Step off cheesy regular burgers, Pechanga Resort Casino can tell Jose Mendoza is going for the glory as the only local chef dishing it out in the prestigious participating in the James Beard Foundation’s 2019 Blended Burger Project. The competition, which has drawn burger entries from 266 chefs nationwide, asks restaurants to create a menu burger that is made with at least 25 percent chopped…
On July 4 and 5, two major earthquakes, followed by several thousand smaller ones, struck Southern California. Their size and the damage they caused captured attention around the country. What tends to get much less notice from the public is what can be done to prevent catastrophic damage from big quakes. Had the epicenter of these latest large California earthquakes been closer to downtown Los…
With all the talk of how great the economy is and how anybody who wants a job can get a job, San Diego County’s neighbor to the east is suffering from sky-high unemployment numbers. To visit California’s Imperial Valley is to enter a sleepy place worlds away from the glamorous boom towns of California’s coast. Pickups outnumber BMWs. Vast farms irrigated by the Colorado River…
The California Assembly voted Thursday, April 25 to ban gun and ammunition sales at the Del Mar Fairgrounds in San Diego County, one of two legislative efforts to ban gun shows on state property. Assembly members Todd Gloria, D-San Diego, and Tasha Boerner-Horvath, D-Encinitas, introduced the bill in February. Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, D-San Diego, added her name as a co-author earlier this month. The bill…
Many invasive species are found along U.S. coasts, including fishes, crabs, mollusks and marsh grasses. Since the general opinion is that invasives are harmful, land managers and communities spend a lot of time and resources attempting to remove them. Often this happens before much is known about their actual effects, either good or bad. The common reed Phragmites australis is a tall perennial grass with…
Ah, Avocados; it’s been a tough month, but Henry Avocado Corp. is back from a listeria recall and so far, no Trump border closure. His threatened U.S.-Mexico border closure would mean no avocados on store shelves within three week, according to experts. With all the controversy, however, avocado prices jumped higher than an NBA all-star at the dunking competition. Prices have remained higher than usual…
There was a method to the madness of presenting San Francisco legend Herb Caen’s three-dot lounge history along with its various re-interpretations. That was to set up Escondido Grapevine’s own three-dot lounge approach to local and state news. For more about the concept, visit our story here. For more local three-dot news, keep on trucking below… Time to get smART at the Seventh Annual Escondido Youth…
Both celebration – and ire – followed Gov. Gavin Newsom’s announcement of a moratorium on the death penalty in California. California’s 737 death row inmates constitute more than a quarter of the national number. Keeping them on death row costs $150 million a year more than sentencing them to life without parole. California’s death penalty has been at an impasse for decades. The state has…
Anything following an ellipsis is a friend of mine for the night. It’s code for ‘you didn’t hear it from me, but. … ‘” — Mark Pargas, “A Visit to the Three-Dot Lounge” It’s been over 20 years since famed San Francisco journalist Herb Caen (1916-1997) died. For journalists and San Franciscans, Caen was a superstar. Known as “Mr. San Francisco,” his columns were a…
SDSU researchers examine the effects of shrinking water supplies in the Imperial-Mexicali Valley. Whenever it rained, six-year-old Trent Biggs would get in trouble for digging ditches in the school playground. “I just liked watching water flow around,” he explained. He still does. Now a San Diego State University geography professor, Biggs leads water-use studies from the Himalayan foothills of Nepal to the Amazon rainforests of…