Then, Rosinsky came to roost in San Diego in 2012, building her nest in a most unusual location: the Fairmont Grand Del Mar.

Following a health scare in San Miguel de Allende, where she’d briefly moved after the death of her husband 15 years ago, Rosinsky was diagnosed with hereditary hemorrhagic telangiectasia (HHT), a condition that can cause excessive bleeding. Doctors at UC San Diego Health were among the top experts on the disease, so Rosinsky traveled here for treatment, taking a room at the Fairmont. Initially, she says, physicians gave her four months to live—but, following seven months on a lung medication that kept her virtually immobile, she became the first HHT patient to survive past 73. The treatment has since saved others. “God gave me work to do in San Diego: to find the cure for HHT,” she adds.

Somewhere along the way, Rosinsky realized she’d need more long-term housing. But when she informed the Fairmont she’d be checking out, she recalls, a receptionist asked, “Why? We love you here.”

“My dear,” she replied, “I can’t afford you.”

The general manager, however, suggested she make a deal—and then accepted her offer. “Welcome,” she recalls him saying. “This is your home now.”

As the hotel’s only permanent guest, she spends her days practicing pilates in her room; writing her memoirs; and dining at the resort’s onsite restaurant, Amaya, where the staff members all know her by name. “I’m the grandmother of everyone here,” she says.

The post Meet Fairmont Grand Del Mar’s Only Permanent Guest appeared first on San Diego Magazine.

Deep in the sea of booths, Wali Amin settles comfortably in his abyss of folding tables, crowded with a dizzying array of used doodads: shoes, CDs, a picnic basket. Amin has been buying out storage spaces for the past 12 years—but this is far from his first business venture.

“It’s in my blood,” he says. “My father was an entrepreneur, my grandfather was an entrepreneur, and so on. They used to travel the Silk Road.”

Amin’s father was a fur merchant in Kabul, Afghanistan. Amin was a tween when the Soviet Union invaded the country in 1979. His family fled to India, where Amin earned a college degree before moving to the US in 1990.

In between shifts at a gas station and as a valet driver in San Diego, Amin slung antiques at small swap meets in El Cajon. Over time, he eventually opened a high-end Italian clothing store. He married in 2000 and started a family. Then, the 2008 recession struck, and he lost everything.

“There were times, after I went bankrupt, [that] I didn’t have the money to buy McDonald’s,” he says. “[But] we have to work, you know? This country is opportunity, and it all depends on how you take it.”

Amin turned to garage sales and storage unit auctions to rebuild his business. “The best thing about doing this is the excitement of what comes out of the box,” he says. “It might be gold, and then there’s times that rats jump out.”

A customer pauses at one of Amin’s tables to pluck a beautiful acoustic guitar—one of the many treasures Amin pulled from obscurity. The drive to make the most from the least seems to be another family trait.

“[My brother] always used to tell me that you have to make good out of your bad,” Amin says.

The post The Treasure of Kobey’s Swap Meet   appeared first on San Diego Magazine.

Courtesy of Georgina Trevino

“I feel like I love to go into the chaos knowing that I can come home,” she says, adding that she often gets asked why, after all she’s accomplished so far, she doesn’t simply move. “I love San Diego. I just love being here, because I’m in between both worlds.”

Following Treviño’s Instagram is something of a whirlwind experience itself; a crash course in what it means when an up-and-coming designer generates enough buzz to where they’re becoming the go-to accessory for photo shoots and step-and-repeats for the likes of Olivia Rodrigo, Lady Gaga, and Bad Bunny, the latter of whom insisted on keeping a pair of earrings she created after he wore them for a music video. “That almost made me cry,” she admits.

Courtesy of Georgina Trevino

Inspired by lowbrow pop culture as much as by ’80s punk rock aesthetics, Treviño’s custom rings, bracelets, and dangles have appeared in Teen Vogue, Purple magazine, and most recently, the Los Angeles Times, who commissioned her for a custom spread in their style magazine, Image. This is in addition to her even more notable accomplishments, such as appearances in a Nike Air Max campaign and a deal to bring her signature pierced designs to Chunks hair products. She’ll also be customizing purses and creating her own in- store intervention for Spanish fashion tastemaker Bimba y Lola inside their Mexico City storefront. Not bad for an Otay Ranch local who, only a few years ago, switched her SDSU major from painting to metalsmithing.

Courtesy of Georgina Trevino

Next up, she says she’s going to check out real estate while in Mexico City in hopes of opening her own brick-and- mortar space there. “There are so many more, other things I want to do to challenge myself,” Treviño says. “I’m just going to figure out how to do it, you know?”

The post Jewelry Designer to the Stars appeared first on San Diego Magazine.

The two were married nearly 70 years, together even longer than that. “We met at Cornell when we were 17,” Jacobs says. “I took her to a fraternity party in 1951. It was kind of a blind date—I knew of her, but we hadn’t met. We started going together after that.”

They married in 1954 and moved to La Jolla in 1966, having four sons along the way. Jacobs was a professor of engineering; Joan worked in schools and in the travel industry. When Jacobs decided to quit his tenure-track position to eventually co-found Qualcomm, Joan mostly supported the move. The couple had no idea they’d end up with a net worth of over $1 billion.

They began donating hundreds of millions of dollars to arts, educational, medical, and scientific causes across San Diego, including more than $100 million to the San Diego Symphony after its bankruptcy in the 1990s.

“That was her idea,” Jacobs says.

Today, Joan is largely remembered for her philanthropy. The Rady Shell at Jacobs Park, the Joan and Irwin Jacobs Performing Arts Center, the Jacobs Medical Center—all are tied to her vision.

“What I loved about her was, I came from a small town—New Bedford, Massachusetts. She came from New York City—Washington Heights—so she had a bit more sophistication than I did,” Jacobs says with a lingering Atlantic accent. “She was lively and outgoing. I was shy. She filled in the blanks.”

“And she was a good traveling partner,” he continues. “Our favorite thing was going to cities and walking. Visiting art museums, galleries, music, theater. Paris, London, Amsterdam. Her favorite place to go was probably New York City.”

But they always found their way home, back to the kitchen.

“We ate three meals together at this table every day,” Jacobs says. “This is where we drank our coffee.”

The post Remembering Joan Jacobs’ Legacy appeared first on San Diego Magazine.

He is wearing a cumberbund, which is one of the fashion world’s kindest gestures to men—an ancestor of Spanx that hides our midsections’ emancipations or the fact that the pleasure of eating Pringles sometimes disables your ability to not burrow through the entire joy silo in a single sitting.

Minutes earlier, I had stood in the hallway waiting my turn. Handlers handled me. For prep, I pondered how no carpet felt as good as casino carpet. It’s like the soft, verdant loam of money; carpet so thick and giving it’s nearly a bounce house. Eventually, the door to the PR suite opened, and a journalist exited. He looked a bit stunned from his encounter, as if he saw what was inside the glowing briefcase in Pulp Fiction, and it was Mr. Short. 

Martin Short, of course, doesn’t need the cumberbund to hide any abdominal discretions. He is lithe and vibrant and very Canadian in the most pleasant of ways. He and I have exactly 15 minutes with each other, a luxurious infinity pool of time allotted by the media architecture of press junkets. I imagine by the end of this vacation together, we’ll blithely phone Steve Martin from the gas station where we choose the proper jerky for the road trip all new buds take to cement our forever bond.

I have become mildly obsessed with what I consider to be one of the greatest ad campaigns of all time for a regional casino, Harrah’s of Southern California. They officially renamed—officially!—an entire town an hour north of San Diego “Funner, California.” And, every couple of years since 2017, they have “elected” a new mayor. The first mayor was David Hasselhoff. You’d see him all over billboards in San Diego, his handsome face that seemingly came into the world expressing a flirty wink or a double-guns. That double-guns face lorded over the city for years, proclaiming him the preeminent public official of a casino-based woohoo. Destinies had never been so perfectly aligned. 

The Hoff was followed by geometrically-chinned boy king Rob Riggle and, most recently, the towering dutchess of deadpan, Jane Lynch (I sat with Jane when she was “elected,” too. You can read about our deep, meaningful relationship here). And now, Martin Short.

I enter the large suite and Martin Short is sitting at a conference table, purple as a magnificent bruise. There is an adjacent “living room,” where no fewer than four people also sit but make no eye contact whatsoever. Then, a kitchen with three barstools, all of which are full with people charged with overseeing this interaction. It is… dead silent, as if someone has just informed the group that AI has made it into the national drinking water. It’s in my nature to not ignore anyone in a social situation, so I briefly say hello to Mr. Short and then try to make eye contact with every single person. It is unreciprocated—not in a cold way, but in a professional “please do your job; we’ve been here all day” way. 

Martin, understandably thinking I’m looking for direction, says, “You can sit over here. Ask me anything you want.”

“Okay, great,” I say. “We’ll start with politics, move into religion, and finish up with sex.”

“TROY!” the PR agent blurts.

She’s a friend, a very capable and talented person who is here on the behalf of her important client. It would be better for her if I didn’t go completely free radical, leaving her to later answer many strongly worded questions about pre-screening interviewees for obvious emotional instability. I smile and become the best professional I possibly can be.

Eight people will now watch Mr. Short and I attempt to wrestle something meaningful out of 15 minutes of conversation. Which I fully realize, having been around some famous people at this point in my life, is a lifetime. Minutes are the most precious possession of the truly famous. Their time is continually requested and picked at by the rest of us. The true interview artists can go from “Hello, my name is…” to “crying over past traumas but in a meaningful, shared way” within 15 minutes. 

I am not that professional. I mostly ask him dumb food questions. 

Here’s what should be said about Martin Short. First, I admit to having drastically under-appreciated this man’s talent. For whatever reason, I’d only seen him in roles that required him to perform with wild, almost cartoonish theatricality. Though his performances were remarkable in, say, Father of the Bride, my heart bends toward the blacker, dead-inside forms of comedy. I giddy most at the cigarette-smoke non-emotion of Lenny Bruce, Steven Wright, Mitch Hedburg, and Neal Brennan, or even the dopey, mellow wonderment of Nate Bargatze. Even The Chappelle Show was too animated for me, which I consider a stain on my ability to comprehend greatness. 

And Mr. Short, in person, is an extremely high IQ’ed Canadian with immaculate emotional composure and a hilarious, no-bullshit wit. His answers are far less fantastical and lampoonish than I expected, but express some self-deprecating insight and wry cultural criticism. “I appreciate food people; I really do,” he says. “Eugene Levy would phone me up and say, ‘Do you want to drive to the valley and go to DuPar’s?’ And I’d say, ‘Orrrrr… eat a Balance Bar and go for a hike?’”

When I ask him for San Diego memories, he doesn’t bother polishing the fakery. “I distinctly remember going to the Hotel Del and the zoo,” he says and gives me a look that says, No clue, man. And I appreciate that amount of real, which again, I hadn’t expected. I’d expected him to embellish every moment, milk it for the ersatz. He also points out, “What do you know about Hamilton, Ontario? Probably not much.” Imminently fair.

The whole time he looks at me with the same look I imagine I’m giving him. “What, dear god, are we going to get from each other in less time than the intro montage of each episode of Game of Thrones—but, hey, let’s try.” And yet, he’s game, a consummate professional, polite as ****. And we get what we get. 

The whole room laughs multiple times throughout our conversation… and not in a way that suggests they’re paid to laugh (they are). I’m laughing, too. His wit leaves the station first in any conversation—as it has been for nearly five decades now—and, more often than not, drops you off at a pretty damn funny destination. 

By the time my PR friend announces from behind me, “Two minutes remaining, Troy,” I’ve decided that I do want to get some gas station jerky with my new buddy, head toward some uniquely American tourist attraction like the world’s largest petrified wad of hummus, and stop at a grocery store somewhere, half drunk on road cosmos, to squeeze a little Charmin. 

Hard-Hitting Questions With The New Mayor Of Funner, California: Martin Short

Troy Johnson (TJ): What are you going to change about Funner, California during your reign?

Martin Short (MS): It’s going more modern and muted tones. I’m a painter. If you ever saw Ordinary People, it’s going to be as depressing as that. Changing nothing is my policy. 

TJ: What is fun to you? What gets your giddy going? 

MS: I have a lot of funny friends. 

TJ: You don’t say.

MS: I swear to you, I have had 500,000 funny dinners. So funny to me is a great dinner, great cocktails, funny people, and a good vibe. 

TJ: Let’s talk drinks. When you look at your hand, what is sloshing there?

MS: A cosmopolitan or white wine. Or, what my siblings and I all drink is rum and Cokes with a slice of lime. I’m not doing the Jack and Coke like you kids. When I was doing The Second City, I would always have a Rusty Nail. It was called a liquid Quaalude in the US and a kilt-lifter in Canada. You have one and you lift your kilt.

TJ: Your shoes are fantastic. Did you dress yourself?

MS: This is just stuff I had lying around. Dorothy-esque.

TJ: Let’s say it’s your final meal before you leave every human behind. You’re never going to see Steve Martin or any of them ever again. But you’re in charge of the menu. All that matters is you. What are you eating?

MS: I would order a Caesar salad, and then I’d go to roasted chicken, mashed potatoes, asparagus. And then for dessert, I’d go for ice cream. When I have guests at the house or Christmas or whatever it is… whenever they leave, and it’s just me, I will take that ice cream out of the freezer and leave it in the sink and let it melt. Because it’s like heroin.

TJ: I knew you were a man of distinction, but I didn’t realize you had this much distinction.

MS: I remember, in Canada, they didn’t have Baskin Robbins. My sister was going to the University of Michigan. I remember first experiencing pralines and cream, mocha almond fudge. And I would get up at 3 a.m. in the morning… I’d never tasted anything like it. So for my last meal I’d have a butterscotch sundae. 

TJ: You had universal healthcare in Canada but not 31 Flavors? That seems like Canada’s priorities may be off.

MS: No. The first thing I did when I came to the US was go to a department store and squeeze the Charmin. How soft could it be? Talk about an ad campaign that worked.

TJ: And was it soft as my middle-aged midriff?

MS: Unbelievably soft. Started making out with it and they threw me out of the department store or wherever I was.

TJ: What’s your food pet peeve?

MS: Well, I have a lot of neurotic food stuff.

TJ: Oh, GREAT. This is juicy. Here we go.

MS: I don’t eat red things. I wouldn’t eat a beet, I wouldn’t have a radish, and I don’t eat tomatoes. But I love ketchup and I love tomato sauce. But if someone hands me a turkey sandwich with tomato on it, the first thing I do is take it off.

TJ: Interesting. So you’re like a bull. Red inflames and enrages you.

MS: One time, my father was drinking milk from the quart, because he’s Irish, and I said, “Dad, be careful. I think that’s a little bit turned,” and he went “Hmmm… a little bit,” and kept drinking it. To this day, I’m traumatized. I don’t put milk in my coffee. I’ll put skim in my cereal, but just moist enough to cover the Raisin Bran. 

TJ: So what tomato hurt you?

MS: I don’t know. 

TJ: Pineapple on pizza?

MS: No. No, no, no, no, no. Mushroom and pepperoni. 

TJ: What do you have in your pantry at all times?

MS: I have peanut butter, some tuna in a can. I make poached eggs in the morning. 

TJ: That’s cooking-esque.

MS: Breakfast I can do. But I’ve never made a meal. I’ve never made a dinner. I can have a Balance Bar for breakfast, a Balance Bar for lunch, a Balance Bar for dinner, a sensible protein at the end of the night. 

TJ: Okay, that makes sense.

MS: It doesn’t, really. It sounds kind of sad. 

TJ: We’re San Diego Magazine. Do you have San Diego stories?

MS: I remember vividly staying at Hotel Del. I love the film Some Like It Hot, so that was exciting. Going to the zoo. That’s my image of San Diego. 

TJ: So, not much. We are the souvenir cup of California, but we’re getting better.

MS: What do you know about Hamilton, Ontario? Probably not much.

TJ: I know they have healthcare and their red food sucks.

MS: Exactly. 

TJ: What do you love about the resort experience?

MS: I love a good spa, but not the cucumbers. I would not eat a cucumber. You like all this stuff—you like all the foods, don’t you?

TJ: Well, not all. I’ve tried to like uni. All of my friends who’ve cooked in great restaurants say, “You have to like uni; it’s like the foie gras of the sea,” and my response is, “Really? Because it tastes like slimy gonads of a sea creature.”

MS: I’m weird because I would not eat a cucumber, but I do love escargot. I like sushi. I love steak. A good cheeseburger. But I eat a lot of chicken and turkey. And I think my favorite meal would be Thanksgiving—the mashed potatoes and turkey and dressing. In Canada, we don’t mash the potatoes because it feels too aggressive. 

TJ: You just kind of stare at them and hope they’ll do their thing?

MS: I envy the foodie. I really do. I pass people painting a beautiful gorge, and I wish I could do that. But the only thing I can do is fill in “one” and then fill in “three.” I envy someone who can get joy out of cooking for three hours with a glass of white wine and youthful music playing. But me? I eat for energy.

TJ: Someone hands you a glass of white wine, and it has two cubes of ice in it. Does it activate your über-pretentious gene where you say, “Oh dear, oh my, nobody desecrates the terroir of the wine on my watch?”

MS: No, I take the glass, I down it in one gulp, and I say, “How dare you?” You know who does? Diane Keaton will take the best glass of red wine and put ice cubes in it.

TJ: You’ve been doing comedy for a couple years—what makes you get up and do what you do?

MS: Well, I think that you love doing it. It’s trickier in any career when you realize you’ve got the rent covered. Why do you want to keep doing it? The second you become complacent—or you realize the effort you would put in at 30, you’re not willing to put in at 60—then you should move aside.

TJ: And you’re not there yet, obviously. Do you ever see yourself getting to that point?

MS: I think after the third stroke I won’t be as active as I’d hoped. 

The post I Drastically Underestimated Martin Short’s Funny appeared first on San Diego Magazine.

Today’s kumpulan (Indonesian for social gathering) is the brainchild of Valley Center native and third generation “Dutch Indo” Andrea Matthies, 51. Matthies founded the social group Dutch Indos in San Diego in 2014 to connect the large—but fragmented—local Dutch Indonesian community. “Most Indos of my generation grew up in English-speaking households, not really knowing much about their background,” Matthies explains. She wanted to get back in touch with her Dutch Indonesian roots and community. As it turns out, others did too.

But what is Dutch Indonesian is not exactly easy to answer. “It usually takes me about 20 minutes to explain it to someone,” Matthies laughs. Her spiel usually goes something like this: Her grandparents, Herman and Paula MacMootry, immigrated to America in October 1960 with their four teenage children, including Matthies’ mother, Brenda MacMootry-Gruber. The family departed from the Netherlands, but they all had been born in the Dutch East Indies, a former Dutch colony now known as Indonesia.

The MacMootrys were part of a mixed Eurasian community, known as Dutch Indonesians or “Indos.” When Indonesia declared independence from the Netherlands in 1945, the Indo community was violently targeted by nationalist soldiers, and many fled to the Netherlands. But the Netherlands was not the most welcoming place for the nearly 350,000 Dutch Indonesians who moved there. Dutch politicians openly questioned their ability to integrate, and many struggled to find work in the midst of a post-war job shortage.

Families who wanted to move to America initially faced strict visa regulations for Asian immigrants. They had to prove that at least 75 percent of their ancestors were of European descent. But when a major flood hit the Netherlands in the 1950s, a special refugee act opened up tens of thousands of American refugee visas. Although the act was meant for displaced Dutch farmers, the Dutch government put thousands of Dutch Indonesians on the list and actively encouraged more to apply. 

A government film titled Een Plaatsje In De Zon (meaning “a place in the sun”) promoted California as the place to be: a distant paradise “where the sun almost gives a continuous representation of what you have always imagined your new home to be.” San Diego specifically, with its leisurely lifestyle, proximity to Tijuana, and bustling market scenes with fresh produce that Dutch Indonesians knew from back home, would make a fine home. From the late 1950s to early 1960s, about 35,000 Dutch Indonesians packed their bags and left for the United States.

Most Dutch Indonesians adapted to their new life as quickly as possible, speaking English and raising their kids as Americans. But in San Diego, the first ever Indo club in America, the DURF, kept a piece of home alive.

“DURF stands for Dutch Recreational Fellowship,” explains Matthies, who is currently making a documentary about the club with her husband. Friends of Matthies’s family, Fred and Edith Attinger, founded the club in 1961. They organized elaborate dinners, dances, and plays and even invited local politicians to their events.

At its height, DURF had more than 100 members and regularly featured in local media. “My grandmother volunteered in the kitchen and my mother and aunt took part in dances and skits,” Matthies says. She still remembers attending the DURF’s Fourth of July celebration as a child. But as her generation lost interest, membership dwindled. The club folded in 1981.

Matthies eventually began researching her family tree and reconnected to family members in the Netherlands. She learned more about Dutch Indonesian history through The Indo Project, which makes information available for English-speaking Indos. At the annual Holland Festival in Long Beach, she met more Dutch Indonesians who had grown up in the US and began hoping to help the Indo community in San Diego celebrate their heritage.

“I wanted to revive DURF’s spirit with Dutch Indos in San Diego,” Matthies says. What started as a Facebook group where local Indos could connect and exchange stories is now a thriving community with biannual and well-attended kumpulans. Looking at the people gathered in Mission Bay, Matthies feels proud seeing so many honoring their ancestors’ food, music, stories, and love for socializing. 

“Who knows how long all these generations are going to be together in one spot?” she asks. “Now is the time to enjoy it.”

The next Dutch Indos in San Diego kumpulan takes place Sunday, June 9, at Playa II in Mission Bay. For more information, see their Facebook page.

The post How Dutch Indonesians Found Home in San Diego appeared first on San Diego Magazine.

“Nope, 1982! Right after we met,” Mooney yells back.

The couple’s “Nectarball Collection” is one of the most famous urban legends in cannabis culture. It consists of hundreds, possibly thousands, of dried whole cannabis buds dating back to the 1960s and ’70s, including some from now-functionally extinct landrace strains: Acapulco Gold, Colombian Red, the mythical San Diego–born Fallbrook Red. As a longtime cannabis reporter, I had heard whispers of its existence, but I wasn’t sure it was real. Last year, Schulze and Mooney contacted me, introduced themselves, and asked if I wanted to see it.

Schulze and Mooney run Crystal Pyramid Productions, a video production company serving corporate clients. But, privately, since the 1970s, the couple have been growing cannabis in rural areas in and around San Diego County, developing their own strain, also called Nectarball, while amassing this storied botanical library.

I ask Schulze how he got started, and the answer is a mind-boggling piece of San Diego lore. “Well, you know my mom, right? She worked for the city of San Diego, Evonne Schulze?” he asks. “My aunt—Evonne’s sister— passed me the first bud for the collection from her stash.”

Schulze and Mooney came out of the “green closet”—a phrase weed people use to talk about the hidden lives they led not-so-long ago, when cannabis was less legal—in 2016. Now that weed’s more mainstream, Schulze and Mooney feel ready to talk about their renegade pot-growing days. They recently released the Nectarball movie, chronicling the plant’s social, cultural, and medical history. And this is the first time they’ve ever shown their collection publicly.

Their caution, of course, was not misplaced. After all, people would do a lot to get their hands on the couple’s incredible assemblage. But would-be thieves have to get through Schulze and Mooney. They fought off that armed robber back in the ’80s, ensuring that more than half a century of cannabis history stays right here at home.

The post Harvesting San Diego’s Rarest Weed Collection appeared first on San Diego Magazine.

First, we visit the petting zoo, where Fiona bottle-feeds a baby goat whose mom rejected it. Next, we go into the reptile exhibit the 10-year-old helps manage, where she starts opening cages and taking snakes out—some small, some four or five feet long—and wrapping them around her body. She knows all their names, what they eat, and how big they grow.

“This is a king snake, and he can eat other snakes, so if he and a rattlesnake got into a fight, he would win. You want a king snake at your house,” Fiona says confidently.

School looks different out here. And Paisley and Fiona aren’t alone.

According to a Washington Post survey, the number of children who are homeschooled in the San Diego Unified School District increased 129 percent between 2017 and 2023. This is one of the biggest jumps in California. Enrollment at the district’s public schools has fallen 14 percent in the last decade, despite the boost provided by the addition of universal transitional kindergarten—a public pre-K grade level for 4-year-olds—in the 2022–2023 school year.

The Coghills have lived in an RV parked on the farm for nearly two years. Fauna trades work for rent and utilities. The family spends their days together unschooling—a flavor of homeschooling that dictates that children will learn on their own, guided by their interests, without a set curriculum.

“Watching their growth, their learning spurts, has been mind-blowing to me,” Fauna says. “[Learning] just happens. You don’t have to make it happen.”

To be able to homeschool, Fauna has filed a Private School Affidavit with the State of California. She has to renew it every year.

But that’s not the only way to choose an alternative learning path.

In the heart of Clairemont, Jannet Dominguez sits at a table with seven children, telling them what foods can be composted. Each of them has a mason jar, and she helps them put banana peels, coffee grounds, and other kitchen scraps inside. Two of them play with a roly poly, passing it back and forth between their fingers.

“My son was diagnosed with autism [when he was entering kindergarten],” Jannett says. She was not satisfied with her school district’s Individualized Education Program, an education and accommodation plan for children with additional needs. “Something in me just said, ‘Pull them out. Let’s see what’s out there.’”

Jannet enrolled her two kids in a non-classroom-based (NCB) program, where students spend less than 80 percent of their time in a classroom. NBCs vary in instruction models, from independent learning to project-based study and at-home education.

“I have to turn in samples and sort of go by the curriculum for his grade level, but we do our own thing. We learn what he wants to learn,” Jannet says. She also receives funds that can be put toward various educational expenditures, from purchasing materials (printer paper and crayons) to scheduling in-person classes or activities.

Jannet also created Flourish Homeschool Community, a group supporting San Diego families choosing to homeschool. She organizes free park meetups, community classes, and demonstrations on subjects ranging from chess to science.

One day a week, she hosts the Bee Blooming Youth Gardening Program at her home, teaching various subjects and lessons to children ages 18 months to 9 years. But there’s lots of wiggle room: Children can choose not to participate, get up to play, use the bathroom when they feel like it, or have a snack with much more freedom than most of their peers in public school. The Dominguez family has a few gardening beds in their front yard, where the students get hands-on experience and outside time with their friends.

Parents can stay or drop off their children for the four-hour program. One of them, Irene Hernandez, is a single mother with a full-time job in the healthcare sector.

On gardening program days, Irene works from the Dominguez family’s kitchen table on a tablet and takes phone calls outside on the sidewalk. “I’m taking more to the term ‘work-life blend,’” she says. “I can make anything happen as long as I have flexibility on both sides.”

She adds that, even if balancing her career and her kid’s education is, at times, stressful or hard to schedule, growing alongside her child makes it all worth it.

For the Coghills, it’s about giving their kids the freedom to be themselves. At their farm, we finish our tour, walking next to the garden where the family planted lemon verbena and strawberries. Paisley finds an ice plate that formed on a puddle during the overnight freeze. She holds it up, peering at the world through its patterned surface—just like her family is looking at life and childhood through a different lens.

“When we have our babies, we let them crawl and walk and stack blocks when they are ready—until they are 5,” Fauna says. “Then we put them in this box, and we make them learn the colors on Monday and the alphabet on Tuesday, and everybody has to learn the same thing at the same time for 13 years, and then, at 18, we say ‘Go, figure out life, who you want to be or how you want to make decisions.’ What if we didn’t do that? What if we never put them in a box?”

The post San Diego Parents Are Turning to Homeschooling in Record Numbers appeared first on San Diego Magazine.

Then, it’s time for her to wash up and recite her daily affirmations. A paper taped to Waisbord’s bathroom mirror offers at least 40 affirming lines, such as, “I am worthy of my dreams” and, “I have nothing to fear.”

Even after years as a stylist, TV and radio personality, speaker, and businesswoman, Waisbord still needs to remind herself that no dream is too big to accomplish.

Growing up with the traditional values of her Jewish-Mexican-Syrian family, Waisbord was programmed to strive for a happy marriage and children. Even while studying marketing and public relations at San Diego State University, she counted the days until she could create a home of her own and raise a family.

But once she had achieved that goal, Waisbord still longed for something else.

“I was 35 [and thought to myself], If I don’t start a career now, someday I’ll be very sad and very frustrated that I could have done something with my life,” Waisbord recalls.

In 2016, Waisbord set her sights on a job in the styling department at Nordstrom in Fashion Valley—and, though the department wasn’t hiring at the time, her persistence landed her a position a few months later. There, she slowly climbed the ranks, working her way up from stylist to administrator.

A jack-of-all-trends, Waisbord began sharing style tips on her Instagram, @stylewais, first out of the fitting rooms at Nordstrom, and then from her closet at home.

She started to embrace her sexy, out-of-the-box fashion sense and her femininity, age, and outspoken personality, both online and in person. She stopped dyeing her gray hair. Then, after nearly a decade, she left Nordstrom to cultivate her following on social media and start her own business as a stylist.

“Style doesn’t happen if you’re insecure [and] if you’re hiding from the world,” she says.

This fearlessness is obvious as I tour Waisbord’s walk-in closet at her home in Chula Vista. Scouring through at least 200 pairs of shoes and vintage finds from all over the world, Waisbord shows me some of her favorite pieces: neon-orange cowboy boots she wore at Coachella, one-of-a-kind ensembles by Mexican designers like Jorge Sánchez and Alex Medina. There are luxurious items from Paulina Luna, which make Waisbord feel “beautiful and powerful,” she says. Clothes from Panuco offer drama and sophistication. Jeanette Toscano’s bold designs help her turn heads.

“[Your body] is your blank canvas,” she tells me. “You can create anything you want.”

Once she’s put together her outfit of the day, Waisbord snaps a photo of her masterpiece for her 33,000-plus followers on Instagram, sharing styling tips in both English and Spanish.

Thanks to her steady growth on social media, Waisbord—now 49—has landed opportunities her 35-year-old self would have never imagined. She helps clients revive their wardrobes and recently became the co-owner of Mexican accessory brand Uno Mas Uno Mas and the C&L Experience, a styling and fashion promotion business founded in partnership with her friend Catherine Bachelier. She launched a YouTube channel in late 2023 and hosts fashion segments on the Spanish-language network Televisa Californias and on the radio station Pulsar 107.3.

While Waisbord’s style and career continue to transform, her message remains the same. She encourages her community to break the rules, hoping they never feel how she did over a decade ago: uninspired and unfulfilled.

“Have the courage to mess up,” Waisbord advises. “You might mess up. It’s okay. Have the courage to evolve.”

The post From Fashion Valley to Fashion Icon appeared first on San Diego Magazine.

It’s been a long road.

I have been fat all of my life, and it has affected how other people perceive both my femininity and masculinity. For a long time, the self-hatred that so often coincides with having a body outside of society’s norms kept me from examining my gender.

A foray into the fat acceptance movement made me work on low-level, near-constant dissociation from my body—and only then did I realize that the dissonance I felt could not be attributed solely to insecurities about my size. Instead, it became clear, as I accepted my body in theory, that it still was not an ideal home for me, an individual outside the gender binary.

Years later, I have started the medical processes that make my body livable. I have gained and then lost and then gained weight again—all while still working to love myself as I am now, even if I have goals for parts of my body to change in the future.

As I took steps in my transition, I quickly learned that there were few resources for fat, masculine individuals. Local photographer Spencer Pablo’s Instagram page became a refuge where I saw a diverse range of men with different body types celebrated, included, and even desired. I wanted my own space on his Instagram, to be looked at with a lens honoring my body.

Visiting Pablo’s garage studio, I dreamt that he would be able to pull out traits in me I hoped—but wasn’t certain—existed. I was afraid my formerly solely feminine body would always be the one most appreciated by others, not the in-between body I adore. Stripped before the camera, there were no societal expectations or gendered clothing—merely my body. The resulting photos let me see myself as I am, taking up space I deserve under good lighting. I saw strength, vulnerability, self-acceptance, pride—and just a hint of stubble.

Fat and trans people are often haunted by the oversimple narratives of the “before and after” pictures. Typically those “before” pictures are shown in the worst light possible, as a reminder that this is a flawed body. Meanwhile, the “after” photos suddenly have great lighting, makeup, and flattering poses. Most importantly, the facial expression is meant to communicate some newfound joy. The physical transformation must accompany an inner change from misery to peace. For trans people, this can be true to a point, but it still reduces a complex journey to tropes.

Pablo’s photos of me celebrated my fluctuating body during the journey. I am not divided into a before and after. There is not an easy narrative—I was photographed after some hormones and weight gain, before surgery and a complete second puberty. Instead, the photos honored my body as it is now: the place I make a home in, no matter how outside the norm it is.

The post Essay: Finding Home in My Body appeared first on San Diego Magazine.