San Diego’s Little Italy
At last count (this morning), 120 neighborhoods make up the City of San Diego. That’s 19 more than the last time I counted about five years ago. Some are residential communities while others are business communities or mixed use communities. One of the more vibrant mixed use communities is Little Italy, a wonderful collection of residences, restaurants, and especially home design and arts businesses.
Little Italy was an Italian fishing neighborhood founded in the mid-19th century and thriving through the 1970s, serving the tuna fishing fleet and canning industry in San Diego, at that time the tuna capital of the western United States. Pacific Tuna Canning Company, the largest, was founded in 1911, and by the mid-1930s, canneries employed more than a thousand people. Sadly, foreign competition and rising costs caused the last of the canneries to close in the early 1980s.
Today it’s a neighboorhod full of life, seemingly 24/7 — it’s the only place I’ve found where I can eat out on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. I have yet to eat at a bad Italian restaurant in Little Italy. Along with great Italian food, Little Italy has a reputation for having fun. Annual events include:
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Little Italy Carnevale on the Saturday before Mardi Gras
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ArtWalk in April (the largest art event on the West Coast with over 120,000 attending each year)
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Gran Fondo Colnago San Diego, the “Big Ride” where 3,000 cyclists start and end under the Little Italy sign
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Sicilian Festival in May
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Taste of Little Italy in May and November (if you ever go to one you’ll come home 20 pounds heavier)
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Labor Day Stickball Tournament in September
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Little Italy Fiesta in October (the largest Italian festival outside of New York City)
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Bulls of St. Agata Charge Little Italy in October — see more than 50 Lamborghinis on the streets of Little Italy
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Little Italy Christmas Village and Tree Lighting in December where you can see Santa riding in historic Fire Engine #3 from the San Diego Firehouse Museum located in Little Italy.
Little Italy Mercato is every Saturday from 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. There you can find freshly caught fish, locally grown fruits and vegetables, pastries from local bakeries, and, of course, art from local artists.
The Little Italy art scene is like no other, and that’s where I found myself late last month, at the Little Italy Art Walk.
I’m Zoey the Cool Cat,
and I approve this post.
Looking for real estate services in San Diego County?
I can highly recommend
James Frimmer, Realtor
Century 21 Award, DRE #01458572
If you’re looking for a home inspector,
I recommend Russel Ray — that’s me!
They’re baaaaaaaaack!
Several years ago I was driving down the freeway at 100 90 80 70 65 miles per hour on Interstate 8. As I came around a long curve into the East County environs, I was greeted by a hillside full of goats.
As I zoomed by them, paying more attention to the traffic than the goats, I thought maybe a truck transporting goats had overturned or something since this was not an area where you normally would see a herd of goats. I took the next exit and went back to find the goats. As you can see by the picture, the goats are in a makeshift pen. Several days later I found out what the goats were doing. They are part of a fire mitigation team.
I took the Fire Mitigation Team picture this morning because — guess what? — yes, the goats are back! Previously they were in El Cajon. This time they are in Lemon Grove on the hillside below Lawton Drive:
The goats will spend several days on the hillside doing what goats seem to do best: eating! On steep hillsides where it is not practical to use mechanical equipment to clear brush, the goats do an extremely good job and are actually less expensive than having people go out there to try to clear a hillside.
The Lawton Drive hillside covers about seven acres. Here’s what it looked like on May 16 when I found out the goats were coming:
And here are the goats early this morning in that exact location on the hillside:
That’s after just one day of goats chomping on the brush, mostly oat grass, mustard weed, and tumbleweed.
After finishing these seven acres, the fire fuel-munching goats are scheduled to clear four acres near 6800 Central Avenue in Lemon Grove.
The goats are managed by Environmental Land Management of San Diego.
The fire season so far has been worse than expected, so if you have a difficult hillside that you need to clear in order to comply with San Diego County’s defensible space law, contact Environmental Land Management. I’m sure they’ll be happy to help, and the goats are so much more fun to watch than a bunch of people with machinery stirring up the dust and making noise.
I’m Zoey the Cool Cat,
and I approve this post.
Looking for real estate services in San Diego County?
I can highly recommend
James Frimmer, Realtor
Century 21 Award, DRE #01458572
If you’re looking for a home inspector,
I recommend Russel Ray — that’s me!
Friday Flower Fiesta (5/24/13) — From the campus of San Diego State University
Schools are getting out for the summer, and this weekend is Memorial Day weekend, the official start of Tourist Season in San Diego.
Today’s Friday Flower Fiesta comes from the campus of San Diego State University (SDSU). A couple of years ago the campus seemed to have undergone a transformation that made the campus into a botanical garden. Right now it seems pretty barren since 32,000 students have taken off for a couple of weeks before summer school starts, but that makes it easy to walk around taking pictures without having to clone people out of the pictures!
Flowerus orangii
Flowerus yellowii
Flowerus unknownii
Flowerus whoknowsii
Begonia
Ice plant
Confused poinsettias
Hollyhock
Iris
Iris
Aloe
Clivia
Coral tree
Rose
(This might be my #1 rose picture)
I’m Zoey the Cool Cat,
and I approve this post.
Looking for real estate services in San Diego County?
I can highly recommend
James Frimmer, Realtor
Century 21 Award, DRE #01458572
If you’re looking for a home inspector,
I can recommend Russel Ray — that’s me!
Happy World Turtle Day!
Today is World Turtle Day, started in 2000 by American Tortoise Rescue, itself founded as a nonprofit 501(c)(3) corporation in 1990.
Celebrations occur worldwide — people dressing up as turtles or wearing “turtle green” clothes, research activities, arts & crafts projects, and even specific turtle lesson plans in classrooms.
Did you know that if you find a turtle crossing a road and decide to help it so it doesn’t get hit by a car, you should point it in the same direction it was traveling, so take it to the side of the road that it was traveling to and point it away from the road. If you take it to the side of the road from which it came, even if you point it away from the road then, it will turn around and start to cross the road again.
And what do I do for World Turtle Day? Why post a bunch of turtle pictures, of course!
I’m Zoey the Cool Cat.
I would approve this post
but I’m pretending to be a book
and no one has opened me yet.
Looking for real estate services in San Diego County?
I can highly recommend
James Frimmer, Realtor
Century 21 Award, DRE #01458572
If you’re looking for a home inspector,
I recommend Russel Ray — that’s me!
Why, the Audacity!
Long-time readers might remember that I have over 58,000 digital music files. They include just about every genre of music that you can imagine. Rock ‘n’ roll and classical music represent about 75% of my collection, while rap and hip-hop represent maybe ten files. In fact, the only rap and hip-hop I have are when rap or hip-hop artists get together with a musical favorite of mine to record together. The Fat Boys come immediately to mind when they recorded “Wipe Out” with the Beach Boys in 1987. Not a fan of the Fat Boys; huge fan of the Beach Boys.
My music library also covers several generations. My earliest recording is “Lover” by Richard Rodgers (of Rodgers & Hammerstein fame but before that fame), from August 1932. My most recent addition is the CD “Delta Machine” by Depeche Mode, released in March 2013 (although do we call a collection of digital music a CD?).
Many of my earliest recordings are mono. However, when one gets into the late ’50s and early ’60s, many of the recordings are “fake stereo” meaning that the voices are on one channel and the music on the other channel. Turn the voice channel down and you have karaoke!
I listen to all of my music in chronological order, and a couple of days ago I finished the year 2013 and started over again back in 1932. I’m currently in 1963, and that’s when I noticed a problem that has always irritated me with digital music that was created from original analog recordings.
In some cases, such as with “Puff (The Magic Dragon)” by Peter, Paul & Mary, the voice channel on the digital recording is very low, causing the music, especially the bass, to overpower the voices.
I went looking for a solution. My original goal was simply to convert fake stereo recordings to mono. In looking for some good audio software, I found several that are free. However, free software often comes with caveats, such as you have to buy someone else’s crap (NCH software does that), or you have to download lots of crapware which takes over your computer (avs4you is good at that).
After many attempts at finding something good (even if I had to pay for it) and uninstalling crapware, restoring my computer to a previous day to get rid of crapware, etc., I found an audio editing program that I can recommend:
The best news is that it is free!
The only item to note is that if you want to save your audio work as an MP3 file, you need a small DLL file downloaded from a different site. That different site is an absolute mess, but once you find the file you need, everything’s good to go. If you need help, let me know.
I should also say that most of my music is in the Microsoft WAV format, which means that the file is about ten times larger than the corresponding MP3 file. I will be converting all of my WAV files to MP3 files as time permits. That might save me two or three terabytes of space once I’m finished!
I’m Zoey the Cool Cat.
I would approve this post
but I’m too busy singing.
Looking for real estate services in San Diego County?
I can highly recommend
James Frimmer, Realtor
Century 21 Award, DRE #01458572
If you’re looking for a home inspector,
I recommend Russel Ray — that’s me!
If I wasn’t dirty before……..
Following are four flash videos taken at the San Diego Zoo on May 17, 2013, when I was with Bryan and Liz Flint. They are from Houston, and Liz is an old blogging friend whom I first met online in 2008. So don’t despair if you’ve known someone online for several years and don’t think you’ll ever meet them in person. It can happen!
We’re dirty!
Bird or fish?
If I wasn’t dirty before…….
Ummmm, good!
I’m Zoey the Cool Cat,
and I approve this post.
Looking for real estate services in San Diego County?
I can highly recommend
James Frimmer, Realtor
Century 21 Award, DRE #01458572
If you’re looking for a home inspector,
I recommend Russel Ray — that’s me!
Creating an orb in Photoshop
I use Photoshop CS6 for most of my photo editing work — adding contrast, sharpening, correcting exposure, bringing back highlights, cropping, and so much more.
Once I finish editing, though, it’s fun to find out what other things Photoshop can do.
To me, Photoshop filters are the most fun, and recently I learned how to create an interesting orb, like this:
Not everything makes a good orb. The more little things in the picture, the better looking the orb will be.
Here’s how to do it, step by step.
Open your picture and crop it to a square, or a ratio of 1:1. Click on the crop icon. In your crop options bar, it probably says “Ratio.” Click on that and change it to 1:1 (Square). Your crop marks will move to the center of the image to create a square from your picture. You can move the crop area around if you want it somewhere else. (Click on the image below for a larger image.)
Next, click on Filter ► Distort ► Polar Coordinates…. ► Polar to Rectangular ► Okay
My flower now looks like this:
That creates an interesting item in and of itself, but we’re going to go further.
Now click on Image ► Image Rotation ► Flip Canvas Vertical. That gives me this:
Again, you could stop there and have something interesting. We’re still going further, though!
Click on Filter ► Distort ► Polar Coordinates…. ► Rectangular to Polar ► Okay.
That gives you an orb!
If you don’t crop your picture to a square, you won’t get an orb. Instead, if your picture is wider than it is tall, you’ll get an oval on its side. If your picture is taller than it is wide, you’ll get an oval on end.
Have fun!
Lastly, guess who is in this orb?
I’m Zoey the Cool Cat,
and I would approve this post
if I wasn’t dreaming of catching birds.
Looking for real estate services in San Diego County?
I can highly recommend
James Frimmer, Realtor
Century 21 Award, DRE #01458572
If you’re looking for a home inspector,
I recommend Russel Ray — that’s me!
Have fun while waiting for the train to go by!
In my little hometown of Kingsville, Texas, the main railroad track ran through the center of town next to the main north-south highway, splitting the town into east and west.
A huge Missouri Pacific Railroad freight yard was at the south end of town, so when long freight trains were being put together, they could block downtown intersections for thirty or more minutes.
Seems it always occurred when one was in a hurry to get to the other side of town for something.
Since my granddad and dad worked for Missouri Pacific, I learned how to have a little fun watching long freight trains, and I’m going to teach you the same thing today.
Each freight car, regardless of what type it is — box car, flat car, tanker car, etc. — usually has at least one date on the car, telling you when the car was new, built, rebuilt, and sometimes even painted:
The date could be just about anywhere on the car depending on the builder, the rebuilder, or the painter. The next time you and the kids are stopped at some railroad tracks waiting for a long freight train to go by, have some fun! See who can find the oldest car on the tracks.
Of course, I have to leave you with a video from my train chasing this past week with Bryan and Liz Flint. Liz is a long-time blogging buddy that I first met online in 2008. This is a 29-second video of a northbound Amtrak Pacific Surfliner just north of the Old Town Transit Station and passing over the San Diego River.
P.S. If you’re waiting for a passenger train to go by, well darn it, wave at the people on the train. There will be someone like me on the train who will wave back!
I’m Zoey the Cool Cat,
and I approve this post.
Looking for real estate services in San Diego County?
I can highly recommend
James Frimmer, Realtor
Century 21 Award, DRE #01458572
If you’re looking for a home inspector,
I recommend Russel Ray — that’s me!
My new BFF
I found a new BFF at Chollas Lake Park today.
I went there specifically to feed the ground squirrels.
Lots of little baby squirrels running around but they don’t seem to eat bread yet.
Only the older squirrels were interested in bread.
Following are four videos of my time at Chollas Lake Park.
In the first video, watch how an aggressive snow goose went after the little boy with food in his hand.
Friendly ground squirrels
Baby ground squirrels
My new BFF
I’m Zoey the Cool Cat,
and I approve this post.
Looking for real estate services in San Diego County?
I can highly recommend
James Frimmer, Realtor
Century 21 Award, DRE #01458572
If you’re looking for a home inspector,
I recommend Russel Ray — that’s me!
Happy Birthday, Cher!
On this day in 1946, Cherilyn Sarkisian was born in El Centro, California, just 103 miles east of me. You might know her by her preferred name, simply Cher.
Cher’s career started in 1965 when she and her husband, Sonny Bono, hit the big time with “I Got You Babe” which peaked at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.
Between 1965 and 1972, Sonny & Cher had eleven singles hit the American Top 40, with six of them hitting the Top 10. Sonny & Cher divorced in June 1975.
Cher has reinvented herself as times changed and is the only person to have received an Academy Award, a Grammy Award, an Emmy Award, a Golden Globe Award, and Best Actress Award at the Cannes Film Festival.
My favorite Cher songs:
Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)
1966, Peaked at #2
Gypsies, Tramps & Thieves
1971, Peaked at #1
I’m Zoey the Cool Cat,
and I approve this post.
Looking for real estate services in San Diego County?
I can highly recommend
James Frimmer, Realtor
Century 21 Award, DRE #01458572
If you’re looking for a home inspector,
I recommend Russel Ray — that’s me!
