The Best Places In San Diego!

Get to know 14-year-old Kiril Kulish and 13-year-old David Alvarez, now former San Diegans. They are two of the three dancers who will play the lead role of Billy Elliot in a musical expected to, “lift Broadway out of its slump” according to Mark Riedel of the New York Post. Billy Elliot, The Musical first opened in London in 2005. There, it won four Laurence Olivier Awards, the British equivalent to the Tony’s, for best musical, best actors in a musical, best sound design, and best choreography.

According to the biographies noted on the Musical’s web site, (more…)

Whether it’s the sunshine, ocean, mountains, desert, canyons, great weather, or wealth of activities, we all have our reasons for loving San Diego. These benefits of living in San Diego motivate us to enjoy life to the fullest extent. I’d say we have more reasons to be motivated than those living anywhere else in the country. It is only fitting that many of the world’s greatest motivational speakers are based in San Diego.

Fortune Magazine notes the four arena-filling monsters of motivation are (more…)

With the nation’s largest urban park (Balboa Park), the seaside hiking trails of Torrey Pines State Reserve, and a total of 35 square miles of parkland and open space, the City of San Diego made U.S. News & World Report’s Top 10 List for Greenest Cities in America for Retirees.

San Diego was noted for its miles of trails and the presence of over 100 senior citizens organizations. The 10 Greenest Cities were selected from over 1,000 cities on the U.S. News & World Report’s list of Best Places to Retire.

To give you a point of comparison, San Diego has three times as much land devoted to parkland than Chicago, another city on the Top 10 list. When you include developed parkland, San Diego’s total reaches 62 square miles or nearly 40,000 acres.

Have you ever peered out the right side of a plane during take-off or landing at Lindbergh Field and watched Marines march in formation? It is a unique opportunity to see Marines in training.

The Marine Corps Recruit Depot in San Diego (MCRD) is one of only two places in the country where new recruits are trained to become a Marine. The other is in Parris Island, South Carolina.

MCRD - San Diego has been training new recruits since 1923. Each year, over 21,000 recruits endure a grueling three months of training. San Diego is home to all of the recruits west of the Mississippi River, as well as the states of Wisconsin and Michigan, and the areas surrounding Chicago and New Orleans.

To learn more about the Marines in San Diego, you can visit the Command Museum at MCRD - San Diego.  I visited the museum this past weekend and will write about it in a future post.

MCRD - San Diego information from Wikipedia

Official Web Site for MCRD - San Diego - Note, the site tends to be slow

Hybrid cars have received a lot of attention in the past few years as consumers look for ways to help preserve the environment. According to a Cars.com survey, nearly 4% of the new vehicle searches in San Diego are for hybrid cars. San Diego ranks 5th out of 50 cities for the interest level in buying green cars.

If you are interested in buying a hybrid car, take a look at the list of hybrid cars built in 2007 and planned for 2008 from Wikipedia.

Judi Sheppard Missett moved to San Diego in 1972 and created what would become the widely popular fitness program, Jazzercise. Starting as a single instructor at the La Jolla YMCA and Oceanside Parks and Recreation, Judi taught a fitness program using jazz dance. She developed the idea based on her experience as a professional dancer. In 1977, Judi began training other instructors. The growing interest in Jazzercise instruction led her to create training videos. This helped to quickly spread Jazzercise across the country and around the globe. The fitness program caught fire by the 80’s. Unlike other fitness crazes of the 80’s, Jazzercise has stood the test of time. Judi, and her daughter Shanna Missett Nelson, now oversee (more…)

The San Diego band Augustana became popular in 2006 with their top 10 single, Boston. You can see their Boston video on YouTube.

They are releasing a new album on Tuesday, called Can’t Love, Can’t Hurt. In May, they will begin their North American tour that includes a stop at the San Diego House of Blues on Thursday, June 12th.

Learn about Augustana and listen to a sound clip from their new album at the official Augustana web site. You can also read more about Augustana, which is signed with Epic Records, at Wikipedia.

Tickets for Augustana at the House of Blues San Diego.

Set your VCR, DVR, or TIVO this weekend for the 10-part PBS Series about the San Diego based USS Nimitz. The first show airs Sunday, April 27th at 9PM. There are two shows over five consecutive nights with the last show airing Thursday, May 1st at 10PM. See San Diego’s KPBS TV schedule for ‘Carrier’.

Carrier is a PBS documentary that follows life on a nuclear aircraft carrier as it makes its journey on a six month deployment from Coronado to the Middle East and back. Filming was done during the deployment made from May 7th - November 8th, 2005. Visit the PBS web page for Carrier to learn more about the history of the USS Nimitz, watch interviews with service members, view a map of the ports-of-call, and more. You will also be able to watch the full episodes online after they air on TV.

Lucky for us, the International Music Products Association (also known as NAMM) moved their headquarters from Chicago to Carlsbad in 1998. They immediately opened up their arms to the community by establishing the Museum of Making Music.

Henry Steinway, of Steinway & Sons piano company fame, was the founding president of the Museum.

The Museum of Making Music houses over 450 instruments. They are separated into rooms representing various time periods in music history that explain the development of new music genre with each passing generation. Did you know the Jitterbug style of swing music started as a fluke in Hollywood when (more…)

Do you want to learn to play a musical instrument? Do you wish you started when you were in school? Well, you’re not alone and its never too late.

The International Music Products Association in Carlsbad has created the Wanna Play? Campaign. According to the Association, 82% of adults who never played a musical instrument, wish they had. To satisfy this wish, the Association has set up a web site for you to learn how to find a great music teacher, learn more about music, and help find a local musical instrument retailer. Campaign supporters include popular stars, including actor Adam Brody (former San Diegan) and guitarist Michelle Branch.

The Association is known as NAMM after its original name, the National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM). Every January, NAMM holds the largest music products trade show in United States.

NAMM began in 1916, with the help of the Steinway & Sons piano company, as the National Association of Piano Merchants of America. In 1919, it expanded to include all merchants of musical instruments and became known as NAMM. NAMM now represents 9,000 retailers in 85 countries.

The Association moved its headquarters to Carlsbad in 1998 and created the Museum of Making Music. I’ll talk about the museum in tomorrow’s post.