San Diego, CA

The best things to do this weekend in San Diego: Aug. 2-4

Published

2 years ago

July 31, 2024

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The best things to do this weekend in San Diego: Aug. 2-4

Here are some of the best things to do this weekend in San Diego from Friday, Aug. 2 to Sunday, Aug. 4.

Friday

Latin American Festival and Mata Ortiz Pottery Market: Artists from Mexico, Guatemala, Peru, Ecuador and other Latin American countries will showcase Mexican folk art, traditional clothing and textiles and Mata Ortiz pottery. There will be live music and artist demonstrations of woodcarving, painting and weaving. Admission is free and free parking is available at the Caltrans parking lot across the street after 5 p.m. Friday and all day on Saturday and Sunday. 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday. 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Sunday. Bazaar del Mundo Shops, 4133 Taylor St., Old Town. Free. bazaardelmundo.com/event/latin-american-festival.

First Friday Art Walk: The First Friday Art Walk, a La Jolla Village event, will highlight more than two dozen galleries along with emerging artist pop-ups. Attendees can stroll through galleries and view artwork and enjoy sips and snacks. There is free admission and an all-day parking pass, along with an advance copy of this month’s Art Walk map. 4 to 7 p.m. Aug. 2 at LIK Fine Art La Jolla, 1205 Prospect St. lajollabythesea.com.

‘Rent’ in concert: Vocalists and the San Diego Symphony Orchestra will bring to life musical performances from the Broadway hit, “Rent.” 7:30 p.m. Friday. The Rady Shell at Jacobs Park. Tickets start at $66. theshell.org/performances/rent-in-concert/

Sarah O’Connor solo show: Culture Brewery and Tasting Room will present an exhibition of Pacific Ocean-themed paintings by this San Diego artist titled “Textures of Water and Light: Exploring the Timeless Moment.” Opens Friday and runs through Aug. 31. 111 S. Cedros Ave., Suite 200, Solana Beach. sarahoconnorart.com

Tiki Oasis: For five nights and four days, attendees to this cultural festival can experience live music, DJs, pool lounging, sunset dinners and tropical cocktails. At the Tiki Marketplace, 150 vendors will be selling a unique selection of tiki carvings, fine art, jewelry and vintage clothing all inspired by the tiki charm of the 1960s. Attendees can also immerse themselves in tiki culture at 40 different seminars. Some events are free to the public; check online for details. 8:30 a.m. to 2 a.m. Friday and Saturday; 8:30 a.m. to 11 p.m. Sunday. Town and Country Resort, 500 Hotel Circle North, San Diego. $45-$699. tikioasis.com/ticket

‘Beatles Experience’ at Moonlight: A performance, “Yesterday & Today: The Interactive Beatles Experience,” will be held at 7:30 p.m. Aug. 2 at the Moonlight Amphitheatre, 1250 Vale Terrace Drive. Admission is $22-$45. Visit moonlightstage.com.

Nat at Night: On Fridays in the summer, the Natural History Museum stays open late. Visitors can compete in trivia at 7 p.m. or enjoy food and drinks from Wolf in the Woods. Admission is half-price after 5 p.m. Fridays. San Diego Natural History Museum, 1788 El Prado, San Diego. $12 for adults, $10 for seniors and military, $7 for youth. sdnhm.org/calendar/nat-at-night

Free dance classes at First Friday: As part of First Friday activities at the ARTS DISTRCT in Liberty Station, free dance classes will be available for teens and adults. This month features the Beg Modern style. 5 p.m. Friday. TILTshift Dance, 2650 Truxton Road, San Diego. Free. libertystation.com/events/calendar

Saturday

All American Car Show: The All American Car Show features American cars, imports, classics and new models. The event is presented by the Mopar Club San Diego. Proceeds are donated to a designated charity or charities serving San Diego’s military community, including active-duty service members, reservists, veterans and families. 7:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. Aug. 3 at the Embarcadero Marina Park North, 400 Kettner Blvd., San Diego. moparclubsandiego.net/AACS.main.html.

Library event features pony rides, petting zoo: A Summer Celebration with pony rides and a petting zoo will be hosted as part of the library’s summer reading program. Highlights include crafts for kids. 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Aug. 3 at the Mission Valley Branch Library, 2123 Fenton Parkway. sandiego.gov/public-library/locations/mission-valley-library.

A concert featuring 90s House Party: Kid ‘N Play, Tone Loc, Young MC, & Rob Base will bring a 90s house party to Vista. 7:30 p.m. Saturday. Moonlight Amphitheatre, 1250 Vale Terrace Drive. Admission is $52-$95. Visit moonlightstage.com.

Luann de Lesseps: The “Real Housewives of New York” star brings her “Marry F Kill!” show to El Cajon. 7:30 p.m. Saturday. Magnolia, 210 E Main St., El Cajon. $38.50. magnoliasandiego.com

Sunday

Major League Rugby Championship: Locals who are catching rugby fever from the Olympics can see top athletes in the sport compete in the Major League Rugby Championship on Sunday. The Seattle Seawolves will face off against the New England Free Jacks. There will also be a performance by Marshmello at the game. 1 p.m. Sunday. Snapdragon Stadium, 2101 Stadium Way, San Diego. $34.85. snapdragonstadium.com/events/detail/major-league-rugby-championship

Movies on the Beach at Hotel del Coronado: At the Hotel del Coronado, guests can watch this week’s screening of “Some Like It Hot” by the ocean. The hotel will be setting up an outdoor theater on the beach. General admission guests will be able to watch from the rows of chairs in the sand, while guests who purchase the Roast Family Movie Package, will have a private movie experience which includes a separate bonfire and s’mores. 8 p.m. Wednesday. 1500 Orange Ave, Coronado. General admission is $26.50 and the Roast Family Movie Package is $330. hoteldel.com/events/movies-on-the-beach

David Borgo Quartet to perform: The Friends of the Encinitas Library will host the David Borgo Quartet in a free concert. Saxophonist and composer David Borgo will present selections from his latest album, “Persistence.” The concert also features John Opferkuch on piano, Doug Walker on bass and Richard Sellers on drums. 2 to 3 p.m. Sunday. Encinitas Library, 540 Cornish Drive. Doors open at 1:30 p.m. Visit encinitaslibfriends.org.

Jazz concert features Wayne Shorter tribute: The Chase Morrin Trio will host a free Wayne Shorter tribute concert celebrating jazz saxophonist and composer Wayne Shorter. Morrin, who grew up in San Diego, is a graduate of the New England Conservatory and Harvard. He lives in Boston. 5 p.m. Sunday. Tio Leo’s Mexican Restaurant, 5302 Napa St. chasemorrin.com.

Originally Published: July 31, 2024 at 2:55 p.m.

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San Diego, CA

San Diego Zoo Safari Park’s Elephant Valley: Get closer to elephants

Published

5 hours ago

March 2, 2026

Press Room

San Diego Zoo Safari Park’s Elephant Valley: Get closer to elephants

Todd Martens
| Los Angeles Times

San Diego — Before we see elephants at Elephant Valley in the San Diego Zoo Safari Park, we come face to face with destruction, only the wreckage is beautiful. A long, winding path takes guests around and under felled trees. Aged gray tree hunks form arches, for instance, over bridges that tower over clay-colored paths with hoof prints.

The design is meant to reorient us, to take us on a trail walked not by humans but traversed and carved by elephants, a creature still misunderstood, vilified and hunted for its cataclysmic-like ability to reshape land, and sometimes communities.

“It starts,” says Kristi Burtis, vice president of wildlife care for the Safari Park, “by telling the story that elephants are ecosystem engineers.”

Elephant Valley will open March 5 as the newest experience at the Escondido park, its aim to bring guests closer than ever to the zoo’s eight elephants, which range in age from 7 to 36, while more heavily focusing on conservation. The centerpiece of the 13-acre-plus parkland is a curved bridge overlooking a savanna, allowing elephants to walk under guests. But there are also nooks such as a cave that, while not previewed at a recent media event, will allow visitors to view elephants on their level.

In a shift from, say, the Safari Park’s popular tram tour, there are no fences and visible enclosures. Captive elephants remain a sometimes controversial topic, and the zoo’s herd is a mix of rescues and births, but the goal was to create a space where humans are at once removed and don’t impede on the relative free-roaming ability of the animals by keeping guests largely elevated. As an example of just how close people can get to the herd, there was a moment of levity at the event when one of the elephants began flinging what was believed to be a mixture of dirt and feces up onto the bridge.

“Our guests are going to be able to see the hairs on an elephant,” Burtis says. “They can see their eyes. They can see the eyelashes. They can see how muscular their trunks are. It’s really going to be a different experience.”

Elephant Valley, complete with a multistory lodge with open-air restaurants and bars, boasts a natural design that isn’t influenced by the elephant’s African home so much as it is in conversation with it. The goal isn’t to displace us, but to import communal artistry — Kenyan wood and beadwork can be found in the pathways, resting spaces and more — as a show of admiration rather than imitation.

“We’re not going to pretend that we’re taking people to Africa,” says Fri Forjindam, now a creative executive with Universal’s theme parks but previously a lead designer on Elephant Valley via her role as a chief development officer at Mycotoo, a Pasadena-based experiential design firm.

“That is a slippery slope of theming that can go wrong really fast,” she adds. “How do we recognize where we are right now, which is near San Diego? How do we populate this plane with plants that are indigenous to the region? The story of coexistence is important. We’re not extracting from Africa, we’re learning. We’re not extracting from elephants, we’re sharing information.”

But designing a space that is elephant-first yet also built for humans presented multiple challenges, especially when the collaborating teams were aiming to construct multiple narratives around the animals. Since meetings about Elephant Valley began around 2019, the staff worked to touch on themes related to migration and conservation. And there was also a desire to personalize the elephants.

“Where can we also highlight each of the elephants by name, so they aren’t just this huge herd of random gray creatures?” Forjindam says. “You see that in the lodge.”

That lodge, the Mkutano House — a phrase that means “gathering” in Swahili — should provide opportunities for guests to linger, although zoo representatives say reservations are recommended for those who wish to dine in the space (there will also be a walk-up, to-go window). Menus have yet to be released, but the ground floor of the structure, boasting hut-like roofing designed to blend into the environment, features close views of the elephant grazing pool as well as an indoor space with a centerpiece tree beneath constellation-like lighting to mimic sunrises and sunsets.

Throughout there are animal wood carvings and beadwork, the latter often hung from sculptures made of tree branches. The ceiling, outfitted with colorful, cloth tapestries designed to move with the wind, aims to create less friction between indoor and outdoor environments.

There are, of course, research and educational goals of the space as well. The Safari Park works, for instance, with the Northern Rangelands Trust and Loisaba Conservancy in Kenya, with an emphasis on studying human-elephant conflict and finding no-kill resolutions. Nonprofits and conservation groups estimate that there are today around 415,000 elephants in Africa, and the African savanna elephant is listed as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

Studies of the zoo’s young elephants is shared with the Reteti Elephant Sanctuary in the hopes of delivering care to elephant youth to prevent orphanage. Additionally, the Safari Park has done extensive examination into the endotheliotropic herpes virus. “The data that we collect from elephants here, you can’t simply get from elephants in the wild,” Burtis says.

One of the two entrances to Elephant Valley is outfitted with bee boxes; bees are known to be a natural elephant deterrent and can help in preventing the animals from disrupting crops or communities. To encourage more natural behavior, the plane is outfitted with timed feeders in an attempt to encourage movement throughout the acreage and establish a level of real-life unpredictability in hunting for resources. Water areas have been redesigned with ramps and steps to make it easier for the elephants to navigate.

With Elephant Valley, Forjindam says the goal was to allow visitors to “observe safely in luxury — whatever that is — but not from a position of power, more as a cohabitor of the Earth, with as much natural elements as possible. It’s not to impose dominance. Ultimately, it needed to feel natural. It couldn’t feel like a man-made structure, which is an antiquated approach to any sort of safari experience where animals are the product, a prize. In this experience, this is the elephant’s home.”

And the resulting feel of Elephant Valley is that we, the paying customers, are simply their house guests.

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San Diego, CA

Man fatally struck by hit-and-run vehicle in San Diego

Published

18 hours ago

March 2, 2026

Press Room

Man fatally struck by hit-and-run vehicle in San Diego

A man in the Mission Bay Park community of San Diego was fatally struck Sunday morning by a hit-and run vehicle, authorities said.

The victim was also struck by a second vehicle and that motorist stayed at the scene to cooperate with officers, the San Diego Police Department reported.

The initial crash occurred at about 2:20 a.m. Sunday in the area of West Mission Bay and Sea World drives.

The pedestrian was in the southbound lanes of the 2000 block of West Mission Bay Drive when he was struck by a silver vehicle also in the southbound lanes. That vehicle fled the scene, continuing southbound, police said.

A 28-year-old man driving his vehicle southbound ran over the downed pedestrian.

“That driver remained at the scene and is not DUI,” according to a police statement. “The pedestrian was pronounced deceased at the scene.”

Anyone with information regarding the initial crash was urged to call Crime Stoppers at 888-580-8477.

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San Diego, CA

Here are the 9 San Diego County communities that set or tied heat records

Published

1 day ago

March 1, 2026

Press Room

Here are the 9 San Diego County communities that set or tied heat records

San Diego County is known for having wet, cold weather in February. But it had numerous hot spells this year. And when the month ended on Saturday a high pressure system produced heat that broke or tied temperature records in nine communities from the desert to the sea, the National Weather Service said.

The most notable temperature occurred in Borrego Springs, which reached 99, five degrees higher than the previous record for Feb. 28, set in 1986. The 99 reading is also the highest temperature ever recorded in Borrego in February.

Escondido reached 95, tying a record set in 1901.

El Cajon reached 92, three degrees higher than the record set in 2009.

Ramona topped out at 88, five degrees higher than the record set in 2009.

Alpine hit 88, four degrees higher the record set in 1986.

Campo reached 87, four degrees higher than the record set in 1999.

Vista hit 86, four degrees higher than the record set in 2020.

Chula Vista reached 84, one degree higher than the record set in 2020.

Lake Cuyamaca rose to 76, four degrees higher than the record set in 1986.

Forecasters say the weather is not likely to broadly produce new highs on Sunday. Cooler air is moving to the coast, and on Monday, San Diego’s high will only reach 67, a degree above normal.

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