The year was 2018, and Dr. Gabriel Wardi saw a potential solution to a long-running problem in healthcare: sepsis. Wardi, the medical director for hospital sepsis at UC San Diego Health, says sepsis—an overzealous immune system response to an infection—kills about 10 million people a year worldwide, including 350,000 people in the United States.
Part of the problem with sepsis is that there are a lot of ways it can present, which makes it tricky to diagnose. For years, Wardi had been trying to see if electronic health records could trigger an alert for doctors and nurses when someone becomes at risk.
“Unfortunately, those early alerts were wrong almost all the time, and you can imagine that in a busy hospital, your initial reaction is, ‘Get this thing away from me,’ because it’s wrong all the time, it changes your workflow, and no one likes it,” he says.
But when artificial intelligence entered the scene, Wardi wondered if AI models could more accurately predict who’s going to get sepsis.
“We focused on coming up with a way to pull data out of our emergency department in near real-time, look at about 150 variables, and generate an hourly prediction [for] who’s going to develop sepsis in the next four to six hours,” Wardi says, adding that the resulting deep-learning model is helping save some 50 lives a year at UC San Diego Health.
Across San Diego County, AI is reshaping healthcare. It transcribes audio from appointments and summarizes patient notes. It helps drug companies decode genetic data. It writes draft responses to patient questions. It chats with people with mild cognitive impairments. It even identifies breastfeeding-related conditions from pictures taken with a phone.
All of these enhancements are leading to lasting changes that will dramatically improve medicine, says Dr. Christopher Longhurst, chief medical officer at UC San Diego Health.
“I think the promise is a little overhyped in the next two or three years, but in the next seven to nine years, it’s going to completely change healthcare delivery,” Longhurst adds. “It’s going to be the biggest thing since antibiotics, because it’s going to lift every single doctor to be the best possible doctor and it’s going to empower patients in ways they never have been before.”
These may sound like high ideals, but the money piece of this equation seems to speak to a bright future for AI in healthcare. Investors are taking note of the technology’s promise. According to a recent Rock Health report, a third of the almost $6 billion invested in US digital health startups this year went to companies using AI.
However, all of these innovations come with big questions: Do patients know when AI is being used? Is patient data protected? Will human jobs be replaced? Does anyone really want to talk to a robot about their health? Some worry the technology is progressing so quickly that these concerns will go unaddressed.
“I just hope we don’t get too excited before the technology is really where it needs to be,” says Jillian Tullis, the director of biomedical ethics at University of San Diego. “I’m thinking of Jurassic Park—just because we can do it doesn’t mean we should do it.”
Illustration by Cam Cottrill
The promise—and pitfalls—of AI as a diagnostic tool
Even providers themselves aren’t always keen on utilizing AI programs such as Wardi’s sepsis model.
“Doctors and nurses are usually very, very smart people, and not all of them are going to be excited about having some kind of form of artificial intelligence suggest that someone might be developing sepsis,” Wardi says. “The more senior the physician, the more likely they are not to find value in the model. It could be a generational thing … Younger people are more excited about AI.”
Wardi compares the skepticism around AI to 19th-century physicians’ resistance to the stethoscope. “[Doctors thought] it had no value and would ruin the profession,” he says. “Now, it’s a symbol of medicine.”
Methods like the sepsis model can be expanded to predict the risk of other diseases, such as cardiovascular conditions, Alzheimer’s, and cancer, says Dr. Eric Topol, director and founder of the Scripps Research Translational Institute.
Courtesy of Scripps Research
“So we take all of a person’s data—that includes their electronic health record, their lab tests, their scans, their genome, their gut microbiome, [and their] sensor data, environmental data, and social determinant data,” he explains. “We can fold that all together and be able to very precisely say this person is at high risk for this particular condition.”
According to Topol, Scripps researchers are even using pictures of the retina to predict Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s years before any symptoms show up. “Machine eyes or digital eyes can see things that humans will never see,” Topol adds.
Meanwhile, at the San Diego biotech company Illumina, researchers are using an algorithm to analyze genetic information and find mutations that cause disease.
But creating this type of intelligence is a challenge compared to building programs like ChatGPT, which train on data from the internet. Dr. Kyle Farh, VP of Illumina’s Artificial Intelligence Lab, has turned to primates, sequencing their DNA and using that data to train the company’s model, PrimateAI-3D. He hopes to one day use the model to diagnose rare genetic diseases.
Tullis at USD says she’s all for predicting and preventing illness, but she’s worried about the other uses of AI.
“When I read stories about doctors who are fighting with insurance companies about whether or not patients should get certain procedures or treatment, but the insurance company uses an algorithm to make a determination… I get really nervous,” she says.
Diagnosis often requires a human touch, she adds.
“You can look at people’s nail beds; you can look at lumps or rashes in particular ways; you can feel people’s skin if it’s clammy and cold,” she says. “The algorithm can’t do that.”
Illustration by Cam Cottrill
Saving time while protecting patient data
Anyone who’s used an AI model to draft an email or write a cover letter knows it can save a massive amount of time. And doctors and nurses in San Diego are already utilizing AI to take care of some of their more menial tasks.
Several health systems, including Scripps Health, use AI to generate post-exam notes, answer patient questions, and summarize clinical appointments. It can reduce documentation time to “about seven to 10 seconds,” says Shane Thielman, chief information officer at Scripps. “It’s enabled certain physicians to be able to see additional patients in the course of a given shift or day.”
Courtesy of UC San Diego Health
UCSD uses a similar system. According to Longhurst, it’s freed doctors up to focus on patients—not computer screens—during appointments.
“That’s really about rehumanizing the exam room experience,” he says. Since they don’t have to take notes, physicians can make eye contact with patients while the tech transcribes their conversations.
But the approach raises concerns about consent and data privacy. Jeeyun (Sophia) Baik, an assistant professor who researches communication technology at University of San Diego, recently studied loopholes in federal HIPAA law that health data can fall into.
HIPAA does not currently protect health data collected by things like fitness apps or Apple Watches, she says. And that legislative gap “could apply to any emerging use cases of AI in the areas of medicine and healthcare, as well,” Baik adds.
For example, if physicians want to utilize protected health data for any purpose beyond providing healthcare services directly to the patient, they’re supposed to get the patient’s authorization. But it’s debatable whether that applies if healthcare providers start to use the information to train artificial intelligence.
“It can be controversial, in some cases, whether the use of AI aligns with the original purpose of healthcare service provisions the patients initially agreed to,” Baik says. “So there are definitely some gray areas that would merit further clarification and regulations or guidelines from the government.”
A recent California state bill, SB 1120, attempts to clear up those gray areas by requiring health insurers that use artificial intelligence to ensure the tool meets specified safety and equity criteria.
Thielman with Scripps Health says patients must always give consent before the AI tool takes notes on appointments. If a patient declines, providers won’t use the technology. However, “it happens very rarely that we have a patient that doesn’t consent,” he adds.
And, he continues, a human always looks over automated, AI-generated messages answering patient questions. But Scripps doesn’t tell patients that it’s using AI “because we have an appropriate member of the care team doing a formal review and signing off before they release the note,” he says.
It’s the same case at UCSD.
“There’s no button that says, ‘Just send [the message to the patient] now,’” Longhurst explains. “You have to edit the draft if you’re going to use the AI-generated draft. That’s adhering to our principle of accountability.”
Jon McManus, chief data, AI and development officer for Sharp HealthCare, says he realized an internal AI model was necessary to ensure employees and providers didn’t accidentally input patient data into less secure algorithms like ChatGPT. “We were able to block most commercial AI websites from the Sharp Network,” he explains. Instead, his team created a program called SharpAI. It’s used for tasks like summarizing meeting minutes, creating training curriculum, and drafting proposed nutrition plans.
Fixing mistakes—and possibly making them
With artificial intelligence technology, telehealth services could get way more advanced—Jessica de Souza, a graduate student in electrical and computer engineering at UCSD, is currently working on a system that would allow parents experiencing breastfeeding problems to send photos of their breasts to lactation consultants, who could use AI to diagnose what’s wrong. De Souza created a dataset of breast diseases and trained AI to identify patterns that could indicate issues such as nipple trauma.
Meanwhile, Laurel Riek, a computer science professor at UCSD, designed a small, tabletop robot called “Cognitively Assistive Robot for Motivation and Neurorehabilitation,” or CARMEN (the name is inspired by Carmen San Diego). CARMEN helps people with mild cognitive impairment improve memory and attention and learn skills to better function at home.
Courtesy of UCSD
“Many [patients] were not able to access care,” she says. “The idea behind CARMEN is that it could help transfer practices from the clinic into the home.”
Uses like these offer another vision for AI in healthcare: to improve patient care by helping doctors assess conditions and find mistakes.
“One of the big things is getting rid of medical errors, which are prevalent,” Topol says. “Each year in the United States, there are 12 million diagnostic medical errors.” According to Topol, those errors cause serious, disabling conditions or death for about 800,000 Americans per year.
He believes that AI can help shrink that number considerably. For example, doctors are utilizing it to review cardiograms, checking if there’s anything a human review missed.
But, Topol cautions, you can’t rely solely on AI. “In anything involving a patient, you don’t want to have the AI promote errors,” he says. “That’s the thing we’re trying to get rid of. So that’s why a human in [the] loop is so important. You don’t let the AI do things on its own. You just integrate that with the oversight of a nurse, doctor, [or] clinician.”
No matter how advanced artificial intelligence programs get, he sees no future where AI would handle diagnosis without human eyes.
“You don’t want to flub that up,” he says. “And patients should demand it.”
Algorithmic bias
An additional hope for AI is that it could correct for implicit racism in medicine, since machines, in theory, don’t see skin color. But the data on which algorithms are built is inherently imperfect.
“The medical bias could be already built into the existing information that’s out there,” Tullis says. “And, if you’re drawing from that information, then the bias is still there. I think that’s a work in progress.”
For example, an AI tool designed to detect breast cancer risk would be trained on previously gathered population data. “But they didn’t get as many Black women as they would like to be included in that data,” Tullis explains. “And then what does that mean for the quality of the data that has been used to maybe make decisions?”
Courtesy of Scripps Research
But there’s bias in every data set, Longhurst says. The key is to choose the right data for the population you’re working with to help address disparities. He points back to the sepsis model. That algorithm, he says, actually performed far better in UCSD’s Hillcrest hospital than in La Jolla.
“Why is that? Well, we tuned the algorithm to identify cases of sepsis that weren’t being picked up [by physicians] until later,” he adds. “We serve different populations in those different emergency departments.”
Patients at the Hillcrest location tend to be younger, which makes it harder to diagnose sepsis early, he says. But the AI algorithm helped to close that gap.
“These tools are going to change healthcare delivery more in the next 10 years than healthcare has changed in the last 50,” Longhurst says. But he hopes the industry doesn’t get ahead of itself—after all, he suggests, what if the FDA approved a new drug for breast cancer and simply said, “It has very few side effects?”
“You’re like, ‘Well, that’s great, but how does it work?’ They’re like, ‘Well, we don’t really know. We don’t have the data,’” he continues. “That’s what’s going on now. It’s like the Wild West. Our argument is that we really need local testing that is focused on real outcomes that matter to patients. That’s it.”
Claire Trageser has been writing for San Diego Magazine for 10 years. She also is a reporter at KPBS and writes for The New York Times, National Geographic, Marie Claire, Elle and Runner's World.
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.
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