Adams Ave Unplugged, the former Roots Festival that moved mostly indoors this year, had a good turnout this weekend with sidewalks full of people checking out the performances and businesses along Adams. One highlight was actor John C Reilly’s Saturday afternoon set with former San Diegan Tom Brosseau at the Normal Heights Methodist Church, where they played country/folk/spiritual songs to an enthusiastic crowd. The overflowing audience wasn’t shy when Reilly suggested they come up and sit in the choir seats.

Check out a video of the performance on Tom’s site.

As a Kensingtonian it was gratifying to see live music throughout our neck of Adams for once, with stages at Kensington Cafe, Ken Club and outside the library. The stage on the west side of Ponces was a bit awkward though, with a parked van blocking it at one point.

While on Adams in Normal Heights we stopped into Bine and Vine, across from Lestat’s, where they’re putting together quite a craft beer collection; “500 different kinds for now, increasing to 700 shortly”, we overheard the owner telling a customer.

Just down 30th from Adams, Pour House Brewing Company and Supply is going into the location shown below, says San Diego Beer Blog:

Over in Mission Hills, Brooklyn Girl Eatery opens this Friday. There was a private event going on there when we walked by last Thursday, so I took a picture of the interior from outside. There’s a decent-sized bar with a common seating area in front of it, which reminded me a bit of the Searsucker setup downtown. Check out their Facebook for much better interior shots.

Finally, Imig’s Kitchen is open at the Lafayette Hotel on El Cajon Boulevard, serving breakfast and brunch on a patio overlooking the pool and its “hipster version of Intervention at Hard Rock” (as one Yelper puts it).

- Five years ago this month, KPBS reporter Tom Fudge was seriously injured riding his bike on Montezuma Rd. near SDSU. Last week a cyclist was killed in the same location when a road-raging driver, impatient with a slow transit bus, veered into the bike lane and rear-ended the cyclist. No charges have been filed. Protest San Diego’s bike-unfriendly roads and the city’s unwillingness to protect its cycling citizens by participating in Wednesday’s Chuck Gilbreth Memorial Ride from Balboa Park to the City Administration building.

Also upcoming: Dining Out For Life is this Thursday throughout San Diego, with restaurants donating a portion of their proceeds to The Center’s HIV/AIDS initiatives… Little Italy’s Art Walk is this weekend… The San Diego Leukemia and Lymphoma Society holds their Man and Woman of the Year Grand Finale at Anthology on Thursday 5/10 at 5:30 PM… Cruisin’ Califas – The Art of Lowriding exhibit opens at Oceanside Museum of Art on Saturday 5/12.

The new Community at Carnegie project downtown hosts the Sezio art event COLLIDE tonight (Saturday) from 6-10 PM. The flyer describes it as:

…a multi-disciplinary, contemporary art show and benefit curated by Sezio and featuring works from 16 San Diego artists and collectives. Individual art exhibits and installations will inhabit apartment units throughout the property. The event is all ages and open to the public. Admission is $5 with 100% of event proceeds benefiting Sezio…

Our friend David attended the grand opening event at Community in Bankers Hill a few years ago and said it was a lot of fun. With craft beer bars from Stone and Karl Strauss, and cocktails from the El Dorado folks, this one should be even better. Here’s some more information on the historic building’s makeover via the UT: Pearl Hotel owner delves into community living, and the Community Facebook page. And I learned from the comments in the UT article that the building was named after the donated Carnegie library building next door, later demolished.

- My last post was on the dome going on to the library downtown, but I didn’t realize it was such a unique structure until yesterday’s article in the UT explained its complexity and size. Cool stuff.

- Not quite as cool: ripping out all the shade trees on Broadway downtown and replacing them with palm trees. I can see putting palms along the Embarcadero on Harbor as part of the bay front makeover (where there are amazingly no trees for a several block stretch) – it’s an iconic tree and won’t block views there. But to pull out mature trees that provide shade to pedestrians in favor of a tree that’s been banned from Los Angeles due to environmental, maintenance and rat issues is silly.

- Even less cool: Papa Doug donating $100K to help make the bronze version of the gigantic kissing sailor statue a permanent bay front reality. Whether he’s donating $125K to deny others the right to marry, or forcing awful art on San Diegans, PD’s always getting up in your business, isn’t he?

- Not remotely cool: gay mayoral candidate Carl DeMaio having a fundraiser with notoriously anti-gay demagogue Roger Hedgecock.

More stuff:

• Blaine Ave. in Hillcrest set to become first Harvey Milk Street in the country (wonder what Hedgecock thinks about that one?)
• VOSD covers Linda Vista and gets some suggestions on how to help this historic (by San Diego standards) neighborhood
• The Rose Creek Bikeway and Pedestrian Bridge in PB has its ribbon-cutting ceremony on Friday April 20th at 10 AM; 2211 Pacific Beach Drive. BBQ event to follow.
• Richard Florida muses on Why Young Americans are Driving So Much Less Than Their Parents
• Slate asks, Why Don’t Americans Walk More?

Completion is scheduled for summer of 2013. Updates can be found here, where they’re still taking donations.

On the other side of Petco Park, Lucky’s has opened in the Culy Warehouse (also coming to Culy: Block No. 16 Union and Spirits club, where their 25 by 35 foot LCD screen just went up).

A deli counter tucked into a small space, they’re serving sandwiches, salads and breakfast late into the night. We were impressed with their service – even though you pay at the counter, staff come by to refill your soda and check if you need anything. Our turkey and roast beef sandwiches were piled high, but at $11 a pop they better be:

Up in North Park, northparkscene.com says the folks that brought you Golden Hill’s Counterpoint have purchased the Post Office building that closed last July. And there’s a new mural up on the west-facing wall of Wang’s, painted by NYC artist Mark Paul Deren:

Also on tap for this weekend and April: the San Diego Bicycle Summit, put on by SD County Bicycle Coalition, is at the Omni Hotel downtown this weekend. Also, not one but two craft beer events in April: Sunday brings the Mission Valley Craft Beer and Food Festival at the Handlery Hotel, and City Beat’s Festival of Beers is Saturday the 7th in front of the Lafayette Hotel on El Cajon Blvd. Next Thursday the 5th is Opening Day at Petco Park, with the requisite free block party from 11-6.

UCSD’s Visual Arts Gallery has an open studios event on Saturday April 7th, with nearly 50 students participating (Josh Tonies piece shown here)… Likely a bit less edgy: ArtWalk is April 28th/29th in Little Italy… North Park Historical District has a walking tour of the neighborhood’s Dryden District on Saturday 4/14 at 9 AM – meet at 28th and Upas Streets. And finally, Sunday April 16th brings two events: the second annual Taste of College Area and a benefit at Ponce’s in Kensington for Franklin Elementary. Full calendar here.

- We enjoyed the vegetarian offerings at newly-opened Lotus Cafe in Hillcrest (my dairy-free peanut butter milkshake was surprisingly good), but it was disappointing to see it nearly empty on a Saturday evening… Bunz is open in Mission Valley, with Terra’s Jeff Rossman serving up some delicious burgers in the former Pam Pam spot attached to Days Hotel. Our waitress said the clientele has been an interesting mix of hotel patrons and Terra-familiar diners. If you get the vegan burger be prepared to use your fork, the bean/quinoa/peppers/oats concoction was tasty but got a bit squidgy.

SD News has a writeup on the tour, which includes local architect Jonathan Segal’s residence, currently undergoing construction.

Meanwhile a recent drive-by confirms that a historic Irving Gill house on Virginia Way in La Jolla is no more. Read dsoderblog’s writeup from last October on the shenanigans that enabled this former gem to be demolished, including sawing off the structure’s decorative roof brackets.

- I forgot to include some renderings of the winning design (from James Corner Field Operations, who designed the NYC High Line project) for Chicago’s Navy Pier in my last post:

Meanwhile in Chicago, where their giant, derided Seward Johnson statue is thankfully temporary, plans are afoot to makeover kitschy Navy Pier, which has lost tourist traffic to Millenium Park:

Initial designs seek to create a sequence of appealing outdoor spaces along the promenade, including tilted lawns for recreation, a fountain that could spout jets, mist or a reflective sheet of water, and hanging gardens inside the pier’s Crystal Gardens pavilion. The plan also adds a swimming pool with a sand beach and an amphitheater that would slope down to Lake Michigan level on the east end of the pier, with cantilevered overlooks offering views back to the city

Makes you wonder what Broadway Pier could have been if someone other than the Port of San Diego determined its fate – probably more than just a cruise ship terminal with a missing a bait-and-switch park.

And finally (and less grumpily), on the heels of the recently-announced Tokyo route, rumor has it that the airport has been in discussions with Singapore Airlines to bring their Dreamliner to San Diego. Direct flights to southeast Asia anyone?

Wait, one more – if you want that direct flight from SAN to Reagan National to happen, you actually have to sign a petition? San Diego may be the largest unserved market for Reagan, but you’re going to have to write the DOT for that to change.

Based in Austin, Texas, Modern Home Tours, LLC was founded by partners Matt Swinney & James Leasure to introduce Modern architecture and living to people across the nation. Through fun and informative tours in dozens of cities across the United States and Canada, we invite people into some of the most exciting examples of Modern architecture and design in the nation.

Brooklyn Girl‘s opening has been pushed back to April 15… Look for Pita Jungle on University to open around the same time, according to San Diego Food Finds. PJ’s facebook page says their floor just went in… Taco Banh opened last week in Hillcrest; our Kobe Beef taco ($3; shown below) and pork banh mi ($8) were pretty delicious:

They’re still waiting on their liquor license, and plan to stay open late to get the post-bar crowd. Check out Ian Pike’s writeup for more details. And it’s good to know they’ll never run out of Sriracha:

Across the street, Local Habit is doing a 3-course local organic farm and craft beer pairing tomorrow, March 13th.

- Flying to Washington D.C. from San Diego has long meant one of two unpleasant options: fly direct into Dulles but take a long cab ride into the city (soon to be connected to the Metro, fortunately), or take a connecting flight to get into the more optimally-located Reagan National. In fact, San Diego is the largest market in the country that doesn’t have a direct flight into Reagan. That could change under a proposal from Alaska Airlines that would provide a daily directly flight into DCA. Meanwhile the new Dreamliner was in San Diego today; direct flights on it to Tokyo start in December.

- San Diego Latino Film Festival is going on at Ultra Star Mission Valley, and next weekend Cuban zombie flick Juan of the Dead highlights the horror/sci-fi sidebar.

- Photographer/artist Justin Lee’s 92101 Rooftops show is this Thursday from 5-12 at Basic in East Village. It’s composed of shots from rooftops throughout downtown San Diego; see the 92101 Urban Living blog for more info.

Comments may be submitted in writing to the City via U.S. Mail and e-mail to the San Diego Development Services Center Environmental Planner. The mailing address is 1222 First Avenue, MS 501, San Diego, CA 92101. The e-mail address is DSDEAS@sandiego.gov. The deadline for submitting comments is 5 p.m. Copies of the document are also available at the Downtown Central Library, located at 820 E St., and the North Park Branch Library located at 3795 31st St.

The project’s bypass bridge is completely unnecessary and will have a significant negative impact on the park’s quality. Several alternatives exist to the “concrete urbanization” of Balboa Park – help stop this project by contributing to the public review.

- It was another warm winter weekend, perfect for a ride around downtown and the harbor. On my way down there I noticed the parking lot across from Albertsons in East Village at 13th and Market is no more – construction has begun on a 6-story Carrier Johnson residential/commercial project there (current image followed by rendering):

Carrier Johnson designed the new urban village at the northwest corner of UCSD. Too bad some of the more bold design elements of that project, or the many others on their website, didn’t make it into the East Village site.

Construction has begun on the revamp of Gaslamp Square Park at Harbor and 5th Avenue downtown. According to this document, there will be trees, benches, a historic plaque, MTS kiosks and five-globe Gaslamp lights.

There’s also work afoot at Ruocco Park at the northwest end of Seaport Village:

There’s a recent construction update for the project on the Port of San Diego’s website, which also details the sculpture artist Roman de Salvo’s is creating for the park. City Beat had a good writeup on the installation a couple weeks ago. It will stand in sharp contrast to the ridiculous kissing sailor and nurse “Unconditional Surrender” statue that towers just to the north. Unfortunately that piece had its life extended yet again recently and could continue its residency permanently as a bronze version.

It’s hard not to come off as a snob when criticizing “Unconditional Surrender” – it honors the Navy, tourists love it, and so do a lot of San Diegans. But I’ll take the bait: there might not be a better example of our city’s cultural shortcomings than the fact that this “shlock” (Port Chairman Lou Smith’s description) was ever allowed to grace our waterfront (OK, maybe the giant wedding rings that used to live by the airport). Is this an urban/civic setting, or Disneyland? Fortunately the Port has initiated a public art curatorial strategy with input from volunteer visual arts professionals that should produce creative and unique pieces, from its artist-in-residency and commissioned artist teams.

Heading north, construction has begun just south of Broadway on the Embarcadero makeover. The widening of the pedestrian/cycling area here will be a huge improvement – it was a struggle to get through this narrow area Saturday that was packed with visitors and residents, while parked cars took up valuable waterfront real estate.

Across the street, work has begun on the County Administration building’s park and water feature.

Heading down Harbor, we noticed the signage change for the Continental-United merger. Flying out on United? Make sure you check both terminal signs while driving, and pray that you can read the small print while a cabbie rides your rear bumper (flights to Newark and Houston depart from terminal 2).

Over in Point Loma, we took a ride break at Mitch’s Seafood and devoured their always-awesome fish tacos and fish and chips, then marveled at the huge balcony on the new Point Loma Seafoods building nearby. They’re operating in a temporary location next door until the remodel is done:

Heading home, I took a picture of the empty lot where one of the new St. Paul’s Cathedral condo buildings are going in on 5th Ave:

That lot south of Nutmeg will have a 13-story building, while the current St. Paul’s lot will have a new 15-story building added. Both will feature retail space – more Bankers Hill restaurant options someday?

Lastly, after languishing for years as the failed Spectrum Terrace project, this complex perched on the hill at Polk and Georgia in North Park is finally just about done:

CalArts professor Charles Gaines has two five works on display, including the 1981 piece “Landscape: Assorted Trees With Regressions”:

An elaborate mural from Erick Beltrán and Jorge Satorre covers an entire wall and presents an illustrated history of key moments in science and art:

It’s an impressive exhibit for UCSD and definitely worth a visit if you’re on campus.

- That stretch of I-8 west just east of I-5 where the accidents pile up nearly every morning may finally be getting some attention. Lanes are set to be painted soon with markings indicating where you’re headed, and a project to add a lane in both directions from the 163 interchange may get the express treatment, according to the folks at Caltrans. And the I-5/I-8 interchange overhaul has been funded, according to the recently updated project fact sheet. Look for construction to begin on that one in 2014, for a 2016 completion date.

- Restaurant roundup: Naked Pizza on 5th in Hillcrest has closed – probably not the best location for their concept given the lease rates on that block… the Cohn Group returns to Hillcrest after the closure of Kemo Sabe a while back; they’re opening wine bar 100 Wines in the Buonissimo 2 location on University. B2 has been closed since the fire at that location last summer… Gaijin Noodle House starts lunch service on 2/29, according to Wine and Dine San Diego… Wang’s North Park seems to be duplicating the Friday night happy hour success of their Palm Springs location – last Friday the expansive bar was packed and there was over an hour wait for a table in the vast dining area… We’ve had a couple of late dinners at Sipz in North Park now and it’s great to have a vegan option in the neighborhood. Inexpensive, healthy dishes and no post-meal guilt. Still need to try the similarly healthy fare at Casa de Luz around the corner, which looks pretty amazing inside and out… Is it just us or does the lit bar in the back room of Caffe Calabria look exactly like the one that used to be at Caffe Vergnano in Hillcrest?… Slater’s 50/50, out of Orange County, is serving up burgers and beer at Liberty Station until the wee hours nightly… Brooklyn Girl Eatery in Mission Hills is set to open next month and has picked their chef… Gabardine is opening in La Jolla next week, while Taco Banh in Hillcrest is set to open this week, both according to Keli Dailey… And is R Gang Eatery in Hillcrest opening a new location downtown?