It seems Carlsbadistan made it through the storm of the decade mostly unscathed. Power remained on during the night and aside from a few downed trees everything seemed to be intact. A large branch closed Carlsbad Blvd. at Mountain View Dr. Police had both the North and South lanes blocked off at 10:20 AM as Carlsbad City crews worked amazingly quickly to get it all cleaned up.
The Westfield Plaza Camino Real seems to be one big pile of problems for nearly everyone lately. If it isn’t empty spaces, or huge department stores that sit empty like hulking relics to a lost form of commerce, it’s the incessant crime that seems to occur around the mall.
Last month, on Black Friday, a Zumiez store employee was robbed at gun point in the parking lot, then on Saturday night (December 18, 2010) a woman had her car stolen at gun point according to a story in the North County Times.
Police said the 20-year-old victim had just left the mall shortly before 9 p.m. when the suspect, described as a black man about 30 years old, asked her for her car keys. He told her he would shoot and brandished a handgun. . . The woman got out of her car, gave the suspect her keys and the man drove away in an unknown direction in her red 2004 Nissan 350Z. . . .her car has a Michigan license plate BXN8034.
Maybe Westfield should just throw in the towel and tear the place down. Just a thought.
The San Diego Zoo’s Jungle Bells is one of the most fun evenings we’ve had at the Zoo in quite some time. The highlight was the Jumpin’ Elves show at Sydney’s Grill. Don’t miss it. Jungle Bells runs through January 2, 2011. Jumpin’ Elves shows are: 3:30, 4:30, 5:30, and 6:30 p.m. each day. Go early, stay late.
The black pipe snaking along Tamarack State Beach can only mean one thing—the dredging is back. And, according to a post on DredgingToday engineers will be pumping up the sludge from the bottom of the Agua Hedionda Lagoon and stinking up our beach all winter by blowing it out into the ocean from now until May 2011.
The project consists of pumping 500,000 cubic yards of sand from the mouth of the lagoon to the beach in order to allow more cooling water to reach the Encina Power Plant. Beginning the week of Dec. 6, Cabrillo Power I LLC will position a dredging vessel and begin laying large black pipes adjacent to the seawall along Tamarack Beach. Approximately 100,000 cubic yards will be deposited on beaches north of Tamarack Avenue in January. Another segment of sand will be deposited between the jetties in February; the remainder will be placed south of the warm water jetty in March. The sand placement is expected to be completed by mid-April 2011. The equipment will be removed by the end of May.
To be clear—they are not dredging so we can have a more beautiful beach. We already have more than enough sand. They’re dredging so the Encina Power Station can continue to make power to sell elsewhere.
Carlsbad’s Adrienne Durso is reportedly suing the TSA after she received a much too vigorous pat down at Albuquerque, New Mexico’s Sunport Airport, according to a story on KOB.com.
“Heavily concentrating on my breast area where I told her I had a mastectomy the year previous and in just seemed to go on and on,” said Durso. . . She says she felt humiliated as the extensive pat-down happened in front of her 17 year old son and hundreds of other travelers. . . “I felt as though I didn’t have any rights other than I had to stand there and let them do what they want to do to my body,” Durso continued.
The last straw was when a supervisor reportedly told Durso’s son that the reason he hadn’t gotten a similar pat down was because “you don’t have boobs.” We’re kind of hoping the TSA loses this one. The craziness must stop.
On the Monday after Thanksgiving the CarlsbadistanMarie Callender’s apparently closed up shop and packed away the signs according to a story in the San Diego Reader.
Next door at the McDonalds, employees said the Marie Callender’s signs were removed right away on that morning. The restaurant obviously did not tell its regular customers. Two hand-written notes were posted on the front door December 8 advising groups that normally meet at the restaurant to go to other nearby establishments for their meetings.
The restaurant, which was shut down by for a few days in November of 2009 after a Thanksgiving day diner smelled sewage in the kitchen, has had a rough time lately. Wish we could say we were going to miss them.
San Diego City Beat has uncovered a rather interesting Wikileak story regarding a wedding thrown by Dagestani ambassador to Moscow Gadzhi Makhachev. The reason it is interesting is that the cable also mentions that Makhachev had homes in San Diego and sent Dagestani youth (including his sons) to “a military type high school near San Diego.”
City Beat says Makhachev denied in published reports that he has homes in San Diego, however, they found that he actually owns four homes in Carlsbad, all of which we know well (one is located next door to Senior Grubby’s see below) and that he has sent 15 boys through Carlsbad’s Army & Navy Academy.
City Beat says that Goldstein has since “fled the country.”
How’s that for some local intrigue? Click the link for all the details in a well researched piece of investigative journalism from City Beat senior writer Dave Maass.
Each year Carlsbadistan Rotarians gather in the parking lot of the Village Faire at the corner of Carlsbad Blvd and Carlsbad Village Drive to kick off the holiday season with a Christmas Tree Lighting with some help from Santa Claus, Matt Hall, some singers, and the ubiquitous Carlsbad High School Lancer Dancers. Because nothing says Christmas like choreographed hip-hop jazz dancing on the asphalt.
Follow the jump for a little more on how the Sunday, December 5, 2010 Christmas Tree lighting went. [click to continue…]
The Carlsbad Library is celebrating the release the their 22nd Annual Magee Park Poets Poetry Anthology with a free poetry reading at The Carlsbad City Library’s Carlsbad Library tonight (December 8, 2010) at 7 PM.
The library will host an open reading by poets whose poems are featured in this year’s anthology. Poets from around San Diego County submitted poems for the anthology and more than 60 poems have been selected. The anthology will be available for purchase for $5. Following the reading, attendees are invited to a reception in the Library’s Gowland Meeting Room. Admission to the reading and reception is free.
We’re not big poetry fans, but it could be fun anyway. Click the jump for all the details. [click to continue…]
This weekend Carlsbadistan street/stencil artist Bryan Synder will present his third annual solo show/30th birthday party which he “created, organized and promoted” titled Young At Art at 6 PM Friday December 10, 2010 at his studio at 2695 State Street in Carlsbad.Young At Art is a collection of new works from the past year including t-shirts, collector prints, stickers, magnets, and other collectibles/gifts.
Snyder says the majority of his new art has never been seen publicly, which quite frankly is hard for us to believe as we seem to see his signature splatter-painted objects all over the place. The event will be catered by Paradise Pizza so there’s that, too.
If you have a Carlsbad news story, press release, event, rumor, or scandal that we'd be interested in (and there are a lot of them), please click the link to send them to The Editors.
Or just search the site to see if we've mentioned it before, right here.