Vida Las Vegas: Sustainability in Sin City

The Groundlings improv theater has churned out world-famous comedic talents like Will Ferrell and Maya Rudolph. And in San Diego, a former Groundling has used that training to campaign for a higher power. The power to protect bees.

“The goal was to try and get on SNL,” says Jeff Russell of his time in the improv troupe. “[But now], I have an audience, and I get to crack jokes and be silly and entertain and educate.”

That audience? The over 4 million people who follow Mr. and Mrs. Bee Rescue in the socialmediaverse. Jeff and his wife, Julie, operate the business, which means they remove unwelcome bees without harming them and rehome them to apiaries throughout the county. Their social media is a hub of videos of Jeff peeling open car trunks, flooring, barbecues—any cozy spot for a bee to set up shop—and using smoke to coax them out of the hive (sometimes working sans gloves or protective gear).

Bees in a hive will follow their queen, so finding and moving her helps speed along the relocation process. It’s “a really hard game of Where’s Waldo,” Julie says. But there’s a secret to it: “If the bees start running completely in some random opposite direction in a hurry, then we know that the queen is probably that direction,” says Jeff. Their social videos document this process in a way that turns a reasonable nightmare (being swarmed by bees) into a form of entertainment and advocacy. The Russells spread the apian gospel, sharing why relocating bees is the only option to consider.

Since the 1960s, bee populations across the US have shrunk drastically for a slew of reasons—habitat loss (postwar industrialization led to fewer farms and crops), climate change (petulant temps affect blooming schedules), and pesticides (when used improperly, they can be toxic for bees).

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Bees are also responsible for up to 75 percent of all flowering plants; 35 percent of food crops rely on animal pollinators to reproduce. So, basically, we’d be living in a flowerless world fueled by a diet of wind-pollinated oats and Red Dye 40 without them.

Jeff and Julie met on Tinder in 2016. “It would have been more appropriate if we met on Bumble,” Julie says. A photographer and graphic designer, she had no experience in a swarm of stingers before 2018. When Jeff broke his back surfing, she had no choice but to step in. Later, when she was laid off from her job in 2020, she focused on growing Mr. and Mrs. Bee Removal’s social media accounts. That’s when their business took off. These videos work. People are learning.

“Quite a lot of my customers were [initially] like, ‘Why don’t we just kill?’” Jeff says. “Now, the vast majority are like, ‘You take them alive, don’t you?’”

You visit your favorite ancient Egyptian merchant, and as you’re buying some papyrus to hieroglyph your way to the 3000 B.C. version of a Pulitzer, he slips you a special token as a thank you for being so loyal. It’s the least he can do for keeping him in business, and you can use that reward to barter for anything you want—like beer.

A few thousand years later, those tokens would evolve to copper coins that American retailers handed out so you could spend. The Sperry & Hutchinson company introduced its groundbreaking “Green Stamps” program in the late 1800s. Today, your sandwich shop’s loyalty card is one hole punch away from giving you a free sub. And you’ve surely justified some extravagant purchases in the name of airline miles.

Point is: Free stuff has always been a compelling way to earn human loyalty. And with his Solana Beach–based company Wildfire Systems, Jordan Glazier has built one of the city’s biggest tech companies by modernizing that simple, ancient idea.

“Being able to save money when you shop is nice to have when times are good,” Glazier says. “When you have periods of inflation or financial stress, that nice-to-have becomes a must-have.”

He launched Wildfire in 2017. It’s essentially a white-label platform that builds and operates programs for enterprise brands across most industries—from banking (Visa, Citi) to travel (TravelArrow) to fintech (Sezzle, Acorns), to rewards (Shop Your Way, KashKick), you name it. Customers of, say, RBC (also a client), can install a browser extension or enable a feature on a mobile app that activates savings and cashback offers. Wildfire has now spent three straight years on Inc. 5000’s list of the fastest-growing private companies.

Glazier’s no stranger to scaling new ideas. As one of the early executives at eBay, he built and ran the consumer electronics, computer, and industrial equipment verticals. Later he turned San Diego tech company Eventful into the world’s largest online calendar and events discovery platform (CBS acquired it in 2014).

“Part of being an entrepreneur is building things and solving for things that haven’t been solved before,” he says.

It’s a lesson he learned early on. His grandparents started a women’s clothing manufacturing company in Chicago in the 1910s, and it remained a family business for over seven decades. Preteen Glazier would punch in as a stock boy and sit with the sales team making phone calls.

“That was my very first paycheck,” he says with a smile.

Now he and his own team of 70 have grown Wildfire’s revenue 721 percent over the past three years.

“I want to make sure we are building a business that’s built to last,” he says. “We are eight years in, and I feel like we’re just getting started.”

Glazier named the company because of how people recommend products and services to each other. Great shirt, where’d you get it? Anyone know of a good sushi spot? “Word of mouth,” he says, “spreads like wildfire.”

San Diego’s tech industry seems to come and go. There were predictions that the post-pandemic, remote work world would see all luminous brains migrating south to our famous clime, but that has been only partially the case. As tides turn, big names like Glazier’s hold anchor.

“San Diego is such a great place to live and to build a business,” he says. “I always feel sorry for people who don’t live here.”

Food is a notorious diva to photograph. The wrong lighting can make José Andrés’ paella look like a jaundiced grain bowl. You could be staring at the best sandwich of your life, but shoot it from above and—hey, congrats on that abandoned piece of lettuce bread. A cottage meme industry has been built around the hilariously bad photos on review sites that make Michelin-star food look like Michelin tires.

Especially in a visual modern media world, food culture depends on great photographers capturing the painstaking work in equally deserving ways. We asked four of San Diego’s top food photographers for their favorite shot from another year of documenting what we eat.

Kimberly Motos

Birdman Sandwich at Chick & Hawk

Getting this kind of shot takes a bit of yoga. Asana yourself into the corner, hold your breath, pray that a chef on the move doesn’t back into your light stand.

“You’re stepping into someone’s workspace during their busiest moments, so it’s a balance of being present to get the shot and being invisible to not slow anything down,” Kimberly Motos says.

The subject here is the Birdman sandwich from Chick & Hawk—hot fried chicken thigh, tangy slaw, kimchi comeback sauce, sweet and spicy pickles, potato brioche bun—getting a hearty dousing of its difference-maker seasoning. Motos captures the parts of the process that diners don’t usually see: the chaos behind something that looks so simple.

Lucianna McIntosh

Oysters + Jewel of the Sea Martini at The Fishery

“I love this image because it feels like a moment you want to step into,” says Lucianna McIntosh. A warm, sunny day at The Fishery in PB with oysters, caviar, and martinis. Yes, please.

The little details—the glass sweating a little, the direct afternoon light creating stark shadows, the oyster glistening on the tray—are the main characters. Instead of trying to overly control the setup, McIntosh “followed the light and lines that draw you in more,” she says. “This was one of those moments where everything lined up on its own for a second. I love it when the shadows end up being just as important as the food itself.”

Eric Wolfinger

Herb-Roasted Golden Chicken at Fleurette

La Jolla native Eric Wolfinger—who won a James Beard Award for Tartine Bread, one of the most stunning bread books of all time—says he doesn’t have a signature style. His style is a conduit.

“I see my job is to translate the chef’s point of view into something you can feel,” he says.

For this shot, Fleurette chef Travis Swikard had one directive: cuisine du soleil (“cuisine of the sun”). With a spread of leeks vinaigrette, herb-roasted golden chicken, and beets, Wolfinger wanted to create a scene that felt straight out of the French Riviera, relaying the light, bright style of Swikard’s new spot.

Some bonus additions here: Extra lights—to add lots of warmth—and a clipping from an olive tree.

Dee Sandoval

Espresso Ice Cream at Lucien

Timing and light are everything in food photography. In Lucien—La Jolla’s tasting-menu-only restaurant with moody ambiance—a single strobe flash creates the ideal spotlight.

Dee Sandoval says she uses the “natural, just-plated energy” of the dish to “create a portrait of moment and craft.” That’s why this Mostra Ghost Bear espresso ice cream—with San José dark chocolate mousse, soy-miso caramel, and koji shoyu chocolate sauce—looks like it might dissolve halfway to your mouth.

My 15-year-old daughter tried to steal our car this week, so I’m ready to become a NASCAR dad. It would be appropriate discipline. We just relocated to a nice suburb within walking distance of her high school. The suburbs are like living in a Tesla commercial. I am pretty far from the wealthiest dad in this neighborhood (I am the least wealthy dad in this neighborhood), more than a few engineering degrees short of being in the running.

I’m fairly certain watching NASCAR is a violation of our HOA and a violation of my daughter’s emotional HOA. But NASCAR hits San Diego this weekend and I have a fever I’ve never felt before. I want to watch 111 drivers do dangerous things in cars and trucks on an active military base in the ocean. Since my lifelong exposure to NASCAR is limited to Talladega Nights and every single iteration of the movie Cars, I can only base my plan of attack on oafish stereotypes.

So while other neighbor dads are sizing bubble jackets for their golf simulators, I’m gonna grow a Ricky Bobby, run the extension cord for the TV out into the carport we share with six other condos, fill a cooler with a proper 80-20 split of Hamm’s and Mountain Dew, treat a lawn chair like an ADU, and spend a few hours yelling ohsheeeit as if it’s a single, nine-syllable word.

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The quality parents in our neighborhood seem highly attuned to the sound of any vehicle breaching the 6 MPH threshold, so I should gather a crowd pretty fast. They may come over with strongly worded emails in their hearts, but one glimpse of Shane van Gisbergen and hometown hero Jimmy Johnson guzzling the last remaining drops of gasoline on the planet in a dazzling display of carmanship—they’ll join my NASCAR pop-up party.

By the time my daughter brings her friends over, we’ll have a real welcoming committee.

Because, like I said, my daughter tried to steal my car.

She wasn’t going to Mexico. But while Claire and I were off doing businessy stuff to afford my teen’s skincare rituals, she and a friend decided to teach themselves stick shift. She’s never driven a stick before. I’m not saying she has, but if she has driven a vehicle at all—it would have been done in a remote, abandoned parking lot where the only possible thing she could destroy was the concept of driving itself.

But a couple TikTok videos later, she and her friend felt a certain level of mastery had been achieved, and they gave it a go. They backed our VW Bug out of the garage with a series of stalls and transmission seizures, and managed to get it into the carport, attempting to do “donuts.” That’s when I got a call from a resident, who had taken an active interest in this experiment.

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Which got me wondering about the power and might of vehicles. Turns out, even at carport speeds there exists a bit of potential fireworks. A garage door could become not a garage door anymore. At 145 MPH on Naval Base Coronado this weekend (don’t worry, they slow down to 100 MPH for turns), NASCAR drivers are essentially doorbell ditching gods. I didn’t register the temperature after my daughter’s trial run, but the track at NASCAR races usually hits a cool 130-150 degrees, enough to lightly sear some Nikes (the tires themselves hover in the 200 degree range).

And that is at least part of our fascination with NASCAR (the other fascination is the legendary pit parties, which either set humanity back a few evolutionary links, or advance it by the same amount of links). These drivers do something all of us do every day in a very efficient, boring way—drive a car—and take it to its extreme impulse. Grace and precision at the thunderous edge of shit going terribly wrong. Most of us have looked at San Diego home prices and felt a burning desire to see how fast our Honda Pilot could make it to our new home in Vegas. So NASCAR drivers are acting on our own wildest impulse.

Music drifts across the fairway. Someone’s in flip flops. The Pacific flashes in the distance. Sun peeks onto shoulders through the palm trees. It’s spring, technically, but the air reads suspiciously like summer. At the par-3 course at Liberty Station, the longest hole barely stretches past 120 yards, and no one looks particularly interested in becoming the next PGA legend.

This is where Sunday Golf was born.

“I got dragged to a par-3 course in 2019 —The Loma Club—and it was way more my jam,” says Ronan Galvin, CEO and co-founder of Sunday Golf, a company that makes lightweight golf bags for players who’d rather carry less and laugh more. “It was a lot different than the stereotypical ideas you have about golf where it’s kind of long, uptight, and exclusive.”

Galvin spent over a decade in the golf industry working in product development, sourcing and manufacturing. But he didn’t grow up swinging clubs. Basketball and football were more his speed. What clicked for him was a simpler, more relaxed kind of play: shorter rounds and weekend games built for fun rather than formality. The kind of golf that resonated for him felt accessible, effortless, and surprisingly his lifestyle.

He noticed something else, too.

On a course where five clubs do the job, players were still lugging 14. So Galvin built something smaller. Lighter. A bag designed specifically for par-3 rounds, the Loma Bag is sleek, functional, and refreshingly unfussy. It’s practical minimalism in a sport known for excess.

Sunday Golf was slated to launch in January 2020. Then, COVID hit. Shipments stalled; lost at sea. The future felt shaky. But the series of catastrophes for the young company turned out to be anything but: By the time inventory arrived that August, golf had become one of the few activities people could safely do.

“It introduced and brought so many people back to the game,” Galvin says. “It created a habit for a lot of people, which is a big reason golf is on its growth trajectory.” 

It turns out Americans can’t get enough of golf. Forty-eight million of them swung clubs last year, a 41 percent jump since 2019, and the National Golf Foundation says the total could top 50 million by the end of 2026.

The brand rode this unlikely momentum. Since 2021, Sunday Golf has expanded into larger lightweight bags and continues evolving from there. A major reason for the company’s success is its approachability, a value so central that it’s literally written on the office walls in the form of the company’s guiding mission: “Get 500,000 golfers having more fun by 2027.” This goal is measured, fittingly, by golf bags sold. 

Sunday Golf has already passed 300,000 bags sold.

But the numbers aren’t the point.

“To remind the world that life is meant to be enjoyed,” Galvin says of the brand’s why. In an era dominated by screens, golf offers something analog. “People are outside, touching grass with their friends. A golf bag is a golf bag, but our products are vehicles to help support that.”

Unlike legacy golf giants promising proximity to Rory McIlroy-level greatness, Sunday Golf leans into what Galvin jokingly calls “diet golf” or “golf light”—weekend rounds, driving range sessions, company scrambles. The bags are built for the casual golfer, and the fit feels obvious.

That philosophy resonates across Southern California, where year-round sunshine means golf courses never really hibernate for winter. As Galvin puts it, “the laid-back lifestyle of San Diego kind of seeps into everyone’s veins.”

Sometimes the validation arrives via email: a 76-year-old customer is able to walk the course again because their golf bag is lighter. Parents are able to take their children out with Sunday Golf’s kids line.

For Galvin, that’s the real win. Not perfection. Not prestige. Just more people outside, enjoying themselves. In San Diego, that might be the most natural mission of all.