Just a day on the town...

This little video clip was shot a few weeks back when I went up to the city again to pet-sit for a friend over a Saturday and went on a little trolley ride to downtown San Diego to catch up with a couple of long lost friends.



The first part of the clip was at my old favorite hang out, Filter Coffee House at the corner of 30th & Polk in North Park. It is a laid back place with good coffee and pastries and free WiFi where the neighborhood gays (in more ways than one) hang out. It is a real neighborhood coffee shop rather than a franchise like Starbucks'. No other cafe in town is quite like Filter... Heck, even the chairs and the corners in this place aren't alike. Every bit of the place has its own personality... And you even get your coffee or tea in a real mug instead of standardized plastic thingy you get at franchise places that can't wait to get you out of the place as soon as you have paid for your drinks!

I'm afraid the cheesy deep dish pizza isn't available at Filter, though. We (my friends and I) had moved on to Wolffy's Place in downtown then. The food is pretty good but a bit overpriced... which is quite typical of downtown eateries. The place specializes in Chicago dishes... And what is more Chicago than a deep dish pizza???

After some roaming around riding the trolley up to Fashion Valley and back, we passed through Lindberg Field (San Diego International Airport) just as a plane was taking off from SAN's single runway. We hopped off at the next station in Little Italy and ran right into the Sicilian Festival!

Little Italy is really a cool neighborhood of downtown San Diego with its colorful and individualistic buildings and shops... and pedestrian-friendly sidewalks with sitting piazzas. The other neighborhoods in downtown seem to discourage public benches because they are afraid the homeless folks would take over them and scare potential customers away. I don't really know how Little Italy keeps the homeless folks out of the area... Perhaps I don't want to know...

I like the water. And so a trip to downtown isn't complete without a short visit to the Embarcadero. They are building on the Broadway Pier so I couldn't get on it (the tip of the pier was a great place to sit and relax while bay-watching with the local sea gulls and pigeons), but I did get there just in time to catch a ferry boat coming in from Coronado.

We went and walked around the Gaslamp Quarter in downtown... And passed by Balboa Theater at Horton Plaza just before a Mainly Mozart Festival concert. There was a street saxophonist there jamming with a street keyboardist. I had a second look and realized it was the same start up saxophonist who used to play by himself along 4th Avenue when I lived near there a year ago. The dude was just learning to play the thing on his own then... and really was more of a sound pollution than anything else (people threw him money for him to stop playing). It is amazing what a few month of determined practice can do... He can actually carry a bit of a tune now when he isn't doing little staccato jazz phrases.

Once that Mainly Mozart concert started, though, the street got quite quieter without the concert goers waiting in front of the theater. The street musicians moved with the crowd toward the restaurants row (4th and 5th Avenues between E and Island Sts). I was pretty well spent by then, though, and had to go back to the friend's to put the dog inside before he spotted a raccoon and started barking (and driving the neighbors mad(der than usual), so I hopped on the next bus#2 that came down Broadway and went back uptown.

I think one of my foreign friends asked about the terms 'downtown' and 'uptown' once. Downtown is where the concentration of city business is along with small flats on top of the shops that are just big enough to accommodate claustrophobic inhabitants. Uptown is the more spacious and affluent residential area a bit removed from downtown's commercial district... You know, where the abodes with backyards are.

Coming Up: Amigos en Concierto, Spanish Theme Concert in San Diego

This coming Saturday night (June 19th) the San Diego Master Chorale is teaming up with the Romero Duo, Mariachi Garibaldi, San Diego Children's Choir, Tijuana Children's Choir, tenor Enrique Toral and soprano Monica Abrego for a spectacular Spanish-theme Amigos en Concierto at Copley Symphony Hall.

Aiming to raise fund for the Master Chorale's community outreach programs, the concert is packed full of music from Argentina, Brazil, Spain, Mexico, Guatemala and the Caribbean. You know, the good stuff that we sway to whenever we chance upon but always seem to neglect on this side of the border. If you are in town on Saturday evening and feel like getting acoustically zested by some classically spicy music, drop in at Copley before 8PM and buy a ticket to the show (tickets available at the Symphony Box Office (619) 235-0804, or at www.sdmasterchorale.org)!

*Smorg is not connected to any of the performing group or Copley Hall... though does tend to find it irresistible to promote good local classical music groups.

Making Pad Thai Chicken In the New Kitchen

I've been getting used to the kitchen at this new pad I moved into a month ago. I still occasionally open the wrong cabinet door(s) when looking for plates or cups... and even forgot how to use my roommate's fancy electric salt & pepper grinders while the omelet is threatening to catch fire in the pan (did manage at the last salvageable second and that egg was very well done indeed!).
                                                      
All that aside, though, I am now comfortable enough around the place to attempt to cook some real food other than omelets and grilled cheese sandwiches (have been having that so much for the last few weeks that I might bleed cheddar if I scratch my knee!).

On the menu a few days ago was Pad Thai noodle with chicken.... And this was how it turned out:



OK, I confess there was supposed to be tofu (the hard fried type) in this, too, and you would have put it in when the noodle hit the pan/wok... It was just that I bought a package of that...er... like a month ago (?), and had completely forgotten all about it. So when I fished the package out from its cozy little corner of the fridge, it was all black and blue instead of healthy yellow in color (I think it even attempted to move as my hand approached!).
                                                  
As tempting as it was, I didn't think colorful blobs of fungi would make all that good substitutes for germ-free soy bean, so I left it out.... and lived to eat another day.

A Brief Visit To North Park

As many of you would have noticed by now, a smorg is a slow-moving creature. And as I've had quite a bit of distance to move of late (have just relocated to the South Bay area of Chula Vista... quite a few miles closer to the Mexican border), I have been even slower-moving than usual!

I did get up to visit the old haunts in North Park over the weekend, though (had to go see about a few old furry friends). Dropped off some mails at the always overly busy North Park Post Office on Grimm St... I wonder which speedophobic architect designed the place. Everything there seems set up to make the traffic flow as retarded as possible. Just have a look at where they've set up the quick-drop mail boxes... Why put the things out of reach against the building where people have to park and get out of their car to deposit their mail when they could have put the boxes at the edge of the sidewalk where people can just drive by, roll down their car window, drop their posts and be off?

The staff inside do their best, of course, but the building fights rather than help them move the customer through the line as quickly as possible. It also doesn't help that there are rarely ever more than 2 customer service staff manning the counter at the same time (so the line goes right out the front door on a regular basis).

I also dropped in at Auntie Helen's, the perpetually characterful thrift-shop on 30th between Lincoln and Polk with its eclectic but always friendly staff and clientele... and manned by the gay world's most serene-tempered dog (don't get startled if the white fluffy shawl on the countertop suddenly shifts its position or raises its head to sniff at you... it really actually is a dog!).

Last Sunday in North Park was actually livelier than usual with its Festival of the Arts taking over University Avenue between 30th and 32nd Streets. Multiple stages showing live rock bands, dance troupes, local kids music programs, local vendors, lots of good food.

I followed a particularly inviting scent to a stall near Illinois St where a friendly guy was grilling a bunch of mouth-watering Mexican hotdogs (fat sausages wrapped in juicy bacon!). Naturally I couldn't resist ridding him of the well-endowed links...

Though, as you can see from the photos, bacon has a demoralizingly disturbing way of shrinking into near-nothingness as it makes its way from the grill to my plate... Where the heck did all that tasty bit of fat go???



Don't be alarmed by the cloudiness in the video, though. It's normal weather for San Diego this time of year. The locals call it 'May Gray' and 'June Gloom'... The low layer of cloud usually burns off by noon and leaves you with a brilliantly sunny afternoon that explains nearly everyone's tan (and skin cancer, among other things).

RIP Giuletta Simionato (1910 - 5 May 2010)

A sad news for the operatic world today. Giulietta Simionato (12 May 1910 - 5 May 2010), the great Italian mezzo-soprano (also known as Maria Callas' best friend and singing partner), passed away at Via di Trigoria in Rome, Italy earlier today. Simionato was a superstar in Romantic Period Italian opera from the 1930's until her retirement in 1966 and helped ushering in the rejuvenation of the bel canto operas... for which I shall be eternally grateful.

There are many good clips of La Simionato on Youtube and elsewhere. This one features her in the wonderful Santuzza-Turiddu duet from Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana from 1955 with Giuseppe Di Stefano. One good news is that she is very well represented on good quality CDs. There is nothing like getting to hear her live, of course (I didn't... I wasn't even the sparkle in my father's eyes yet when she retired from the singing scene), but even an electronically captured glimpse of her is worth seeking out.



This should also remind many of us not to take the wonderful singers performing on the stage today for granted. They won't always be there. If you have a chance to catch someone like Jonas Kaufmann, Edita Gruberova, Nina Stemme, Patricia Racette, Vesselina Kasarova, Renee Fleming, Ewa Podles, Bryn Terfel, Juan Diego Florez, Ramon Vargas, Simon Keenlyside and others live today, for Pete's sake, don't put it off!