The world’s matchmakers have been atwitter lately, according to Sophy Singer, San Diego founder and executive coach behind matchmaking service Sophy Love.
In June, Materialists hit theaters, starring Dakota Johnson as Lucy, a matchmaker for fictional New York company Adore. The film navigates not only the complicated and sometimes unrealistic expectations of her clientele but the matchmaking mathematics of Lucy’s own love life, as well.
Singer, like many matchmakers in her community, waited in anticipation to see whether the movie’s portrayal of the industry would reflect their real-life experiences. I spoke with Singer about her thoughts on Materialists.
“It didn’t portray matchmaking in a wonderful light,” she admits. “But it does remove the stigma and normalizes matchmaking [to a broader audience].”
According to Materialists, matchmaking is like working at a morgue or an insurance company: Each person is reduced to a set of rote information and statistical analyses, with a price tag to match. Men are valued primarily for their height and bank accounts, women for their youthfulness and level of education.
The film’s director, Celine Song, worked at a large matchmaking company for six months early in her career to support her aspirations as a playwright. Her experience informed much of the film’s premise, including the structure of marketability upon which Lucy evaluates each of her clients. It makes modern dating feel like the stock market—a person’s valuation rises and falls according to perceived worth.
Singer laments the “check-box driven, transactional, and slightly impersonal matchmaking process” that’s portrayed in the movie.
“What it really misses is an integrative and holistic approach. It misses the deeper, more human side of matchmaking,” she says. “For my business, it’s not just the matchmaking and the matches, but understanding our clients on a deeper level and understanding what’s holding them back.”
Singer looks at her clients not as a static set of stats, she adds, but as people capable of growth and development, with the opportunity to change their lives for the better.
“What are their patterns?” Singer wonders about her clients. “They are the common denominator, in a good way. If [people] are able to look at the underlying parts and patterns of themselves that are showing up in the dating space, that’s where the work is.”
If someone is consistently unable to make it past the six-month mark in their relationships, for example, it’s probably not because they’re too short or too old. Maybe they’re meeting quality people, but their own past traumas—either with family or early romantic partners—are prompting them to put up walls and sabotage the chance for a deeper connection. It’s a lot more complicated than the 1s and 0s approach Lucy seems to take.
In Materialists, matchmakers like Lucy throw clients into the fray without really helping them unpack what’s going on internally. In fact, if Lucy had done some more digging on one of her client’s matches, she could have potentially avoided some devastating consequences—but I won’t spoil the movie for you here.
Singer’s business uses a psychology-driven and trauma-informed modality called IFS (internal family systems) to help clients tap into what’s holding them back in the dating space. She looks at dating and relationships as the next chapter of a person’s healing and growth overall, not just the avenue to lock down a spouse and somehow live perpetually in “happily ever after.”
“There’s a huge opportunity for a completely different result than [clients have] ever had before,” she says.
Sophy argues that, when you’re not addressing the internal self and “who’s at the wheel of the bus,” you may be doomed to repeat the same cycle you’ve been in, even after accessing a dating service. Singer addresses this head-on with her clients and offers IFS-based courses for clients to learn more about themselves and identify issues they’d like to work on before meeting would-be partners.
Think of it like “match-coaching” before the more traditional matchmaking begins.
Matchmaker and founder of Sophy Love, Sophy Singer
Singer points to a particular scene in the movie: One of Lucy’s clients is crying on her wedding day, minutes before she’s set to walk down the aisle. The client admits that she’s not excited to marry her groom. He checks all the boxes, but her real motivation was to one-up her sister with a husband that she believes is more impressive than her sibling’s. “So, this is about value,” Lucy points out, making the case that marrying someone because they offer you a sense of external value is a valid reason to stay with them forever. Relieved, the mascara-streaked client moves ahead with the wedding.
But Singer holds a critical eye to this scene. “A relationship built on that level of an unconscious dynamic [is ultimately unsustainable],” she argues. At some point, what everyone else sees—that external value—will become less relevant than the fact that you’re with someone who doesn’t meet your deeper, less obvious needs. Once that happens, most people find that their attraction to that person fades fast, since the motivation to be with them was misplaced in the first place.
I ask Singer about the math of matchmaking portrayed in the movie, with perfection—or “unicorn status”—being the goal. Are people even attracted to perfection?
“There’s this problem of ‘the checklist,’” she says. “The era of dating apps has led to people treating dating as a shopping endeavor. It puts you into an evaluative mindset, and that’s how you’re showing up on dates. As people stay single longer and longer, they are not only evaluating [others], but they feel that they are being evaluated. So people are showing up in a performative manner, not as an authentic version of who they really are.”
Singer has found that people actually connect to the messiest parts of the human experience the most, because everyone understands it. She notices that women, especially, act overly low-maintenance or pretend to not have any needs when it comes to presenting themselves on dates.
“That’s not relatable. I’m trying to unravel all of that. People feel lonely and disconnected and keep having the same superficial conversations over and over,” Singer says. “They’re not understanding why they can’t connect. But that’s because they haven’t tapped into what it means to be relational and share what they’re experiencing in the moment.”
The problem is, when you show up as this breezy, unbothered version of yourself, you’re setting yourself up for failure. Not only are you less relatable in the moment, but you are creating a situation where you’re bound to lose face at some point. Once that happens, the other person may feel that you weren’t truthful about who you made yourself out to be.
Singer uses an empathetic, come-as-you-are approach to dating called “authentic relating.” The practice “allows you to reveal yourself [and also] set the stage for others to reveal themselves,” she says. “Dating can then be a gift to another person to feel seen and heard. And, when you do it that way, and it’s not about checking off a checklist, the outcome of the date doesn’t matter as much as the experience itself, and more connections can happen that way.”
Authentic relating allows each date to become less about evaluating for a perfect fit. When you let real connection happen, then finding love doesn’t have to feel like a job interview, even if you ultimately decide that person isn’t for you.
I ask if Singer felt the movie got anything right.
She laughs. “Lucy’s rant made me feel seen,” she says, referring to a scene in which Lucy drops the checklists for a moment and gives her dissatisfied clients a much-needed reality check.
“This is not a simulation. People are people are people are people. They come as they are,” she says.
Singer agrees with Lucy’s sentiments. “This isn’t Build-A-Bear!” she jokes. “An endless laundry list of perceived must-haves can lead you to overlook people who might actually be great matches for you, but don’t perfectly fill out all of your criteria.” (If you’d like to watch the rant without committing to a two-hour movie, search it up on TikTok.)
In my own life, I’ve found that checklists are often defenses against insecurity—a system of rigid rules to protect from pain and disappointment. They often tend to reflect our external ideas of worth, not authentic self-awareness. As Lucy says, “You are not a catch, because you are not a fish.”
I’m holding Singer’s advice as I navigate my own dating journey. As things move forward with Robin, I truly hope to bring my authentic self to the table. I’m trying to be honest with my flaws and not pretend that I’m perfect. And I’ve been pleasantly surprised to see her share her own insecurities with me. It makes me feel like I understand her better and can communicate with her in a way that makes both of us feel more seen. That, in itself, feels like a win—and gives me some real material to work with.
How Scrojo Became One of Rock’s Most Prolific Poster Artists
The San Diego designer has created more than 3,000 concert posters over nearly 40 years for artists including the Rolling Stones and the Red Hot Chili Peppers
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.
Courtesy of Scrojo
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.
Courtesy of Scrojo
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.
Courtesy of Scrojo
“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.
Courtesy of Scrojo
“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.’”
Matt Eisenberg is an award-winning writer and photographer based in San Diego. A former ESPN editor, his work has also been published by CNN, Bleacher Report and the New York Daily News.
Before, during, and after the Fourth of July, San Diegans can commemorate America’s 250th anniversary with an abundance of stars, stripes and local celebrations. America The Beautiful: 250 at The Rady Shell and Lamb’s Players Theatre’s revival of American Rhythm will look back at the many songs which define our country. Liberty Station’s Anchored in Freedom celebration and the Independence Day Carnival offer community-centered fun and loads of family-friendly activities. And who can possibly forget the Big Bay Boom, which will resume its reign over San Diego Bay as the state’s biggest fireworks show. Outside of the holiday festivities, this week brings the yearly return of Little Italy’s Summer Sera and the Athenaeum Summer Festival, as well as a slate of championship matches for All Elite Wrestling.
Sip on refreshing beverages and savor a panoramic rooftop view this Friday from 6-8 p.m. during the 21-plus Sunset & Spritz at Margaritaville Hotel San Diego Gaslamp Quarter’s 5 O’Clock Somewhere Bar. There will be a live DJ (until 9 p.m.), appetizers, pool and cabana access, a photo booth, and a cash bar (until 11 p.m.). To accentuate the summer theme, guests are invited to dress in white, pink, and orange attire. Tickets are $29 and come with a welcome aperol spritz.
616 J Street, Gaslamp
The 250 Grand Tasting Menu at Amaya
July 3 & 4
Bring a patriotic palette to the Fairmont Grand Del Mar for The 250 Grand Tasting Menu at Amaya this Friday and Saturday from 5-8:30 p.m. Patrons will be treated to a five-course tasting menu, curated to exhibit a selection of standout regional flavors and culinary concepts that have shaped our country’s distinct food heritage. The meal will also include beverage pairings with each course, such as wine, cocktails, and artisanal drinks. Reservations are $330 per person (with tax and 20% gratuity) on OpenTable.
Don Toliver thrives at being the life of the party (and the “After Party”). His fifth album Octane, released in February, is indicative of his thrill-seeking nature. As with his earlier releases, Octane sees Toliver operating in the space between hip-hop and R&B, with warbling vocals and blaring beats that are best heard at a high volume. This Tuesday at 7:30 p.m., Toliver will play at Pechanga Arena, with rappers SoFaygo, Chase B and SahBabii—who had a guest verse on Octane standout “K9”—as special guests. Tickets start at $156 for this concert.
What makes musicals like Wicked, Cats, Chicago, and Jersey Boys so timeless is the legion of excellent songs that makes fans out of those who’ve never even watched the show. This Friday at 7:30 p.m. during Blockbuster Broadway! at The Rady Shell, conductor Evan Roider, the San Diego Symphony Orchestra, and veteran vocalists Alex Getlin, Jessica Hendy, Scott Coulter, and John Boswell (also on piano) will perform an all-star theater soundtrack. In addition to the shows named above, audiences can expect songs from A Chorus Line, The Phantom of the Opera, Annie,and more. Tickets range from $57 to $129 for this concert.
222 Marina Park Way, Embarcadero
America The Beautiful: 250 at The Rady Shell
July 4
One night after recognizing the brilliance of Broadway, The Rady Shell will ring in the United States’ landmark anniversary with America The Beautiful: 250 this Saturday at 7:30 p.m. Conductor Byron Stripling, joined by a five-performer ensemble and the San Diego Symphony Orchestra, will lead a night of ballads that best resemble the red, white, and blue, including songs sourced from the Great American Songbook. After the show, concertgoers are invited to watch the nearby Big Bay Boom from their seats. Tickets range from $71 to $139 for this concert.
222 Marina Park Way, Embarcadero
Athenaeum Summer Festival at Athenaeum Music & Arts Library
Ryan Hardison is a freelance arts and entertainment writer and recent graduate of San Diego State. When he's not staring at his laptop, he's likely eating an adobada burrito or getting sunburnt at the beach.
“This is insane!” the guy filming it seems to proclaim. “It’s the best fireworks show ever!” a companion confirms, inspiring a debate lasting over a decade.
All told, 7,000 fireworks exploded in the span of 25 seconds over San Diego Bay on July 4, 2012. A Michael Bay amount of unison. $125,000 worth of shells, cakes, Roman candles, and skyrockets had been placed on a barge—enough for 17 minutes of decorative sky flares—and…
Boom.
The sky looked like someone had set a giant Rorschach test on fire. Or as if whatever we all see in our Rorschachs—butterflies, clowns, tongue kissing, dads—was being electrocuted and lifted heavenward, amen. It was shocking how bright it was, how much it sizzled the local cosmos. Could’ve been one of those sci-fi films where a hole is ripped open between warring universes. But angstier, more metal—the work of some methy creator in a sleeveless concert tee.
The sound?
Lou Reed once released an entire album that contained 64 minutes of mindflaying guitar screeches and machine noises. No regular songs, just a fascinating amount of ear distress. His record label reps no doubt heard the melodic outro of their careers, but everyone else was in pain and stumped. That album still sounded better than the bay did that night. The bay sounded like a god who struggled with emotional regulation had blown his speakers and was working through the anger stage of AV grief.
In the left frame of the video, a middle-aged woman is attempting to drag her husband off by the hand. In no way does he want to go, possibly because he had missed the time Roseanne Barr sung the national anthem at a Padres game, simultaneously disemboweling and amusing America through the power of song. He would not willingly abandon an equally worthy San Diego trainwreck.
Another woman in the video appears to have just filled her beer, rushing to sit down for the show. She pauses mid-sit and returns to the full and upright position to properly bear witness. What was supposed to be prolonged entertainment has been so radically shortened that she will have to find another reason to drink. Lucky for her, drinking will be the only way to adequately process.
Locals remember the conspiracy theories. People wondered if the fuses had been tripped by a saboteur who was sympathetic to dogs, fish, or the growing suspicion that late-stage capitalism is a gorgeously branded but impossible dream sustained by remarkably efficient top-tier wealth retention and the soft compliance of fireworks-watchers who can no longer afford a house, a beer, or the personal impacts of human reproduction.
Speaking of being terrified of babies, babies were terrified. The children who witnessed it probably still can’t go near a candle store. But those kids will be tougher, perfectly scarred kids. They’ll write better songs.
That night helped us absolutely dominate the national news cycle. For a hot minute, we became America’s water-skiing squirrel. Now, years later, when you Google “fireworks gone wrong,” San Diego is always a top contender, along with that poor Nebraska family who nearly wiped out a couple generations in their front yard, their minivan somehow turning into a howitzer of recreational TNT.
There is still debate as to whether Big Bay Boom 2012 is the worst or greatest fireworks show of all time. But the advanced parts of civilization arrived at the truth as quickly as the women in the video did. It was undeniably amazing.
First of all, the point of Fourth of July fireworks isn’t “the intricate choreography of sky fire over a guaranteed amount of show time.” It’s about creating a vivid memory shared with some people you like, love, or would like to love.
BBB2012 used large-scale chemical fire to create the ultimate memory.
Sure, some people who iron their jeans subjected their family to a sermon about how San Diego managed to botch America’s birthday like a Disney princess-for-hire who smelled of quite a few Sauvignons.
The rest of us saw how perfectly it nailed the actual feeling of being an American. Because only a miniscule percentage of us bake postcard apple pies where every inch of crust is perfectly laminated like the wood in an Irish bar. Very few of us can paint on par with Picasso. The rest of us—despite truly believing in our America-activated abilities to achieve greatness in almost any field of our choosing—burn pies. We try to paint only to realize it looks like our fine motor skills have entered active death.
That’s why BBB2012 was the most perfectly American fireworks show ever: A wildly ambitious idea galvanized thousands upon thousands of people to both work on it and come to hold a beer and gawk at it, only to have it fail in the most glorious TMZ-level spectacle.
America isn’t about immaculate, storyless wins. It’s about how the framework of a country is solid enough that we can accidentally detonate our entire lives—a few times—and still probably be OK.
No one has America’d quite like San Diego did on that day. It was performance art. Lou Reed’s heart slow-clapped. Any brief municipal embarrassment quickly became a pride of our people. I can only hope the same for the Nebraskan yard family whose Dodge Aerostar became a hyperactive Death Star.
P.S. Local writer Maya Kroth compiled a quite great oral history of that night for Thrillist. The bottom lines for me were—it took nine months to prepare, no one was hurt, and even though the pyrotechnics company tried to zero out the bill, Big Bay Boom founder H. P. “Sandy” Purdon refused and paid them in full. This year will mark the 25th Anniversary of the yearly Big Bay Boom.
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.
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.
Summer has officially kicked off, and San Diego is celebrating the sunny season with a myriad of fun events. From San Diego Pride week and a fairytale performance at Civic Theatre to a Santigold concert and Comic-Con, there are dozens of opportunities to make memories worth adding to your scrapbook. Here are all the best things to do in San Diego this July:
Divine inspirations, operatic ballads, and symphonic pop production elevate Rosalía’s Lux to heavenly levels. Hear angelic vocals ascend—in up to 13 languages—during her performance at Pechanga Arena.
Enjoy a night of feel-good indie rock and sing-along anthems at the Cal Coast Credit Union Open Air Theatre courtesy of Young the Giant and special guest Cold War Kids.
29
Santigold collects genres like gold stars: musical accouterments that brighten her uniquely alternative sound. See her live in concert with dancehall producer Troy Baker Sound at Humphreys Concerts by the Bay.
Two male government workers pursue a secret romance amid the Lavender Scare in the San Diego Opera’s production of “Fellow Travelers” at the Balboa Theatre.
Audrey Hepburn. Marlon Brando. Salvador Dalí. What do these icons have in common? Each was the enigmatic focus of a Cecil Beaton portrait. Step inside Cecil Beaton’s Fashionable World, an alluring showcase of 20th-century style at San Diego Museum of Art.
Courtesy of San Diego Pride
More Fun Things to Do in San Diego This Month
1
The Little Italy Mercato will trade morning rays for golden-hour glow through its free Summer Sera, an expansion of the neighborhood’s farmers market with live music, artisanal finds, and a fetching amount of pet activities.
11–19
San Diego Pride week starts with a Dyke March and ends with the two-day “Pride Shines On” festival. The days in between? Run a 5K, march in the parade, visit the rainbow-lit St. Paul’s Episcopal Cathedral, and more.
19
Dress up for a Mediterranean-themed tea time at the Estancia La Jolla, a laid-back yet refined afternoon planned for the resort’s monthly Tea in the Garden series.
23–26
Nerd culture’s biggest gathering returns to the Convention Center. San Diego Comic-Con welcomes fans of everything from comic book cinema to ultra-rare collectibles for panels, exhibits, sneak peeks, and much more.
Ryan Hardison is a freelance arts and entertainment writer and recent graduate of San Diego State. When he's not staring at his laptop, he's likely eating an adobada burrito or getting sunburnt at the beach.
You’re coasting home after a weekend in Rosarito Beach—still riding the high of vitamin D and Baja Med—and then comes a slap back into reality: brakelights and gridlock exhaust.
Small wonder, given that San Ysidro is the busiest land border crossing in the western hemisphere (fourth-busiest in the world). Otay Mesa’s no breeze either; it’s the busiest commercial port in California and second-busiest across the entire southern border. Smart Border Coalition says that each day last year, 41,800 vehicles crossed into the US at San Ysidro; 17,800 crossed at Otay Mesa, along with 1,023,000 commercial trucks.
Diana Pazos, a San Diego resident and adolescent psychiatrist working in Tijuana, says the northbound border wait at the San Ysidro crossing is often three to five hours Saturday through Monday—delays that modern humans and multinational maquiladoras alike aren’t built to endure. At the current Otay crossing, “commercial trucks may be in line for six hours or longer,” she says.
Needing to bake a couple hours of commute into the States doesn’t just affect vacations; tens of thousands of people cross the border each day for doctor’s appointments, work, school, you name it. The clog has personal and commercial ramifications.
But change is coming. Construction has begun on a new border crossing in Otay Mesa, which is expected to significantly reduce wait times across all San Diego border crossings, bolster binational trade, and improve the air pollution levels in the area.
Nikki Tiongco, an 18-year Caltrans veteran who oversees the Otay Mesa East project (aka Otay 2) for the agency, says the new border crossing will also be among the most high-tech, efficient, and secure border crossings in the nation.
“We have already completed the roadway network within the Otay Mesa East region,” says Tiongco. Part of this project included building State Route 11, an extension of SR 905, which has been open to the public since August and will feed traffic to the new entry port. Otay 2 comes with a 21st century upgrade, too. Miles of fiber-optic cables have been installed underground, which gives the port the brainpower to efficiently sort and streamline traffic as cars approach the border. (Unlike the San Ysidro border, where lanes get organized by vehicle type, Otay 2’s lanes will be interchangeable. For example, if the system indicates that a high number of commercial trucks is heading to the border, passenger lanes could be converted to cargo lanes in real time.)
Otay 2, driven by a binational collaboration among government agencies (Caltrans, SANDAG, General Services Administration, and U.S. Customs and Border Protection), receives both federal and state funding, plus hefty contributions from Mexico. So far, funds from the $1.3 billion project have helped build new bridges and roadway interchanges that will guide traffic to the crossing. At this stage in the process, Caltrans is “laser-focused on building the facility itself,” Tiongco says.
Now, to the juicy part: the prospect of a “20-to-30-minute border wait time” at Otay 2, according to Tiongco. Currently, there are three standard ways to cross the border at San Ysidro: Ready Lanes, General Lanes, or SENTRI Lanes. Most travelers use either the Ready or General lanes. SENTRI Lanes require a form of pre-approval from the US federal government plus an additional fee. According to CBP, the average wait time in 2025 at the San Ysidro crossing, was as little as 15 minutes in the SENTRI Lanes, 45 minutes in the Ready Lanes, and 1.5 to 2 hours in the General Lanes. Those are best-case scenarios that vary based on lane type and time of day.
Otay 2 is about 12 miles east of the San Ysidro crossing and 2.5 miles east of Otay 1. Those not wanting to spend that much extra time on the road to drive to the new border crossing, despite the allure of an under-30-minute wait, are still expected to see some benefits. Tiongco says Otay 2 will “provide a relief valve” overall by spreading the burden across the three border crossings. As a result, SANDAG says, wait times at San Ysidro and Otay 1 could be cut in half.
It’s not just your time waiting at the border that matters. Multinational corporations that relocated their manufacturing plants (maquiladoras) to Northern Baja have claimed for years that the long delays at Otay 1 eat away at their profits. More than 600 maquiladoras, used by companies such as Samsung and Panasonic, currently use Otay 1 to transport products to US and international markets. Ambassador Alicia G. Kerber-Palma, the consul general of Mexico in San Diego, says the project will facilitate more than $60 billion in cross-border trade annually.
Previous reports say that Otay 2 also has the capacity for around 12,000 passenger cars and 1,500 commercial trucks daily. A shiny, new element to this port: Commercial and personal vehicles that choose to cross will pay a dynamic toll on both sides of the border. The fee will increase during busy hours and decrease during slower periods, Tiongco says. Caltrans estimates that the toll could range from $4 to $30 for passenger vehicles and higher for commercial trucks. Drivers will be able to see current rates before they reach the actual border crossing.
And, with these changes, there are environmental benefits, too. “With shorter wait times at all three ports, there’s less idling and congestion, which should significantly reduce air pollution on both sides of the border,” says Kerber-Palma. The main factor driving improved air quality would be decreasing dirty emissions from idling diesel trucks. This county’s air could use some sprucing up, anyway. A 2026 report from the American Lung Association named San Diego as the fifth-most particle-polluted county in the US. The bulk of that dirty air comes from the heavy-duty trucks and ships that pass through the area.
Otay 2 is not only expected to curb the acceleration of air pollution in San Diego; if the state’s legislature passes California Senate Bill 10, the border crossing could also restore local water quality. This bill would use a portion of Otay 2 toll revenues to fund ongoing maintenance of the South Bay International Wastewater Treatment Plant. Current media reports say, however, that it’s increasingly unlikely that SB 10 will become law.
Otay 2 has been in the works for over two decades and is finally nearing the finish line. Construction estimates show that it should be up and running in 2029. Tiongco says this border crossing is “a good example of how the state, federal and local governments are working together and with Mexico to advance our mutual goals in the region.”
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.
703 16th Street, Suite 200, San Diego, California 92101 | 619-704-2700 | avrpstudios.com
