Editor’s Note: October 2026: Inhale, Exhale

“Go pound the pavement” is an enduring journalist’s adage for a reason—being out and about is the best way to learn what you need to know.

When I first moved to San Diego, I rented a room in a falling-down, 1950s three-bed that edged up against the canyon in Hillcrest. A shallow white ledge ran at eye-level around the sage-green walls, and I used it to prop up paintings I didn’t know how to hang. My parents helped me set up the bed frame I’d had since childhood next to the large, east-facing window. Sunlight beamed directly into my eyes in the morning, but with my head on my pillow, I could watch birds flirt and squabble on the telephone wire outside.

I was a 23-year-old from the suburbs, which meant I arrived that summer pathologically terrified of parallel parking. I should’ve practiced. Instead, I walked anywhere I wanted to go. I wore the last bit of tread off a pair of cowboy boots trekking two-and-a-half miles to Pride in Balboa Park. Once, as I stepped out of Whole Foods, a woman asked for directions to the DMV. I wasn’t sure how to explain the route, so I strolled there with her, the pot of yogurt I’d just bought slowly curdling in the August heat. Another time, I popped into a bar on a whim and ended up gin-drunk at 2 p.m. with a crew of friends in their mid-60s. All this wandering became a kind of gonzo cartography—I got to know Hillcrest’s main roads and side streets and strange alleys, and they began to feel like home.

I kind of know how to parallel park now, but with that new skill came the loss of these everyday moments of serendipity. In a world that often feels shrunken to the size of our screens, many of us long for adventure and variety. We fulfill the desire in different ways: booking European vacations, going on dates with people we probably shouldn’t, paying to be locked in an escape room and hunt for hidden keys smudged with the hand sweat of thousands of bored office workers before us.

Don’t get me wrong—I crush at escape rooms. Yet, on my birthday last November, when a friend asked if I had any goals for my 28th year, I told her, “I want to cultivate surprise.” To me, that means making time to wander. Talking to strangers. Loosening my grip on plans and just going with what announces itself.

It was through those first summer walks that I began to feel like a San Diegan. When my now-fiancée and I settled into our first apartment together in University Heights, then our second in South Park, our first order of business was to take a long walk, poke into shops, order a latte at the nearest café, drawing the first sketches of the mental maps that make up home.

So, in the spirit of surprise, I’m committing to exploring the contours of more of San Diego on foot. I invite you to take up the challenge with me by offering a few places to start: La Jolla, Alpine, City Heights, Poway, and Imperial Beach, the locales covered in this year’s neighborhood guide. We give you each neighborhood’s origin story and pull out our crystal ball to see what’s next for the area, and expert locals offer their top places in town. Go check ’em out (but leave room to find a favorite of your own).

While you explore, keep an eye out for public art. San Diego is full of brilliant muralists, including Mr B Baby, a San Ysidro local whose colorful piñata character Chucho frolics on walls all over the city (and the world).

Other parts of this issue provide more ideas for wonder-seeking. Food editor Troy Johnson wanders into Fleurette, the new spot in La Jolla from restauranteur Travis Swikard (the chef who gave us Callie). There, he’s whipping up a lighter take on French cooking. Craving the drama of a home game? As three of San Diego’s biggest names in pro sports—the Padres, the Wave, and SDFC—kick off their seasons, we spend time with their coaches to talk refreshed rosters and playoff prospects.

We also dive into San Diego history, looking back at the “Jackass Mail” route—something that has nothing to do with Johnny Knoxville sticking leeches to his face and everything to do with using a bunch of mules to carry mail over 1,200 miles of undeveloped terrain. On a journey from San Antonio to SD, carriers fended off attacking warriors, drank out of puddles, and tended to sick mules, all while, unbeknownst to them, a sinking ship carried their paychecks to the bottom of the sea. Proof that there is such a thing as too much serendipity.

In San Diego, though, curious minds usually find just enough.

I think I was 11 or 12 when I asked my mother if I could transfer to a British boarding school. She laughed, assuming, fairly, that I was joking. I laughed, too, immediately embarrassed at having asked, and that fall I returned to the sweltering concrete halls of my Coachella Valley middle school, so different from the ivy-smocked, stone-walled academies I’d read about in books.

The desert I lived in was utterly boring to me, raised only slightly in esteem when I was allowed to go to Coachella Music Fest four or five years later. Dreams of a posh education at a school called something like Watertonshire Abbey aside, I’d have settled for LA, land of actors and American Apparels (it was 2013!), or, yes, San Diego, where I assumed teenagers must have movie-like summers—surfing and loitering at diners and kissing each other on boardwalks, instead of sitting in pools the temperature of bathwater after the sun had gone down.

For this, our Desert Travel issue, I returned to the place I’d wanted to escape so badly, and, to my surprise, I found myself a little reluctant to leave. Part of it, of course, was that I could see now the beauty I’d willfully ignored as a teenager—the way the surrounding mountains, some of them snow-capped, bite into the enormous blue sky like a puppy’s craggy molars; the way the wind blows the sand into oceanic ripples. But the other part was that I could feel the culture growing all around me.

Teenagers roamed through cafés and shops owned by people only a little older than they were. In contrast to my classmates and I, my younger brother and his group of artist friends not only have things to do but access to a creative scene that proves big dreams aren’t solely for other cities. While the valley still has the quiet gravity that probably drew my grandparents there in the first place, a bud—one that I had sensed forming for years on my regular trips back home—is blooming.

“So many people that had second homes here stayed full-time [during Covid],” Indio resident Nicole Massoth told me, “and it changed the context of opportunity and success. But, also, for a lot of young people [who grew up here], it became a Renaissance moment, where people were dreaming about starting businesses and then executing them.” Massoth owns The Place, a massive collective of SoCal small businesses in downtown Indio, where locals are revitalizing the neighborhood with their own hands.

“I want every single young person to take over all of these empty buildings and opportunities and really breathe life into their own futures,” she added.

My 12-year-old self would be shocked, but it’s an exciting time to be from the Coachella Valley. That also makes it a wonderful time to visit, with so much new to explore and that palpable energy of possibility in the air. I write about the way Massoth and other valley residents are revolutionizing the area on page 66. And I’m not the only one seeing the desert in a new light—on page 71, Director of Creative Projects Nicolle Monico heads to Sedona, hoping to tap into the transformative forces said to swirl around the Arizona city’s soaring red rocks.

Speaking of rocks, on page 44, we step into an Escondido home that coexists with the giant boulders that pepper its site—by inviting the stones inside. Designed by Drew Hubbell (the equally sustainably-minded son of artist and green building legend James Hubbell), it shows the same innovative spirit in architecture that the audacious chefs at tasting-menu-only La Jolla restaurant Lucien show in food. Content Chief Troy Johnson reviews Lucien and its extraordinary egg dish on page 26.

We’ve also got a roundup of some of the county’s best sweet treats on page 24, a look inside the psyche of a local thriller writer willing to get himself kidnapped for research (it’s paid off—he got a Netflix deal) on page 40, and a behind-the-scenes peek at how the San Diego Museum of Art curated its centennial exhibition on page 36. Page 80 offers the latest trends and hot tips in the world of weddings, including—my favorite, as someone currently engaged—expert advice for how to best distribute that budget.

Closing out the issue, on page 96, is the story of San Diego DJ and cultural pioneer Makeda “Dread” Cheatom, who, much like the young entrepreneurs changing the game in the Coachella Valley, saw that something was missing here (in her case, Bob Marley’s music and a universal cultural center) and set out to bring it to life herself.

Finally, if you’ll allow me to quote something already very overquoted, I’ll briefly tell you the story of Gertrude Stein’s return to her hometown of East Oakland. She had been away for three decades, and when she arrived to find the house and trees and garden of her memories gone, she wrote, sadly, “there is no there, there.” I learned the real, despairing emotion behind that quote later; when I first read it, divorced from context, I assumed (like many others before me) that she was disparaging her native city as identityless, dull.

“I get it, Gertrude,” I thought.

I’m grateful now to realize I don’t relate to either interpretation. The valley always had something special (Palm Springs wouldn’t summon millions of visitors a year if it didn’t!). Even better, the best of the “there” I remember is still there, and its residents—people I grew up with, people who arrived later—are adding to it all the time, fueling its growth with the renegade spirit that seems to possess all desert cities. I hope this issue inspires you to go discover “there,” wherever there might be.

San Diego has beaches, sunshine, biotech, and enough stucco to wallpaper a small country. But what actually gives a city its personality? The artists, musicians, designers, dancers, galleries, theaters, museums, and all the other creative people making things that give a place its identity. That’s the question at the center of this special edition of the podcast, recorded as part of San Diego Magazine’s September arts and culture issue, created in collaboration with the Art + Design District and San Diego FC Playmakers.

Host Troy Johnson sits down with Jonathon Glus, former director of the City of San Diego’s Department of Cultural Affairs; and Grant Oliphant, president and CEO of the Prebys Foundation. Glus now serves as the Prebys Foundation’s senior art & design fellow in residence at the Downtown San Diego Partnership, where he’s helping develop the emerging Art + Design District around the Civic Center. Together, Glus and Oliphant bring two sides of the conversation to the table: what it takes to build the physical and cultural infrastructure for a creative city, and what role philanthropy, government, businesses, and artists themselves play in making that happen.

The conversation gets into San Diego’s recent fight over arts funding, the city’s cultural ecosystem, and why supporting artists means more than simply writing checks. They talk about the Art + Design District’s roots in city planning work dating back to 2016, the cultural institutions already clustered around the Civic Center, and examples from cities like Miami and Austin that used major cultural initiatives to help shape their identities. 

And, naturally, Troy gets nostalgic about San Diego’s old jazz scene, including his best friend’s dad’s club, The Crossroads, and the unfortunate fate of a very valuable vinyl collection.

This summary was provided to you by AI. To hear from the humans, listen to this episode wherever you get your podcasts.

For over two decades, the San Diego County Medical Society (SDCMS) has worked collaboratively with San Diego Magazine to recognize physicians who are held in the highest regard by their peers. Votes and nominations are open to all physicians in San Diego. The voting physicians are asked to vote for physicians within and outside their specialty to whom they would refer their friends and family. Through this process we have identified 968 physicians in 102 specialties.

In a synchronized effort, SDCMS confirmed every individual nominee’s Medical Board of California licensing and current practicing status. Through this exhaustive process, 968 physicians are being honored this year. Many of them have also been recognized for multiple years since we began publishing this list. Multi-year honorees will have the number of years they have been selected listed in brackets behind their name.

Although not all our superb physicians are represented on this list, we still acknowledge and appreciate their contributions. The selection criteria are strict, with only a small percent of physicians selected in each specialty. Many additional physicians received multiple votes from their peers, however, did not reach the threshold to be on the list. The best choice of physician for a patient includes many factors and we all work hard to meet their needs. We are proud to recognize that all physicians in San Diego work collaboratively to provide the very best care for all.

We welcome and encourage all San Diego County physicians to participate in their county and state medical societies as we work toward the SDCMS vision: “Physicians United for a Healthy San Diego.” The strength of our united voice as a medical community depends on the leadership and advocacy of all of us. We appreciate the assistance of all the physicians who voted, and we thank San Diego Magazine for their support.

Congratulations to all of our 2026 Top Doctor selectees! For more information regarding membership, voting, future events and becoming more involved with the medical society, visit www.SDCMS.org. 

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San Diego Top Doctors List 2026

* Brackets denote the number of years chosen as a Top Doctor

Abdominal Surgery

Garth Ross Jacobsen, MD [4]
UC San Diego Health
9300 Campus Point Dr, MC 7220
La Jolla, CA 92037
(858) 657-7025

Addiction Medicine

Long H Nguyen, MD [2]
Kaiser Permanente
3420 Kenyon St
San Diego, CA 92110
(800) 290-5000

Addiction Psychiatry

Kimberly A Fitzgerald, MD [2]
Kaiser Permanente
3420 Kenyon St, Bldg B 1st Floor
San Diego, CA 92110
(800) 290-5000

Adolescent Medicine

Azadeh Shirazi, MD [2]
Sharp Rees-Stealy Medical Group
16899 W Bernardo Dr, 1st Floor
San Diego, CA 92127
(858) 499-2777

Adult Cardiothoracic Anesthesiology

Dalia Abadeer Banks, MD [8]
UC San Diego Health
9500 Gilman Dr, MC 0898
La Jolla, CA 92093
(858) 657-6510

Adam Brent Barrus, MD [3]
Anesthesia Service Medical Group
3626 Ruffin Rd
San Diego, CA 92123
(858) 565-9666

Francesca Betti, MD [2]
Anesthesia Service Medical Group
3626 Ruffin Rd
San Diego, CA 92123
(858) 565-9666

Arsh Chopra, MD [1]
Kaiser Permanente
360 Rush Dr
San Marcos, CA 92078
(800) 290-5000

William T Connell, MD [12]
Anesthesia Service Medical Group
3626 Ruffin Rd
San Diego, CA 92123
(858) 565-9666

Andres Falabella, MD [2]
Anesthesia Service Medical Group
3626 Ruffin Rd
San Diego, CA 92123
(858) 565-9666

Alexander M Girgis, MD [5]
Anesthesia Service Medical Group
3626 Ruffin Rd
San Diego, CA 92123
(858) 565-9666

Austin J Henry, DO [3]
Anesthesia Service Medical Group
3626 Ruffin Rd
San Diego, CA 92123
(858) 565-9666

Paul James Himaya, MD [7]
Anesthesia Service Medical Group
3626 Ruffin Rd
San Diego, CA 92123
(858) 565-9666

Brian Alexander Janda, MD [2]
Anesthesia Service Medical Group
3626 Ruffin Rd
San Diego, CA 92123
(858) 565-9666

Tse-Sun Ku, MD [9]
Anesthesia Service Medical Group
3626 Ruffin Rd
San Diego, CA 92123
(858) 565-9666

Jason Philip Lujan, MD [17]
Anesthesia Service Medical Group
3626 Ruffin Rd
San Diego, CA 92123
(858) 565-9666

Kris Cheryl Lukauskis, MD [1]
Anesthesia Service Medical Group
3626 Ruffin Rd
San Diego, CA 92123
(858) 565-9666

Lars R Newsome, MD [20]
Anesthesia Service Medical Group
3626 Ruffin Rd
San Diego, CA 92123
(858) 565-9666

Deena Helen Perotti, MD [1]
Anesthesia Service Medical Group
3626 Ruffin Rd
San Diego, CA 92123
(858) 565-9666

Gabriel Rene Rubio, MD [2]
Anesthesia Service Medical Group
3626 Ruffin Rd
San Diego, CA 92123
(858) 565-9666

Alaa Saghbini, MD [3]
Anesthesia Service Medical Group
3626 Ruffin Rd
San Diego, CA 92123
(858) 565-9666

David Maged Seif, MD [8]
Anesthesia Service Medical Group
3626 Ruffin Rd
San Diego, CA 92123
(858) 565-9666

Edward Harding Sherer, MD [4]
Anesthesia Service Medical Group
3626 Ruffin Rd
San Diego, CA 92123
(858) 565-9666

Kevin James Staggenborg, MD [2]
Anesthesia Service Medical Group
3626 Ruffin Rd
San Diego, CA 92123
(858) 565-9666

Sepehr Shokri Tabibzadeh, MD [12]
Anesthesia Service Medical Group
3626 Ruffin Rd
San Diego, CA 92123
(858) 565-9666

Kris Kishore Vasant, MD [2]
Anesthesia Service Medical Group
3626 Ruffin Rd
San Diego, CA 92123
(858) 565-9666

It’s finally fall, and although it may not feel like it (our ceiling fans are this close to flying off their hinges), San Diego is ringing in the cozy season with a heap of fun events. Whether you’re wanting to find your new favorite outfit at Fashion Week, cheer at the Oceanside Shock’s home debut, or practice meditation at the Strength in the City Festival, these are the best things to do in October.

Concerts & Festivals | Theater & Art Exhibits | More Fun Things to Do

Concerts & Festivals in San Diego This Month

3

Go beyond the menu during the Taste of North Park, with over 50 food samples and 15 beverage stops, plus live music and art-driven programming to keep all the senses engaged.

7

Cross the Coronado Bridge—and bring your appetite—for A Taste of Coronado, an island-wide culinary jaunt in support of beloved businesses and the Promises2Kids nonprofit.

Theater & Art Exhibits in San Diego This Month

10/8–11/1

In the Roustabouts Theatre Co.’s newest comedy at Scripps Ranch Theatre, roommate beef has no age limit. In “Ripcord,” a feud between Abby and Marilyn escalates to absurd heights.

10 & 11

Pay it forward to local public schools with each pet adoption, purchased piece of art—from over 170 artists—and sip of wine, beer, or spirits at the free La Jolla Art & Wine Festival.

17

Those in search of creativity and community can find both at Other Places Art Fair South, a free showcase for independent artists and galleries at California Center for the Arts, Escondido.

More Fun Things to Do in San Diego This Month

9/30–10/4

Where can you play pickleball with celebs, sample local eats (including that place you’ve always been meaning to try), and take part in the scenic and delicious Grand Tasting at Surf Sports Park? There’s only one answer: the Del Mar Wine & Food Festival.

2–4

Sashay your way through the 19th annual Fashion Week San Diego, home to stunning runway couture, fall designer collections, and a trunk show—perfect for shopping for your new look.

9 & 10

Dance to Y2K throwbacks all weekend long during Ocean Beach Oktoberfest, which includes a beach party, a stein-holding competition, a brat-eating contest, and for VIP attendees, a custom “OB2K Oktoberfest” liter
mug.

10

First comes the sting, then comes the shock. San Diego County’s newest sports franchise, Oceanside Shock, will make its home debut in the Federal Prospects Hockey League versus the Fresno Falcons at Frontwave
Arena.

24

Working out is just one part of this Waterfront Park wellness experience. Practice meditation, play bingo, and recover with sauna zones during the Strength in the City Festival.

25

At the 25th annual Oceanside DÍa de los Muertos Festival, the Day of the Dead is alive and well. Walk through a chalk cemetery and Por Siempre Car Club’s decorative trunk altars during the free event.