San Diego Magazine to host the Best of San Diego Party
MEDIA ADVISORY – AUGUST 1, 2014 San Diego Magazine to host the Best of San Diego Party August 22 WHEN: August 22, 2014, 6:30 – 9:30 p.m. WHERE: NTC Venues at Liberty Station, Point Loma WHAT: It’s the most anticipated bash of the year. San Diego Magazine will host the annual Best of San Diego […]
San Diego Magazine to host the Best of San Diego Party August 22
WHEN: August 22, 2014, 6:30 – 9:30 p.m.
WHERE: NTC Venues at Liberty Station, Point Loma
WHAT: It’s the most anticipated bash of the year. San Diego Magazine will host the annual Best of San Diego Party on Friday, August 22. It’s the only event where you can sample San Diego’s best restaurants, breweries, wineries and spirit companies all in one place. Guests can sip and sample their way through the party as tickets include unlimited tastings. Live music, DJs, unexpected entertainment and a dance floor will cap off an unforgettable evening. The party stems from the annual Best of San Diego issue, published by San Diego Magazine every August.
WHO: More than 56 participating restaurants, breweries, wineries and spirit companies will serve tastings to a crowd of 2,000 guests.
You know the tuna I’m talking about. It’s easy to mistake for a cube of watermelon. It’s the color of a Lyft logo. Appears to be glowing a vibrant, tantalizing purity. Tuna that bright red or pink means it’s… what, extremely fresh? Bursting with nutrients?
I thought this was widely known, but a chef recently told me very few of his staff members were aware of this, and almost none of his customers. So, especially with the recent proliferation of poke joints, I thought I’d be helpful with this PSA of sorts.
Bright red or pink tuna means it has been gassed. In its natural state, fresh tuna is dark red, almost maroon, sometimes even chocolatey-looking.
But here’s why I personally tend to back away when I see bright red or pink tuna:
1. IT’S MUCH HARDER TO TELL IF IT’S FRESH OR NOT.
It can be left out for days and it will not turn brown. In one study, the University of Florida found that carbon monoxided tuna kept its bright red color for 11 days in the fridge. “The carbon monoxide actually hides the quality of a fish,” says Tommy Gomes, fifth-generation San Diego fisherman, host of The Fishmonger on Outdoor Channel, and owner of seafood shop Tunaville in Point Loma. “It’ll make a poor-quality fish pretty like a rose. I’ve seen them take an old piece of brown tuna [and] put the gas on it, and it comes out looking like cherry lemonade.” The gas also masks the smell of old tuna (which is one way you can tell if tuna’s getting past its eat-by stage). “Since there’s no smell, it falsifies the freshness,” Gomes explains.
2. I TRUST GOVERNMENT HEALTH ORGANIZATIONS, BUT ALSO RECOGNIZE THEY’RE NOT PERFECT.
The 1992 USDA food pyramid suggested carbs should be the bulk of our diet (they corrected that in 2005 and 2011). The government approved the fat substitute Olestra, which gave people all sorts of tummy issues. Margarine and other trans fats were also approved, then banned in May 2019. There are some smart humans in the government, but even geniuses make mistakes. So I tend to go with my gut: tuna in its natural state, or tuna treated with carbon monoxide? Easy choice.
So why gas tuna at all? Because of us. Consumers don’t like brownish fish. Tuna oxidizes quickly. It’s difficult for tuna fishermen and women to get it to market quick enough before it turns that brownish or chocolatey color. Customers erroneously think all brownish-looking fish is old or bad and will pay more for “fresher-looking” fish. So in the 1990s, the FDA allowed companies to gas the tuna and keep it artificially bright red for long stretches at a time.
“There’s nothing wrong with a hot chocolate–looking tuna loin,” says Gomes. “But, here in America, we want [it] seared on the outside, rosy pink on the inside.”
What fresh tuna should look like
Gassed tuna is also often imported and less inexpensive than fresh, un-gassed tuna, says Gomes. “So, to be fair and honest,” Gomes acknowledges, “for families on a budget, gassed tuna is one of the best alternatives out there for frozen seafood.”
In theNew York Times article cited above, a sushi restaurant owner reported his sales of tuna tripled when he started using gassed tuna. So that’s obviously good for the small business owner, as well as grocery stores. Food waste is a massive epidemic—the US throws out about half of edible seafood. If gassed tuna gets Americans to eat perfectly edible tuna they otherwise might throw out, that’s a step in a good direction.
But it’d be better if we as consumers knew that fresh, non-gassed tuna is supposed to be dark red or maroon—not bright red or watermelon pink, like a majority of the tuna I’ve seen at local poke shops. Ideally, we would look at a piece of bright red/pink tuna and think “Oh, hey there, carbon monoxide.”
The most important things about buying tuna is to trust the source (whether grocery store, fishmonger, or sushi joint). It also should be shiny and somewhat translucent, and not have slime or an off-smell.
Troy Johnson is the magazine’s award-winning food writer and humorist, and a long-standing expert on Food Network. His work has been featured on NatGeo, Travel Channel, NPR, and in Food Matters, a textbook of the best American food writing.
The Best Gym in San Diego Isn’t Really a Gym Anymore
Earlier this year, Fit quietly dropped "athletic" from its brand, from Fit Athletic Clubs to simply Fit, and started calling itself something new: a social wellness club.
There’s a version of San Diego that lives in two extremes. On one side, the 5 a.m. crowd: biohackers, marathoners, people who’ve already logged a cold plunge before your alarm goes off. On the other, the after-dark crowd, the ones chasing sunset happy hours and late dinners with friends. Everyone seems to be either optimizing or unwinding, and most of us feel like we’re failing at both.
Fit, San Diego’s reigning Best Gym for the third year running, has built its entire identity around erasing that divide.
Walk into one of Fit’s three San Diego locations on a Tuesday afternoon and the lines blur fast. Someone’s mid-set on the squat rack. Someone else has a laptop open at a café table a few feet away, half-working, half-people-watching. A group is trading plans for the weekend’s event by the recovery lounge. Nobody’s in a rush to leave.
“We’re not competing for the same people,” says Emily Waybright, Public Relations Manager at Fit, addressing the arrival of a national luxury gym chain in San Diego this year. “We don’t really feel like we’re in the gym category. It’s this unique thing.”
That unique thing has a name now. Earlier this year, Fit quietly dropped “athletic” from its brand, from Fit Athletic Clubs to simply Fit, and started calling itself something new: a social wellness club.
It’s a small wording change with a bigger idea behind it. Fit was never built around escaping the workday. It was built around the people who genuinely like what they do, and who want workouts, work, and friendships to happen in the same place instead of three separate ones. Because sometimes red light therapy with a stranger turns into weekend plans.
Fit’s philosophy traces back to its founder, who started the brand nearly two decades ago after failing to find a gym he actually wanted to belong to. He looked instead to the old-school country club, where people came for a shared interest and stayed for the community. His version was made for a younger generation, minus the golf, plus the loud music.
Which makes it a little ironic that the very award putting Fit back in the spotlight this year is Best Gym.
What does the best traditional gym look like when the definition of a gym is becoming less traditional? It’s a fair question, and Fit’s answer is that the fitness industry itself is shifting. The 45-minutes-in, 45-minutes-out model is giving way to something closer to a genuine third space, the kind of role the office and the bar used to play before remote work and changing nightlife habits rearranged how people spend their time
For Fit, community isn’t a marketing add-on to fitness. It’s the through-line. Members aren’t just paying for a treadmill; they’re paying for an entire day of social wellness that’s built on performance, recovery, connection, and a plan for the next event on the calendar. That’s a much harder membership to walk away from.
Ambition and ease aren’t opposites here, they exist side by side, where passion and play share the same morning. On September 12, Fit is hosting Sol, a full day wellness festival at Fit Social. The morning focuses on wellness classes and vendors and then the evening is a full party with multiple DJ sets and an open bar. Think of it as a kick-off to locals’ summer in San Diego.
Ready to see what a social wellness club actually looks like? Visit fitclubs.com, or follow along at @thefitclubs on Instagram.
Growing up, Laika Nur, MD, Scripps Clinic sports medicine specialist, loved watching beach volleyball when the Association of Volleyball Professionals tour came to her hometown of Chicago. A talented volleyball player herself, she remembers sitting in the stands all day, and once, even got a couple autographs. Years later, Dr. Nur was attending a professional event focused on women’s sports, and the discussion turned to a new professional women’s volleyball league. The general manager and coaching staff for San Diego’s team, the Mojo, happened to be in attendance, and Dr. Nur took the opportunity to ask them if they needed a team doctor. Flash forward to the Mojo’s inaugural 2024 season, when Dr. Nur officially became the team physician. Click here to read more about Dr. Nur and how she incorporates lessons she learned on the court into her practice.
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