unfailingly point me to the right connections to get to where I want to go the fastest. And no matter how bad the traffic gets or how crowded the bus is, they are exceedingly courteous and patient... even when a few riders aren't returning the favor.

One bus driver who was running route 30 from University Town Centre to Downtown via La Jolla and Mission Bay last week not only told me what the nearest stop to Children's Pool (I wanted to see the seals) would be, but also took the time to tell me exactly how to get there after I stepped off his bus. Another lovely lady driver leaned out of her bus one morning to ask me where I was trying to get to when she spotted me looking perplexedly at the routes map posted at a bus stop in downtown. It is really cool to see folks who take pride in what they do and do their job really well!


Aside from hanging around the famous Children's Pool (where the seals are), I also got to see a lot of the gorgeously eroded La Jolla Cove, walked along much of the San Diego - La Jolla Underwater Park and even found the famous Sunny Jim cave (albeit from the sea... I hitched a ride with a local boat, thanks very much. Those 144 steps don't look all that friendly to three-legged me). There are 7 sea caves in the area and this is the only one that is accessible from land (though, apparently there is a $4 fee for using the steps from the Cave Store). If you want to see more photos from these trips, I put them together into 3 slide show clips at Youtube:
- Torrey Pines State Reserve
- San Diego-La Jolla Underwater Park walk
- Torrey Pines Gliderport



Saturday night saw a different sort of adventure, though. My old golfing buddy, Clark Renner (who now teaches at Rancho Carlsbad Country Club), agreed to go with me to the opening night of Puccini's Madama Butterfly at the San Diego Civic Theater in downtown. A spectacular performance featuring perhaps the first pick for the title role on anyone's wish list, Patricia Racette as Cio-Cio-San (Mme Butterfly).

She didn't look much like a 15 yrs old Japanese ingenue, but the way she inhabited the role had us all sold on the concept from start to finish. And, man, it is so good to get to hear such a powerful and dramatically adept voice still in such a good shape after so many years in this demanding repertoire. None of that overly wide or prominent vibrato that is a given in a Verdi or Puccini (or Wagner) soprano nowadays. When the curtain came down the audience erupted into a roaring cheer that was loud enough to wake the dead.

On another note, I thought it was pretty darn obnoxious how loudly the audience booed Carlo Ventris' Pinkerton when he came out for his bow. I think it was in jest (as in 'booing the cad Pinkerton' rather than booing the performance of him), but still... That isn't how it is done at opera houses. I hope someone at the SDO explained to Ventris that the boo was to be taken as a cheer and not as a disapproval (as it would be interpreted elsewhere in the sane world). :oP Honestly... San Diego opera audience is really a certifiably strange crowd!

Anyhow... I'm willing to bet that most are scrambling to try to get a ticket to see another performance now. This show really deserve to sell out its remaining performances of the run (May 12, 15, 17, 20). Ya' gotta give it to the San Diego Opera for continuing to put on high quality performances even in this tough an economy!

A look around the Maritime Museum of San Diego

Being decidedly not affluent at the moment, I wouldn't spend $17 on a non-essential... unless it is for a great and rare opera that I couldn't hope to ever catch live again in many many years or for a once a year tour aboard the impressive historic ships of the Maritime Museum in downtown San Diego.



The star attraction here is, of course, the Star of India... today's oldest ship still in active service. Above is a short-ish slide show of still photos of most of the ships (the Californian was, sadly, off limit when I dropped in). The music in the background is Sails by Chet Atkins.

You can actually get into the museum to see all these ships for $15, but adding $3 would also enable you to go on a cruise around the middle part of the San Diego bay on the little Pilot. A good deal!

A sail around San Diego Bay

Having sold an article that pays a bit more than usual, I decided to celebrate by buying a $17 Discovery Package ticket to the Maritime Museum that includes a short (45 minutes long) cruise along the middle part of the San Diego bay on the Pilot, the original 1914 boat that served as the harbor pilot that guide ships safely in and out of the bay and is now a part of this floating museum of historic ships... aside from getting to see all the historic ships and museum exhibits.

I haven't got a video camera, and so this is a slide show of many still photos instead. We had a guide along with us who pointed out various notable features along the waterfront and told us many amusing stories about them. It was a good tour even though the sky was rather hazy and cloudier than usual. We didn't run into any navy ship (aside from the speeding security patrol boats), but did catch the America, another historic replica that usually moors at the Marriott Hotel Marina, as she took off for a whale watching trip.

The music in the background is Arthur Rubinstein playing 'adagio' from Tchaikovsky's 1st piano concerto (in B-flat minor).

Birdihood by the Bay

The sea-loving pigeons of San Diego Bay having an infectiously romantic moment...



Photos taken on the Embarcadero close to San Diego Maritime Museum. Music is 'Nocturne' from the film, La Califfa (music by Ennio Morricone).

Beach bum: Ocean Beach & Dog Beach

Last weekend yours truly went roaming around the western part of Pt. Loma, the peninsula that forms the northwestern boundary of the San Diego Bay. The area is known as Ocean Beach (for obvious reason, it borders the Pacific Ocean). I hopped off bus 35 at Voltaire and turned up on the San Diego River flood channel. As you can see... in this part of the continent a 'river' isn't necessarily filled with water much of the time.
It does make for a nice dune-ish landscape, though, doesn't it. You can almost see the entrance to Mission Bay, the manmade body of water where Sea World is located on.The little beach where the San Diego River should have flown into the ocean is one of the few beaches in the area where dogs can roam freely (the underwater terrain makes for some nasty rip tides and stuff that makes it unsafe for swimming anyway).
At anyrate, the ocean beach proper to the left/south of the life guard tower is good for swimming, sunning, volleyballing, and even surfing.And in the evening hours, it is also a good place to relax while watching the sun dive into the ocean.
A dunking star is always worth a re-take, ay?

Earworms: Pace, pace....

Drunken thougths happen when you sit by the seaside too long

I looked enviously at the sea gull floating lazily in the bay...
who cares if he can't do calculus or run an NMR or write an opera review?
He can surf the onshore wind as well as he can surf the choppy sea waves...
and when he just waddles around on dry land, he's got a pair of skinny legs!

O... did I mention that he sings, too? ... A sea gull... That's what I'd want to be when I grow up.

By the way, what is it about the sea that makes it so easy to sit on its shore and be peacefully lost in the moment even when there are screechy sea gulls and other (a little less screechy) people around? It is a strange visitation... Sometimes I feel like an amoeba trying to get a time-warping glimpse back at the primordial soup where my ancestors emerged from....

Early morning by the San Diego Bay

Who needs security guards when we have watchful sea gulls looking over the marina?
This is downtown's Embarcadero Marina Park - North...

don't know what the tree is (I'm not a native Californian),

but I sure love looking at it!
** 10 May 2009: I finally found out what sort of tree this is. It's Erythrina caffra (coral tree).

A bunch of navy boats were out making waves. The yellow and orange boat to the right is our harbor pilot... He guides visiting ships in and out of the bay.

Bay bums

I don't know why but I love watching these diving birds as much as they like to hang around the Embarcadero looking at the sunset. They don't sing songs like the St. Louis birds do, but they can screech and spit as well as any baseball player I've heard!

A visitation from Nina: More historic sail ship in San Diego

There is another truly historic ship in town this month here in San Diego. The Nina, built by the Columbus Foundation in 1990, is now in port at Kona Kai Marina on Shelter Island for 13 days (she's leaving on Feb 16th).This is supposedly the most historically accurate replica of Christopher Columbus' Nina (of the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria fame). The original ship made the complete round trip with him from Genoa to the New World (actually they landed on Hispaniola in the Caribbean) and back. Then on Columbus' 2nd trip, he made her his flag ship. Reportedly they were so dedicated on getting this replica right they actually used the original 15th century building method.... all done by hand! That makes this Nina a truly fascinating floating museum! She's open to the public from tomorrow until February 15th from 9AM - 5PM (fee is $5 per adult, $4 per senior, $3 per student, free for kids 4 yrs old and under).

Cannon Battles on San Diego Bay 2009

Well, today (Sunday January 25th) was both cloudy and windy. The sea was over-enthusiastic for a good send off for the last Cannon Battles on San Diego Bay show of the year (courtesy of the Maritime Museum), I suppose. I hung around at the tip of Broadway Pier on the Embarcadero in Downtown for a while until the wind got inside my sweater and shirt. Four tall ships were anticipating this weekend; the HMS Surprise (a replica of an 18th Century Royal Navy frigate), the revenue cutter Californian (the state's official tall ship), the privateer Lynx, and the schooner Amazing Grace. The last three were carrying paid passengers... Yours truly wasn't one of them since I haven't got $35 to spare at the moment. Anyhow, I got a few good photos off it and put them together into a slide show....



Just as the clock ticked to 1PM start time, they were off in hot pursue of the HMS Surprise, who made a beeline South, scattering the many yachts, sail boats, harbor cruisers, and various waterfowls in the area. The tiny but adorably feisty Amazing Grace tailed her everywhere as the bigger revenue Californian and Lynx took a while to get into their rhythm. Once warmed up, though, the Californian proved delightfully tricker happy and shot at just about every tall ship in sight. The bangs reverberated through skyscrapers-filled Downtown until 4PM closing time. I wish we wouldn't have to wait a whole year for the next round... That was fun!