Hey San Diego! Save the date for the 16th Annual Rolando Street Fair on Sunday, March 25th.

16th Annual Rolando Street Fair

By Virginia Martin – RCC Publicity Co-Chair

“Make a Wish Baby!” Do those lyrics ring a bell? They will when you see Ambrosia playing at the 16th Annual Rolando Street Fair on Sunday, March 25th. Their huge hits, “Biggest Part of Me,” “You’re the Only Woman,” and “How Much I Feel” will have the entire community dancing in the street!

The Rolando Street Fair has become a real music event in San Diego. Band Coordinator Stephanie Bonner continues to use her influence to attract big names and local favorites to our event. In addition to Ambrosia, the music line-up includes Lee Coulter, Steph Johnson, Cathryn Beeks, and Len Rainey and the Midnight Players.

Over 100 vendor booths and non-profit community organizations will entice you with delicious food, hand-made items, and services. In addition, there is a Kid’s Corner with rides and activities.

The Rolando Community Council (RCC) produces this event. Financial support of over $10,000 from the San Diego City Arts and Culture Commission and Marti Emerald’s 7th District Council Office make it possible. We salute both offices for supporting this celebration of our community. We also recognize our partners in production, the College Area Business Improvement District and the College Neighborhoods Foundation. They too are essential. And finally, our thanks to the many Rolando volunteers whose hard work makes this event a success year after year. It wouldn’t happen without you.

More volunteers are needed on the day of the Street Fair and to distribute advance flyers and posters. If you can assist in either activity, please contact the Volunteer Coordinator, Supi Bhullar 619-796-5585 or bhullar.supi@gmail.com. For more information and vendor applications, please visit www.rolandocommunitycouncil.org.

So mark your calendars now for Sunday, March 25 from 10 a.m. – 6 p.m. The event occurs on Rolando Blvd. between El Cajon Blvd. and Solita Avenue.

Photos – Creative Commons attribution: RolandoVillage.com

Vendors get ready. The 2012 Rolando Street Fair is on Sunday, March 25th, 2012. Download the 2012 Rolando Street Fair Application (PDF). We look forward to seeing you there!

What a beautiful place and a beautiful day! We’re hitting the ground running on the first morning if this new year. Wishing you all the best in 2012!

A warm and busy welcome to winter in our little neighborhood. Enjoy!

When: Saturday, October 22 at 10:00 AM

Where: El Cajon Boulevard between 59th and Rolando Boulevard with Carnival to follow at Clay Park

Who: FREE event perfect for families

What: Saturday, October 22^nd at 10am: Come out, come out where ever you are … It’s wickedly fun! The Blessed Sacrament Parish School Boulevard BOO! Parade & Carnival, San Diego’s only Halloween themed parade. A celebration of community spirit and cultural diversity.

This FREE family friendly event features a spell binding parade with ghoulish floats, vintage cars, equestrian entries, unique costumed characters, bands and more!

The BOO! Carnival at Clay Park follows the parade beginning at 11am. This FREE action packed carnival includes bone chilling rides, games, food, bands, costume contests, pumpkin bowling, a pie-eating contest, a Haunted Pumpkin Patch with Trick-or-Treating, and more fun than a barrel of spiders!

For more information, please visit www.booparade.com

No, not that District 9! San Diego’s Redistricting Commission this week voted unanimously to approve a map that redraws the San Diego City Council’s eight districts creating a new ninth district.

According to the filing statement the new boundaries are effective 30 days after adoption. Details of representation are unclear but councilmembers might start representing their new districts in December of 2012. Marti Emerald has announced she will run for re-election in district nine next year.

The map below shows the boundaries of District 9 adopted August 25, 2011. The boundaries were exported from the incredibly difficult to use San Diego redestricting tool at ESRI.

The San Diego Redistricting Commission has more details.

View City of San Diego – Council District 9 in a larger map

District 9 neighborhoods

• Azalea Park
• Bay Ridge
• Castle
• Cherokee Point
• Chollas Creek
• Colina Del Sol
• College East
• College West
• Corridor
• El Cerrito
• Fairmont Park
• Fairmont Village
• Fox Canyon
• Hollywood Park
• Islenair
• Kensington
• Mt Hope
• Ridgeview
• Rolando Village
• Southcrest
• Swan Canyon
• Talmadge
• Teralta East
• Teralta West

Hey neighbors! The Lisko Artisan Deli and Fish Market‘s Grand Opening is today, August 21st, from 8am to 3pm.

Lisko’s is located on Rolando Boulevard at El Cajon Boulevard, catty-cornered from the Seven Eleven. For those who remember, it’s in Woodstock Pizza’s old location.

6548 El Cajon Boulevard, San Diego, CA 92115

I dropped in yesterday for a cappuccino and later for delicious cheese, fresh fruits, and beautiful olives.

Check out the musical line up for the 15th annual Rolando Street Fair event on Sunday, March 27, 2011. Click on an artist name for a video or audio preview. Here’s a map showing the layout of the street fair with the location of the stage.

Gone Tomorrow – 10:00am

Steph Johnson – 11:30am

Billy Midnight – 1:00pm

Quino of Big Mountain (with full band) – 3:00pm

Len Rainey and the Midnight Players – 5:00pm

UPADTE: It’s now almost time for this year’s Rolando Street Fair. Hope to see you there!

The 15th Annual Rolando Street Fair is on Sunday, March 27 this year.

Come out, meet your neighbors, enjoy over one hundred vendor booths and support your community organizations selling hand-crafted items, scrumptious food, and other services at Rolando’s annual street festival.

As usual the carnival rides will be present. Show your kids centrifugal force first-hand by sending them for a spin on the RoundUp! Enjoy the massive bouncy world, and conquer the climbing wall.

Enjoy live music performed by local talent including:

• Gone Tomorrow
• Steph Johnson
• Billy Midnight
• Quino of Big Mountain with full band
• Len Rainey and the Midnight Players

The hub of the street fair is at the Rolando Village Triangle located on Rolando Boulevard and Serrano Place just a block south of El Cajon Boulevard. Here’s a map for you.

A big thanks to everyone who makes this possible. Including but not limited to:

• The Rolando Community Council (a local 501c.3) for organizing this event
• Marty Emerald’s 7th District Council Office for a generous grant of $3,000
• The San Diego City Arts Council for awarding $3,100 to support this production
• Doug Lister and all the tireless volunteers who make me feel lazy and guilty
• All the fun people near and far who come each year to enjoy the fair

Dear fellow Rolandos! Joining the Rolando Community Council is a great way to support your community and stay involved. You can join the RCC and pay your membership dues online with this form. If you’re an existing member you can renew your membership by paying your dues online. Thank you for supporting the RCC.

Full disclosure: RolandoVillage.com is independent from the RCC. However, RolandoVillage.com really likes the RCC and appreciates their hard work very very much.

By Aimee Lee Cheek

Below is a fun piece of history from 1947 … the VERY FIRST ROLANDO VILLAGE STREET FAIR. Take a look!

The trees and the rides look familiar. It must be the Rolando Street Fair, now in its fifteenth year. But wait a minute. The poster, plain as day, advertises a Rolando Village Carnival in September, not March 27, when this year’s Street Fair will be held. And who are those girls in the formal gowns?

Thanks to Mrs. William E. Flohr, who still lives in Rolando with her husband of nearly fifty-six years, who excavated this photograph from her closets, we now know some of the answers. Moreover, we are able to establish that the Rolando Street Fair had a precursor sixty years ago.

Claribel Houston (far right, above)—or “Tootsie” as she had been nicknamed as a baby and has been known ever since—was seventeen years old in 1947. When she was six years old, in 1936, her family had moved to a house with a half-acre lot on 67th Street. They kept cows, chickens and pigs, she recalls. “Our side of the street was all dirt and there were no sidewalks.” She and the other little girls took their roller skates and wagons over into the slightly more developed section just to the west and “the boys played cops and robbers up and down the sewers.”

Her father, Verl R. Houston, was a builder eager to attract customers for new houses. Rolando, its development slowed by World War II, seemed the perfect opportunity. He drove around in a pick-up truck filled with signs emblazoned Rolando Village. Then, in late summer 1947, he and others planned a carnival to draw in potential buyers. By chance or design, La Mesa staged a street parade. Mr. Houston seized the moment.

Mrs. Houston had decided that for her senior prom Tootsie had to have a gown. It was pink, full length, with an enormous skirt and a diaphanous overlay. Perhaps it was the sight of his daughter in her beautiful dress that inspired Mr. Houston and his collaborators to dream up an elaborate float to enter in the La Mesa parade to advertise the upcoming Rolando Village carnival.

Tootsie remembers that her neighbor, Yvonne Massa (far left, above), also rode on the float. It was mounted on a flat-bed truck with a decorative skirting to conceal the unglamorous underpinnings of the machinery. By the time they made it back to Rolando Boulevard where the photographer set up his camera, a huge rent had appeared in the skirting. The young women spread their own skirts to hide the damage and smiled their best smiles into the afternoon sun.

Tootsie’s father went on to construct and later build and sell a number of houses on Rolando Boulevard and in the neighborhood as it expanded, most if not all still standing. He built the house that she and her husband Bill moved into shortly after their marriage. Here they raised their four children. Here they still live.

Tootsie hopes this photograph might jog someone else’s memory about that long ago day of the parade, perhaps of the other three girls in the photograph whose names she cannot recall. She’s sure they weren’t called princesses. “We were just girls,” she says with a smile. But looking at them, and listening to Tootsie now, it’s easy to see that Rolando indeed had royalty.

Do you have historic photos of Rolando?

If you, or anyone you know, have photos of Rolando Village they would be willing to share please email photos@rolandovillage.com and we can help arrange to digitize the photos with loving care so we can shared them here.

If you have an Android, Blackberry, iPhone or Windows Phone 7 please install the CitySourced app and use it. CitySourced makes reporting potholes, graffiti, burned out street lights, and other civic issues a no-brainer.

This has been mentioned here before but the service keeps getting better. Give CitySourced credit for fixing that pothole on Alamo Drive at Rolando Boulevard and many burned out street lights.

Here’s a live map of issues reported with the CitySourced mobile app.

A more detailed map is here.

May the holiday season bring health and happiness to you and yours.