San Diego Magazine

How long has East Village been on the cusp of greatness? You could trace its evolution to the opening of Petco Park’s opening in 2004, followed by a steady stream of arrivals that helped reshape the area:

A clinical trial for an innovative new type of replacement heart valve that doesn’t require open-heart surgery saved John Rufo’s life. The 65-year-old biomedical engineer had been living day to day with severe aortic regurgitation, which forces the heart to work harder and weaken over time. Without replacing the aortic valve in his heart, John wouldn’t have survived long. But...

An embarrassing admission to start: At one time in my life, I considered skaters to be a feral nuisance at best, a rebellious menace at worst. I was annoyed at how they turned public spaces into personal playgrounds, taking over handrails, park benches, ledges, and stairs. I wanted a peaceful, bird-chirpy world without a kid-rocket in oversized clothes whizzing by, flipping a...

The Perfect Order: summer salad rolls, field of greens pizza, half roasted chicken

It’s been a pretty wild ride for arugula. Ancient Roman poet Virgil hailed the curvy leaf as an aphrodisiac, which is pretty hard to trust. Humans have had a real long list of turn-on foods. Either they were exceptional horndogs, or food was such a crapshoot back then...

In 2003, Treg Derry opened Luna Video Games in Ocean Beach, making good on a plan that he’d had since he was 15. Growing up in Minneapolis, Derry wasn’t allowed to own video games, so he got his fix at friends’ houses and eventually sta...