San Diego Physicians Answer Your Most-Asked Questions
The county's medical experts break down some of the field’s most complex and pressing inquiries surrounding heart disease, Medicaid, cancer treatments & more
Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the US. Scripps Clinic electrophysiologist Dr. Doug Gibson; Kaiser Permanente cardiologist Dr. Bahram Khadivi; and Dr. Jia Shen, cardiologist and director of the Bankers Hill cardiovascular clinic at UC San Diego Health, weigh in on why—and what advancements might help change that stat.
Why is heart disease so prevalent in America today?
Dr. Doug Gibson: The simplest way to think about it is that, for most of modern human history, we haven’t had easy access to unlimited resources such as food, [and] we had to expend more physical energy to acquire these resources. We got more exercise, and we didn’t have processed foods at the convenience store down on the corner. Modern human genetics are largely the result of that scarcity that we all lived through as human beings over the last 500 years. These genetics don’t do well with easy access to unlimited resources and lack of exercise. The end result is that, because of the agricultural and industrial revolutions, humans have had to expend less effort to acquire resources such as food. This has resulted in more risk factors associated with cardiovascular disease, such as high blood pressure, diabetes, and obesity.
Generally, cardiologists will advise patients at risk for heart disease to achieve or maintain a healthy weight. GLP-1 or semaglutide medications have made the news in recentyears as a revolutionary weight loss solution—but I can’t help think of the fen-phen craze of the 1990s, which supported weight loss but turned out to damage the heart valves. Has research been done on GLP-1s’ impact on heart health?
Dr. Bahram Khadivi: Weight loss by lifestyle modification tends to be more permanent because new habits have been formed. This avoids medications and their side effects. However, there are some patients that truly struggle, and we will take any avenue for weight loss, because we know it will help them. These medications are indicated for patients who have risk factors for heart disease, and [we] also take into account body mass index. Widespread use of these medications is concerning as we don’t know [enough about potential] long-term side effects, such as loss of muscle mass and effects on vision.
Dr. Jia Shen: GLP-1s are very popular for weight loss, but they also have cardiovascular benefits. [Previously,] some diabetes medications were shown to improve [blood] sugar but also lead to worse cardiac outcomes, so a lot of the newer diabetes medicines have to prove that they’re not harmful to your heart. Because of that, [researchers] measure cardiovascular outcomes when they’re testing these medicines in the population. [A landmark trial] looking at semaglutide in diabetics found about a 26 percent risk reduction in cardiovascular endpoints. Then they took that one step further and asked, “Well, do we find [a similar] benefit in people that have obesity, but not diabetes?” It was true—there was about a 20 percent relative risk reduction in cardiovascular outcomes.
We find that not only do people lose significant amounts of weight with [semaglutide]—I believe it is around 15 percent of their total body weight—they also have vast improvements in their blood pressure, cholesterol, triglycerides, and inflammation. Their whole cardiometabolic panel gets better. These medications, we feel, are very safe and very good for the heart, and I will prescribe them as a heart medication for people that need them.
Courtesy of Scripps Health Dr. Doug Gibson
What are some of the latest breakthroughs in the field of heart disease treatment, and what innovations will we see in the future?
Dr. Bahram Khadivi: Our ability to treat structural heart disease—we often think of blocked arteries as heart disease, but heart disease can also involve the structures of the heart, such as heart valves and muscle. Historically, diseased valves were treated with open heart surgery, [but] we now have the capability to treat multiple heart valve disorders minimally invasively. This field has really come a long way, and we can avoid open heart surgery for many patients. Structural heart procedures are done [by accessing] a blood vessel in the groin, neck, or upper arm.
Half of the procedures that I perform today were not available 10 to 15 years ago. This is also true for robotic surgery, where [what was once] a large, open surgery can now be accomplished through small incisions. Everything is headed towards the minimally invasive route.
Dr. Jia Shen: There’s always something new in cardiology. For people that have really advanced disease, we have a mechanical device that can take the place of their heart. If the heart cannot pump anymore, we can put in something called a BiVAD—a biventricular assist device, or a mechanical pump—that can actually bypass the heart completely.
With transplantation, we take out the old heart and give you a new heart. One new innovation is that we now have a special machine that pumps the heart [outside of the body]. We can take the organ and put it onto this machine, and it keeps it good and alive longer so that we can actually travel greater distances to give that heart to a potential recipient. It’s very high-tech and very sci-fi.
I think one of the things that will transform the field more is the use of artificial intelligence. UCSD is looking at different algorithms that can identify heart disease in ancillary scanning—so let’s say you get a CT for something else. We can use AI to comb through these images to see if you could have an increased risk of heart disease, so maybe we can identify that disease earlier in young patients.
Dr. Doug Gibson: In general, I would say genetic-based therapies are most exciting. Any illness that is the result of a single gene mutation is on the target list for a real cure in the near-to-intermediate-term time frame.
In my specific discipline, the most exciting advance is pulsed field ablation, a new way to treat abnormal heart rhythms, specifically atrial fibrillation. I’m a cardiac electrician, if you will—the formal job title is cardiac electrophysiologist. I specialize in abnormal heart rhythms. We treat arrhythmias by threading catheters through the veins in your leg up to your heart. We then use these catheters to destroy the abnormal heart muscle that causes the abnormal heart rhythm. We used to [utilize] heat or cryotherapy to destroy the abnormal heart muscle. We did it this way for many years, and it worked, but it could be dangerous, and it suffered from a lack of adequate success.
As of February 2024, instead of burning abnormal heart tissue to get rid of it, we use something called pulsed field ablation. [It’s] a once-in-a-career revolutionary shift in the way we treat atrial fibrillation. Instead of heating or freezing abnormal heart muscle, we’re delivering microsecond— soon to be nanosecond—pulses of energy to the cardiac tissue. [Those pulses eliminate] only the abnormal heart cells that we are targeting. This results in less collateral damage and the ability to deliver what we know to be the effective dose safely, [meaning] shorter, safer, and more effective procedures. Adoption of this new technology has been widespread and robust. At Scripps, we participated in preclinical research and the pivotal clinical trials that led to FDA approval. This allowed us to get early access to the technology for clinical use.
Courtesy of Sharp HealthCare Sharp HealthCare President and CEO Chris Howard
Incoming Cuts to Medicaid Questions
The July 4th passage of the Trump administration’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” will have significant impacts on Medicaid in the US. Sharp HealthCare President and CEO Chris Howard explains how it may affect patients in San Diego.
Chris Howard: One-third of San Diegans are covered by Medicaid, which is known as Medi-Cal here in California. Medicaid provides health insurance coverage for low-income adults, children, pregnant women, elderly adults, and people with disabilities. It’s a federal-and state-funded health insurance program, so the states provide funding for a portion of it and the federal government provides a different portion for it.
What are the planned cuts, and how will they impact San Diegans?
Chris Howard: The passage of the 2025 federal reconciliation bill, known as HR1, puts many individuals at risk of losing their healthcare coverage. New eligibility and work requirements and coverage restrictions will result in more people being without insurance. In many cases, these are people who qualify for Medicaid, but they’ll lose their coverage because they aren’t able to complete the cumbersome paperwork process.
It’s also important to note that HR1 made significant changes to the Affordable Care Act’s health insurance exchanges, like Covered California, where small business owners, part-time and gig workers, young adults, and others who don’t have health benefits through their employers can shop for and purchase private insurance plans, often at reduced cost, some of which has been subsidized through tax credits. In San Diego County, there are more than 164,000 people who have purchased their health insurance through Covered California, and 88 percent of those people received tax credit help to reduce the costs. So, as this bill takes that away, some of those individuals will decide that healthcare is too expensive, and then they won’t buy it.
HR1’s restrictions on tax credits and its new renewal and validation processes [are] going to make it more difficult for people to receive healthcare insurance coverage. For Sharp, being the largest provider of medical services in San Diego County, we are keenly aware of how significant the loss of this coverage would be for the most vulnerable patients. This includes patients from fragile newborns in our neonatal intensive care units to people receiving end-of-life care in our hospice homes.
All of our local healthcare systems are dedicated to providing exceptional health care regardless of an individual’s ability to pay. But this will place extreme pressure on hospitals, in particular, and unfortunately, that could lead to decreased services or other challenges as hospitals simply try to bear the cost of this care without compensation. The entire healthcare system in San Diego County will be extremely burdened.
Is there anything providers and institutions can do to help mitigate these effects?
Chris Howard: Advocacy is our first and foremost priority. There is much that remains unknown about how the bill is ultimately going to impact Sharp and other providers in California, in part because some of the provisions of the bill don’t take place until later years. But what we do know is, of the San Diegans that are covered by Medi-Cal, a portion of them in the future will not have health insurance coverage. And so our focus right now is on county and state budget decisions being made in response to the decreased funding from the federal government for Medicaid services, and we’re closely monitoring these developments, advocating to minimize negative impacts to our patients, the community, and Sharp.
At the end of the day, the state will have to find funding sources for the healthcare that it desires to provide. We know the current status of the state budget, and we know it’s extremely challenged. The daunting part, though, is that the net impact of HR1 will be to reduce federal funding, in this case to the state of California. And so, moving forward, the state, perhaps the county, will have to understand what, if any, additional funding sources there are for healthcare coverage, because it’s going to fall on the state, in particular, to address that. That will be a headline in the coming years: How much can California fund relative to its Medicaid program, and who will pay for that?
Courtesy of Palomar Health Dr. Jonathan Bear
Groundbreaking Cancer Treatments Questions
Radiation oncologist Dr. Jonathan Bear explains the ins and outs of brachytherapy, an innovative approach to treating prostate cancer at Palomar Health.
What is brachytherapy, and what cancers does it best treat?
Dr. Jonathan Bear: The way that we treat most cancers is with external radiation, so we have a machine that delivers radiation, or high-power x-rays, through the body to get to the tumor. While we have great technology and modern treatments and we can really deliver accurate radiation, we still have to go from the outside to the inside. You can’t give an infinite amount of radiation, because, though we would get rid of the tumor, we’d harm the patient’s [healthy tissue].
Brachytherapy is internal radiation. “Brachy” is Greek. It means “close”—so the radiation is right up next to the tumor, exactly where we need it, and that allows us to deliver less radiation to the other organs and go to higher doses. High-dose-rate brachytherapy starts with a patient under anesthesia. I put catheters through the skin and do a CT scan so we can plan the radiation in three dimensions, and then we hook each of those catheters up to a radiation machine. The beauty is, because you have [multiple] channels and a computer that’s helping you, and each channel can be dosed differently, you can really steer the dose and get a lot of accuracy. The whole procedure, from start to finish, takes about three to four hours.
What the evidence shows us from numerous trials is that it translates to better outcomes as far as what we’re trying to accomplish, which is curing the cancer and minimizing side effects.
We can treat most cancers with brachytherapy. It’s most commonly used in prostate cancer and gynecological malignancies. It’s also used in lung cancer and gastrointestinal malignancies, where brachytherapy can be applied directly inside the airway or digestive tract. [At Palomar,] we’re going to start with prostate brachytherapy, and then we’re going to move on—probably toward the end of year—to gynecological cancers.
Palomar is the only hospital in San Diego County offering high-dose-rate brachytherapy for prostate cancer. What are the limits to accessibility?
Dr. Jonathan Bear: You need to be specially trained to do this procedure—it takes a lot of time and effort compared to external radiation therapy. So really what it comes down to is the training time, the effort, and the expertise. Brachytherapy is a team-based approach. It’s not just me, [the radiation oncologist]—you have to have a urologist. I have a bunch of nurses and OR staff; we have a physicist who helps with dosing the radiation. Not too many centers have the highly skilled team that’s required in order to successfully do this procedure.
What research is Palomar currently doing to push this and other cancer treatments forward?
Dr. Jonathan Bear: We’re growing our cancer clinic. We have a research team that is contracted through Palomar. We don’t have a clinical trial [for brachytherapy] right now, but that’s definitely on the horizon—I anticipate we will have trials opening up relatively soon.
Courtesy of University of Michigan Dr. Karandeep Singh
Advancements in Healthcare-Related AI Questions
Kaiser Permanente San Diego Assistant Area Medical Director Dr. William Tseng; Dr. Karandeep Singh, chief artificial intelligence officer at UC San Diego Health; and Shane Thielman, corporate senior vice president and chief information and digital officer at Scripps Health, share the latest advancements in AI and explore what the future might hold.
What new AI tools have you implemented at your hospital group?
Dr. William Tseng: One system that we implemented within the last year is the KP Intelligent Navigator. When you share your symptoms through our app, the system uses AI to assess how urgent your situation is. If it detects something critical, it won’t let you wait for a message or an appointment; it will direct you right away to the hospital or appropriate care.
The system has a built-in clinical alert feature. For example, if a patient says, “I’m having chest pain and it’s getting worse. Can I make an appointment tomorrow?” the system recognizes that as urgent. Instead of letting it sit in the queue for a routine reply, it directs the patient to seek immediate care and escalates the message for a physician follow-up.
From October of last year through March of this year, the system processed nearly three million encounters, averaging about 19,000 each day. The system is about 96 percent accurate, meaning it is very good at correctly identifying what is an emergency, with very few false alarms.
Dr. Karandeep Singh: If we want to measure the quality of care that we deliver as a health system, we have to actually look at patient charts and see, for example, “Hey, for this patient who had a bacterial infection that resulted in sepsis, did we give them all the right things that they needed?”
Amazingly, health systems are only required to read 20 charts a month to see if they did a good job—I say “amazingly” because that’s not nearly enough charts to actually get a sense of where your opportunities are to improve. And so one of the exciting areas that we’re right now getting into which is a space that I think we are leading in—is using AI to help us do that first pass and read those charts. Basically, we don’t have to only measure our quality on 20 patients; we can measure it on hundreds of patients. We don’t have to be constrained by the fact that we don’t have enough person power to do that. We can take a first pass with AI and get over 90 percent accuracy compared to having experts reviewing the same charts.
We are now piloting AI that reads through [a patient’s complete medical history] and gives doctors a kind of executive summary, so that once you have a holistic understanding of what is going on with this person, you can strategically figure out what order you’re going to read their chart in, rather than just reading things front to back. It’s much more efficient to read a chart when you actually know what you’re looking for.
Shane Thielman: We’re working with our radiologists to use a technology that takes their dictated findings and automates the clinical impression in their documentation. The idea there is to help reduce their time in documentation but also lighten some of the cognitive burden by automating and streamlining repetitive tasks. The radiologist is still signing off on that clinical impression, but the intention is to take that dictation and pull out the clinical impression in the radiologist’s notes. That’s been a more recent development.
Courtesy of Scripps Health Shane Thielman
What does the future hold for AI in healthcare? What developments might we see in the next 10, 20, even 100 years?
Shane Thielman: I’ll start off by saying I’m not much of a futurist—with the pace of advancement of technology in general and specifically AI, it’s difficult to think beyond probably the next two to three years. The rate of change will probably not ever be as slow as it is today. We’ve taken a very deliberate and serious approach to how we evaluate any proposed AI solution, with a level of caution and a degree of risk aversion so that we’re not unnecessarily impacting patient safety, the experience of our patients, and the reputation of the organization, while also building experience with using AI.
One area that I might highlight is that, historically, it has taken many years—oftentimes between 15 and 20 years on average—to translate evidence-based research into standard clinical practice. My hope is that AI will help us [identify the] connections and relationships between intervention, treatment, and outcomes in medical data and translate those into care processes more rapidly.
We have a responsibility in healthcare to continue to evaluate technology and tools that help improve care and outcomes, increasingly with a focus on delivering care in a cost-effective manner. I think that AI can really help contribute to those aims. It has the potential to help us identify disease sooner, which can lead to improved access to care and personalized treatment in order to more effectively manage and address the disease earlier. I think it has the potential, as well, to enable proactive and preventative care and help to identify patients that are at risk to offer them access to care interventions that, ultimately, will probably help them manage their condition more effectively over time.
Dr. Karandeep Singh: One place where I feel like it could really help is, when you receive a new diagnosis or you’re a caregiver of someone, there’s often this real feeling of loneliness. When someone has an advocate—a family member with them who’s asking all the right questions—they often have better outcomes. Having an AI [system] as a patient advocate, a kind of a sidekick that can help you navigate the broader system, could be a critical thing. [It would] not just tell you what you want to hear but actually tell you, “Here’s what’s next on the agenda for this year. Here’s why.”
My wildest dreams are that you get a new diagnosis and you’ve got your own AI that’s searching up all the clinical trials, helping you figure out how to get enrolled. At that moment when you’re in grief and you have all this stress on you, you really need something or someone that can take action and keep track of everything.
One other thing I’ll add is that, in the last five years, there have been tremendous advances with personalized treatments. Some of these things seem like science fiction, but because of advances in gene editing and advances in AI, there is a lot of potential that things we view today as incurable may be curable. Modern medicine in 100 years or 200 years may be unrecognizable because of the level of personalization we can do against things like cancer, and that’s an incredibly important use of AI that has sped things up.
Courtesy of Kaiser Permanente Dr. William Tseng
Conversely, what are the limits of AI?
Dr. William Tseng: AI won’t replace physicians, but, in time, physicians who understand AI will replace those who don’t. AI is most powerful, really, when it makes healthcare interactions feel more and not less human.
AI is an assistant. It is not a doctor. Physicians need to supply the wisdom behind its output and refine what it produces, because AI won’t always get it right.
Currently, AI is still largely language-based. It’s two-dimensional, not three-dimensional or tactile. It can ask questions, but it cannot yet fully recognize the unspoken: the silence, the tears, the nonverbal responses that carry so much meaning. Medicine is more than just words. It’s the touch of a hand in times of need. It’s delivering both good and bad news with humanity. No patient should ever hear a cancer diagnosis from a bot. That moment belongs to a physician, someone who understands, who is empathetic, who can share in the patient’s tears. These are the human connections that define healing, and they are far beyond the reach of AI.
Amelia Rodriguez is a writer and journalist and winner of the San Diego Press Club's 2023 Rising Star Award and 2024 Best of Show Award, she’s also covered music, food, arts and culture, fashion, and design for Rolling Stone, Palm Springs Life, and other national and regional publications. After work, you can find her hunting down San Diego’s best pastries and maintaining her five-year Duolingo streak.
Through its Playmakers initiative, San Diego FC is working with artists, musicians, and other local creatives to shape the identity of the city’s newest professional sports team
What does a soccer team have to do with San Diego’s arts scene? Quite a lot, as it turns out. When San Diego FC launched, the club could have spent its marketing budget on billboards, bus wraps, and digital ads. Instead, it went into neighborhoods, found local artists and creatives, and started building the club’s identity with them. Through its Playmakers initiative, artists have designed limited-edition merchandise, had their work featured on the stadium’s jumbotron, and found themselves in front of thousands of fans—and, in some cases, a national TV audience.
For this special edition of the podcast, created alongside San Diego Magazine’s September arts and culture issue, host Troy Johnson talks with Sebastián Morúa, SDFC’s Senior Vice President of Brand & Innovation, and longtime San Diego native and creative Tony Martinez of Barrio Junto. The conversation gets into why a professional soccer club would make local art part of its business, how Martinez’s decades in San Diego’s creative community helped shape Playmakers, and the club’s early efforts to connect with artists across the county through its Chrome Ball Tour and neighborhood events. The goal, they explain, isn’t simply to put a local artist on a T-shirt. It’s to let the people who already understand San Diego help define what the new club looks and feels like.
The conversation also gets into the less glamorous—but important—side of supporting artists: money. They talk about how Playmakers pays local creatives, the value of the platform SDFC provides, and what it means to build an ongoing relationship between a professional sports club and the artists who help shape its identity. They also discuss the club’s growing music initiative, which will bring local musicians into the fold, and the many ways artists have already contributed to SDFC through merchandise, murals, Parks & Pitches projects, and more. Ultimately, it’s a conversation about soccer, art, community, and what can happen when a major sports franchise gives the people already making culture in San Diego a bigger platform.
This summary was provided to you by AI. To hear from the humans, listen to the podcast wherever you get your podcasts.
At Del Mar Wine & Food Festival’s Grand Tasting, the walk between food tents can take a while. You might stop to watch a chef competition, get pulled toward the DJ, or find yourself playing mini golf before you remember which bite you were after.
Across the Del Mar Polo Fields, there’s also line dancing, a 1961 red Beetle ready for photos, and an aviation-themed pop-up with Reno Tahoe chefs and mixologists. Need a slower stretch? Check out the wellness stops or browse the shops. Here’s what to look for as you make your way through the festival’s zones:
Courtesy of Del Mar Wine & Food Festival
VIP First Bites & First Sips
VIP ticket holders get a head start, with the VIP Reception running from 11:15 a.m. to 1 p.m. and serving first bites, first sips, and a few surprises before the Grand Tasting officially gets going. Champagne Telmont will make the festival’s first pour, while Cohn Restaurant Group brings carajillos alongside pours from Karl Strauss, Licor 43, Tap Truck San Diego, Bebemos Tequila, and Devil’s Grin Gin.
The bites are just as good. Celebrity chef Beau MacMillan will serve a first bite, while Warung RieRie is bringing one of its highly coveted dishes. Yes, this is the restaurant that currently has an eight-month waitlist. You’ll also find bites from The Shellfish Affair, The Waverly, Wolf in the Woods, Dora Ristorante, Cori Pastificio Trattoria, An’s Gelato, Pacific 333, Vintana, and more.
And because every good first act needs a soundtrack, there will be live painting and music, with Courtney Govan bringing live jazz to the reception. It’s the perfect opening act before the main event.
Live Cooking & Culinary Moments
During the VIP Reception, chefs Tommy Gomes and Jeff Roberto will conduct a live ahi cutting. Plant Paradise brings another culinary angle, with celebrity chef Zuliya Khawaja joining the plant-based lineup. The area combines chef talent with plant-forward restaurants and brands, giving guests a chance to see just how creative plant-based cooking can get.
Throughout the weekend, The Stage keeps the cooking demonstrations coming, with celebrities and chefs sharing techniques, recipes, and plenty of inspiration for anyone who plans to actually cook something when they get home. Before you know it, you’re watching a chef demo, casting your awards vote, and sipping mezcal on the grass with friends you just met in line.
Courtesy of Del Mar Wine & Food Festival
DJs, Music, & The Party
At the Grand Tasting, dancing just sort of… happens. A DJ drops the right song. Someone’s holding a taco in one hand and a glass of wine in the other. The country zone breaks into a two-step. Friends convince friends. Strangers become temporary dance partners. By the end of the day, everyone’s forgotten they were ever worried about looking cool.
DJ TENAX will be spinning in Plant Paradise, bringing house, techno, and UKG to an open-air dance floor that’s hard to leave. Chris Cantore, a veteran San Diego broadcaster, takes over the VIP Tent, while BootScootin Line Dance and PVO Events bring country-style line dancing to the Polo Fields, so you can work off your tasting itinerary one two-step at a time.
Then a live guitar hum in the distance leads you to a fuchsia boa over at the Pride Zone, where you’ll find yourself covered in sequins and having the lawn party of a lifetime.
Sports, Tailgates, & Games
Not every activity at the festival requires a tasting glass (although it’s certainly encouraged).
The Matchday Experience brings San Diego FC and San Diego Wave FC into the Grand Tasting, complete with interactive tents and plenty of game-day energy. Athletic Brewing is also sharing activation space with San Diego Wave FC, bringing a fun nonalcoholic option into the mix.
For golf fans, the Los Angeles Golf Club is bringing a Dryve Box golf simulator to the festival. And if your competitive streak is less fairway and more miniature windmill, SD Pop Up Mini Golf has you covered.
The Beach Zone gets in on the action, too, with surfing-inspired elements and Playavole paddle courts. Hemlock Hats and other California brands add to the coastal atmosphere, but the real draw is having somewhere to actually play. And don’t worry, you can cool down in COOLA’s turquoise beach chairs, too, and when your bestie suggests reapplying sunscreen, obviously you do. Basically, there are plenty of ways to work up an appetite between tastings.
Courtesy of Del Mar Wine & Food Festival
Photo Ops & Instagram Moments
You’re going to want to take photos, and the festival has made that extremely easy.
A Timeless Day is bringing multiple photo moments to the Grand Tasting, including a 1961 red Beetle at The Italian Getaway and a teal VW bus in The Beach Zone. For something a little more polished than the standard group selfie, head to the Locals Zone for Pixster Photo Booth and San Diego’s version of a Glam-Bot, complete with a grass red carpet.
Bebemos Tequila is also bringing back its festival-favorite hidden speakeasy. If there’s ever a time for a photo, it’s here. Otherwise, people might not believe you. The speakeasy serves bone marrow shots straight from the bone, with candlelight, a lounge area that makes it hard to believe you’re in a tent outside, and little orange shot glasses. This is “first slide of your festival photo dump” material.
You can also grab your squad and head to LaCroix’s bright and ridiculously cute setup, or swing by San Diego Magazine’s area, where you might stop for a photo in front of the larger-than-life SD Magazine sign and find yourself watching a painting come to life.
But really, you’re in Del Mar. The ocean is essentially your backdrop, and every zone gives you an excuse to stop for the obligatory “totally candid” photo. And yes, the best strategy is to get the group shot before everyone has been sampling wine for three hours.
Shop, Browse, & Take Something Home
The Grand Tasting also doubles as a little shopping excursion, with local makers, fashion, vintage finds, jewelry, and lifestyle brands scattered throughout the grounds. Smoke Revival Vintage Vault brings the thrill of vintage treasure hunting, while Nortte Hats and Hemlock Hat Company make a pretty good case for leaving with a new accessory.
Keep an eye out for jewelry and creative vendors, too, including Iris Studio Jewelry and New Nightfall Jewelry, plus local artists and makers featured throughout the festival.
You can come for an all day food and wine festival, but still leave with something shiny you definitely did not plan to buy.
Wellness & Reset Moments
We know, at some point, even the most dedicated grazer has to come up for air. The Novo Dia Wellness Zone is designed for exactly that, bringing together mocktails, coffee, hydration, wellness brands, and even bites from Parakeet Cafe.
Step away from the food and drink frenzy for a few minutes, relax in the shade, try some skincare, stretch with prAna, and maybe grab some Instant Hydration Electrolytes before round three.
There’s also nothing wrong with stopping to smell the roses at Green Air Botanicals while devouring a dairy-free cheese dip. It’s less about disappearing from the party and more about making sure you have enough energy to keep going.
The zones give you somewhere to wander, and the activities give you a reason to keep going. So grab your tasting glass, check the schedule, and leave a little room in your afternoon for something you didn’t plan on doing. At Del Mar Wine & Food, that’s usually where things get interesting.
Isabella Dallas is a freelance writer for San Diego Magazine and the Arts and Culture Editor at The Daily Aztec in her final year at San Diego State University. She previously worked as an editorial intern for SDM, but when she’s not writing, you can find her trying the best coffee spots in SD, devouring the latest rom-coms, and indulging in anything and everything pop culture.
There was once an actress known as “San Diego’s Sweetheart” who mailed herself to Los Angeles—donning a helmet covered in postage stamps and boarding a two-seater, single-engine mail plane. The publicity stunt was billed as the first air parcel package in the US. It wasn’t. She wasn’t even the first human to be mailed: When the US parcel post started in 1913, at least seven people mailed their newborns to relatives (an innovative loophole eventually outlawed).
Technicalities be damned. That kind of nose for spectacle was why Virginia Brissac was such a star—landing bit parts in TV shows (I Love Lucy, Dragnet) and 155 films, notably playing James Dean’s grandmother in Rebel Without a Cause. “Nobody could help but love her,” her dresser told San Diego Magazine in a 1971 feature, published when Brissac was 88 years old.
In 1911, she topped the Playbill at the opening of the Savoy Theatre at 3rd and C streets in Downtown—a grand live-performance hall built for $150,000 ($5.2 million in today’s money). It became one of the premiere vaudeville theaters in the country (under vaudeville king Alexander Patages). The theater helped make San Diego a destination for stars like silent-film comedian Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle, heavyweight champ Jack Dempsey, plus classical legends Rachmaninoff and Anna Pavlova. As theaters converted to movie houses through the ’20s and ’30s, the Savoy remained dedicated to live humans. It closed in 1940, and the Civic Theater now stands in its footprint.
As for Brissac, during a time when women couldn’t even vote, she led a stock company under her own name at the Strand Theatre. The Brissac Company held a four-year residency, “an all-time successful record run for San Diego,” the article says. That classic Ocean Beach theater (featured in San Diego film legend Cameron Crowe’s Almost Famous) has been closed for decades, its bones now a chain beachwear and souvenir store. But Brissac’s legacy lives through the women leading San Diego’s theater scene.
Read the entire 1971 article by Merle Clayton below…
Emma Veidt is an editor at San Diego Magazine. She earned her bachelor's and master's degrees from the Missouri School of Journalism. She loves running, hiking, and rock climbing, but really, she mostly loves encounters with the street cats around North Park.
Kelly H. Harfouche, founder of KQ Aesthetic Society, knows firsthand that cosmetic treatments like fillers, neurotoxins, and microneedling, can not only enhance a person’s appearance and restore confidence, they have the power to truly change a person’s life. An expert injector has the ability to tailor treatments to each individual patient’s anatomy and goals for personalized results. Harfouche, a board-certified nurse practitioner, has spent nearly a decade perfecting her craft as an aesthetic injector and integrating her multifaceted artistic skills with precision patient care. Her commitment to continual education and training, plus a passion for helping people look—and feel—their best, set KQ Aesthetic Society apart in a sea of local medspas.
For many people considering nonsurgical treatments, the intent is to look refreshed and refined. KQ Aesthetic Society’s philosophy eschews a cookie cutter approach that bases treatments around units, instead working to understand each person’s unique goals, then curating a treatment plan to fit that vision. Harfouche focuses on “inclusive luxury,” the belief that everyone deserves access to aesthetic treatments, respective of budget restrictions. She develops long-standing trusted relationships with her patients, and works with each one to achieve their aesthetic objectives and address the underlying causes of their concerns.
“For me, forming an honest and open relationship with every patient who walks through the door is essential. This means understanding them on a deeper level and meeting them where they are to define and achieve their individual goals,” she says.
Drawing on her artistic background, which inspired her transition into medical aesthetics, Harfouche sees each client as a “unique canvas.” Rather than relying on standardized procedures, the practitioner’s distinctive approach combines her profound understanding of the physiological and anatomical changes associated with aging with an unwavering commitment to ongoing education about the newest products and their mechanisms of action. Her goal is to make each patient feel beautiful in their own skin and to embrace their individuality.
She has also pioneered a way to combine her talent for aesthetic artistry with her philanthropic nature. Harfouche is one of only a handful of providers using dermal fillers to treat patients with lip asymmetry and scarring resulting from cleft lip surgery. Patients travel from around the country for this transformative treatment, noting increased confidence and a restored identity. She hopes to eventually launch a training program to help fill the void in this space.
“My passion has always been connecting with people and giving back in any capacity that I can,” she says. In the rapidly advancing landscape of aesthetic medicine, you can place your confidence in Harfouche and KQ Aesthetic Society to deliver exceptional care. To learn more or book a consultation, please visit kqaestheticsociety.com.
What Will It Take to Make San Diego a Global Arts City?
Jonathon Glus on the Art + Design District, investing in the creative economy, keeping artists in the city, and what we can learn from places like London and Chicago
Jonathon Glus is the Prebys Foundation senior fellow leading the development of the Art + Design District at the Downtown San Diego Partnership. He has been asked what an arts and design district is many times. In our conversation, I asked him instead to describe what it isn’t. His answer opened up a broader discussion about what San Diego has and hasn’t invested in, what it has the capacity to become, and what other cities have done that we haven’t. Glus speaks about global art fairs and architecture biennials in Chicago and long tables at dinner parties all with the same fluency. He also discusses who gets to live in the neighborhoods where creative work happens, and what it means when they can’t afford to stay.
Claire Johnson: You have been asked what an arts and design district is many times. Can you tell me what it isn’t?
Jonathon Glus: It is not a place designed intentionally and specifically for tourists. Of course there will be opportunities for tourists to come, but the district is really focused on creatives, on creative education, and on the creative workforce—as well as our major performing arts organizations. That is the emphasis.
What does the district need to do in the next five years for you to consider it a success?
[It needs to] develop greater connectivity between the anchor institutions—the symphony, Broadway San Diego, the opera, all the wonderful things happening in Balboa [Park]—and the creative workforce that will be living and working in that neighborhood 24/7.
What does San Diego not have that you wish it did?
We have not been intentionally investing in the contemporary art product that other major cities have been building. A contemporary art fair. A biennial that reflects the ethos of this region. Chicago developed an architecture biennial about eight years ago. London has a design biennial. Desert X, right here in Southern California, invests in and elevates contemporary artists inside a city. We have not really been playing in the global art market in a way that we have the capacity to.
What capacity do we have?
We have a wonderful foundation. Two theater companies that produce work that goes to Broadway more than many regional theaters in the country, major museums, artists teaching at UC San Diego and University of San Diego. What a city does when it wants to take itself to the next level is intentionally create the product. Miami went after the Art Basel fair; they did not passively receive it. You have to have the intention and the will, and you have to go after it. We haven’t done that in the way that other cities have.
Look at what we did with the tech sector; we’re now a major tech center. That was intentional. Leadership organized around it. We have to do the same thing around the arts. We have a lot of contemporary art collectors here. We have a lot of galleries. But the ecosystem of the business of contemporary art is not as organized or as visible as it should be.
Which city is your North Star?
It’s bits and pieces of different cities. Dubai has invested very quickly and very intentionally in contemporary art—art fairs, design fairs, higher education, artist residencies from all over the world. London has centered artists and creatives in the contemporary zeitgeist in a way that was not true 40 years ago. They built biennials. They ensured British artists had affordable housing and workspace. They made sure the media paid attention to what they were doing.
If you don’t have an artist at your dinner table, it’s not a dinner party. That sounds elitist, but it’s true. It shows the value that artists have in a community. Our relationship culturally with Tijuana is really significant here because artists in Baja seem to be at the table.
We’ve talked before about how food, fashion, design, and art aren’t siloed anymore.
They aren’t. When super creative people are in a community doing extraordinary work, that draws other super creative people doing extraordinary work. That’s why other arts and design districts around the world end up populated with some of the most interesting restaurants and young fashion designers. Creatives want to be around other creatives.
Which leads to the economic argument…
Our creative economy already employs about 170,000 people and generates more than $11 billion in economic activity. It’s large and robust. But we must center all of this in accessibility and affordability. Williamsburg used to be affordable. Artists can’t afford to live there anymore. Wicker Park and Bucktown in Chicago—artist central, now unaffordable. If we’re going to invest in this district, we have to be really intentional about housing and workspace, so creatives have a place in the future of this district.
I see all these new supper clubs and creative collectives popping up. What is the lesson there for San Diego in terms of the commercialization of cultural and creative groups?
I think the lesson is that nothing changes. What do people love? Long tables. Why? Because you’re with a lot of people—some you may have known your entire life, but most you don’t. And if it’s driven by a creative process, all the better. We know one of the best ways to do that is around food, but also music.
For the Art + Design District, part of why we’re leaning into the process is because, culturally, we’re bringing down the barriers between film, fashion, multimedia, tech, and architecture. It’s an experiential mashup in the best possible way.
And it’s not just about art and design, but community writ large. Creative expression is something we all desire. Whether it’s at a long table, at the opera, or in your studio, we gravitate toward creative expression as a way of building community and communicating with the people around us.
Is there a question I should have asked you but haven’t?
I hope you are writing about this in seven years when the district is fully mature. But this is just the beginning for all of this. I think that’s what’s most exciting to me. We don’t know what this is going to be like, but we know it’s going to be creatively centered, and that’s super exciting to me.
On February 28, 1926, the Fine Arts Gallery of San Diego (now called the San Diego Museum of Art) opened its Plateresque doors to 3,000 guests for opening day. Over the next century, the museum changed with the times—even once functioning as a naval hospital after Pearl Harbor. This year, the museum is celebrating its 100th birthday with an exhibit (open through January 24, 2027) featuring photographs, ephemera, and film footage spanning the museum’s history.
Courtesy of Tim Novara
Free Concerts at Spreckels Organ Pavilion
Every Sunday from 2 to 3 p.m., stop by the historic Spreckels Organ Pavilion for a free concert presented by the City of San Diego on the largest outdoor organ in the world (more than 5,000 pipes). The pavilion seats 2,400 for performances by the civic organist or guest artists.
Some think natural history museums are just cemeteries for dioramas that haven’t received an update since the Reagan administration. When it comes to The Nat, which just finished a $7.5 million rejuvenation, they’re totally wrong. The museum debuted a new rooftop that replaces its 25-year-old atrium. The old roof created a greenhouse effect that steamed up some exhibits, so the new one—which includes 200 solar panels and better temperature control—will help preserve the artifacts inside. Each Friday in the summer, The Nat also becomes one of the season’s vibiest hotspots during Nat at Night, with food from places like Wolf in the Woods and The Craft Taco, bars and signature cocktails on several floors, and a rooftop DJ.
Fleet Science Theater Remodel
The Fleet Science Center just received its most significant update since the 1990s. It expanded its exhibit space by 20 percent and introduced a newly designed entrance gallery (formerly the IMAX theater lobby) that includes free exhibits for visitors who want a taste of the science without paying an admission fee. The former ticketing area now houses the Mindbender Mansion exhibit, and there’s a new café, Element 8, that will, of course, sell the center’s famous soft serve.
AVRP Studios’ tradition for Design Excellence and Innovation began in 1976 with Doug Austin, FAIA, in Solana Beach, California. The firm has since grown to complete major projects throughout the United States and Canada. We think of ourselves as a family and we care deeply about people. We want to inspire, help make their lives richer and more complete through our efforts. We believe that architecture is one of the most important art forms because of the impact it can have on the lives of those it touches. We’re delighted to have been recognized with over 150 awards for design excellence.
703 16th Street, Suite 200, San Diego, California 92101 | 619-704-2700 | avrpstudios.com
