Mammoth mountain

Courtesy of Mammoth Mountain

Friday afternoon, mid-January in La Jolla, the sun beating down as if seasons hardly mattered. Students on longboards glided across the UCSD campus, making weekend plans for the beach. A salt breeze drifted in my window as I packed a bag of winter layers, mittens, goggles, and beanies, along with my snowboard and boots. I hauled my gear to the other side of campus to meet up with a couple dozen friends of the same questionable mind. It was 2006, a massive winter. Storms were hitting hard on the Sierra Nevada. Our plan was to follow the snow. All of us outliers, searching for winter in a land of eternal summer.

I grew up in Lake Tahoe and learned how to ski shortly after I could walk. In high school, I started snowboarding. Back then, all I’d ever known were winters that buried me in snowbanks three times as tall as I was. So the moment I graduated high school, I moved as far away from the snow as I could—while still getting that in-state tuition.

At first, San Diego was a welcome reprieve from my small hometown in the mountains. But when snow started to fly in the Sierra, I felt adrift without the grounding power of cold days. I felt lonely without a crew of friends to lead me into the mountains.

Then, one day, I walked past a small table with a sign-up sheet for the UC San Diego Ski and Snowboard Team. They were kids like me, strung between two worlds: the sea and the snow.

We didn’t have coaches. We didn’t wear spandex. We joined the team because we simply wanted to ride Mammoth, one of the best ski resorts on the planet. And after the lifts closed, celebrate our days late into the night. That’s a skier’s dream. And we were willing to sacrifice our weekends and suffer long, tedious drives up the Eastern Sierra for it.

The author on one of her countless pursuits of “water and gravity.”

Courtesy of Julie Brown Davis

Skiing and snowboarding have never been affordable. But there are ways to skimp and scrape and make ski bumming work for a student’s budget. Each winter, the captains of the team would sign a ski lease in Mammoth, hoodwinking the landlords, and we’d cram three dozen college kids into a tiny A-frame. Split 50 ways, our lease and van fees added up to only a few hundred dollars for the entire year.

The ski resort also gave us discounts on lift tickets because we were part of a Southern California league of ski teams, joined by Cal Poly, UCSB, UCLA, USC and San Diego State.

Every weekend, a different school would host a party—everyone wearing neon ski jackets from the ’80s. The ski team was an anti-fraternity, a social club of dirt bags. We called ourselves Kappa Tappa Keg. Our hazing ritual involved chugging questionable booze out of a bag. It was a club founded on a silly pastime that involved stuffing your feet into extremely uncomfortable boots, going outside in weather conditions that would make most people question your sanity, and strapping into one or two planks of wood. All for a thrill. That brief moment of weightlessness when you drop in at the top of the slope.

The drives to Mammoth were brutal. What should have been a six hour drive would easily stretch to nine in Friday traffic. By the time we pulled into the icy driveway of the A-Frame, I was exhausted and bolted for one of the two bedrooms upstairs. Sleeping bags were already lined up wall to wall, but I found a sliver of space to roll out mine near the door.

I remember this particular weekend well because the air inside the house was icy cold and, sure enough, the captain of the team announced the pipes had frozen. Frozen pipes meant no plumbing. Which meant we had to ration water bought in plastic jugs from the grocery store. Which meant we had to pee outside. Mercifully, the house was a block from the ski lodge, where we could use the public restrooms for anything else. Too tired to care, I fell asleep quickly.

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Saturday morning came fast. I scooped up a breakfast of instant oatmeal, pulled on my layers, and headed for the resort. The chairlifts carried us to the top of the Sierra Crest, where views stretched out in all directions. I could see the jagged tooth-like ridge of the Minarets, the ancient seabed of the Great Basin to the east, and westward, the rolling slope of the Sierra descending toward the Pacific. Mammoth Mountain was founded in 1953 by Dave McCoy, a true visionary who saw a future and potential on a mountain buried beneath an average 30 feet of snow every winter. Today, more than two dozen lifts drop skiers and riders above 3,500 acres of choose-your-own-adventure terrain.

My time on the ski team was only the beginning of a decade-plus devoted entirely to snowboarding and skiing. With the time and effort I’ve invested in this weird pursuit of frozen water and gravity, I’ve had the chance and privilege to ski across the globe. Mammoth stands apart because of the way the wind blows in every night, buffing the snow until it’s as smooth as a sheet of paper.

Come morning, you can draw whatever line you can imagine on its slopes. The same forces that dictate waves in the ocean deliver snow to the mountains. It’s a coastal snowpack that gives back whatever you give it. Speed. Stability. Deep carves down steep chutes. It’s why I keep coming back to Mammoth for more, every year. It’s a love for a place and a time that began in college.

By Sunday afternoon, the mounds of snow outside the A-frame were polka-dotted with yellow spots. We piled back into the van, this time with wind-chapped cheeks and sore legs. We pulled out of the parking lot beneath the pines and drove south, ocean bound.

The post Mammoth Calling appeared first on San Diego Magazine.

Melody Moulton runs a small shop filled with esoterica in the front of her South Park art gallery, Trash Lamb

Madeline Yang

Ones to See

The most recent mural to go up in national landmark Chicano Park pays tribute to a major cultural institution of Chicano life: the car club, and the lowriders who created rolling works of art. The five-story mural is dedicated to Brown Image, the shop in Barrio Logan where many clubs workshopped their cars. According to artist Henry Rodriguez, he funded the mural and sketched it out using photos from his family album.

The painting—which uses lowrider-art techniques like airbrushing and gold flakes—took 10 months to complete and involved over a dozen local artists, including well- known muralists Victor Ochoa and Roberto Posas. The artwork features dozens of faces Barrio locals will recognize and completely covers one of the massive pillars holding up the 5 Freeway that straddles the Chicano Park playground. Murals are a huge part of the Chicano artistic expression, but Rodriguez says few, if any, have depicted the iconic car clubs. “It’s art as education,” he says.

The binational art scene is alive and well, thanks in large part to San Ysidro’s Casa Familiar. The organization recently ran a paid apprenticeship for 17 emerging artists in the San Diego-Tijuana region, which resulted in an exhibition called New Native Narratives (Nuevas Narrativas Nativas) at The Front: Arte & Cultura. Ones to watch include Natalia Ventura, whose Arropada is almost like an embroidered veil or a map to a continuous, somewhat convoluted journey; Evan Lopez, who uses 32 ceramic letters made from Tijuana River Valley sediment in She Gives Us Water to display natural links between San Diego and Tijuana; Adrián Del Riego, whose sculpture of an antenna with plants evokes both the shared flora and radio waves of the border region; and Casiel Sanchez, a visual artist and one of San Diego Magazine’s designers.

Created during the pandemic, Melody Moulton’s Trash Lamb Gallery in South Park is a leap of faith into the realm of quirk and oddballism. She’s struck a chord and seems to be nourishing a section of San Diego’s bohemian soul. Trucker hats get a cheeky graphic update and eccentric posters pack a visual punch. But Trash Lamb isn’t just another source of radical low-brow tchotchkes. Moulton, a visual artist herself, is a talented curator with an eye for the interesting. She curates shows at the shop at least twice a month, featuring work from local and national artists.

Cornado’s Kendall Becerra won the highest award in the country for high school musical theater

Broadway San Diego

Ones to Watch

Local playwright Christian St. Croix grew up as a working-class kid and only ever expected writing to be a hobby. As a result, his plays feature brightly written, honest-job characters from Black and LGBTQ communities, set in situations where compassion and grace undergird their every move. “I like to give the working class and everyday queer joes—we exist—a sense of magic and possibility,” he says.

Hailed by American Theatre Magazine as a playwright to watch, he recently debuted plays in Seattle, and his work was a finalist for the Eugene O’Neill National Playwriting Conference. Locally, his award-winning play Monsters of the American Cinema (which debuted at the San Diego Fringe festival in 2019) will be staged in the upcoming season of the recently reopened Diversionary Theatre.

It’s no secret San Diego is a secret theater hotbed. Playwrights and actors come here to cut their teeth before venturing to NYC and nationally renown stages like La Jolla Playhouse encourage a strong crop of homegrown young actors. Every year, the Broadway San Diego Awards recognizes the top high school thespians, then sends them to the National High School Musical Theatre Awards (The Jimmys) in New York. This year, they sent Kendall Becerra from Coronado School of the Arts and Ryan Sweeney from Canyon Crest Academy. Performing on a Broadway stage, Becerra took “Best Performance”—the highest award in the country for high school musical theater.

Lizz Huerta

Courtesy of Lizz Huerta

Ones to Read

Earlier this year Lizz Huerta, a San Diego native with roots in Mexico and Puerto Rico, released her eagerly awaited YA novel, The Lost Dreamer. It’s a story of Mezo-America, female seers, and life among indigenous peoples. Huerta has been on a wide-ranging book tour where the audience is largely comprised of young Latinas.

“Representation is so important when you are trying to figure out who you are,” she says. “And there are very few models that speak to pre-[colonial] contact culture. I would have loved a book like this growing up.”

Formerly known as The Grove, The Book Catapult is giving South Park some percolating literary cred by luring notable authors for its reading series—like the aforementioned Ms. Huerta, as well as national best-selling author, L.A. Times columnist, and San Diegan Jean Guerrero.

Co-owners Jennifer Powell and Seth Marko revamped the shop and envisioned what Powell calls “a third space” where books one might not usually find come together with people to build a sense of curiosity and community.

They’re featuring a long-running mini-exhibit of graphic art, curated by Marko, the latest of which is a charming mural by local graphic artist Sara Gharemani.

Digital Gym

Ones to Experience

Movie theaters have taken a huge hit, especially indie film houses. One of the last standing in San Diego, North Park’s Media Arts Center, closed its doors during the pandemic. But the biggest arrival in downtown culture—UCSD Extension’s Park & Market—gave them a new home. Now called Digital Gym, the 58-person screening room must be heard to be appreciated. It has well-balanced surround sound, employing 5.1 Dolby, and a sensitive range that allows sounds like footfalls on grass and breathing to round out the viewing experience.

Earlier this year, it hosted a Sundance Film Festival showing. Exhibitions director Moises Esparza is actively curating the most noteworthy new films from Latin America and Europe. What was once the East County Performance Center in El Cajon is now The Magnolia—its manifestation after an extensive $8 million renovation.

The 1,200-seat venue has improved sightlines, more legroom, better seats, VIP lounge, bars, and all-new modern stage lighting and sound. Live Nation is booking, so the venue will have pull. The debut season includes modern icons (Marcus Mumford, Andrew Bird with Iron & Wine), a strong Hispanic lineup (Mexican pop star Yuridia, Cafe Tacuba), heritage rockers (Pat Benetar), TV stars (Countess Luann), comedy (Kathleen Madigan), and something called Wardruna (a dirge-laden, melodic Norse language prog folk band born out of black metal—yes, you read that correctly).

The crew from Dice Roller Radio records a podcast episode at Imperial Co-Lab in Sherman Heights.

Madeline Yang

Ones to Hear

Every American is now given a podcast at birth, but that doesn’t stop us from loving them. Like Dice Roller Radio, a fun-as-hell pod hosted by a crew of San Diego and South Bay creatives focused on street art culture—recorded at Downtown’s iconic cocktail den, El Dorado. With over 65 episodes, the show spotlights local musicians, artists, and fashion designers, and now a monthly live show called Memoirs Mondays with live performances.

They also host parties, clothing drops, and other recording events at Imperial Co-Lab in Sherman Heights, an all-in-one coffee shop-boutique-salon-taco-joint-gallery-event-and-co-working space that’s owned by the same folks as Por Vida just down the road in Barrio Logan. Recent features include pop art-inspired fashion line Makeout Club, as well as dance, hip-hop, and electronic artist RyRy.

Multi-hyphenate musician Jesus Gonzalez has an ear for the eclectic and an eye for the beautiful. For his latest project, Tour of Enchantment, he created site-specific soundscapes (looping beats, poetry, naturalist lyrics) at various locations across San Diego like Villa Montezuma, Jacumba Hot Springs, and the Fleet Science Center. Gonzalez says he wants to show people, especially locals, what he thinks are the “hidden gems” of the region. So if you’re’ at one of these spots, take a moment and listen. It’s one of the city’s more creative musicians translating your current experience into a soundtrack.

IYKYK: It’s an apt acronym for the mauve behemoth of a building now called Pink Haus. Sounding like an offbeat German hostel, it’s actually an unpretentious, underground venue that has become the codeword for local music cool. Modest music happenings grew through word-of-mouth and a bit of social media sleuthing (one has to DM them for the address). Hidden in a backyard shed, the tiny concert hall is equal parts Andy Warhol’s Factory (silver-lined walls) and college dorm (comfy couches and all-ages). Three years after curator Gonzalo Meza decided to form this little art commune, it’s furtively become the hub for a rotating roster of emerging artists and musicians. Several bands are on Pink Haus’ own record label, Egg Records. Next underground thing is September 3. Happy sleuthing.

The post San Diego’s Movers & Shakers in the Art World appeared first on San Diego Magazine.

Louis Vuitton Sunset Catwalk at the Salk Institute

Giovanni Gianonni

Designed Arrival

The Blue Line

When students disembark from the new Blue Line trolley at UC San Diego, they cross paths with the work of poets, artists, and scientists who’ve made an impact at the university. Conceptual artist Ann Hamilton embossed the 800-foot pathway with 1,300 quotations sourced from the Geisel Library for the quilt-like concordance. The new trolley route is a critical development for the city, serving as physical and intellectual linking of the US-Mexico border through Downtown and UTC.

Subterranean Design

Wildlife Explorers Basecamp

It’s the most ambitious project in the history of the San Diego Zoo. After two years of planning, the 3.2-acre former Children’s Zoo has been transformed into an $87-million state-of-the-art, multi-ecosystem experience. With much of the design going underground, it was a huge engineering feat for Pacific Builders Group, navigating tunnels and Komodo Kingdoms during a global pandemic.

Wonderwalls

Betty Larkin

Never mind wallpaper. The designer on everyone’s lips brings her own wall power. Artist Janie Rochfort is founder of Betty Larkin, the in-demand multidisciplinary design studio focusing on artwork and megawatt murals. Rochfort makes enduring statements by maximizing wallspace with graphic treatment and custom design. On her CV: A Love Island set, Lonny magazine offices and closer to home, Shop Good and Communal Coffee.

Beauty Splurge

Chanel

It’s beyond the beauty counter. Way beyond. The new stand-alone Chanel boutique at Westfield UTC is an immersion into fragrance, makeup, and skincare products, along with an exclusive selection of très chic eyewear—like Telluride-tested shields or pearl-detailed specs for work. The boutique’s black-and-white design recalls house codes.

UCSD North Torrey Pines Living

Tomoko Matsubayashi

Free for Architecture Lovers

Kidsketch

Ready your pencils. From the Hotel Del to Chula Vista Library, the second Saturday of every month is all about KidSketch. Courtesy of the San Diego Architecture Foundation, the free virtual art lessons are aimed at teaching the next gen how to draw iconic San Diego structures. Next up? Cabrillo Bridge in August and North Park Water Tower in September.

Local Collaboration Powerhouse

Nixon

From Metallica to Bones Brigade, Nixon remains unmatched at securing collaborations with collector cred. Last year, the Carlsbad-based brand rolled out Nixon x Grateful Dead. This year’s time bomb is Nixon x Independent. In the 70s and 80s, Independent’s skateboard trucks were designed to grind rails and empty pools. Today? Wrist candy.

Style Moment

Louis Vuitton

San Diego made fashion history when Louis Vuitton conducted a sunset catwalk at the Salk Institute. Glitterati (Vogue editor Anna Wintour, starlet Gemma Chan) descended upon the brutalist icon for the 2023 Cruise collection. “The architecture, with the sea as a horizon, the raw cliffs, it’s searing,” exclaimed artistic director Nicolas Ghesquière. Shimmy in the collection; it’s available at the new Westfield UTC boutique in November.

New Architectural Neighborhood

North Torrey

While UC San Diego claimed the #1 employer ranking in San Diego, its campus has been undergoing its own architectural feat. The La Jolla-based Safdie Rabines designed the award-winning North Torrey Pines Living and Learning Neighborhood. At 10 acres, it’s the university’s most ambitious new build yet—blending learning, living, cultural pursuits, commercial endeavors, and bike-friendly pathways.

See full list of contributors here

The post Best of San Diego: Style & Design appeared first on San Diego Magazine.

King Britt

Todd Glaser

The sandalwood is burning. Stevie Wonder’s “Innervisions”is humming. Vintage vinyl is neatly stacked under the gaze of a Grace Jones print. And the professor is very much in. UC San Diego has been operating at a different frequency since the iconic DJ, composer, and producer King James Britt arrived on campus two-plus years ago.

Britt’s lecture course, Blacktronika: Afrofuturism In Electronic Music, has lured an elite roster of speakers to his online class such as—Questlove, Honey Dijon—while birthing a club night as part of his curriculum. “Unless you go to a club and feel how the music affects your body, you haven’t experienced it,” he says.

Over his 30-year career, the Philly native has created soundtracks with Hollywood legends Michael Mann and Ridley Scott, and spun with 90s hip-hop darlings, Digable Planets.

king britt portrait

Todd Glaser

Most recently, he curated Carnegie Hall’s Afrofuturism Festival, which doubled as research for UCSD’s forthcoming Blacktronika Festival to be held Oct. 29 at the new state-of-the-art amphitheater. During Covid, inside Warren Lecture Hall, Britt shaped a sanctuary and a satellite classroom for the global community to explore the lineage of Black electronic artists who have been integral but overlooked in the development of house, techno, and experimental music.

“Being in here got me through—it was a time to hone in on my identity,” says Britt. “The beauty of being a professor is re-learning everything I know and articulating it in a way that my students can grasp. I found my equilibrium on campus.”

The post Fit for a King appeared first on San Diego Magazine.

April Moon Waara

Jenny Siegwart

“This is a very stressful time for our health care teams,” says April Moon Waara, chief clinical operations officer for Sharp Rees-Stealy. “Individuals have increased anxiety due to the pandemic, and specific stress associated with providing direct patient care to those with symptoms and those diagnosed with COVID-19. There have been several recent studies on the impact of pandemics on health professionals, and there is a high prevalence of anxiety and depressive symptoms. Insomnia, burnout, emotional exhaustion, or somatic symptoms were also reported. The additional strain of frequently changing national, state, and local guidelines and directives increases the stress placed upon health care professionals, especially if systems are not prepared to respond to pandemics that may last several months or years.”

To help these professionals during this challenging time, health care systems across the country have increased their workers’ access to emotional support programs and implemented robust telehealth systems, allowing staff the flexibility of working remotely and allowing patients to access care from home.

Waara explains that the effect of telehealth is threefold: “First, removing non-direct patient care roles from the clinical setting reduces the opportunity of exposure. Second, it supports social distancing. Third, it can create additional capacity by offering nontraditional clinics and virtual hours to patients.”

While it may have taken a pandemic for popular consciousness to recognize them as “essential,” those who work in the field know that they face challenges 365 days a year—in normal times or otherwise. These are some of the additional ways that local health care organizations are working year-round to reduce some of the stressors faced by their staff.

ICU RN and ECMO specialist, Tige R. Leivas, at Sulpizio Cardiovascular Center

Angela Klinkhamer

Protecting Against Workplace Violence

We are all aware of the contagions these workers face on the job. But a lesser-known threat puts their lives in even more immediate danger: violence committed against them in the workplace. In fact, they are the population at greatest risk of suffering assault or injury on the job. A 2018 report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics found that health care professionals accounted for 73 percent of all nonfatal workplace injuries and illnesses due to violence that year. A multitude of factors contribute to this risk—caring for patients with mental illness or drug addiction, environmental factors, staffing shortages—so the challenge is significant, and the solutions are multifaceted.

Mary Prehoden, a nursing supervisor at Scripps Mercy San Diego who was attacked by a patient there in 2018, emphasizes that this problem needs addressing at a foundational level.

“Violence against nurses has continued to rise over the past several years,” she says. “The reasons are multifactorial. First, nurses spend the most amount of time with patients and come in the closest direct contact. This alone, unfortunately, makes us greater targets for a patient’s violent verbal and physical outbursts.

Mary Prehoden

“Urban hospitals like Scripps Mercy treat high numbers of individuals with untreated or undertreated mental illnesses, and drug and alcohol abuse. We attempt to provide care to these volatile patients with minimal physical restraints. The assaults perpetrated by patients run from verbal berating to egregious physical assault by punching, kicking, biting, spitting, and using medical equipment at hand against persons who are just trying to provide care. This constant barrage not only takes a physical toll, but the mental aftereffects are lifelong and sometimes career changing, or career ending.”

Along with many other nationwide efforts by leading organizations like the American Nurses Association and The Joint Commission, Scripps Health is taking steps to mitigate risks and protect workers from violence in the workplace.

“Scripps has made some headway in early identification of patients who could be high risk for violence,” Prehoden says. “We have visual cues outside patient rooms, as well as arm bands that all staff have been educated on. We have also created a rapid-response team that includes nurses and security to intervene with patients before they fully escalate into harming staff or themselves. De-escalation training is offered for all staff, where in the past it was mandated only for the emergency department and behavioral health staff.

“There is no magic answer for this problem. We must work together with other health care institutions and share best practices in the care of these patients and in staff safety. Our communities cannot afford to keep losing nurses to assaults. This hurts everyone who needs the skilled care that we provide.”

Shining a Light on Suicide Risk

Morethan 800,000 people die by suicide each year—and health care professionals represent a disproportionately high percentage of them. In fact, according to a study out of UC San Diego, female nurses die by suicide 58 percent more often than the general population; male nurses, 41 percent more often.

Judy Davidson

“Given these findings, suicide prevention programs are needed,” says researcher and nurse scientist Judy Davidson. Her organization, UCSD Health Sciences, created the Healer Education Assessment and Referral (HEAR) program, a simple, anonymous online screening assessment to help identify health care professionals who are in crisis.

Now in its fourth year of operation for nurses and 11th year for physicians, HEAR is being replicated in organizations across the country. Davidson says that now is the time for all health systems to take action, since pandemics are known to increase the prevalence of mental health issues and rate of suicide among health care workers.

“HEAR works to identify clinicians at risk and move them into treatment,” she says. “Through a simple email that invites clinicians to do a risk screening, we are finding approximately 40 nurses a year in one organization that need help—many of them expressing suicidal thoughts—and referring them into treatment. They are there, just under the surface, waiting for someone to reach out to them. Our prevention program has raised awareness and done a lot to reduce the stigma associated with getting help, and our clinicians now actively recognize colleagues in trouble.”

Helping the New Workforce Grow and Thrive

The sentiment that “nurses eat their young” expresses a common fear among nursing students about to enter the workforce, referring to the nursing shortage that has existed for at least the last decade. But workforce development efforts are consistently put in place to debunk this myth and support new health care professionals as they begin their career path.

One such effort is the New Graduate Nurse Residency Program at Sharp HealthCare, which provides a flexible, supportive environment to help nurses build confidence and thrive in their new roles. The program pairs new grads with preceptors for 12 weeks on various units to help them acclimate.

Sara Wren

“By having consistency of leadership, interdisciplinary involvement, and peer support, the residents demonstrate a stronger leadership role at the bedside,” explains Sara Wren, a nursing workforce professional development specialist at Sharp Chula Vista Medical Center. “The collaboration allows the new grad to have multiple resources to develop their clinical decisions for the patient. As the new grad is sharpening their bedside skills, they are learning prioritization, delegation, and collaboration both at the bedside and in the classroom setting.”

A year later, the new grad meets with a mentor through Sharp’s CareForYou program.

“This allows the resident and the mentor to talk openly and develop a goal,” Wren says. “It also allows time off the unit with a trained peer supporter as immediately as possible to debrief after an event occurs. The residents that participate in this program find the transition during the first year of nursing not as challenging.”

ICU nurse Rachael Stokes sends a message at Jacobs Medical Center. These black-and-white photos were captured by ICU nurse Angela Klinkhamer to document their experiences during the early days of the pandemic.

Angela Klinkhamer

Providing Peer-to-Peer Support

Compassion. Peace. Renewal. Three things we could all use in our daily lives—perhaps no one more than the pediatric nurses at Rady Children’s Hospital-San Diego.

JoAnne Auger

JoAnne Auger, a supportive care registered nurse coordinator at Rady Children’s, created Compassion, Peace, and Renewal (“CPR”) for the Soul, a program designed for nurses working with children with life-threatening illnesses.

“Working with sick children is a paradox—it drains you but it fills you up,” Auger says.

CPR for the Soul is designed to create a caring infrastructure for health care teams who face the difficult, demanding, and emotionally charged work of caring for seriously ill children. The program’s sessions serve as a time for the staff to pause, breathe, and rebalance; it includes guided meditation, journaling, and a safe space to share on-the-job challenges, as well as four-hour retreats that incorporate further self-care.

“As nurses, we often put our self-care needs down at the bottom of our priority list,” Auger says. “CPR for the Soul provides a space to share the difficult work, debrief from the challenges of the day, and talk about our own struggles. We need to take care of each other to be there to take care of the kids.”

ICU RNs and ECMO specialists, Tamara Norton and Joanna Lung, at Sulpizio Cardiovascular Center

Angela Klinkhamer

The post 5 Ways Local Hospitals Support Their Frontline Workers appeared first on San Diego Magazine.

My oversight was Regents Pizzeria. And, well, I finally made it. It is, as heralded, damn good pie. Food Network once hired me to search America for the best pizza. You can temper your jealousy because they canceled my show. But that trip was fantastic, and I got to learn a lot of the secrets to the best pizza. The ovens. The flours with just the right gluten content. The flor di latte mozzarella. The olive oil and the cured meats.

Most pizza joints specialize in either the New York, Neapolitan or Chicago style. Regents does both New York and Chicago. It’s like that kid who played the flute and the sax in band. And they do both very, very well. You should go try it for yourself to decide if I’m full of it or not. I’m sure a transplant from the Bronx is reading this right now saying “this guy don’t know expletive about pizza.”

They’ve got a huge selection of craft beers (30-plus). UCSD students are the main décor. They have a new, bigger space now, on account of people saying yes after they ate at their original location (50 feet away). Here’s what we tried, and what we loved (plus one that we didn’t).

TOASTED GOAT CHEESE SALAD

TASTE IT: Regents Pizzeria

Toasted? Seems more fried to me. And the only way you can go wrong with fried goat cheese is to not eat fried goat cheese. They do a lemon-lime vinaigrette that cuts through the milkfat, along with onion strings, apple slices, kaiware sprouts (sprouted micro-versions of daikon radishes) and red bell. If keeping to NYE resolutions or warding off dorm butt, this is a very nice option.

POLENTA FRIES

TASTE IT: Regents Pizzeria

Jenga fries. It looks impressive on a table. There’s a great polenta crunch. But we weren’t floored with ‘em. A tad too much rosemary. Rosemary is the Gilbert Godfrey of herbs. You can use it, but you also need to hush it.

THE CHICAGO DEEP DISH

TASTE IT: Regents Pizzeria

The problem with many deep dishes is that they get too wet. There’s so much sauce, so much sausage, so much cheese—all of which give off moisture when baked. Regents manages to pre-cook and dehydrate some of the ingredients so that it’s not a soupy mess, yet still juicy enough. Many places, like the famous Gino’s East in Chicago, use cornmeal. Regents does not, which is a preference (even if it wouldn’t be mine). Yet it’s still very good. Like a meat Napolean with pepperoni, sausage, bell peppers, onions, mushrooms and their tangy sauce. Very good.

THE WHITE NEW YORK PIZZA

TASTE IT: Regents Pizzeria

It’s absolutely phenomenal. Fresh spinach, both ricotta and mozzarella cheeses with a rosemary-garlic olive oil sauce. It’s that cheese and the addictively good olive oil sauce (using quality olive oil is an absolute necessity for a good pie, worth all the cost, and they do). This one made me do the whole inappropriate food moaning thing.

THIS PESTO DISH

TASTE IT: Regents Pizzeria

It’s just creamy pesto. But it’s delicious pesto, with herb flecks giving the occasional bolt of fresh flavor through the creamy mixture. Adding cream to pesto is like adding butter to butter (since pesto already has the fat of olive oil and nuts), but it’s tasty with tang from both artichoke hearts and sundried tomatoes. Sometimes taste trumps creativity, and the need for yes trumps the need for less. Well done.

THE PIZZA PAZZA

TASTE IT: Regents Pizzeria

Aged mozzarella blend, goat cheese, marinated portabello mushrooms, onions, pancetta, white truffle oil and parmesan. Truffle oil is a scary proposition. It’s the Drakkar Noir of the food world, and some chefs apply too much like a 13-year-old boy. This is perfectly done, with just enough of a hint to give it that truffle intoxication. But it all comes down to the crust of a pizza, and that’s where Regents goes very, very right.

THIS BRASS MONKEY

TASTE IT: Regents Pizzeria

Yes, the picture is sideways. Sue me. This is a blog, and I’m not 16 enough to figure out the tech. And, yes, the drink from the Beastie Boys song. Brass Monkey is a legendary not-so-great-neighborhood drink made of malt liquor and orange juice. Noble Aleworks in L.A. makes a malt liquor (yes, like Olde English or Colt 45), and right now Regents serves it with a side of orange juice. Mix the two together, and it tastes vaguely like your drunk uncle has just taken a sip of your Orange Julius. Decently righteous.

Regents Pizzeria, 4150 Regents Park Row, 858-550-0406.

TASTE IT: Regents Pizzeria

The post TASTE IT: Regents Pizzeria appeared first on San Diego Magazine.

Young Dancers Get a Lift

Photo: Jim Carmody

Yesterday, I received word that UC San Diego had just received a $100,000 gift from Professor Emerita Margaret C. Marshall. The money is earmarked for dance productions to be put on by the Department of Theatre and Dance.

While I’m not an alumna of the UC system, I am a fan of dance and also a member of the amateur dance world (I take adult ballet classes). I was very happy to see dance getting more support. I hope this is happening at other schools, too. I know that my alma mater, the University of Southern California, just established the USC Glorya Kaufman School of Dance. In a New York Times story reporting on this, the writer said Glorya wouldn’t disclose how much money she’d endowed, but he knew it was more than $20 million. Hot damn!

I wonder if all the dance shows on TV—DWTS on ABC, SYTYCD on Fox, Dance Moms on Lifetime, and Breaking Pointe on the CW—are truly promoting the dance world and having an effect on young would-bes and wannabes. I hope this is a trend.

Anyway, congrats to the professionals and students of UC San Diego who will benefit from this gift, and I’ll sign off with this vintage photo of UCSD’s first dance concert on March 19, 1977. (This pic left me a little teary-eyed, as it was taken at Mandeville Auditorium, where, starting just a few years later, all my childhood dance recitals would take place (shout out to Hammond Studio of Dance in Solana Beach!).)

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