The Best Places In San Diego!

San Diego finally has its first Five Diamond Restaurant - The Addison in the Grand Del Mar Resort. Serving French Cuisine, the Addison offers four course meals starting at $98.  Only four restaurants in North America were added to this year’s Five Diamond Award List issued by AAA.  Congratulations to the Addison.  We are lucky to have you here in San Diego.

Four Season Resort Aviara in Carlsbad and The Lodge at Torrey Pines once again were named to AAA’s list of Five Diamond Award Winning Hotels. Only 103 establishments in North America earned that distinction this year.  The San Diego area offers more Five Diamond hotels than such cities as Boston and Seattle.

What better place could you live to enjoy a Five Diamond Staycation! San Diego has it all - fine dining, luxurious resorts, and great year-round weather.  (It’s the middle of November and as I write this it is a balmy 90 degrees outside.)

San Diego is the perfect place to ride out any type of storm.  Obviously, the weather here is near perfect.  But, did you know San Diego is also a great place to ride out an economic storm?

Tourism nationwide fell dramatically after 9/11 as people reacted by staying closer to family and avoiding planes. As a result, people throughout the Southwestern part of the United States turned to San Diego as their vacation hot spot.  We served as the getaway vacation capital for the 10 million residents of Los Angeles and the nearly 5 million residents in the Phoenix metro area. These two cities are the largest in the Western United States and San Diego is within easy driving distance of both.  That helped to prop up our tourism industry during the weak economy at that time.

Now that our nation’s economy is going through another rought spot, here is another sign that San Diego’s tourism business will get a boost.  The Cruise Log Blog at USA Today reports Royal Caribbean Cruises is moving their 2,501 passenger Randiance of the Seas ship from the Caribbean to San Diego to ride out the current economic storm.  The theory is a lot more people will be willing to drive to San Diego rather than fly to the Caribbean during the economic downturn.  An additional 24 trips will originate out of San Diego, bringing up to 60,000 more visitors through San Diego.

It is always nice to see a bright spot in every storm.  This is just another one of the benefits of living in San Diego. If you want to see the cruise ships up close, check out my post about the San Diego Cruise Ship Terminal I made earlier in the year.

A few months ago I shared with you how, surprisingly to me, San Diego County leads the way in farming.  Well, here’s another surprise from our fellow food-making San Diegans.  We are also home to a cheese company that consistently wins top honors at the World Cheese Competition.

This year, the competition for the World Cheese Awards took place in Dublin, Ireland.  Our own Cantare Foods, based in Otay Mesa, won 2nd place for best Mozzarella Cheese. Cantare Foods has won several awards in recent years for their Mozzarella and Mascarpone cheeses.

If you love cheese, the Cantare Foods web site provides a number of recipies using their award-winning cheese.

You can find Cantare cheese at grocery stores all over the country. So, go out and support a local company producing some of the finest cheeses in the world.

The Project for Public Places is a New York based non-profit that works with communities around the world to develop quality parks and public squares.  Since their beginning in 1975, they have worked with over 2,000 communities in 26 countries.

With that said, it is quite impressive they ranked our own Balboa Park, the 13th Best Park in the World and 4th Best Park in the United States.  If you haven’t been to Balboa Park lately, it’s time to learn more about the park in your backyard that is the envy of communities around the globe.

Take advantage of this unique gem.  And, if you hear someone complaining San Diego doesn’t have the amenities of a world-class city, send them this link and tell them stop looking in someone else’s backyard and to appreciate that we are living in a special place.

The Project for Public Spaces put together lists in 2004 of both the Best Parks and the Worst Parks in the World. These parks are used as examples on what should and should not be done to create a wonderful park to be enjoyed by local residents. Although there is always room for improvement (like making Balboa Park #1), we do have something to hang our hat on.

Congratulations go out to ATA Engineering in Carmel Valley.  They made this year’s Wall Street Journal list for Top Small Workplaces.  Only 10 companies nationwide earned the honor.

ATA Engineering, founded in 2000 and now employing 84 personnel, solves complex mechanical and aerospace engineering challenges.  Their work includes help in the development of the International Space Station to assistance on the design of amusement park rides.

So, what does ATA Engineering do that makes it a Top Workplace? The Wall Street Journal cited 100% Employee Ownership, managers and executives being paid on the same payscale as engineering staff, all employees earning the same percentage of their salary for bonuses, and allowing many employees at all levels to be a part of company decisions from hiring new employees to determining where the offices should be located.

So, congratulations go out to ATA Engineering for setting an example for small companies across the country.  Visit the ATA Engineering web site to learn more about the company and view their engineering opportunities. Maybe you can become a member of one of the Top Workplaces in America.

The results for America’s Favorite Cities survey are in!  If you recall, I encouraged my readers back in March to make San Diego #1 on the Travel & Leisure magazine survey. I’m not sure what to think after reviewing the results.

San Diego failed to receive any top rankings out of 45 categories.  We were only competing against 25 other cities. However, we did finish #2 for Ideal Weather, Attractive People, and Perfect Place for a Family Vacation.  My more compelling concern is that it was the scores given by San Diegans that contributed to our poor rankings.

To be fair, San Diegans did score our city better than non-San Diegans…barely.  Out of 45 survey questions, we gave ourselves a cumulative 2 extra points.  (Each question had the potential for 5 points.) Unfortunately, other cities thought much more highly of themselves, helping to propel their cities to higher rankings.

If you were to compare the city rankings based only on what residents gave to their own city, San Diego gave up a whopping 15 cumulative spots in the rankings in comparison to what outsiders thought about San Diego.

That begs the question, ‘Is this a good thing because San Diegans are too modest to gloat about ‘America’s Finest City’ or is it a bad thing because we lack self-esteem about our own city?’.

Here are the categories where we gave up the most in rankings - Public Parks and Outdoor Access, Classical Music, Farmers’ Markets, Stylish People, Public Transportation and Pedestrian Friendliness, and Christmas Destination.   (Hmmm … Stylish People … maybe we are so caught up in trying to keep up with the Jones’s that we don’t take the time to appreciate what we do have.  Maybe this is indicative of us losing sight on what a great place we live in and it takes outsiders to point it out to us.)

Here are the categories where we flat-out scored ourselves worse than outsiders - Historical Sites and Monuments, Late Night / Club Scene, Traffic, and Affordability, not to mention some crossover categories from the previous section, including once again Stylish People, Classical Music, and Public Transportation.

I’m hoping we are a bit too modest but part of me thinks we are so caught up in ‘keeping up with others’ that we forget to appreciate what we do have.  Hopefully, I can help improve our perception of San Diego with this blog.  I’m also working on a special project that I will introduce in the coming weeks to improve our city’s image.

I’d be curious in hearing your thoughts on why we may have scored ourselves so low in comparison to how other cities thought about themselves.

San Diego native Tony Hawk became the sports cover boy in the 1980s as the #1 Skateboarder in the World.  He pushed skateboarding into the mainstream by setting a new standard with his death-defying tricks.  Becoming one of the first self-made rich kids, he was able to buy a home in Del Mar by the age of 17.  In the ensuing years, he won 73 out of 103 pro contests and finished in the top two in 92 of those contests.

The 1980’s sports cover boy is today’s business cover man.  Just this month, he is on the cover of Success Magazine and the first athlete-turned-businessman to be featured in Portfolio Magazine.

After tough years during the 1990s when Hawk was forced to refinance his home and eat with only $5 a day, he turned a once fledgling skateboard company into a business powerhouse. Tony’s business success in the areas of skateboarding, clothing, video games, national tours, and a New York Times Best-Seller has enabled him to create the Tony Hawk Foundation, which has assisted in the development of several hundred skateboard parks across the country. Both Tony Hawk, Inc and the Tony Hawk Foundation are based in Vista.

Learn more about our fellow San Diegan who is now gracing the covers of business magazines. You can read about the life of Tony Hawk and get his business tips in the Success Magazine article and then get more business strategy advice by reading his profile and watching several three minute video clips of an interview he did with Portfolio Magazine.

For his New York Times Best-Seller, Hawk: Occupation: Skateboarder, you can read more about that on Amazon.

No.  That is not a misprint in the title.  The current King of NASCAR is from San Diego. El Cajon to be more specific.  Who knew that San Diego was such a hotbed for racecar athletes.  I guess I should have known when I wrote a recent post about all of the other professional athletes that grew up in San Diego.

Who is this King of NASCAR? His name is Jimmie Johnson.  Like me, you may have heard his name mentioned in the news over the past couple years but don’t know much about him if you haven’t followed NASCAR. So, here is a primer about our fellow San Diegan, who is the king of our nation’s 2nd most popular sport to watch on TV, following NFL football.

Jimmie Johnson was born in El Cajon and attended Granite Hills High School.  Since his rookie season (2002), Johnson has finished in the top 5 in ‘points’ for the NASCAR Championship every year.  He has won the NASCAR Championship the past two years.  Now Johnson is on track to win his third straight Championship, which so far has only been achieved by one other NASCAR driver in history back in the 1970’s. (Geez, I didn’t know NASCAR has been around that long.)

There are 26 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series races that determines who can compete for the NASCAR Championship during the final 10 races of the NASCAR Season. The NASCAR Chase for the Championship consists of the top 12 drivers entering the final 10 races.  With only six races remaining, Jimmie Johnson currently sits atop the leaderboard and is the odds on favorite to win his third Cup.

So, if you are like me and may have a spark of interest now in following our fellow San Diegan, then question is when to cheer for him.  When watching ESPN sports news, it seems like there is a NASCAR race every day of the week. Well, it turns out there are several different NASCAR Series.  It also turns out, the NASCAR drivers compete in multiple Series. (There is apparently a bit of controversy that surrounds that.) You will hear many of the well known names competing in NASCAR races that are part of the NASCAR Nationwide Series. The top level one where all of the money is made is the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series, which frequently takes place the following day on the same race track as the Nationwide Series. Wikipedia has a nice write-up on the difference between the Sprint Cup and Nationwide Series, as well as the controversy related to drivers competing in both.

To follow the progress of Jimmie Johnson in these final six races as he attempts to tie the long-held NASCAR record, visit the NASCAR Sprint Cup web site where you will find the current standings and upcoming TV schedule. With the exception of this afternoon’s race, the rest of the races will take place on Sundays and all can be see on ABC.

You can learn more about Jimmie Johnson and read his bio on the NASCAR web site. He certainly appears to be a good guy.  He and his wife (sorry ladies, but he is taken) started a foundation to help children and families nationwide.  Among the groups they have supported is San Diego’s Habitat for Humanity.

So, if you’ve never followed NASCAR, now’s a good time to check it out while cheering for a fellow San Diegan.  Go Jimmie Johnson!

The Nation’s Largest Military Air Show is right here in San Diego. You will see jets whizzing around University City, Miramar, Mira Mesa, Kearney Mesa, and Scripps Ranch all week as they practice for their shows that begin this Thursday, October 2nd. Thursday’s show is only open to military families. The rest of the public is welcome to join in the spectacle on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

The stars of the show are always the Navy’s Blue Angels. We missed them last year when they had other obligations requiring the Air Force Thunderbirds to serve in their place. Being this is a Navy and Marine town, the return of the Navy Blue Angels will be a welcome sight. Be aware that the Blue Angels perform during the daytime shows and not during the night time show on Saturday. By the way, did you know the winter home and training grounds for the Blue Angels are just east of San Diego at the Naval Air Facility in El Centro?

Two of the newest military aircraft are set to fly over MCAS Miramar. The F-22 Raptor will perform just before the Blue Angels during the afternoon performances. The MV-22 Osprey is tentatively scheduled to perform during the morning sessions. Get familiar with the Osprey because there will be several squadrons of this tilt-rotor aircraft stationed at MCAS Miramar starting in 2010.

One of my favorites is the B-2 Stealth Bomber. If you are outdoors this week going for a walk and notice a shadow engulf you, look up quickly and you’ll probably see the Stealth Bomber. That happened to me several years ago near UTC. I had no idea it was coming up behind me, flying low over the building tops, until its large shadow engulfed me before I heard the noise of the jets.

Considering this is the country’s largest Air Show, bring lots of sun tan lotion and plan on spending the whole day touring the exhibits and watching the performances. If you don’t have the whole day, be sure to check the air show schedule so you’ll know when to look for your favorite performances. Also, bring a lot of patience because traffic getting in and out will be very, very slow … especially Saturday afternoon when the day show spectators are leaving and the night show spectators are arriving.

If you buy your tickets online, you’ll save a few dollars per person. The Friday and Sunday shows are the cheapest ($11 for Adults and $8 for Kids), but again you’ll save a few dollars each if you buy them online. Several levels of premium tickets are also available.

Have fun!

Mark your calendars for November 10th. That’s the day PBS will premier The Journey to Palomar - America’s First Journey into Space. The documentary chronicles one of science’s greatest achievements - the development of the 200 inch Hale Telescope, which took its first photograph in 1949. As I mentioned in a post last month, the Hale Telescope took the clearest outer space pictures ever, of any ground or space spaced telescope, in 2007. Its ability to operate in such an impeccable manner over several decades demonstrates the level of precision and foresight exhibited by George Hale and all those who took part in the development of the telescope.

The Journey to Palomar is based on the book The Perfect Machine: Building the Palomar Telescope by Ronald Florence. You will learn how the giant mirror for the telescope provided a ray of excitement during the Great Depression. As it was transported across the country from the Corning glass factory in New York to Southern California, thousands of spectators came out to the tracks to cheer it along its journey.

Although it is in a remote location of our county, make plans to pay it a visit some day and appreciate the significance of one of our nation’s greatest science marvels here in our own backyard. Check out my previous post to learn about the different programs available for visitors.

If you are a student or amateur astronomer, check out this “once in a lifetime” opportunity being presented through a Live NASA Webcast. On October 8th, participants will get to interact with the producers of The Journey to Palomar along with America’s Top Astronomers, who are featured in the documentary and will be talking to you live from the Kennedy Space Center.