Sailing the World (Pregnant)

For this adventure, you only need to be able to do one thing. “If you can follow directions, you can get in a boat,” says Brewster Schenck, who has quadriplegia and has cruised with Challenged Sailors—a nonprofit that offers free adaptive sailing to people with disabilities—for the past five years.

On an overcast Friday afternoon, a group of 17 huddles on Harbor Island’s docks, home to eight specially designed Martin16 sailboats. The two-person vessels are weighted so they can’t tip over. Even if they filled with water, they wouldn’t sink. The sails are controlled by two ropes and the rudder by a joystick, so the boater can sail without ever having to leave their seat. These boats can even be fitted with technology that allows sailors who can’t use their limbs to control the boat with their breath. As a precaution, a volunteer sailor travels in the seat behind.

The adapted boats give participants freedom they don’t always experience on land. Volunteer Dale Burchby recalls a woman who went sailing with them after a catastrophic accident that rendered her suddenly needing a wheelchair. Looking out at the bay, she asked, “Where do we go?”

Her companion sailor said, “Anywhere you want.”

She burst into tears.

Wheelchairs, walkers, and scooters stay on the docks, explains Challenged Sailors President Peter Phillips, who, because of nerve damage caused by Guillain-Barré syndrome, needs leg braces and a walker to get around.

“When I’m walking, I’m experiencing pain. I can’t go fast,” he says. But out on the bay, “there are no limitations—it’s just the boat and the wind and the water.”

Back on the dock, Penny Anders, who became paraplegic after an accident two years ago, gets ready to be lowered by a hoist into her boat. She beams as she ducks beneath the boom and takes control of the helm. “You go so fast [when you’re sailing]—you’re just flying,” Anders says. The sport has been a source of joy for her in what has been a difficult transition, she adds.

“It saved me, too,” says Leah Gualtieri, her volunteer companion sailor, who took up sailing after a divorce. “Once you’re out there, you don’t want to not be out there.”

Friendliest Bike Shop

MJ’s Cyclery

The bike shop sits on a popular commute route and is staffed by affable mechanics who have worked the Tour de France. Hardcore bicycle people don’t have the friendliest rep, but MJ’s is different. They’ve got the skill set to equip racers, but they don’t treat commuters or parents buying bikes like tourists in their world.

Way to Become the Pickleball

PB Tennis Club

One minute you’re casually playing a game of pickleball, the next thing you know, you’ve helped design Gearbox’s newest paddle. The brand is based in San Diego and PBTC is their local court, where they play with locals to gain insights on how to improve their rackets. This sounds like free lessons to us.

Boujee Boat Picnic

Picnic Voyage

When a relative was giving away their boat, local architect Vilchis saw an opportunity to design a 10/10 Instagrammable experience. Now you can class up your day date by recreating The Notebook—a pristinely refurbished tiny boat with padded seats, plant garlands, snacks and drinks, and even parasols. Ryan Gosling not included.

Beach Volleyball Where Everyone Knows Your Name

South Mission

Each weekend on the courts of South Mission Beach, the sand is taken over by 2v2 players—many of which are ESL speakers from various countries. They’ve made this plot of sand their sacred community, where the universal language is bump, set, and spike.

Running Shop That Doubles as Bumble BFF

Milestone Run Club

On any given Wednesday on Hamilton Ave., 100 to 200 runners gather to run the streets of North Park. It’s put on by Milestone Running, a shop created by locals Greg Lemon and Chad Crawford. Go a few times and you’re pretty much guaranteed at least ten new friends—might even get “Smirnoff Iced” during the post-run raffle. You win some, you lose some.

Reward-Based Running

Waterfront Social Run Club

Even avid runners can lose motivation. This year, Waterfront introduced a new tradition: beer stops. The three- mile loop starts at Eppig Brewing in Point Loma, then heads to Fathom Bistro for a beer before completing the next 1.5 miles. Finish up with a post-run brew at Eppig, obviously.

Sailing Lessons by Jack Sparrow Himself

Harbor Sailboats

San Diego’s maritime history runs deep. America’s Cups have a permanent home here. Harbor Sailboats—seven-time winner of the “ASA School of the Year”—offers sailing courses taught by longtime sea dogs. You know, the type of no- nonsense skippers who know how the wind will change by the way the breeze hits their beard hair.

Hikes in Real Nature

Palomar Mountain

If you want sky-high firs, oak forests that shade your path, and mountain peaks that overlook actual foliage (read: no palm tree in sight), head to Palomar Mountain State Park. And, since the inaugural California State Parks Week took place this year, there’s no better time to dust off your hiking boots on one of the six hiking trails (five for running).

An Apparently Easy Climb That’s a Lie

Mission Gorge

A mellow 5.7 climb on paper, The Tower at Mission Gorge will have you clipping the first few bolts like you’ve been dirtbagging in Yosemite all your life. You’ll have to dig deep into your courage reserves to tackle the crux, but you’ll be walking down that mountain with your head held high when the sun starts to set.

Floor Exercise

Mission Bay Basketball Court

Hoops here have always had a magical effect—a full regulation court, smack dab on the beach. The ball smells like sunscreen. No fence; out of bounds is in the sand. And it just got an artful resurfacing in honor of local basketball legend, Bill Walton—who’s been a member of the South Mission Beach Sports Park & Rec for 25 years.

Best Surf Shop Nowhere Near Water

Happy Battle Surf Co.

Yep, in City Heights. Specializing in boards from local shapers, owner Mark Polintan (who grew up on a pineapple farm in the Philippines) has created an infectious gathering place for surfers to support their peers. Like chasing tubes in exotic locations, you never know what or who you’ll find here, but you’re guaranteed to leave stoked.

Best Way to Justify Surfing All Day to Your Family

100 Wave Challenge

Surfers are selfish. No matter how many waves we catch, we always want more. And while there’s no shot we’ll ever change, we can at least direct that impulse toward a good cause. At the annual 100 Wave Challenge, participants commit to riding 100 waves in one day to raise funds for the local nonprofit Boys to Men Mentoring.

See full list of contributors here

PART ONE

My daughter Cora is our official engine starter and dolphin spotter. She loves living on a boat and likes it even more when we go sailing. But on Day One of our journey, as we left Point Loma and turned toward open water, the ocean swells intensified, and so did the sour look on Cora’s chubby, two-year-old face. I had spent all morning fluttering around the inside of the cabin, stowing away last-minute provisions and happily snapping photos of our well-prepared vessel for our blog. I felt like a domestic boat goddess as I handed out small bowls filled with a simple breakfast of blueberries, cheese, and almonds to Cora and my husband, Eric. This is what it’s all about, I thought.

Shakedown cruises are a way to get ready for longer passages onboard. They let you try out truly pushing your boat and using it the way it was meant to, out in the open ocean, with sails unfurled, and under the full power and force of wind and waves. Our shakedown cruise would take us from San Diego Bay to Catalina and then on to Santa Cruz and, we hoped, the San Miguel Islands.

We had planned to motor up to Catalina rather than sail, because we were fighting a strong current and were all tired from the previous days’ prep work. We had given Cora a dose of children’s Bonine before we left, so I wasn’t worried about her getting seasick. But then things got rolly.

The swells started and Eric put up the staysail to try to make things a bit more stable, but Cora wasn’t saying a word. Our chipper dolphin spotter was more like a moping jellyfish.

I knew what was coming. I tried to turn her away from me and toward the cockpit. “Get a bucket,” I said to Eric, who just scoffed, saying she wouldn’t get the concept.

But oh, she got it. And she threw up a lot. I tried to soothe her but had a hard time not puking myself, as she emptied her breakfast onto my leg and shoes. My first thought was, She just got vomit all over my only clean skirt! Eric jumped into action and got her wiped up. I said we were both going to go lie down in the v-berth, because I didn’t feel well either.

That was a bad, bad idea.

The v-berth is forward on a boat and an extremely bouncy place to be, especially when seasick. I had hoped that once Cora threw up she would feel better and be over her seasickness, but no such luck. She got sick multiple times before I finally got sick myself, into a plastic bin that had been holding our brightly colored courtesy flags. Cora looked up for a brief moment to watch me. You can tell a kid isn’t feeling well when she watches a grown-up hurl and doesn’t laugh. Kids typically think anything barf-related is hilarious. But Cora just buried her face back in my legs.

I sat there for what seemed like ages, trying desperately not to look down at the reconstituted blueberries. Trying

not to smell them. Finally I heard Eric on the steps and yelled for him. He yelled back that he was almost done

cleaning up, but I hollered louder, and when he came to see, I just handed him the bucket and said, “We gotta get out of here.”

And so it went… for hours and hours.

On our second date, Eric told me he wanted to sail around the world. He was tall, dark, and handsome with striking green eyes and an all-American smile that promised a world of adventure ahead of me should I dare to join him. Ten months after that date we bought our boat together, the Rebel Heart. Two years later we got married, and in another two years, our first daughter was born. We moved aboard the boat as a family of three, and announced to our friends and family how we’d been saving and preparing to sail around the world. They smiled indulgently and disbelievingly. At each stage of this journey, most people did not believe we were going to go.

Our trajectory for a circumnavigation would take us from Mexico to the South Pacific, and then on a circuitous route from New Zealand, through the Indian Ocean, the Suez Canal, the Mediterranean, and the canals of Europe, across the Atlantic Ocean, through the Panama Canal, and then back up the coast of Mexico to return to San Diego.

We only had one small problem. Six weeks after setting our departure date for this shakedown cruise, I found out I was pregnant with our second child. When I told Eric, the first words out of my mouth were, “I’m pregnant.” And, staring into his dumbfounded eyes, the next words were, “And we’re still going sailing.”

Fast-forward to August 16, 2012, our boat pulled away from the marina and motored out of America’s Cup Harbor for our shakedown cruise to Catalina. I had just entered my second trimester of pregnancy, and nausea was just the beginning.

On that first day, Cora and I tried lying out in the cockpit, but we both continued to be sick even in the fresh air. We have no sun cover when we are out sailing, and eventually I just got too hot to be outside. I hobbled down to the salon cushion and made camp there. Eric came by periodically to pick up my puke bucket and dump it out for me.

I tried unsuccessfully three times to take a Zofran to prevent the vomiting, and threw up three of the precious pills (I only had 10). Finally, on the fourth attempt, I was able to keep it down and that began the slow process of getting un-seasick. Once I was stable enough to be lying on my side in the cockpit again, we moved Cora to a cushion beside me. Eric, who had been blissfully seasick-free, was exhausted from caring for both of us, and he went down to get some sleep while I feebly stood watch. I set a timer that went off every 15 minutes, so I could stand up and look in a complete circle around our boat to make sure we weren’t going to hit any vessels.

It is impossible to really know how to provision your boat for a long trip until you have just gone ahead and done it. I highly recommend reading Lin Pardey’s book The Care and Feeding of Sailing Crew as a place to start. But no amount of practical advice or how-to books prepared me for 12 hours of morning sickness at sea with a hurling toddler.

Eric and I don’t have faith in Mother Nature; we respect her. Any sailor worth his salt knows you can’t trust the ocean, but you can study it and understand what you are getting into before you leave for a destination. We read weather reports, we research when to avoid areas because of storms and bad weather, and we never have a strict schedule.

And both Eric and I have a huge amount of trust in each other. We divide our roles on the boat into “pink” and “blue” jobs. My domain is the interior of the cabin. I take care of provisioning, cooking, and making sure the kids are safe and cared for under passage. Eric’s domain is topside, navigating, trimming the sails, and anchoring. I have absolute trust that Eric will get us there safely. Likewise, Eric trusts that the crew (me and the kids) are out of harm’s way and that every once in a while a cup of hot coffee and a homemade meal will be handed to him so he can keep the boat moving. It might sound old-fashioned, but it works for us.

Cora has chores on the boat, too. She helps set and clear the table, she brings us paper towels and canned goods that are stored in lockers at her level, and she helps clean when we are cleaning, working alongside us with a spray bottle and a rag. Keeping things ship-shape is very important on a boat. There is a place for everything, and Cora has quickly learned that she can’t move on from one game or activity until the other is put away. She knows how to stow her rack or clean up her berth. Down below, what she likes most is to help me cook, and especially bake. Topside, she likes to work alongside her daddy. She has a set of toy tools and happily bangs away on winches and lines whenever she gets the chance.

She is a tough little kid with a sweet spirit. We hope one day she will recognize the incredible opportunity of being raised on a boat and sailing around the world. How many two-year-olds can step from a bouncing dinghy onto an outboard ladder, climb up it, and get themselves over the gunwale of a sailboat unassisted? How many toddlers are aware of the lines on a boat and how dangerous they can be? Or how many kids get to wake up each morning to wildlife on their doorstep? Swimming with dolphins, or seeing the spouts of whales from their backyard? Not many.

We got to Catalina approximately 20 hours after leaving San Diego. Eric yelled from the foredeck that we were securely moored in Two Harbors, and I melted into the cockpit cushions in total relief. The happy hum of summertime sounds seemed to instantly calm the sickness. A woman in a neon bikini breezed past us on a paddleboard, and I smiled at the little kid tucked in between her legs enjoying the bumpy ride to the beach. A Beach Boys song blared from a café near the end of the main pier. Cora popped her head up into the cockpit, grinned, and waved her swimsuit around like little cheerleader celebrating our victory over the sea. Our dolphin spotter was ready to look for fins. And I knew for the first time in a long time, we were going to be able to use our boat the way we had always wanted: to have adventures.

It was one hell of a learning curve for both me and Eric. Neither one of us thought I would get as seasick as I did. And as much as we respect Mother Nature, we realized we didn’t have as much respect for Bonine, considering how sick Cora got as well. Pregnancy had changed the disposition of my sea legs, and it meant we had to completely re-evaluate our plans for the next leg of the six-week-long shakedown, and eventually the first leg of our world tour, with a stop in Mexico to have our baby. But for now, we were happily ensconced in Catalina, and the beach was calling our names.

Stand watch for Parts 2 and 3 of this series in the coming months. Follow the Kaufmans’ journey on their blog at therebelheart.com and see a video clip of the family and map of their route around the world.

PART 3

When your 8-foot dinghy strikes a sandbar in the middle of the Bay of La Paz, it is not a life-or-death moment. To the casual observer, it would seem like our boat was simply floating in the water, since the sandbar is not visible from the shore, but smack dab in the middle of the bay is a gigantic dune of submerged sand, and our little boat had run aground on it.

It was early morning and the Coromuel winds were still blowing white-capped waves that sloshed the starboard side where I sat holding my four-month-old. Eric laughed and started pushing off of the sand with a spare oar. He had misjudged the usual passage we motored over each morning in our shallow-drafted dinghy. In a few moments he would shove us off. Heck, we could have probably stepped out onto the sand in the middle of the bay and walked our boat a few feet over, but none of this registered. Instead, my toes began to curl and my hands started clenching and unclenching involuntarily. I clamped my teeth together so tightly, I had an aching jaw the rest of the day. Sweat fevered my body, even though the wind was raising goosebumps on my toddler’s arms. I couldn’t breathe. The sky overhead was a giant vise pushing down against my body. I kept my lips in a tight line, instead of opening them into the O shape I wanted to create with an ear-curdling scream.

That panic attack should have been my first sign of impending trouble. When you set sail on a world adventure, there is a fair amount of gallivanting and gadding about that happens on a daily basis. We had decided to leave San Diego for Mexico and commence a world sailing trip, even though we had just recently discovered I was pregnant with baby number two. People have babies in Mexico every day, don’t they? It would be a lark, part of the adventure we had been planning for years.

But even adventurers get the blues, and in my case it wasn’t just a case of the baby blues. When my second baby was six months old, we flew back to San Diego to visit family and renew our Mexican visas. The panic attack in the Bay of La Paz had happened two months earlier, and I was still struggling. Every day was a desperate attempt for normality. Wake up. Wash face. Pull hair back. Put on my “mom uniform” of clothes that fit my postpartum body and a bra and shirt that allowed me to comfortably nurse. Dress the toddler. Clothe the baby. Make food. Visit with friends. Nod and shake your head that you were fine—just tired, thanks.

But I wasn’t okay. And during that trip to San Diego, my family in the States gave me the news that a family member was ill. On top of that, I was dealing with the breakup of close members of my family. Those two items alone are included in the list of what experts say are the 10 most stressful life events. Add moving out of the country on our boat when I was pregnant, giving birth in a foreign country, postpartum health complications, and being away from friends and family, and I just started to crack.

When we got back to Mexico, the heat of a Baja California summer was unbearable. I felt trapped inside our boat, waiting for the heat to dissipate each day. By the end of August, it hadn’t cooled off at all, and my body and my mind were slowly roasting into a ball of oppressive misery. We sailed the boat to Puerto Escondido, Baja’s only true “hurricane hole,” and moored her there to wait out the rest of hurricane season. Realizing I was at a breaking point, we rented an air-conditioned apartment next to the marina and stayed there for seven weeks, waiting out the battery of storms that hit Baja, the Sea of Cortez, and the Pacific coast of Mexico. In quick succession we weathered Tropical Storm Ivo, but even with the air conditioning, the giant freezer, and the unending access to ice cream and the Internet, I kept sinking further into an abyss. A paralyzing unhappiness had settled over me that I couldn’t shake. My brain was like a fog. I started to daydream of running away. Of escape. Of disappearing. I couldn’t bring myself to smile. Nothing brought me joy.

And then the rage came. Anger would course through me, sparked by the simplest things: the sound of my husband chewing almonds, my toddler touching my leg when my baby was nursing, a clean blanket dropping on the floor. I was enraged. I could visualize how I wanted to act out on my anger. I wanted to lift up the heavy wooden chairs in the dining room and smash them against the wall of the apartment, then take the large splinters of wood and pulverize them with my teeth. When we moved back from the apartment to the boat in preparation for returning to La Paz, I had fantasies of tearing the teak siding off the hull and gouging it into the cushions in the salon. I wanted to destroy everything. I had the deepest desire to jettison my foot through the doors of the hanging lockers, to rip them off their hinges and fling them into the sea. I had to restrain myself from ripping off every foot of the decorative teak that encircled our boat.

A few years ago I had been diagnosed with depression; I treated it with medication, therapy, and exercise. When I became pregnant the first time, I read about how a previous occurrence of depression makes you a more likely candidate for postpartum depression (PPD), and both my husband and I carefully watched for signs of PPD after both of our babies were born. The only problem was that we were looking for the same symptoms I exhibited the last time I was depressed, and this time they didn’t all match up. Did you know that rage is a sign of depression? Uncontrollable anger and irritability are too, as well as a deep, abiding sense of unhappiness. I didn’t know about these symptoms. The first time I was depressed, I was simply bleak. I lost all interest in anything that had previously brought me joy. I was sans emotions. But this time my emotions raged. I had deep red welts in my forearm, left there by my fingernails earlier that day when I had tried to channel my rage into physical pain instead of shouting or acting out toward my family. Finally the pieces all began to click into place.

I talked to Eric and told him my suspicions. I called my doctor in San Diego, the one who had treated me during my last experience with depression, and I did research. I had thought that going on medication for depression would mean I’d need to wean my daughter, but thankfully, many antidepressants are not contraindicated for breastfeeding. I called my therapist in San Diego and began to have regular phone appointments with her, and, most importantly, we sailed to La Paz after hurricane season and I started exercising again. None of this has been easy. My therapy phone calls are done on a cell phone from Mexico to the United States. I walk around the marina trying to sit near empty sailboats so no one but my therapist, and the pelicans, can hear my thoughts. The first medication I started turned me into a zombie. For three days I observed myself as if I were outside my body, a detached observer treading through life, until I called my doctor and we tried another kind that set me on the right course.

And how do you go public about having postpartum depression? We had already dealt with so many negative comments about leaving for our adventure; so many armchair admirals naysayed our decision to leave San Diego when I was pregnant. They tsk-tsk’d when we encountered problems, when I had pregnancy complications. I was loath to let them revel in their Schadenfreude, but in the end honesty won out. Leaving on an adventure doesn’t make you a superhero. You are not immune to life, or to living. In fact, I was trying to live more by sailing away from everything, and live we have. We have met some of the most interesting people on this journey. I gave birth to our second daughter in a foreign country. I’ve watched my firstborn child learn a second language, and blossom from a shy two-year-old into a gregarious and confident three-year-old. Was it a mistake to leave when we did? Possibly. But I wouldn’t reverse our course if I could. And as I slowly start to recover I’m already planning our next adventure. Only four more months until we cross an ocean and arrive in the South Pacific.

This is part of a three-part series. This is Act III. See Act I and Act II here.

The Future

We’ve been here before.

In 2012, city funding for the arts and culture in San Diego had eroded. As a corrective, the city council unanimously approved “Penny for the Arts”—a promise to dedicate roughly one penny of every dollar spent on hotel rooms (the Transient Occupancy Tax, or TOT).

The logic was fair and sound: Cultural institutions and events help attract visitors. Those visitors pay hotel taxes. So, the people agreed, some of that hotel-tax revenue should go back into maintaining the cultural ecosystem that helps bring those visitors and that money.

Projected as a five-year plan, the measure was supposed to increase funding to $17.9 million by 2017.

It never did. The penny was never guaranteed, so each year the city used part of it for other priorities. By 2023, the money going to arts and culture was up to about a half a penny. Even as TOT revenue has gone up significantly.

In 2019, TOT revenue was $245 million.

In 2025: $325 million.

One fix would be to guarantee the penny. Not simple, given San Diego’s financial woes. But the alternative—eroding the culture that makes San Diego San Diego, give it its identity—also doesn’t feel wise. Plus, even a locked percentage still rises and falls with tourism, which is why culture advocates want a guaranteed floor on top of it.

Another solution would be to give the arts commission actual authority.

“It’s an advisory body,” says arts commissioner Kamaal Martin. “You’d be hard-pressed to find anybody who takes our advice.”

He described the commissioners debating real, consequential questions this year, like whether and how to divide the cuts between funding pools. But those conversations “don’t connect to whoever’s actually deciding,” Martin says. “We haven’t been entrusted with decision-making about relevant things nearly enough.”

Christine Martinez is building political infrastructure through her organization Arts+Culture:San Diego—which is starting a 501(c)(4) lobbying structure not unlike police and fire unions. Martinez is also keeping her community actively engaged. “We won’t be caught off guard next year like we were this year,” she tells me.

Then there’s the evergreen issue of affordability and accessibility. Kiplinger’s most recent report ranks San Diego as the 11th most expensive city in the US, based on cost of living. The average home value is $980,700 (the US median is $540,000), but San Diego’s median household income is only one-third greater than the national level. Rent is also 66 percent higher than the national average ($2,716 vs. $1,636).

This is why San Diego has long suffered from the creative brain drain—creatives leaving for more affordable cities. “Artists are free to live wherever they want, and they will go where the rent is affordable,” says Jennifer de Poyen of Space 4 Art. “When they leave, they take their gifts with them, and their contributions, and their economic impact.”

One saving grace is the presence of Tijuana, where the cost of living is about 60 percent lower than San Diego, per Numbeo. Tijuana has long functioned as an affordable neighborhood for many in San Diego’s creative culture. It’s part of the reason why the binational identity is such a constant in our galleries, music, theater, murals, and culture. While that cross-border blood flow is one of San Diego’s most compelling attributes, few artists living that life would call it convenient or easy. A city is at a disadvantage when its culture creators have to cross a border to go home at night, and cross again the next morning to work.

In May, San Diego County Board of Supervisors approved a $2.75 million arts initiative of its own. It includes an Artist Space Grant Program aimed directly at the affordability crisis, as well as an artist-in-residence program, a dedicated Binational Creative Economy Investment, and a one-time investment in the Black Arts and Culture District in Encanto.

Bob Lehman of San Diego Art Matters has been doing county-level, binational organizing for years; in 2023, he helped get the county’s arts commission reestablished after 30 years of defunctness. That’s important because it gives arts and culture an official seat in county government, advising the County Board of Supervisors on arts and culture policy. He also brought in consultant Laura Zucker, who ran LA County’s arts program for three decades, to build a real regional plan.

“I really believe we’ll have something set up here that other communities come and look at,” he told me. “A national template other cities come to learn from.”

When asked who decides which artists will get the new grant money, county arts commissioner and executive director of the Chicano Park Museum and Cultural Center Monica Delgadillo Hernandez doesn’t hedge.

“That’s part of the infrastructure we’re going to be building,” she says. “What should a panel of reviewers look like? Should it be the commissioners? Should it be other folks? A supervisor?” She was just as candid that the commission itself doesn’t reflect San Diego’s population—Chicano communities are roughly a third of the city, she tells me, “and that’s not represented at the table yet.”

What Other Cities Prove Is Possible

The great news is that none of these solutions have to be invented from scratch. Numerous cities serve as examples of what’s possible—if we have the will.

Jonathon Glus—Prebys Foundation Senior Fellow for Art & Design, the Executive Director of the Art + Design District, and board president for California for the Arts—worked in Houston before coming to San Diego. The Texas city dedicates 74.5 percent of its hotel tax to arts grants by formula, and that support is guaranteed. Washington, DC locked in dedicated arts funding in 2019. Salt Lake City, my hometown, has run a voter-approved arts tax for almost 30 years, most recently reauthorized through 2034. And just this summer, New York City pushed cultural funding to a record $323.8 million, even incorporating an emergency fund.

Denver’s model is interesting because instead of a city-dependent funding model, theirs is a 0.1 percent regional sales tax. In place since 1988 and renewed by voters three times, their Scientific & Cultural Facilities District has distributed between $54 million and $85 million to arts, culture, and scientific orgs—each of the last 12 years.

This is part of a three-part series. This is Act III. See Act I and Act II here.

None of these cities got there by accident. They decided, on purpose, that arts and culture were worth protecting from politics—and, in some cases, worth building an entire identity around.

“That’s how Miami has flipped the switch,” says Glus. “People go to Miami for culture as much as they do the beach.”

San Diego has spent decades selling itself backward: Beach and weather first, culture as an afterthought you might stumble into. Glus would love to see the strategy flipped: Visitors should come for the art, “and then, by the way, you’re on the beach.”

So What Happens From Here?

“I do think it was a wake-up call for the community,” de Poyen says of the budget fight. “People understand that our funding is vulnerable. It was a lesson in how much power people have when they coalesce. But wow, is it painful.”

Glus says he’s genuinely optimistic. “The players have all changed seats, but the work is moving forward.”

“I believe optimism is a moral duty,” says Martin, who’s both power-fist and polite.

In eight months, there will be another budget fight. Everyone I talked to expects it will be worse. But something happened this spring that can’t be undone.

“I hope this rupture has brought us together in a moment of self-realization,” says Leticia Gomez Franco of the Balboa Art Conservation Center. “I hope we stop being so transactional; we begin to see ourselves and each other as partners in this work.”

That’s the whole ask, really. And it’s on all of us.

This is part of a three-part series. This is Act III. See Act I and Act II here.