Each month in 2023, we’re asking a local artist to recreate one of our iconic covers from the past 75 years. For July, we tapped celebrated binational artist Panca to reimagine San Diego Mag‘s February 1965 cover. Check out the recreation here and learn more about Paris in the Q&A below:
Tell us about how you found your distinguished style and how you honed your skills.
It developed just as I did, quietly waiting to be found. Growing up during the ’80s-’90s with Gen X around me I, was exposed to weird MTV cartoons quite young as well as having frequent visits to museums in Mexico City when we would visit family. Films from the golden era of cinema in México with my parents very-much influenced me as well.My life came to a cathartic point where I was forced to look inward and I realized it was the one constant thing I really enjoyed and I could express myself with much more clarity and depth, it clicked. Once I accepted that my style was weird, imperfect, and raw, I was able to accept it as my own so it was easier to lean into it. It felt right. The environment I was in was quite bizarre so it allowed me to mirror my surroundings. It gave me the same comfort I longed for as a bored child surrounded by adults. Now as an adult myself I realize it’s part of many things much deeper than my personality, so I am happy to embrace it. Style is everything.
I really admire artists who chase their dreams with genuine love. I’m devoted to being present and being supportive of them. I’m in awe of women confronting stigma related to dealing with generational trauma and also cultural or social dynamics. Some female artists that I constantly refer to creatively are Susan Sontag, Patti Smith, Diane Arbus—she went there; she saw a side that was also beautiful but not photographed, and she made it poetic and raw. It inspired my “Los Perdidos” series. Éric Rohmer; these films feed my soul. Lady Pink, Maya Hayuk, Miss Van, Mab Graves, Camille Rosé Garcia.
Panca
Well, these women made me think, “Wow, such strength,” and they inspired me greatly. Representation matters. When I started it was a boys club so I have nothing but respect. Goya! David Alfaro Siqueiros has always been a master as well as that generation of painters during that time in Mexico. Sofia Coppola, I saw her films during my teens and it was really impactful to me. It allowed me to see that pain could be made into something quite brilliant and beautiful.Nina Simone (I mean wow), Amy Winehouse (I feel you), Flor Garduño…a photographer that has work [that is] so dreamlike and ahead of her time. Mr. Rogers, I mean this list could be epic and never ending. The Golden Girls. But Keith Haring was an artist I was able to learn about before his death and it really spoke to me. The more I grew up, I really have just learned that I follow the same idea that the art is for everyone and along with Jean-Michel Basquiat. I also saw that grit was the secret ingredient.
How do you think your art reflects the southern California lifestyle?
I think that my art strongly reflects the Southern California experience but also that of a binational person living, creating, working between the border or frontera. I grew up here, went to surf camps as a kid, had skateboarding posters all over my walls and especially the colors, raw in your face images from skateboard culture totally influenced my style. The color palette alone from then is very much in my work. Those neons pop out and the fact that I grew up close to IB and now that I am back and I live closer to Barrio Logan-Sherman Heights, it’s a very different experience and don’t have a specific style that can be categorized. Yet the people of the community spill into my work and it’s the same as when I was in Tijuana. I just embrace it. It’s real and beautiful.
What do you have on the horizon work-wise?
Right now I am doing a pop up with Modelo beer and that will happen this summer. That is a big one! I am going to be finishing the new phase of El Más Allá which will open this summer to kids and complete my installation there which is a big deal because I started during the pandemic and it’s been a hard process for me.
Where do you like to go to get away and relax?
At one point I had this ritual of after a show or big mural taking the red eye from Tijuana to Yucatán-Quintana Roo and just disconnecting for a week but it’s just a whole thing nowadays and I am enjoying going to Valle de Guadalupe for a nice day or weekend trip. I miss living in Baja, but I am reconnecting with San Diego and finding a nice day at Lafayette or just the beach is relaxing. I’m walking the harbor and enjoying that.I’m a fan of taking the train to LA to just have a museum day or go see a show and then come back. It’s close and I get to relax seeing the ocean along the way. Also, home. I am a big hermit who really enjoys being home and I get to be with my senior pets and recharge by watching a film, gardening or going for a walk. It’s the little things.
Where can people find your work?
Right now mostly around San Diego and the Tijuana/Baja region. Places like The New Children’s museum. Bread and Salt, Mujeres Brew House, Holy Paleta, La Dona in OB, The new MCASD shop, Mortis Studio in Golden hill and a solo pop up show at Mi Vida Logan this summer. I’m excited that this summer I’m working with Modelo beer on several pop-up events in the community.
Each month in 2023, we’re asking a local artist to recreate one of our iconic covers from the past 75 years. For December, we tapped artist Taylor Chapin to help us recreate San Diego Mag‘s January 1965 cover. Check out her unique translation here and learn more about Chapin in the Q&A below:
Tell us about how you found your distinguished style and how you honed your skills.
The style I’m currently working in was developed during my recent time in grad school at UCSD. I’ve always been fascinated by branding and advertising, and my earlier work explored this very overtly through painting brands and products representationally.
During my time experimenting in school, I was challenged to think of new ways to explore these themes, and I had the idea of very literally covering up the products and brands I was painting with fabric so that their form was obscured. I began painting these covered forms as a way of critiquing how value is represented. This led to my current obsession of covering everything—including the human form.
I’ve always been really into pattern and detail since I was a kid, and now I’ve found ways to incorporate all the patterns I’m attracted to into my work through this act of covering the form in fabric. I’ve honed my skills over the years through countless hours of painting, and I continue to do so by painting pretty much everyday. Painting never ceases to challenge me, and I love working through the process slowly and methodically and learning more as I go.
What artists do you admire or look up to?
There’s so many artists I look up to. I’m currently really inspired by the work of Amy Adler, she was one of my advisors in grad school. I’m also really into the work of Jean Lowe, Hilary Pecis, Ken Gun Min, and Ilana Savdie, to name a few.
Tell Me About Yourself by Taylor Chapin
How do you think your art reflects the Southern California lifestyle or plays a role in the way your art comes to life?
To me, Southern California has such a specific color palette and aesthetic associated with it. I think my palette of bright and contrasting colors is very much inspired by Southern California. I also think my interest in consumption and consumerism is related to my observations and experience of living in Southern California, because it is a capital for conspicuous consumption, entertainment, and the performance of wealth and beauty. I think being in such close proximity to this type of display has heightened my fascination with our culture of consumption.
What was your big break?
I was in a group show in 2018 at Hill Street Country Club, a nonprofit arts space in Oceanside. Dinah Pollenitz, the cofounder and curator at Hill Street, subsequently offered me a solo show there in 2019. This first solo show has led to so many other amazing opportunities throughout San Diego, and I am forever grateful to Dinah for supporting my work and providing me with one of my first opportunities to show my work in an art space in San Diego.
What do you have on the horizon workwise?
I have a solo show with Quint Gallery in La Jolla in March of 2024 that I’m currently working on. I will also be doing a public mural in Pacific Beach next year, and I have a few other projects that are currently in their early stages of development.
Where can people find your work to admire or hire you?
People can check out my work on my website. I have a show up at ICA North through the end of this year. I also have a few murals around San Diego including one on the side of Warren Hall at UCSD, an indoor mural at Corner Pizza in Oceanside, and one on the south-facing side of the Leucadia Donut Shoppe. I am available for hire via the contact form on my website.
It’s easy to write our city off as merely an always-sunny hub for laid-back beach bums—thus forgetting that culture, innovation, and progress have always been baked into SD’s identity.
This cover from 1956 marries all these values. Bali Hai opened in 1952 at the dawn of tiki culture. Four years later, photographer Paul Oxley shot the three-wheeled Messerschmitt KR200 outside its doors. Designed by a German aircraft engineer, the sleek microcar broke 22 international speed records in 1955. It’s a promise of the auto technology to come, plopped in the middle of San Diegans’ favorite haunt for tiny umbrellas.
In honor of our 75th anniversary, we’re recreating iconic covers from our past. The new cover stars the same beloved Bali Hai and another futuristic, three-wheeled vehicle, the SD-grown, battery-and-sun powered Aptera.
Photo Credit: Corrine Jackson
The original cover featured an uncredited model. This time, we chose two unforgettable locals pushing our city into the future: Shavone Charles, head of global diversity and inclusion communications at TikTok, and chef Claudia Sandoval of cookbook and Master Chef fame.
They (and the other movers and shakers sprinkled throughout this issue) are proof that San Diegans are always headed towards the next big thing—we’re just doing it in better weather than most.
Jackie is a long-time freelance journalist covering cannabis, food/restaurants, travel, labor, wine, spirits, arts & culture, design, and other topics. Her work has been selected twice for Best American Travel Writing, and she has won a variety of national and local awards for her writing and reporting.
Mission Beach boardwalk icon SloMo recreates San Diego Mag's August 1972 cover
August 1972 San Diego Magazine Cover
As fall approaches, it’s a good time to pause and savor the mellow of summer. Night comes quicker with each day that passes. Soon, quiet afternoons in the backyard will give way to dark evenings by the fire. Now is a time to slow down.
Nobody takes it all in quite like San Diego’s slow-rolling, suntanned philosopher, John Kitchin, aka SloMo, who you can generally find floating one rollerblade at a time down the Pacific Beach Boardwalk. A neurologist and psychiatrist, SloMo took up skating in retirement as a way to mellow out.
“Since then, I’ve been living freely,” he says. “And skating literally everyday on the boardwalk for 24 years.”
As we celebrate San Diego Magazine’s 75th anniversary, we’re reflecting on our history—blading the boardwalk down memory lane, ontology. (Though we’re doubtful that pipe will looking to past covers for inspiration and putting a modern shine on them. This month, we peek back at our August 1972 cover, an homage itself to Lippencott Magazine’s 1895 cover, dubbed “Tennis.” Here, a stately gentleman finds a moment of repose on his way to a friendly game. We assume he’s mulling over his own thoughts on the state of being, how to unravel his personal elevate his tennis skills.)
In our new version, SloMo pauses in his garden—reading, daydreaming, hidden away like the San Diego treasure he is.
“There are two things that we all have,” he says. “One is the world of objectivity. What’s back in the other world, that of subjectivity, is where dreams are.”
Entrepreneurs typically launch businesses because they’re passionate about a product or service, not because they want to manage its finances. While working to carve out a niche in their respective industries and drive their companies forward, many business owners find themselves bogged down by day-to-day accounting. Their existing accounting tools don’t provide the necessary visibility or insight, and they don’t have the time or resources to hire additional staff or a chief financial officer. That’s where NOW CFO comes in.
For more than 20 years, NOW CFO has been pairing businesses across the country with experienced accounting and finance professionals. Its outsourced model allows clients to customize solutions that match their individual needs, size, and financial challenges, whether that’s fractional or interim support, project-based services, or full-time placement.
NOW CFO’s clients range from startups preparing for rapid growth to established companies that need additional financial leadership without the commitment or expense of building an in-house team. However, many of these companies don’t fully understand their needs until they experience a “trigger” event: preparing for an acquisition or capital raise, navigating a first-time audit, or another period of transition. With a team of over 300 consultants nationwide, NOW CFO can start quickly and match the right expert to the right business.
“It’s important for companies to have financial visibility, and we can help them avoid a lot of the potholes that companies often run into,” says Mariah Block, a partner at NOW CFO’s San Diego branch. “Roughly half of our clients have an in-house finance person or department, and we’re resourced for more bandwidth when they need an extra set of hands at the staff or senior accountant level, or the controller or CFO level. Some clients use this a few hours a month and others use multiple people close to full-time. Our model is solution-based and customizable. We’re like a faucet you can turn on and off.”
With NOW CFO, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach. Solutions are based on the client’s individual goals, challenges, needs, and budget, meaning a client never pays for more than they need. Whether it’s a few hours of executive-level guidance or a full accounting team to support daily operations, NOW CFO meets businesses where they are and grows alongside them.
“We pride ourselves on providing our clients with the right resources at the right rate and being able to evolve as their needs evolve,” says Block.
And clients appreciate on-demand access to cost-effective support designed to improve performance and profitability.
Luxury car storage service Auto Concierge has partnered with NOW CFO to support growth over the past year. The arrangement began with a staff accountant who covered a leave of absence, but as the client’s needs changed, they also added a controller role. This allowed Auto Concierge to put effective processes in place and navigate operational challenges. Lori Church, Auto Concierge’s chief operating officer, says NOW CFO has been an “outstanding resource” and a “true strategic partner.”
“From the controller to the bookkeeper, every professional they’ve placed has brought a high level of expertise, responsiveness, and professionalism to our organization. Their team took the time to understand our business of high-profile clients and needs, adapted quickly to our fast-paced environment, and became a trusted extension of our team,” she says. “As Auto Concierge continues to grow, having a reliable financial partner like NOW CFO has allowed us to strengthen our financial and business operations while remaining focused on delivering exceptional service to our clients.”
The NWSL and Wave FC's youngest player talks growing up in San Diego & being a part of our cover recreation
By SDM Staff
Each month in 2023, we’re recreating one of our iconic covers from the past 75 years. For August, we asked the National Women’s Soccer League and Wave FC’s youngest player, 15-year-old Melanie Barcenas, to help us re-shoot San Diego Mag‘s June 1959’s cover. Check out the recreation here and learn more about Melanie in the Q&A below:
What does being part of this cover recreation mean to you?
Being part of this cover recreation is an honor. The cover is iconic and I’m grateful that I’m a part of a historic recreation in my hometown of San Diego. Not everyone gets that opportunity, especially at my age.
What was it like growing up playing soccer in San Diego? What does it mean to you to play for your hometown team?
Growing up playing soccer in San Diego is special. There’s a special fútbol culture here in every part of San Diego and that culture brings out the best in everybody and unites everyone. I’m excited to continue to see soccer/futbol grow here in San Diego and feel lucky to be part of that.
Who are your soccer idols and why?
My soccer idols have always been Neymar and Alex Morgan. I’ve always loved the way Neymar has played, his creativeness on the ball is something I want my game to replicate, and his skill set is amazing. I’ve also always looked up to Alex as she is a female athlete and has accomplished some amazing things in her career. I also admire the off-the-field things she has done for communities and young girls. I hope I can inspire and be someone for young athletes to look up to, like how Alex was for me.
What’s next for you with the Wave?
Things have been going really well with Wave. I made my debut back in April and have been getting more playing time and even got my first start recently. I’m looking forward to the rest of the season with the team. I’m loving every second of it.
How was the shoot and wearing your wave jersey in the pool?
The shoot was very fun, I had a blast in the pool! It felt a little more relaxed and comfortable since I love being in the pool in the summer. It was super cool to wear the jersey in the pool, I mean anytime I wear the jersey it’s an amazing feeling. I’m proud to represent my home, San Diego.
Have you heard? We’ve got oceans. In June 1959, SDM heralded the arrival of waterfront developments in Point Loma and Mission Bay, citing “San Diegans’ growing consciousness of the sea” as a driving force behind the builds.On the cover, a woman floats blissfully in a stretch of clear water—perhaps discovering for the first time the pleasure of perching weightless in an inlet and imagining what it’s like to be an otter.
Covering 75 August 2023 Melanie Barcenas Wave FC
Photo by Stacy Keck
San Diego’s been a beach town for a while now. But, this year, it’s settling into its status as a focal point of women’s soccer since the 2022 arrival of the National Women’s Soccer League team, Wave FC. So, in celebration of our 75th anniversary, we recreated this retro cover with one of the newest icons making a splash in SD: 15-year-old Melanie Barcenas, a Wave FC forward and the youngest player ever signed to the league. The San Diego native started training at age five with her dad and brother. She grew up scoring goals on local club teams and watching her idols play, including Wave FC captain Alex Morgan. She snagged Morgan’s jersey while spectating a Qualcomm Stadium game five years ago—and now they wear matching ones.Melanie’s got no regrets about going pro while most of her peers are studying for their permit tests. “I knew this is what I wanted to do for the rest of my life,” she says. “When it’s something you love, it’s like, ‘What’s next?’”The future is bright, Melanie. Good thing you’ve got shades.
Amelia Rodriguez is a writer and journalist and winner of the San Diego Press Club's 2023 Rising Star Award and 2024 Best of Show Award, she’s also covered music, food, arts and culture, fashion, and design for Rolling Stone, Palm Springs Life, and other national and regional publications. After work, you can find her hunting down San Diego’s best pastries and maintaining her five-year Duolingo streak.
If you’re anything like us, it can be easy to get so caught up in taking care of everyone else, that your own needs get lost in the ether. But while this may be a cliché, that doesn’t make it any less true: You can’t give your best self to other people unless you’re taking care of yourself.
Sometimes, that looks like stopping in for your regular acupuncture or chiropractic appointment. Other days, it means giving your body the fresh, organic fuel it needs to truly feel and function at its best. And some other times still, it involves leaving your responsibilities behind for a weekend to pamper yourself at an incredible resort and spa.
Only you can decide what your truly need. We’re just here to help you find the best ways to get it.
Tommy Bahama Miramonte Resort & Spa
Island living meets desert luxury at the Tommy Bahama Miramonte Resort & Spa in Indian Wells. When you step onto the 11-acre property, you’ll be surrounded by sweeping view of the Santa Rosa Mountains with olive trees and fragrant citrus groves decorating the grounds. In other words, everything about this relaxed but refined resort is primed to help you let go of the stress from home and enjoy easy sun-soaked days and gorgeous starry nights.
The rooms blend calming, woven textures with Tommy Bahama’s signature tropical prints and feature private lanais, making it easy unwind the moment you walk in the door. If you book one of the four Villa Suites, you’ll be treated to exclusive Tommy Bahama furniture and unique personal touches to further that feeling of instant ease.
At the award-winning Spa Rosa, the expert team will help reset and recharge your body and mind using methods and rituals inspired by the desert. The 12,000-square-foot retreat includes outdoor soaking pools, eucalyptus steam rooms, and outdoor cabanas, as well as massages, facials, and body masks—all aimed at creating a day dedicated to you. We’re particularly partial to the Day Long Escape, an indulgent all-day affair of CDBs soaks, renewing scrubs, life changing massages, and transformative facials.
Following your treatment, continue the experience with a meal on the patio at Grapefruit Basil. We love the Hamachi Crudo, a light, citrus-forward dish featuring premium yellowtail, house-made ponzu, creamy avocado, and fresh seasonal garnishes.
Whether you’re strolling the gardens, relaxing beside its saltwater pools, or indulging in a restorative treatment, you’ll be able to escape in style and relax in luxury at the Tommy Bahama Miramonte Resort & Spa.
Healcove Chiropractic
There’s no shortage of ways to stay active in San Diego—but if you really want to enjoy everything the city has to offer, you’ve got to make sure you’re giving your body its tune-ups. Enter: Healcove Chiropractic. The board-certified chiropractors and wellness professionals at Healcove are experts at addressing that stage where you’re not injured, exactly, but you’re not at 100%, either. Maybe you’re feeling a bit tense or stressed out. Or it could be that you’re not quite moving the way you want to. Sometimes, it’s just that the accumulation of days, weeks, or even years of daily strain is starting to take a toll. No matter what stage you find yourself at, the Healcove Chiropractic team can provide integrated, preventative care centered on long-term, science-backed approaches that ensure you can always stay active and live the life you want to live pain-free.
This starts by providing truly individualized care. Every patient can expect a thorough 60-minute consultation session that includes a posture and movement screening. This allows the team to develop a completely personalized plan. That plan might include chiropractic care, acupuncture, or massage therapy, as well as functional fitness training, vibration and sound therapy, and Dynamic Neuromuscular Stabilization, a clinical rehabilitation method that retrains the body’s stabilization systems. Whatever the team recommends, you can be sure that it’s tailored to meeting your body’s needs today and the future.
There’s a reason that San Diego Magazine named Healcove the “Best Chiropractor in San Diego”—don’t wait until you’re struggling with an injury to find out why. Book an appointment today for holistic, integrated care that helps ground and heal your body before it reaches a crisis point.
Juice Holler
West Coast wellness culture meets the community feel of Southern Appalachia at Juice Holler. Juice Holler’s menu consists of made-to-order smoothies and smoothie bowls, as well as grab-and-go cold-pressed juices, wellness shots, salads, and more. It operates from the blissfully simple premise that fueling up with food and drink that’s guilt-free and good your body should be simple, accessible, and, above all else, delicious. And if you haven’t yet made it out to the Encinitas café, which opened just this year, let us be the first to tell you: Juice Holler delivers on each and every of these fronts.
We love the Supercharger smoothie, a mood-lifting and body-fueling option made with banana, almond butter, blue spirulina, maca, grass-fed whey protein, raw cacao nibs, medjool dates, and coconut milk. We’re also partial to the Thrive Alive smoothie bowl, where avocado, mango, sea moss, spirulina, mint, coconut milk, and agave are mixed and topped with coconut, chia seeds, strawberry, mango, and chocolate drizzle. The wellness shots include the Detoxifier, a cleansing blend of kale, cucumber, lemon and spirulina, plus a shot specially designed to fight inflammation (named, fittingly, Anti-Inflammation). Probiotic overnight oats, lemon turmeric bars, and strawberry shortcake chia pudding are other standouts on the grab-and-go menu.
Much of the vibe feels beachy North County chic—think green tile with orange and pink accents, grounded with greenery and natural wood—but Juice Holler founder Kelly Sergott, a longtime Encinitas local, has also enfused the space with her Kentucky roots. In Appalachia, a holler is small valley between hills and mountains, where nature reigns, community is king, and nourishment comes right from the land. At Juice Holler, Sergott has created a holler for the busy modern times, using local ingredients to create a spot for people to come together and enjoy fresh, fast, feel-good fuel for their day.
Everwell Acupuncture
We’ve all had that experience with a medical professional where we’ve felt rushed, ignored, or misunderstood—and ultimately, like we didn’t get the answers that we needed. But at Everwell, the holistic acupuncture practice located in Solana Beach, the care team wants to transform your understanding of what healthcare can look like.
Patients at Everwell experience care rooted in intentional listening and radical empathy—and trust us, those aren’t just corporate buzzwords. This place actually puts those ideas into practice. You will always be given the time you need to tell your story— initial in-take appointments are two hours long—and you can rest assured that your story will be believed. Every single question and concern will be addressed by a dedicated practitioner who wants to find the specific solutions that work best for you, and you’ll receive care that’s aimed at healing the body, mind, and spirit.
Everwell’s highly trained, doctorate-level practitioners blend evidence-based acupuncture with the practice of classical Chinese medicine. (If you’ve never tried acupuncture before or aren’t sure if the team will be a fit, we’d highly recommended Everwell’s complimentary 20-minute consultations.) Research shows that by stimulating specific points on the body, acupuncture activates a natural healing response in the body, helping to restore balance, regulate the nervous system, and improve overall wellbeing. This allows the practice to address an incredibly wide range of conditions from chronic pain and autoimmune disorders to digestive issues, from stress and burnout to headaches migraines, fertility and postpartum struggles, hormonal imbalances, sleep concerns and more.
At Everwell, you can expect to feel heard, trusted, respected, and cared for. This is a space that doesn’t want to be just another healthcare provider you visit; it wants to provide patients with dedicated partner who will be there for their entire health journey.
