The Best Places In San Diego!

For those who miss the San Diego Spirit, former women’s professional soccer league team, you can get your fix of top caliber soccer in July. The U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team will be hosting Brazil at the University of San Diego’s Torero Field on Wednesday, July 16th at 7PM.

The game will be a warm up for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, which begins in early August. Go see the Women’s Olympic Soccer team get ready to win the gold! If you can’t make it in person, the game will be shown live on the Fox Soccer Channel.

Tickets for U.S. Women’s Soccer team against Brazil from Ticketmaster. Ticket prices range from $22 - $85.

Ticketmaster Phone Number: 1-619-220-8497

Official Torero Stadium information. The University of San Diego is a 10 minute drive north of downtown and located east of the SeaWorld Drive exit. Enjoy the nice hilltop views.

Directions to Torero Stadium from Google Maps

Women’s National Soccer Team web site.

San Diego, along with Philadelphia and Indianapolis, has been chosen to host a QUASH Event for the Alzheimer’s Association. QUASH (Quest to Unravel Alzheimer’s - Scavenger Hunt) will take place in San Diego on Saturday, June 14th.

The scavenger hunter will take your team of four members throughout San Diego, providing an unforgettable adventure through city landmarks and hidden hotspots. Your team will complete challenges and solve puzzles in a race against the clock - and your opponents - to emerge victorious.

The registration fee for each individual is $25 and teams must collect a minimum of $200 in donations. So get together with coworkers, alumni groups, friends, and family to help researchers find a cure for Alzheimer’s.

Alzheimer’s affects 13% of people over the age of 65 according to the most recent Alzheimer’s statistics published by the Alzheimer’s Association. Considering the number of aging Baby Boomers, scientists are going all-out to find cures for this mentally disabling disease. Let’s show the Alzheimer’s Association they made a good choice to pick San Diego in their efforts to help the fight against Alzheimer’s Disease. Sign up for the QUASH Challenge today.

With the presence of the Scripps Research Institute and plans under way for the development of UCSD, the next keystone needed to create the nexus for the current-day powerhouse biotech cluster on Torrey Pines Mesa was San Diego’s pursuit of becoming home to the Salk Institute for Biological Studies.

The year was 1960. Dr. Jonas Salk had become famous for developing the polio vaccine, which essentially eliminated the threat of polio overnight. The polio vaccine was the first to be created with an inactive, or killed, virus. Prior to the polio vaccine, live viruses were injected in humans to build antibodies.

Dr. Salk, who was director of the Virus Research Laboratory at the University of Pittsburgh, did not make a profit on the polio vaccine but did use his notoriety to pursue his dream. The dream was to build an independent research center, where scientists could gather and pursue their curiosities in hopes of finding more biological cures.

Cities across the country vied to become the home to Dr. Jonas Salk’s dreams. San Diego Mayor, and former polio victim, Charles Dail led the charge to make a name for our city. In June 1960, 74% of San Diego residents overwhelmingly approved a donation of land to lure the Salk Institute to its current location.

I’ve had the good fortune to meet Dr. Jonas Salk’s son, Dr. Peter Salk. He notes his father was drawn by the innovative climate of California and thus San Diego and the San Francisco Bay Area had become the leading candidates. Dr. Peter Salk remembers his father being particularly attracted to the beautiful cliff side location in Torrey Pines. This, along with the proximity of UCSD, which was being built at the time, and the overwhelming generosity of land from the citizens of San Diego sealed the deal.

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The Today Show web site reports that Best Life Magazine has rated San Diego #5 for the Best Places to Raise a Family.

The ranking of 257 cities was based on child safety, education spending, student test scores, divorce rates, commute times, cost of housing, and access to parks, museums, and pediatricians.

Considering our housing costs are among the highest in the nation, we must do quite well in all of the other categories to beat out 252 other cities in the country.

So, it appears San Diegans have perfected the whole life cycle considering we rank 12th in the country for Best Places for Having Babies, and placed 8th in the country on AARP’s list of Best Places for Senior Citizens to reinvent their lives. In addition to those previous posts, San Diego also ranks as on of the Best Places for Mid-Career Professionals.

San Diego has taken top honors as the 2008 Cookout Capital. Blue Rhino conducted a survey to identify the cities with the best weather for grilling.

San Diego finished a surprising 15th last year. That must have been due to the hot summer we had in 2006. Our weather returned to normal last summer, securing us the top spot based on having the most days that are under 90 degrees and dry.

It is nice to be reminded once in a while that we live in America’s Finest City.

Coronado Beach, stretching from the Hotel Del Coronado to Dog Beach near the town center, is the top beach in California for 2008.

Coronado Beach ranks 5th nationwide in the annual ranking of the Top 10 Beaches in the Country. The beach in Coronado will be featured along with the other Top 10 beaches on a TV special over the 4th of July weekend. I’ll keep an eye out for the time and channel and update this post.

You can read more about Coronado Beach from the Coronado Visitor Center web site. Here’s one tidbit I never knew: (more…)

Elizabeth Reaser, from ‘Grey’s Anatomy’, stars in a new drama being filmed in Ocean Beach. ‘The Ex List’ will air Friday nights at 9PM this fall on CBS. Check out a clip of the show from Entertainment Tonight.

Here’s the full list of actors, producers, director, and others involved with ‘The Ex List’ and a brief description from Yahoo. The studio credit for the show is 20th Century Fox Television.

I saw them filming just last month on Newport Avenue in Ocean Beach. If you saw any of the filming in OB and have any tidbits, share it with the rest of us!

Read about other TV shows produced in San Diego from a previous post.

Considering today is the 96th anniversary of Marines Corps Aviation, I figured it would be the appropriate time to encourage you to visit the Marines Corps’ Aviation Museum.

Have you been awed by the progress of military aviation over the years? Are you a fan of movies like The Flying Leathernecks, starring John Wayne? Or, have you heard stories from family members who fought in WWII or watched documentaries on TV about the success of the F4U Corsairs?

There is one museum in the country dedicated to the nearly 100 year history of Marine Corps aviation and lucky enough for us, its based right here in San Diego.

The Flying Leatherneck Aviation Museum and Historical Foundation is housed (more…)

The University of California, San Diego (UCSD) is regarded as one of the top universities in the country according to U.S. News and World Report. Eight of its faculty members have won a Nobel Prize. Twelve Nobel Prize Winners have been associated with UCSD, which currently ranks it 27th in the world. This ranking is quite impressive considering the Nobel Prize was first awarded in 1901, well before UCSD was founded.

UCSD is ranked fourth in the country among (more…)

Once again, San Diego teachers are being rewarded for their outstanding work. This time, Havena Marks and Amanda Nobles from Adobe Bluffs Elementary School in Rancho Penasquitos were recognized with Time Warner Cable’s National Teacher Awards.

The awards are given to teachers who incorporate the power of cable television’s technology and high-quality programming in their classrooms. Time Warner recognized only fifteen projects nationwide out of its largest applicant pool in 19 years.

Marks and Nobles were recognized for using both cable and the internet to teach students the importance of clean beaches. Learn more about their project at the Time Warner Cable web site.

Also, check out the previous posts for top San Diego teacher awards:

California Teachers of the Year

Olympus 2008 Emerging Educational Leader Award