Lofty Coffee Cafe and Bakery, Little Italy

Finally, the weekend is here...

(Condo construction along Columbia St. in Little Italy)

Bert and I had a few hours free this morning since TC was at a sports event which we would later attend...

I read that Encinitas based roaster, Lofty Coffee had just opened this past Thursday in Little Italy...

City Heights Coffee House revisit + breakfast at Saigon on Lunar New Year

After having had pretty nasty weather for the past few weeks...the sun decided to come out this weekend.

Last time we tried coming here, they were closed for the Thanksgiving weekend...

This time, the place was open...

"Freedom" mural at Einstein Academy + Beth Emmerich utility boxes

From Golden Hill, we made our way to neighboring South Park...

we were in search of a particular mural by Gloria Muriel on Beech Street but could't find it...

Painted utility boxes near Duet Coffee

Earlier this month, I met up with Cathy of mmm-yoso...

We had breakfast at the nearby Daily Grind Cafe and headed to this strip mall westward on ECB so we could have coffee at Duet.

Drinks & Charcuterie board @ Holsem Coffee + BSW and windowshopping @ Local Made, pigment & Verbatim Books

Our last stop of D's birthday food crawl was here in North Park...

We went to BSW (Beauty Supply Warehouse) so I could get a styrofoam head and wig cap for my Halloween costume. That place is chock full of everything you can imagine for makeup, nail polish, hair products, you name it.

There is a mock "new" neon sign above Holsem. It wasn't there until recently. It pays homage to the former tenant of this space, a cobbler/shoe repair shop.
Update as of 9/1/2/16 - Here is a great article I found about the return of this vintage neon sign. It was actually resurrected and is now back. The design is of a shoe hammering elf. Every time he hammers the shoe, he "winks". It was originally designed  in 1949 for Wink's Shoe Repair in downtown San Diego. The last tenants of this particular building were Chito's Shoe Repair, which relocated to Lincoln Ave close by.  I've got to see this sign at night!
Article:
"The neon elf returns!" SD Uptown News, Sept. 9, 2016

Is it wierd that I notice or care about stuff like this? Inquiring minds want to know (and my persistence and curiosity paid off)...

Tostadas

So far I've been enjoying fall break...

especially since I get to spend quality time with TC...

Babycakes

After our lunch at Pink Noodles, we walked a few blocks away to our dessert destination...

Above is street art on the side of a wall somewhere in Hillcrest...

Rosie Lee's

[Update - Rosie Lee's closed earlier this year]

TC and I tried going here a few months ago not knowing Rosie Lee's was closed on Mondays. This establishment caught my eye because the FoodBlogger bakesale last May featured a gift basket from Rosie Lee's. Plus, they had a way cool mod looking postcard.

Rosie Lee is not the name of the owner but rather is Cockney Rhyming Slang for the phrase "cup of tea"...

Closed on Mondays!

I wanted to check out Rosie Lee's, a British import store on Park Blvd. I remember getting one of their postcards from the SD Foodblogger's bake sale last month. After our lunch at Barrio Star, I drove up 5th into the heart of Hillcrest...

Tokidoki at Yogurtland and It's It from Vons!

We headed back towards the Vons parking lot where we left our cars earlier to the mercy of El Cajon Blvd. C was kind enough to drive us all over town that day.

Here is a painted greenbox on the corner of Montezuma Drive and College Avenue.

Foodcrawl with Bert - Star Dust Donuts

During the second week of my spring break, Bert was able to take a few days off, which was nice. We hardly ever get to go to lunch during a weekday because of our work schedules.  TC was happily ensconced in Archery Camp so we took advantage of these huge blocks of time. Wow, we had time to go places!

So, we headed down South and took Palm Avenue over to IB...

There ya go...

And as luck would have it, Star Dust Donuts was open! Yay! It was about 11 am. The other times we'd tried going were on Saturdays at 10 am and they were closed both times. Incidentally, this view of the sign is a slightly different angle than the one featured on the album cover of an acquaintance's newest cd, "West Zoopolis"(2010) - featuring John Czjakowski (guitars, sequencing, etc) and German wunder drummer Marco Minneman. I can't even describe the cd's musical style (just click that West Zoopolis link) but it's really cool to listen to.

Here;s the album cover:

Star Dust is owned by two brothers who took over the shop years ago from their parents. Here's one of them bagging our donuts (some photos are out of sequence). We saw that they had their famous cinnamon rolls there. I'd read the yelp reviews that sometimes people order dozens at a time. We just got three.

I ordered three cinammon rolls, one old fashioned, one chocolate frosted, and one glazed, plus a coffee for Bert.

They basically open when they feel like it but they have a loyal fanbase that will wait for them.

Their equipment as seen through the window...

Our half dozen donuts...wait, there's only five!

Here it is, the missing cinnamon roll, as bitten by Bert. We liked how these weren't those big ginormous Cinnabon sized rolls. This was petite compared to those but they tasted much better. I liked the size and the fact that there wasn't a thick slathering of frosting on the top. The frosting is actually embedded within and throughout the donut. I could see how people could get addicted to these. I don't even like cinnamon either. But yeah, people order dozens of these at a time, sometimes cockblocking people behind them in line who want the same thing, leaving them S.O.L.

I enjoyed this old fashioned...I realized that we had our dessert first before we had any actual food that morning!

Here's another view of them thar' donuts...

I also wanted to note that the donuts were bagged. The styrofoam box was ours. I put these in here so they could have more "space to breathe" as well as in preparation for any leftovers we were expecting later today.

Painted utility box at the gas station on the corner of Palm and Saturn. There are so many painted green boxes here. Being in IB, many of them had beach themes (dolphins, fish, palm trees, surfers), or flowers, or in this case, horses. There are more horse painted boxes near La Victoria Taco shop and on the gas station on corner of Coronado Ave near the 5 freeway.

We were going to head slightly north on the 5.

Who else had Star Dust Donuts?
Darlene from My Burning Kitchen went here back in 2009
and all of these yelp reviews.

Next stop, Main Street...but for what?

South Bay Food Crawl - San Ysidro: McDonald's Massacre Memorial & the Southwestern College Higher Education Center

Although my post names include "South Bay Food Crawl", we only hit up about 5 places for actual food. The trivia hunter in me also threw in a few non-food places as well. Dennis actually joked about visiting a gun or pawn shop. Hey, if you're serious dude, there's a few of those down south that we can "check out"!

So, after the Wing, we headed south on Dairy Mart Road to San Ysidro Blvd.

For those of you that are native San Diegans, you may remember this tragedy, the San Ysidro McDonald's Massacre...

On July 18, 1984, a crazed gunman, James Huberty opened fire at a San Ysidro McDonald's. He killed 21 people (ranging in age from a baby to young kids, teens and older adults) before he was shot and killed by  S.W.A.T. I remember it was a hot day that summer. My brother and two of his friends had gone bike riding. When they came home, one of the moms said, "Don't go out! There's a crazy guy shooting up a McDonald's!". Sure enough, on the news were vivid helicopter images of the McDonald's (not the one near us on Palm) in San Ysidro. We were not allowed to go out and instead were glued to the TV watching the events unfold.

One of our good friends, Tatonka (who lived in San Ysidro at the time) recently told Bert that he WAS there at McD's that day biking with friends, except he left one hour before it happened. When he arrived home, his father asked him where he and his friends went and did a gruff headcount, saw that everyone was there and calmly went back into the house. I had chills when Bert told me about this.

After the McDonald's tragedy, Joan Kroc, the widow of Ray Kroc ordered the restaurant to be torn down. Nearly a decade later, in 1990, the Southwestern College Higher Education Center was built along with a memorial sculpture dedicated to those whose lives were lost in the tragedy. There are 21 hexagonal columns, each representing a victim. The varying heights represent the different ages of the victims.
It was really a sobering moment to stand here and reflect upon the terribly sad past of this venue. However, it was also uplifting to see a center of higher education especially in this impoverished community. I think it is a fitting tribute to have a satellite campus of SWC at the site.

The center even had some painted utility boxes!

I liked this one with the San Diego Trolley!

Articles about the San Ysidro McDonald's Massacre and it's aftermath:
"20 Years Later, San Ysidro Massacre Remembered" (North County Times)
"Teenage cook shot by Huberty in 1984 now a San Diego Police Officer" (S.D. Union Tribune)
"Slaughter at McDonald's changed how police operate" (CNN)

Articles about the Memorial:
After a Long Wair, Monument is Dedicated at Massacre Site (L.A. Times)
"Bouquets on memorial mark 25th anniversary of massacre" (Signon San Diego)

Wanting to end on a happier note, we headed up  the 5 for our last stop...

Off the Record on University

Off the Record is a used records/CD store on University near the North Park sign. Turns out that the Hillcrest location closed years ago. This is the only Off the Record now.

Painted green box right next to Off the Record.

I wasn't looking to get anything; it was more of a look-see...

The guy in the corner was sorting cd's; he was the sole employee there. Whatever music he was playing was pretty cool. I should have asked him what it was. I remember asking an employee at the old Off the Record on El Cajon what was on and it turned out to be the Rutles, a British parody band of the Beatles (check out their mockumentary, "All You Need is Cash"! It's classic! Plus it has Eric Idle playing the Paul McCartney character). This was pre-internet (probably 1992 or 1993) and I had to special order the damn cd for $13.99 and pick it up at the Hillcrest location. I'll never forget that day because it was raining and I got a fkg parking ticket while parked in front of David's Place (a coffee shop that used to be next to the Brass Rail gay bar).

I didn't take too many shots in here but I had to take one of this wall of old soul/R'n'B records.

So it was just a look see kinda visit. This place is smaller than the Hillcrest Off the Record. They also had lots of LP's there. No cassettes, ha ha. The cd's ranged in prince from $4.99 (used) to $16.99 (new). still I like M-Theory in Mission Hills since they had that 2 for 1 deal going last Fall.

View of the store as we were leaving (we parked two blocks away and headed up 29th):

A free Record Collectors newspaper I picked up while at Off the Record featuring Stones guitarist Keef Richards. It's a wonder he's still alive after all these years. Now he's just known to the youngsters as Captain Jack Sparrow's father in the 3rd installment of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies.\

[Update 2/24: I finally had a chance to leaf through this magazine and it's pretty cool. I didn't realize there were tons of record stores in LA! The Bay Area also has some good ones like Amoeba and Rasputin. Sadly, the only ones mentioned in San Diego were Record Heaven and Lou's with nary a mention for Off the Record or M-Theory. The article on Keith Richards was pretty good too. I could tell the mag was definitely for audiophiles and record lovers. In the late 80's, I bought a pin from Rhino Records with a design on it for "Save the LP". Vinyl seems to be making a comeback too and not just for Dj's.]

All the record stores I used to go to are gone: Licorice Pizza (I'm showing my age here), Blue Meannie (in El Cajon), Tower Records in the College Area (and later in La Jolla)...Sigh.

Song currently playing as I post this:
"Drive My Car" by the Beatles from the album "Rubber Soul".
Actually the whole album has been playing. I had to endure the Bieber earlier (TC's choice), then I got to put on "Hard Day's Night" which segued into "Rubber Soul". Seems like the Biebster is unable to sing without the help of Autotune. Unfortunate. A lot of these singers use Autotune and they all sound the same, robotic and boring. Whatever happened to real singing and actual musicanship? Sigh.

Okay, song playing as I sign off from this post:
"Norwegian Wood" - The first Beatles song that featured the sitar (played by George Harrison/taught by Ravi Shankar/father of Norah Jones), it was also a lilting ballad about Lennon's extramarital infidelities.

Xooro

[Closed  as of this year, 2012, and newly reopened as another dessert place]

After our lunch at Eddie's, we headed over to Mission Valley mall, taking the surface streets so I could avoid the freeway. This is the corner of Utah and University. See that pink sign? It's that POLE FITNESS place I mentioned last month. Strippers have to be fit too you know.

Corner of Texas and University. We hung a right on Texas to get to Mission Valley.

After doing a few errands at the Mission Valley mall, I spied this new store, Xooro Spanish Delights Cafe. Xooro ispronounced "shoo-roh" and uses an "X' so it looks like a Northern Spanish word but probably isn't. This place is across from Icing (the accessories store) and in the same wing of the mall near Sports Chalet. I made a mental note to check it out after our foray into Target.

It was very sterile, sparse, and hip. Seems like every place now has a plasma screen with the menu.

The main reason we went here was curiosity and also because I wanted to blog it.

The risk with that was not knowing their prices but I figured, why not for today.

We looked at the different choices in the display case (not shown) and picked one that we knew Bert would like, the Peanut Butter Xooro (which hereafter will be referred to as a "churro"). This plain churro is $3.40. The frosted and flavored ones are $4.40 like this one.

The churros are not as long as the box. Oh yeah, I'm sure the box is included in the price. I didn't expect a box, cool though it was. I thought it was a massive waste of material. (Note: Mini Union Jack purse is TC's, purchased at the Shakespeare's Corner Shoppe several years ago as a gift for her)

The churro was thick and drizzled with peanut butter frosting and chocolate glaze. The filling was obviously peanut butter. There was a bit of heft to this churro as well.

Who else ate at Churro's?

Cathy Tran of Oh So Yummy went here back in June 2010

CC household Verdict:
Me - I don't want to sound like a cheapass, but I thought it was overpriced and overly sweet. And like the reviewer above, was kind of disappointed that these weren't made "fresh" to order. You get what's in the display case and who knows how long that shit has been laying in there. Plus if you like your churros warm/hot, your churro won't get that treatment here. You get 'em cold. I actually like my desserts cold so that wasn't an issue with me.

TC - "It was good. There was lots of frosting on it. (she's easy to please) But it was kind of brittle and didn't taste like a nice, hot churro."

Bert - He liked the filling the best. He's just a "peanut butter" kind of guy. Perhaps they could have crisped this up some way. He said, "When they're cold they taste more stale and heavier".

There are two locations of Xooro as I found out when checking this place online, Mission Valley Mall and Plaza Bonita. Not sure that I'll be returning but I wanted to try this at least once.

Update - This place is now CLOSED as of 7/2012. It may have been closed earlier but that's when I noticed it was gone.