San Diego

[doctordenim]

My girlfriend is gonna be there this week. She's mostly gonna be at some national park doing a video project, but she told me she's gonna be two days in the city. I was wondering if anyone could recommend good places to eat/go out/record stores or anything worth checking out. She told me she's going to the zoo but that doesn't sound like it's gonna take up two days.

[Sukebe GG]

Eat breakfast, lunch and dinner at Roberto's or any variation thereof.

Fish tacos at Rubios are also grubbable:

[SSR]

Thirsty Moon and Record City are both worth a stop. And drop by Taang if you wanna laugh. All in the Hillcrest neighborhood. TM & RC are about a half block from each other.

[Sukebe GG]

Sounds like Off the Record has turned to crap and is no longer in Hillcrest.
Although this young lady gave them a glowing review:

Off The Record has a large supply of classic rock records! The store is large and spans most genres. For those of you looking for old movie soundtracks, this is the place!

[doctordenim]

Raw, thanks.

[EricS]

Used to live there.  Go to Mama's Bakery for lunch, for sure
http://www.yelp.com/biz/mamas-bakery-and-deli-san-diego

Hamilton's has a nice beer selection if you are looking for drinks.
http://www.hamiltonstavern.com/

Ritual tavern is excellent too.  Good food.  Good drinks.
http://www.yelp.com/biz/the-ritual-tavern-san-diego

[Saint Gut-Free]

Sunday Times play at the Casbah tomorrown night with the So So Glos.  Should be good.

[CHRIsss]

best burritos in town=el zarrape
best bar = the whistle stop sunday nights are extra fun, i would avoid saterdays
best pizza = luigis, cool people, good beers, good music, cheap pizza
make sure to get a califonia burrito and adalbertos.

[MZITF]

Hamilltons is the best bar in the city by far if you like good beer and a generally pleasant atmosphere. They got a pretty ok juke box, pool, shuffle board etc. A lot of the good beer bars are either places for dads to get drunk while kids play video games or yuppie hell holes and that bar avoids both pretty nicely.

http://www.hamiltonstavern.com/

The Zoo is really cool, but unless you totally love animals and lines and expensive low quality food, I would really only spend half a day there. Do your self a favor and get there early and spend the rest of the day in Balboa Park (it completly surrounds the zoo). If you like to bike, it's actually a pretty nice place to bike, bring your bike. Don't go to off the record, Mr. Soraino more or less hit the nail on the head. The Whistle Stop, Bar Pink, Radio Lounge (or whatever that place is called) are OK if you want to hang out with a bunch of sneering San Diego hipsters and assorted people.

It's hard to say where to go for a meal, it varries widely on how much you want to spend. The Prado is a really nice restaurant in Balboa Park. I don't know the burrito joints as well downtown, but people seem to like adalabertos and santana's. Don't plan to go out drinking in Hillcrest, it can be fun, but it can also be really weird, unless it is tranny night at the brass rail!

If you do wind up going to The Casbah, it borders the fairly upscale neighborhood and resturant district of little italy. If you want nice food, just look around, I get the impression it's all the same, there are a strangely large amount of upscale Italian joints in San Diego. If you want to go somewhere cheap or fun Filippi's is awesome. It sorta has this cheesy family vibe, but the food and drinks are cheap and pretty good. I was down there last summer with my girlfriend and we got a large pizza and black out drunk off bad wine and then took the Coronado ferry back to her place. It was awesome.

Oh The Mission with its several incarnations is a local standard for breakfast. One downtown and one also in north park I think.

LOVE SAN DIEGO!

[doctordenim]

Wow that's a pretty good guide for 2 days time man, THANKS!

[MZITF]

I am an A+ kind of guy.

[blahblahblegh]

Best authentic san diegan mexican food: cuatros milpas in barrio logan. Do not go here if you are vegetarian or vegan, go here if you like delicious simple shredded chicken burritos with homeade tortillas and a bunch of dirty looks from the 30 mexican women who run the place

best non-authentic: el zarape on park and adams (make sure its this one cause theres another el zarape on adams that sucks). If you go here at night, you can go to the small bar next door which is owned by the same people as hamiltons, similar beer selection with hard alcohol as well.

lucha libre (best salsa bar)on washington.

only good record stores: record city and thristy moon. don't expect to be too impressed.

favorite breakfast = the hash house on 5th. don't expect to be eating lunch after this though. slightly pricey, but huge delicious portions. The mission on University in NP is a good backup for fake mexican breakfast.

best ethnic whatevers: as mentioned, mamas lebanese bakery on alabama and el cajon blvd.

vo's cafe on university - $4 vietnamese sandwiches (veggie, pork or beef, all A+), pho, dumplings, yogurt, whatever you want. Closed on Sundays

Tao on Adams. Free starter salad with rasperry vinagrette and house made tofu, excellent vietnamese/pho for $8-$12 a plate, free mango or lemon or strawberry ice cream at the end of every meal. You could spend $8 - $10 here and be satisfied foodwise all day.

best bars: tower bar is the punkest. about 20 blocks out of the way of anything though. Livewire has good beer selection, good jukebox, next to mamas and luigis. whistlestop on sunday nights is good. hamiltons has the best beer selection, gets waaaay too packed on weekends though. has shuffleboard, shitty jukebox.

some shows this week -

Pink Elephant
thur 3/11 10pm
Lovvers,
Abe Vigoda

Pink Elephant
fri 3/12 10pm
Thee Oh Sees,
The Baths,
So Cow
$5

casbah
Mar
Fri
12    
Cave Singers , The Dutchess and the Duke , The Moondoggies
$12

casbah
Mar
Tue
16    
Past Lives , Heavy Hawaii , Nude Boy , Jungle Fever
$8

[MZITF]

Record city can be really great, depending on what they have bought recently. I sorta wonder where all the good records go in that city. If you are really serious about buying records, there are some antique stores arround where collectors sell through consignment, but that's about the only "scores" I have ever gotten. At my work, I ship probably over 3,000 - 5,000 record sleeves of various types to San Diego a week, so someone has got them!

[brian island]

I wanna throw M-Theory out there, too. Admittedly, it's a shitty, indie rock-orientated record store but I've found some great stuff there for super cheap...mainly because they didn't know what they had. Examples:

The Chills - Kaleidoscope World LP - $7.99
Nervous Gender - Music From Hell LP - $6.99
The Door and the Window - Subculture 7" - $15 (OK, not that cheap but still a great find)

[blahblahblegh]

m theory used to be great.

friend got metal urbain lp there for 7 bucks, i passed on bats - daddys highway for $20 for over a year, bought a bunch of animal collective records which resulted in about $150 profit... but since they've discovered ebay (two years give or take a half ago, maybe?) pretty much since they got rid of their used annex) they've priced everything over ebay prices. Your only luck there now comes when something hasn't come on ebay for a while and there's no completed listing record of it. Last record I got there was nomeansno - wrong for $25, which by all means is only an ok deal (been looking for it forever). Been there about once every two weeks for the past 4-5 months with little luck. No new arrivals bin to lighten my search. Sadly, It seems like as of the last 6 mos. or so record city is on the same track (ebay pricing).

Forgot to mention that route 44 skateboards on el cajon blvd has a good record selection, but since a "professional" moved in via consignment deals are pretty hard to find. Good selection of "termbo friendly" new stuff. Got the easter monkeys record there for 10 bucks the other day. Still a far cry $5 scratch acid/scream/random mystic records og pressings I used to get.

oh, kobeys swap meet is fun on sundays (it's biggest day) in the sd sports arena. Usually not great for records, but good for cruising.