Robynn Nussbaum put her heart and soul into The Shoe Lounge. It was a small, yet elegant, haute couture footwear and accessory store she opened at Del Rayo Plaza across from Fairbanks Country Club. An avid tri-athlete and marathon runner with three young children and four step-children, the 44-year-old Rancho Santa Fe resident had a passion for shoes. She dreamed for years of opening an…
They say you can’t fight city hall, but what happens when city hall fights you? And for dubious reasons to say the least. “I don’t understand why the city of San Marcos is doing this to me,” said longtime Twin Oaks animal rescue and ranch center owner Shera Sandwell, walking among her horses and community-friendly 10-acre open space this week. “I have been providing, and…
Reptiles may like to heat up, but in the case of Escondido’s EcoVivarium living museum, life may be getting way too cold for comfort for the snakes and such due to a mounting electric bill. It’s a constant challenge keeping these cold-blooded suckers warm and kicking. Operators of the 13-year-old private non-profit 10,200-square foot museum at 641 E. Pennsylvania Ave. issued an “emergency plea” for…
In “an extremely rare occurrence,” a pregnant male seadragon made history at a La Jolla aquarium. The weedy seadragon’s pregnancy marks “the first successful transfer of eggs from a female seadragon to a male” at the Seadragons & Seahorses habitat at the Birch Aquarium at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego, a Jan. 9 news release from the aquarium said. “We’re elated to…
Erickson-Hall Construction has broken ground of new football stadium and softball fields of Palomar College at San Marcos, California. The $22.8 million facilities were designed by HMC Architects and funded by the $694 million Proposition M (Maintain & Modernize Palomar College) which was approved by voters in Nov. 2006. The proposition was passed for $694 million to be given to Palomar College in a series…
Former tennis prodigy, model and TV presenter Maria Victoria “Vick” Vannucci lived through the photograph, then figuratively died by the photograph. Former owner and chef at Normal Heights’ Pachamama Restaurant, Vannucci pursues a new socially aware image featuring her tale of personal redemption centering on giving back to the community and educating people about healthy food and animal conservation. “My story is a special story,”…
Not a lot of us are left, Doart Shoe Repair owner Lucia Capuano says before jumping out of her lunch to wait on yet another customer. Capuano’s talking cobblers, not customers. A steady stream of the latter enter the 35-year-old fixture at 103 S Broadway, just south of the 100 block of W Grand Avenue, constantly interrupting her attempt to lunch. Not to worry, time…
Applying an international twist to the American Dream, the globe-trotting French native Aymerick Rondeau, 44, now scours the world for authentic 1960s Scandinavian mid-century modern furniture, bringing it all back to his San Marcos warehouse and home. Like Cher and Oprah, the effervescent Rondeau is known by first name only as Aymerick. He followed the sun as a young man working in the hospitality industry…
As a Cal State San Marcos professor of history, of course, Jill Watts is also a student of history. Watts knew that many U.S. history textbooks, in the all-important pages about the hugely consequential Franklin Delano Roosevelt presidency, make passing references to what the black press of the day coined the “Black Cabinet,” an unofficial group of African-American advisers to FDR as he navigated the politics of the Great Depression and the New…
The year 2023 began with a historic bang — record precipitation and disastrous flooding throughout much of California. Parched watersheds soaked up the first rains, but soon became waterlogged. Runoff accelerated. Sodden hillsides collapsed. Rural levees burst and rivers spilled their banks. Towns went underwater. People died. Meanwhile, the Pacific Ocean continued to whip up more atmospheric rivers and “bomb cyclones,” and one after another,…