10 Stunning Places to Propose in San Diego 

Let’s start with his name.

No, not his birth name, Craig McKenzie Haskett.

Scrojo.

When he was in high school, he and his friends were trying to come up with the perfect name for their punk band that would encapsulate all their personas. Nicaragua. The Freds.

One of his friends said he was going to go by Jimmy Stacks and called it “the perfect rock and roll name.” Their names changed so much that Haskett erupted: “Fine, I’m f—ing Scrotum Joe, the true defender of the Open West.”

Their response: Wow, that’s a great name.

As a teenager, he drew chalkboards for Del Mar’s Pannikin coffee shop and would design T-shirts for surf/skate brand Life’s a Beach. He signed the shirts with his moniker, but even in punk rebellion, who wants a shirt with the words Scrotum Joe on it? “They just cut out the ‘t-u-m,’ and the next thing you know, a client referred to me as that, and it stuck,” he says.

Scrojo could have been part of a band as iconic as The Misfits—had he been able to learn the famously cumbersome bassline to The Kingsmen’s “Louie Louie.” Becoming one of the most renowned concert poster designers—someone who quite literally designed the cover of Art of Modern Rock: The Poster Explosion—is a pretty good Plan B.

“To my knowledge, he’s done more rock posters than anybody else alive,” says Dennis King, whose D. King Gallery in Berkeley, California, serves as one of the largest private rock poster collections in the world. “He’s the hardest-working guy in the poster business.”

King not only co-authored the sequel to music historian Paul Grushkin’s The Art of Rock, but he also handles distribution and sales for all of Scrojo’s work. That’s more than 3,000 different posters over nearly 40 years. (That’s over one poster each week. For four decades straight.)

For anything from boxing matches to rodeos, posters have long been used as promotional items. Toulouse-Lautrec’s famous lithographs advertised Moulin Rouge in the late 1800s. Around the same time, Hatch Show Print in Nashville was making handbills for the Grand Ole Opry.

“I propose this: Cave paintings are the first poster art,” Scrojo says.

Rock and roll posters took off in the 1960s, when the hippie counterculture era replaced conformity and suburbia. Artists like Jimi Hendrix and the Grateful Dead used their vibrant, psychedelic prints as a form of rebellion from the mainstream. Posters were promotional, commemorative, collectible, and especially expressive.

If the name Scrojo is any indication, he doesn’t shy away from imagery that toes the line of being too provocative. He focused more on what inspired him instead of trying to be offensive for the sake of getting attention.

“Didn’t want to show it to my grandmother, but my parents were fine with it,” Scrojo says with a laugh.

“We’ve had to ask him to put a Band-Aid over a nipple every now and then,” says Chris Goldsmith, president of Belly Up Tavern in Solana Beach, where Scrojo started out and hundreds of his posters currently line the walls.

Scrojo spent six weeks at Otis College of Art and Design for a summer semester before drugs, alcohol, and a self-described lack of discipline prevented him from enrolling full time. Still, he taught himself concepts like text hierarchy and later found his niche at the Belly Up and in the surfing and skating world, working with brands like Quiksilver, Rip Curl, Scorpion Bay, and DGK.

His first concert poster was for North County band Borracho y Loco, of which Goldsmith was bass guitarist. Scrojo drew an abstract version of the Belly Up’s iconic shark with colorful calypso and tiki themes.

Early on, he would craft using a pencil, pen, non-reproduction blue pencil, X-Acto knife, rubber knife, and proportion scale to create each poster, and the finished product could take a week or even longer.

“I recommend every artist coming up to do that for like six weeks,” Scrojo says. “It forces you to think about every design decision as you’re going along.”

He has since mastered vector imagery through Adobe Illustrator to the point where, depending on the level of detail needed, he could finish two projects in a day. Still, he fills sketchbook after sketchbook to blueprint.

“I liked his line in particular, and he knows how to draw, which a lot of people don’t really know how to do these days,” King says.

Scrojo would research what each musician’s merchandise looks like to get a feel for each artist’s tone and voice. Once he has his central image in mind, he focuses on what and where to place the text.

He doesn’t have one specific style, ranging his talents from art deco to psychedelic and everything in between (and outside the lines). Want a pop surrealist comic book cartoon devil with splattered paint textures, halftone dot patterns, and pure chaos? Red Hot Chili Peppers, February 1986. Want a minimalist graphic portrait with bold strokes and graffiti text? P!nk, October 2023. Want a carnival sideshow style piece with a tasteful caricature of Jeff Bridges? The Big Lebowski, August 2011.

Scrojo calls himself a jack of all trades because he can create posters for all music genres. King calls him a chameleon for his ability to adapt his voice to new eras.

“The variety of his skillset makes it possible for us to put 50 of his posters on a wall next to each other and have it look compelling, not just a bunch of the same thing over and over,” Goldsmith says.

Some of Scrojo’s favorite posters are when he feels a personal connection to the artist or the album. He has a vivid memory as a child of being trapped in a closet filled with marijuana leaves while playing hide and seek and staring at Jimmy Cliff’s “The Harder They Come” LP. “For whatever reason, as a kid, that sparked a desire to do graphic design,” Scrojo says.

Fast forward to February 2012, Cliff is performing at Belly Up. Scrojo decided to modify Cliff’s original album cover from rainbow gradient fills to classic reggae psychedelia while preserving Cliff’s striped pants and bold hat. Cliff’s manager called him and said they wanted to use it for the rest of their tour.

“We always get artists requesting that he does their posters,” Goldsmith says. “A lot of artists don’t want venues to go all rogue because they want to control how they’re being presented. With him, they’re like, ‘Let him go nuts.’”

The inland North County community of Rancho Santa Fe is often associated with wealth. It’s one of San Diego’s most expensive residential markets and is consistently ranked one of the highest-income zip codes in California and the U.S. Rancho Santa Fe is known for its large equestrian community including riding facilities and horse trails, as well as its country club lifestyle and associated golf courses.

At the center of this luxury master-planned community is a small, walkable downtown area referred to as the “village,” with The Inn at Rancho Santa Fe acting as both a landmark and social hub. Much of the community, including the historic Inn, was designed by acclaimed architect Lilian Rice, one of California’s earliest female architects. The Spanish Colonial-style architecture she brought to the village is still one of its defining characteristics today.  

Whether you’re coming to Rancho Santa Fe for golf, horseback riding, or pampering at a resort spa, be sure to start with a short walk around the village to take in the neighborhood’s charm. Plan your next visit here with our neighborhood guide to the area’s best restaurants, things to do, and shopping.

Jump To: Restaurants | Things to Do | Shopping

Rancho Santa Fe Restaurants, Bars, and Coffee Shops

The Pony Room

Families congregate at The Pony Room for elevated California ranch-style cuisine. Lamb lollipops, carne asada tacos, burgers, and weekly dinner specials are offered here, alongside an extensive collection of wine and spirits (especially tequila) and sizeable kids menus. As the signature restaurant of Rancho Valencia Resort & Spa, this all-day eatery is a lively centerpiece of the local social scene.

5921 Valencia Circle

Mille Fleurs

The piano bar at Mille Fleurs is the buzziest spot to be on Friday and Saturday nights in Rancho Santa Fe. French classics like escargot, lobster bisque, duck confit, and steak frites are the main dinner attractions at this local institution that has been around for more than 40 years. Spring for the four-course prix fixe menu before nabbing a coveted bar seat near the piano entertainer.

6009 Paseo Delicias

Nick & G’s Restaurant

Nick & G’s is one of the most prominent restaurants in the village, with an outdoor patio that overlooks the main thoroughfare. Enjoy modern Italian food, steaks, and seafood dishes here, including homemade pasta, pizza, wagyu beef, and oysters. Be sure to check their live music schedule and events calendar for the latest happenings.

6106 Paseo Delicias

Lilian’s

Named after renowned architect and planner Lilian Rice, Lilian’s is The Inn at Rancho Santa Fe’s flagship restaurant. Their upscale menus feature sustainable seafood, grass-fed meats, local produce, and even sushi rolls during dinner. Outdoor seating provides a bird’s-eye view of the village and an elegant backdrop for weekend brunch. Stop by Bing’s Bar (a nod to Bing Crosby) for craft cocktails, beer, wine, and light bites in a refined setting.

5951 Linea Del Cielo

Thyme in the Ranch

Quaint cafe and bakery Thyme in the Ranch serves a small selection of breakfast and lunch items (don’t miss the tarragon chicken salad), but is perhaps best known for its pastries and baked goods. Cakes, pies, muffins, scones, and cookies fly off the shelves here, where locals come for special occasions, parties, and group catering orders.  

16905 Avenida De Acacias

Paseo RSF

Located inside a historic building once home to Rancho Santa Fe’s original schoolhouse, Paseo RSF is one of the village’s newest dining options. The charming American bistro has pasta, salads, burgers, meat and seafood entrees, plus a thoughtfully selected California wine list and new sushi and omakase program. Kids and dogs are both welcome here.

6024 Paseo Delicias, Suite C

Rancho Roasters

Grab a quick coffee to go from this walk-up window in the same shopping center as the post office. Cinnamon roll lattes, cold brew, spiced chai, smoothies, protein bowls, and more can be found at Rancho Roasters, where they brew beans from Dark Horse Coffee.

16950 Via De Santa Fe

Goli Pizza

Casual pizzeria and martini bar Goli is a popular spot for catching the latest sports games. Order one of their unique specialty pizzas like the Casbah with hummus and veggies, build your own pizza or burger, or go with one of their hearty wraps that’s made with an extra thin version of pizza dough.

18021 Calle Ambiente, Suite 403

Cocina del Rancho

Find generous portions of Mexican food at Cocina del Rancho, run by the same owners as Carlsbad’s Cicciotti’s Trattoria Italiana and Village Kabob. Get classic dishes like burritos, tacos, and enchiladas, plus their specialty items including pulpo, carne asada, and fajitas with lobster tail. Don’t skip the margaritas.

16089 San Dieguito Road

Chino Farm Stand

If you’re anything like me, you’ve probably been planning your wedding your entire life. The impromptu daydreaming usually comes at the most inconvenient times: during a meeting or right as you’re falling asleep after watching too many episodes of TLC’s Four Weddings.

In those imagined scenes, there is always a sunset. Usually some kind of impossible garden that feels like Alice in Wonderland meets The Secret Garden. There are soft pinks and climbing greens, florals that look like they grew a little too perfectly on purpose, and somewhere in the distance, water that catches the light. It’s dramatic in the best way.

Perched on Harbor Island, Sheraton San Diego Resort feels like a tucked-away bayside escape. But the real centerpiece of its $123 million transformation is the new Garden Terrace, a private green oasis that feels like it was designed specifically for the dream wedding replaying in my head. This is what I had been imagining all those years. White tea roses, lavender, gardenia, jasmine, and magnolia trees line the space, creating a fragrance that feels like it’s part of the architecture. 

Sheraton San Diego Resort has always had the advantage of its location, but what stands out now is how intentionally the indoor and outdoor spaces coexist. Panoramic harbor views stretch across the property, shifting from soft blue mornings to golden-hour glow and a nighttime skyline that feels almost cinematic. Of course, there are other ceremony and event spaces across the resort, too—including the Lanai Lawn, Harbor Vista Lawn, and Eventide Gardens—each offering its own variation of open-air beauty. But the Garden Terrace is the one that feels like it was made for vows.

I arrived on a Tuesday afternoon with a suitcase slightly overpacked, the result of not knowing what to fully expect from a resort doubling as a wedding venue. I tried to cover every possible version of the trip: a handful of summer dresses, a few breezy pants, marina-esque tank tops, sandals for everything, and accessories meant to sparkle in the sun (seven different earring and necklace options was probably unnecessary, though). 

I did, however, underestimate the swimsuits, especially once I saw the paddleboards, endless water activities you’d want to try at least once, and pools and jacuzzis practically whispering your name. Business casual never made it out of the suitcase, replaced instead with easy cover-ups, pinks and greens, and airy button-ups that felt more in tune with the setting than structured jackets ever could.

The resort has been reimagined across rooms, dining areas, and outdoor spaces, with thoughtfully layered tile textures, lighting that shifts with the time of day, warm-toned palettes in the dining rooms, and fresh blues in the bedrooms that complement the views pouring in through the windows. The foyer feels expansive, framed by floor-to-ceiling windows and designed to bring a little bit of San Diego inside with you, rather than shut it out.

By late afternoon, I was sitting by the marina watching the water shift colors in real time, the kind of view that makes everything feel slower without trying. Dinner at Rumorosa brought the first real taste of the resort’s Cali-Baja identity, starting with a trio of margaritas—passion fruit, spicy watermelon, and creamy coconut—that made it impossible to pick a favorite and slightly dangerous to have them all in front of you at once.

The table opened with guacamole layered with spicy cotija, radish, pomegranate seeds, candied serranos, cilantro, limes, duritos, and warm tortilla chips, followed by Mexican street corn with sweet kernels, spiced aioli, cotija, and more candied serranos that hit just enough heat to keep you absolutely addicted.

For my main, I went with the roasted organic chicken breast with buttered jasmine rice, mole negro, and roasted cauliflower, which felt familiar in structure but elevated in small details like the cilantro and pickled onions. And then the Carajillo tres leches cake, a vanilla sponge layered with coffee and Licor 43 mousse, praline, and caramel sauce, arrived and disappeared faster than it probably should have.

What made it feel so curated wasn’t just the menu, but how intentional everything felt without ever feeling fussy: bright flavors balanced against rich ones, heat against sweetness, and plates that arrived right as the light over the marina started to soften. The next morning carried that same energy. Breakfast could unfold at your own pace, whether that meant taking a Zoom call in your room, heading downstairs for a sit-down meal with friends at Rumorosa, or grabbing something quick from Strada Italian Market. I opted for a vanilla latte from La Colombe at Strada before heading out for the morning.

I made it just in time for the resort’s complimentary morning yoga on the lawn, boats just visible beyond the stretch of green. The Sheraton offers it daily as part of the stay, a low-pressure option for anyone looking for an easy reset rather than a full workout, which I wasn’t expecting to take part in on this trip but ended up glad I did. The class itself was beginner-friendly, with slow flows and a few optional deeper stretches for anyone who wanted to push into more advanced poses.

Afterward, stand-up paddleboarding shifted everything into a different perspective. My small group launched from the resort’s private dock, boards wobbling slightly as we found our balance, then drifted out into the marina where the water opened up in every direction. We paddled past rows of docked boats, slipped alongside houseboats with their shaded decks and string lights, and followed the gentle curve of the harbor as it widened and narrowed again.

The afternoon transitioned into poolside lounging at Sunglow Cabana Bar, where cabanas, cold drinks, and a poolside lunch had me so relaxed I didn’t even realize my phone had died. Sunglow is open to the public, so if you’re looking for a quick day getaway, you can dock and settle in for SoCal-style shareables and frozen drinks.

Dinner at the Garden Terrace kind of shifted everything for me. In the daytime it just feels like a nice open space, but at night it becomes something else entirely: more intentional, more “put together” in a way I didn’t really clock at first. As the sun went down over the marina, everything turned warm and the garden lit up in this soft glow that was staged under fairy lights. It was as if you were meant to experience it in this very certain way.

It was easy to picture it then: the quiet before guests arrive, the moment someone steps forward, the pause right before “I do.” There’s often a specific kind of silence right before a ceremony begins. And, at the Garden Terrace, that feeling is built into the space itself. You are standing in a garden wrapped in white blooms and soft greenery, with the harbor stretched out just beyond it. The sun is low enough to turn everything gold. Someone is standing across from you, close enough that everything else fades into background noise.

At 3,600 square feet, the Garden Terrace can host up to 300 guests, with the wider property offering over 132,000 square feet of flexible event space. The transformation even earned a Northstar Stella Award Gold Medal for Best Renovation in the Far West Region in 2024.

That evolution, according to Sean Clancy, Vice President and General Manager of Sheraton San Diego Resort, has been years in the making. He describes the property as having been “completely transformed,” from the rooms to the restaurants and everything in between, with new spaces like the Garden Terrace designed to highlight the marina backdrop in a way that feels “naturally stunning” and “magical,” not just scenic.

By the time I checked out on Thursday, watching the sun rise over the marina, empty in the early light, I understood why someone would choose this exact spot to say something they mean forever.

Front yards. They used to be the most controlled part of a home—or not. They could be tidy with manicured lawns, have raised vegetable beds with food for sharing, or act as an overflow of things that didn’t quite make it inside. Thank you, capitalism, and the American habit of endless consumption. In Lemon Grove, where I live, it’s not uncommon to see a mechanic running a business from his front yard or a family selling birria on Saturdays from theirs. The front-yard genre is broad.

But in communities across San Diego County, the most exposed part of a house—the strip between public and private life—is being turned into something eminently usable, visible, and hang-outable. At first glance, this may seem decorative, but in creating an intentional space, particularly one that’s visible to neighbors and passersby, it’s also the release of a pressure valve.

Let’s not gloss it over: American life has taken a hard right at high speed; two wheels have lifted off the pavement as we careen toward who-knows-what, and our nervous systems are making a sound best described as zoinks!

People are trying to (re)build connection in an increasingly isolated culture, (re)find beauty in the midst of endless anxiety, and (re)create a system friendly for critters. Many of us are remembering that, Oh yeah—we’re biological creatures.

San Diego as a “Biodiversity Hotspot”

Landscape designer Andrea Doonan, of Andrea Doonan Horticulture + Design, is a certified arborist with more than 20 years of experience collaborating with homeowners and renters. She rejects sterile, white picket fence designs and places a strong emphasis on edible gardens and usable outdoor spaces. When we speak, she mentions the unusually wide range of plant and animal life in the relatively small size of our region, making us a “biodiversity hotspot.” (San Diego is the most biodiverse county in the Lower 48.) Because of this, we have a unique system of endangered species that rely on plants to survive.

“More and more, people are introducing native landscapes to connect to nature and support birds, butterflies, and bees,” Doonan says. “I’m very passionate about getting people to unplug and ground.”

Whether it’s for a love of all creatures, our climate, or water conservation, Doonan describes a broader shift toward habitat-driven spaces that are both aesthetic and ecological. For her clients, this can mean replacing turf with native planting, adding seating areas, or even rethinking the front walk as an active, planted threshold rather than just a green lawn. “There’s this idea that people want to make a difference,” she says. “But they also want a place to entertain, recreate, and ground.”

At the center of this is a simple but increasingly urgent question: How can small design choices ripple outward into community life?

For Doonan’s client Lee Miller, that shift is fully expressed. After remodeling the interior of his Pacific Beach home, Miller focused on the backyard, thinking that would be the place for his soon-to-be-born daughter to eventually play. The front yard of his corner property was the last detail to be completed.

Miller said he wanted “a very full, very natural look versus having everything measured.” He knew what he liked when he saw it, but it was Doonan who translated his ideas and guided the creation of a wildlife-friendly space with full-grown orange, plum, and pluot trees. “We have lots of birds, lots of bees, lots of lizards,” Miller says. “There’s nothing better than walking outside and eating fruit off a tree.”

The front yard has become where Miller’s family spends time—often more than the backyard. He and his daughter, who’s now 5, explore the space together, checking what’s growing, learning about their little ecosystem, and chasing lizards. It’s where his daughter plays, where she’s built her own fairy garden, and where neighborhood parents and kids tend to gather at the end of the day.

Building Community by Being Out There

For her own Normal Heights home, Doonan designed a front yard that includes a seed library, raised beds, native plants, and a sitting area where she and her husband spend time. “I’m meeting my neighbors because I put two chairs and some plants in the front yard,” she says. “I’m sharing produce with them.”

That exchange has become part of the landscape itself, and she points to small systems (like seed libraries) as ways of circulating plant material and knowledge directly between people. In real life. Person to person.

More and more, Doonan says, when we’re talking about solving the big problems, it’s important to remember that everything starts local. Even “guerilla gardening”—small acts of informal planting and care in overlooked sections of land, such as parking strips—makes a difference. Tossing some seeds and adding a bench to the sidewalk strip out front can create a “pocket park” or “a mini-mini park.” In that framing, the front yard stops being an ornamental backdrop and starts becoming an infrastructure for connection.

Landscape architect Bret Belyea frames this front-yard movement (my term, not his) as social repair. “It’s a handshake to your neighbors and passersby,” he says. “It says something about who you are.”

Of course, plant choices matter, but not only for ecological reasons. Native and climate-appropriate plantings become part of how neighborhoods re-establish contact with each other, even without formal planning. What he describes is an aesthetic, but it’s also relational in the way a yard can signal openness rather than withdrawal, invitation rather than separation, and connection rather than, “Get off my lawn, ya damn kids!”

Hanging out in the front yard rather than sequestering in the back is a signal to outsiders that they’re really not outsiders at all. Or, at least, they don’t have to remain so.

The Front Yard as Memory

Not every front yard in this shift toward social spaces has a professional’s influence. Some are created through labor, trial and error, and nostalgia. For Grace Wanjiru, the memory of her childhood in Gitaru, Kenya, led her to beautifully DIY the hell out of the front part of her half-acre Encanto property. When she bought her home nearly two decades ago, it was essentially just a little house plunked down on a giant plot of dirt. She had a blank slate and plenty of memories from which to create something that would imbue the space with peace and hospitality.

The designer-led yards are often framed through an academic understanding of ecology, structure, and intentional planting strategies, and Wanjiru did much of the same thing through instinct. When she’d visit her mother, who lives just outside of Nairobi, she was reminded of the abundant beauty and vibrancy of a childhood spent running free, climbing trees, and being connected to nature. It was important to Wanjiru that her then-young daughters, both now in their early 20s, have that experience.

Wanjiru’s goal was to create the feeling of home, not as replication but as translation. “When you throw a seed in Kenya, something grows,” Wanjiru tells me. “Here, the dirt is horrible for plants. I still wanted green and color. I wanted nature—birds and insects. I grew up with nature, but here: No.”

With an understanding of what would and wouldn’t grow in San Diego, Wanjiru was able to achieve a sense of home with succulents and native plants she purchased at Walmart. She created a large courtyard with a fence built of wood and corrugated metal. Inside, she added a hammock and a bird bath, which Wanjiru settled on after gophers ate through seven different plants; a table with an open cookbook, a bottle of wine, three glasses; a weathered dresser—once in her daughter’s room—that now sits opposite the table and contains Wanjiru’s many seeds. And, of course, strung lights.

The space feels rustic, comforting, personal, emotional, and magical. It feels like love.

Wanjiru likes to host small groups of her friends and family, keeping it intimate but accessible. “This is the kind of house you just call: ‘What are you doing? Are you making your African tea? Can we just come over?’ Because this is what they do [in Kenya],” she tells me. “And so I always want to have that, because I think for foreigners living in America, that’s one of the things we struggle with. We don’t have that kind of community.”

Craving a communal feeling, Wanjiru built it herself. And her kids grew up climbing the jacaranda tree and playing in the garden.

“We still gather out there,” she says. “We read in the hammock, talk, connect.”

Gardens as Points of Connection

Perhaps the most important part of a front yard is a garden, whether it’s a space for entertaining and gathering, retreating and grounding, discovering and playing, resting and people-watching. The science backs up what gardeners have long known: Spending time around plants can be profoundly restorative. A 2024 review of dozens of studies found that gardening is consistently associated with better mental health, greater well-being, and improved quality of life, also linking interaction with plants and green spaces to better nervous system regulation.

For Doonan, this is part of why the conversation around gardens is bigger than aesthetics. “Gardens are for everyone,” she says. “I think it’s a right for all of us to have access to gardens.” “All of us” means homeowners and renters, people with sprawling yards and people with apartment balconies, people with large budgets and people growing herbs in containers from the discount rack at Home Depot.

In my conversation with Belyea, I tell him about a little house I passed in Oceanside this past spring. The owners set out free avocado clippings from their tree for anyone to take. “This is people’s way of putting an olive branch out,” he says. “And it just happens to be an avocado branch.” Maybe that’s what this front-yard shift is really about. Maybe it’s about trying to remember how to live alongside one another again. A hammock beneath string lights. Kids chasing lizards through native plants. Someone slowing to ask what’s growing. A neighbor stopping by and staying longer than they planned to. All of it, a pocket of softness in a culture that’s trying its damndest to make us harden.

Back when Enrique Espinoza was a student at Southwest High and San Ysidro High, his mom couldn’t afford to buy him the school yearbook. So he made his own. Every spring, he brought a new marbled composition book to pass around, collecting signatures, photos, and messages from friends. By senior year, he was finally able to get his hands on the “real” yearbook, but at that point, he preferred the personal, collaborative project he’d started: a record of how people could come together to create something from nothing.

Espinoza—“Oz” to friends—got serious about photography a couple years later at Southwestern College, shooting for esport leagues and connecting with other artists all the while. Then in 2024, his childhood friend Charlie Knowles, cofounder of Bica Coffee Shop in Normal Heights, got in touch: He was looking to host meetups for creatives at the café, and he remembered how much people enjoyed contributing to Oz’s DIY yearbooks back in high school. Why not make more?

So Yearbook Creative Club launched on November 23, 2024, at Bica, with the goal to connect local artists, and ultimately make a book showcasing one another’s work. Since that first meeting, the club has become a social hub for creatives, also running art shows, galleries, a holiday toy drive, and a booth at the inaugural San Diego Bazaar winter marketplace. Yearbook also often collaborates with Camera Exposure, Southern California’s largest used camera store and photo studio, which has been a nexus for San Diego photographers in Normal Heights for nearly 40 years.

And though Oz provided the spark, he emphasizes that the club is, at its heart, a group endeavor: six photographers form the “Yearbook Committee”—including entrepreneur baker Samra Lovelady and Brian Eastman, chief experience designer of San Diego hospitality collective CH Projects—but everyone with an artistic eye is welcome. In Camera Exposure’s blog, Developing Stories, writer Austin Siragusa characterized Yearbook as “a community-first collective that deters gatekeeping and neutralizes imposter syndrome in favor of an open-door policy to foster trust and skill-sharing, regardless of follower count and portfolio length.”

The club published Yearbook Vol. 1—a limited-edition, entirely self-funded, 170-page glossy hardcover with the same spirit as Oz’s high school books—last April, celebrating with a launch party and gallery at the headquarters of Tribal Streetwear in San Diego’s East Village. About half of the 30 artists represented in the book are local; the rest are extended contacts from New York, Miami, and San Francisco. “Yearbook is San Diego-based,” Oz says. “San Diego is the home, but art is everywhere, and I want to be sure that San Diego is in that conversation of bringing artists together.”

Anyone interested in improving their camera skills is invited: Rowley says they always have a good mix of beginners and more experienced photographers, which leads to helpful conversations about how to get one’s aperture settings just right, or tips on how to compose the best shot.

The museum began hosting a series of bimonthly photo walks around La Jolla in partnership with Yearbook. Anyone interested in improving their camera skills is invited: Rowley says they always have a good mix of beginners and more experienced photographers, which leads to helpful conversations about how to get one’s aperture settings just right, or tips on how to compose the best shot. The walks are scheduled to end at the museum in time to segue into another event: March’s walk led into a live jazz band performance; May’s led into the museum’s entry-fee-free Second Sunday.

Yearbook Vol. 2 came out in late May 2026 with a release party of over 300 attendees and a partnership with 100 Thieves. This volume features a greater variety of media, including digital illustration, graffiti, and tattoo art. The club is also planning to publish an additional book in partnership with MCASD, composed exclusively of work taken during this year’s photo walks—anyone who participates is welcome to submit. Rowley says he hopes to celebrate that book’s launch with a community gallery, as part of an ongoing effort to show that art museums are not just reserved for the great, dead Old Masters. There’s space for you and me, too.

Yearbook meets several times a year at Bica, and Oz says there are always new faces and drop-ins from other local photography groups, such as Girls on Film and Beers and Cameras. Several lapsed amateurs have told him that simply showing up and feeling welcome has inspired them to pick up their camera again.

As more people seek a digital detox by turning back to screen- or AI-free art forms—Talker Research reported this January that 50 percent of adults are turning to a more analog life via paper books, vinyl records, and actual cameras (not the one in your phone)—Oz says that most people he knows still shoot on film, which has a relatively low barrier to entry. “A film camera is a lot friendlier on your wallet,” he says. “For, like, $150 you can get something comparable to a $900 digital camera.”

And though he admits he’s usually “a digital guy,” Oz notes that working with film is an antidote to digital fatigue and endless scrolling. “A lot of people like that process,” he says. “There’s a philosophy that comes with shooting on film that makes you want to slow down and appreciate the shot.”

The next Yearbook Creative Club photo walk is July 12 at 1 p.m. at MCASD in La Jolla, led by Enrique Espinoza and Brian Eastman.