San Diego, CA
The best things to do this weekend in San Diego: Feb. 27 to March 1
Here are some of the best things to do this weekend in San Diego from Friday, Feb. 27 to Sunday, March 1.
Friday
Pokemon Day Extravaganza: The 30th anniversary of Pokemon will be the source of a celebration this weekend at the Central Library. Head to the IDEA Lab for prizes, a sewing project, a scavenger hunt and a terrarium craft. 1 to 5 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Free. sandiego.librarymarket.com/event/celebrate-pokemon-day-356171
Circus: Circus Vargas is bringing a new production to National City. Masquerade is described by event organizers as a show that transports guests to an “alternate, other-worldly dimension.” Performances and stunts are delivered by international acrobats and clowns during music and light shows. After National City, the circus will move on to Escondido from March 13 to April 6, Temecula from April 10 to 27 and San Clemente from May 1 to 18. Friday through Monday, Wednesday through March 9. 3030 Plaza Bonita Road, National City. $25-$90. circusvargas.com
Bingo Loco: The interactive live game show and concert Bingo Loco returns to San Diego. The event is packed with lip sync battles, prizes and giveaways, dance competitions, a comedian and DJs playing club classics from the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s. Bingo Loco is an ages 21-and-older gathering. 5:30 to 9:30 p.m. Friday. Quartyard, 1301 Market St., San Diego. $35. us.bingoloco.com/san-diego
San Diego Symphony Brahms Festival: The orchestra, under the baton of Music and Artistic Director Rafael Payare, will present five concerts from Fridayt through March 7 celebrating the works of German composer Johannes Brahms. This weekend, Brahms’ A German Requiem will be performed at 7:30 p.m. Friday and 2 p.m. Sunday. Also, at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Brahms’ Symphonys Nos. 1 and 2 wil be performed. Jacobs Music Center, 750 B. Street, downtown. $30-$108. 619-235-0804, sandiegosymphony.org
Final weekend for Museum Month: Throughout February, locals can visit over 70 museums, gardens, aquariums, parks and historic sites at a discounted rate. The public can receive their 50% admission discounts by picking up free printed museum passes at about 80 public libraries throughout San Diego County. Digital passes can be downloaded directly to smartphones on the San Diego Museum Council website: sandiegomuseumcouncil.org
“Somewhere Over the Border”: Cygnet Theatre presents the San Diego premiere of Brian Quijada’s musical about a young Salvadoran woman’s journey to America, with characters and situations inspired by “The Wizard of Oz.” 7 p.m. Wednesdays through Fridays; 2 and 7 p.m. Saturdays; 2 p.m. Sundays. Through March 15. The Joan, 2880 Roosevelt Road, Arts District Liberty Station, San Diego. $44 and up. 619-337-1525, cygnettheatre.org
“The ’70s! The Golden Age of the Album”: Lamb’s Players Theatre is bringing back its hit 2025 music revue of the greatest songs of the 1970s. 7 p.m. Wednesdays-Fridays; 2 Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays. Through April 12. Old Town Theatre, 4040 Twiggs St., San Diego. $49-$98. 619-437-6000, lambsplayers.org
“The Book of Will”: Lamplighters Community Theatre presents Lauren Gunderson’s historical fiction comedy about William Shakespeare’s friends and fellow actors John Heminges nad Henry Condell who collected and published his plays in the First Folio after the Bard’s death. Opens Friday and runs through March 22. 7:30 p.m. Fridays; 2 p.m. Sundays; select performances on Saturdays. 5915 Severin Drive, La Mesa. $28-$30. 619-303-5092, lamplighterslamesa.com
“Hedda Gabler”: The Old Globe presents Katie Holmes in Henrik Ibsen’s classic drama, in a new version by playwright Erin Cressida Wilson. 7 p.m. Tuesdays-Fridays; 2 and 8 p.m. Saturdays; 2 and 7 p.m. Sundays. Through March 22. The Old Globe, 1363 Old Globe Way, Balboa Park, San Diego. $61 and up. 619-234-5623, theoldglobe.org
Winter Olympics poster display: In honor of the 2026 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games in Milan-Cortino, Italy, Point Loma Nazarene University has installed in its Ryan Library a temporary exhibit of historical artists’ posters from its Carolyn W. Thomas Memorial Olympic Poster Collection. The display features Winter Games posters from the same region of Italy from both 1956 and 2026. The exhibit will be on display at least through March. Ryan Library, Point Loma Nazarene University, 3900 Lomaland Drive, San Diego. 619-849-2385, pointloma.edu
“The Gin Game”: Music&Arts@3rd&Ash will present a concert reading of D.L. Coburn’s tragicomedy “The Gin Game.” 7 p.m. Friday. First Lutheran Church, 1420 Third Ave., San Diego. $20 donation. 619-234-6149.
“The Trip to Bountiful”: Lamb’s Players Theatre presents Horton Foote’s drama about an elderly woman who takes a trip back to her childhood hometown to reconnect with fond memories from her past. 7 p.m. Friday; 2 and 7 p.m. Saturday; 2 p.m. Sunday. 1142 Orange Ave., Coronado. $39-$78. 619-437-6000, lambsplayers.org
“The Recipe”: La Jolla Playhouse presents the world premiere of Claudia Shear’s play about the life of chef and author Julia Child before she rose to TV fame. 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays-Fridays; 2 and 8 p.m. Saturdays; 1 and 7 p.m. Sundays. Extended hrough March 29. La Jolla Playhouse, 2910 La Jolla Village Drive, UCSD campus. 858-550-1010, lajollaplayhouse.org
“A Conversation with Edith Head”: Moxie Theatre presents La Jolla actor-playwright Susan Claassen in her play about the Hollywood legency, who won eight Academy Awards and 35 nominations for her movie costume designs. 7:30 p.m. today; 2 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday; 2 p.m. Sunday. Moxie Theatre, 6663 El Cajon Blvd., Stuite N, Rolando, San Diego. $20-$51. 858-598-7620, moxietheatre.com
“Beetlejuice”: This national touring production of this comedy musical is about a demon trying to trick a family into freeing him from death. 8 p.m. today; 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday; 1 and 6:30 p.m. Sunday. San Diego Civic Theatre, 1100 Third Ave., downtown. $47-$245. broadwaysd.com
“How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying”: San Diego Musical Theatre presents the 1961 Frank Loesser satirical workplace about a wily window-washer who schemes his way to the top of a company. 7 p.m. Friday; 2 and 7 p.m. Saturday; 2 p.m. Sunday. San Diego Musical Theatre, 4650 Mercury St., Kearny Mesa. $49-$69. 858-560-5740, sdmt.org
Saturday
San Diego Bird Festival: Learn all about local birds and their habitats during two free community days at the San Diego Bird Festival. Guests will get to see some of the various bird species that live and roam in our region via workshops, classes and keynote speakers. Some of the programs include talks about bird species, flight paths, light pollution, bird watching and a live painting demonstration. There will also be exhibitors with information about San Diego’s wildlife, live music and food vendors. 8:30 a.m. to 5:45 p.m. Saturday. 8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sunday. Marina Village Conference Center, 1936 Quivira Way, San Diego. Free. sandiegobirdfestival.org/free-days
San Diego—North County Lunar New Year Festival: The Hong Konger Club and Oceanside Public Library are collaborating on a new Lunar New Year celebration for North County. The event will feature a lion dance, giveaways, live performances, crafts and other activities. Noon to 5 p.m. Feb. 28. Oceanside Civic Center Library Community Rooms. Free. thehongkongclub.com
San Diego Chinese New Year Fair: The Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association has been hosting this fair since 1983. This year’s theme is: “When ten thousand horses move as one, everyone rejoices.” Locals can enter an art contest through Feb. 18. 10 to 5 p.m. Feb. 28-March 1. 428 3rd Ave., San Diego. Free. SDCNY.org
“Straddle”: Diversionary Theatre presents the world premiere of Harrison David Rivers’ play about a long-married lesbian couple who are struggling to get their romantic spark back. Opens Saturday and runs through March 15. 7 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays; 2 p.m. Sundays. Diversionary Theatre, 4545 Park Blvd., University Heights. $11.50-$61.50. 619-220-0097, diversionary.org
“Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”: Backyard Renaissance Theatre presents Edward Albee’s 1962 drama about a New England college professor and his wife invite who a young faculty member and his wife over for a night of drinking, dancing and debauchery. Previews Saturday through March 6. Opens March 7 and runs through March 21. 7:30 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays; 3 p.m. Sundays. Tenth Avenue Arts Center. 930 Tenth Avenue, San Diego. $50. backyardrenaissance.com
SACRA/PROFANA: This professional choral ensemble will present “The Infinite and the Divine,” a concert program of choral works from different cultures and eras. 7 p.m. Saturday. San Dieguito United Methodist Church, 170 Calle Magdalena, Encinitas. $15 – $40. sacraprofana.org
Camarada Tango Quartet presents “The Art of Tango”: The San Diego ensemble performs the music of Piazzolla and many others with bandoneon player Pablo Jaurena, tango historian Ignacio Varchausky and tango dancers Carolina Jaurena and Anton Domansky. 7:30 p.m. Saturday. Baker-Baum Concert Hall, The Conrad, 7600 Fay Ave., La Jolla. $28-$98. /theconrad.org/events/25-26-camarada_art-of-tango-ii/
Sunday
Carlsbad Flower Fields: Flower enthusiasts can rejoice once again as the Flower Fields at Carlsbad Ranch opens for its 10-week spring showcase this week. New this year to the 55-acre venue are weekly local pop-up vendors selling drinks and sweets, a 1,000 square foot greenhouse filled with butterflies and an outdoor music concert series featuring bands and singers such as Michele Lundeen, Cool Rush and Bayou Brothers. Attractions coming back this year are meditation and sound healing classes, wine tasting, tractor wagon rides, a sweet pea maze, blueberry picking and yoga classes. Sunday through May 10. 5704 Paseo Del Norte, Carlsbad. $17-$57. 760-431-0352, theflowerfields.com
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.
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.
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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