The capability of the brain to permanently flash freeze certain memories into long term storage is pretty interesting.   Come Monday morning, almost everyone we talked to in San Diego had a story about what they were doing at exactly 3:40pm, when the 7.2 earthquake struck a few hundred miles away in Baja California.   One of the more interesting ones we heard was about a person driving on the I-805 / I-8 interchange who thought they were having serious car trouble, only to pull over and see that everyone else was doing the same.

Chloe and George happened to be in the backyard enjoying the late afternoon sun.  George was recounting his dream from the night before (in which strangely figured an earthquake) when both of us had the sensation that the other was pushing on their chair.  Soon enough we came to the realization that it was an earthquake in progress.   The whole thing was as if in slow motion; we had time to tune into voices across the canyon shouting about an earthquake, take stock of our rumbling surroundings, and note with amusement how another neighbor's lawnmower just kept droning right on through the whole event.  The scary thing about an earthquake is you never know how long it is going to last or how bad it is going to get.  In fact it's probably exactly that frightening uncertainty that overloads the brain's circuits and fuses those memories into the mental hard drive.

We haven't been to the Linkery in a while, but with all the recent sausage-making in the San Diego Union Tribune about their controversial mandatory 18% tipping policy, we have to confess to a sudden hankering for some delicious hometown wieners.

In case you haven't heard the news, a couple of weeks ago the owner Jay Porter was dogged by reports that he might be headed to jail for maintaining such a policy, a ridiculous idea brought about by the assistant city attorney, only to have the case dropped the next day.

Like any neighborhood worth its salt, North Park has its gritty side that gives it character, keeps it interesting, and reminds you to lock your doors at night. Who hasn’t seen that crazy angry guy walking down the street with the tennis racket, or that one neighbor whose residence is a junkyard maze like something out of Silence of the Lambs?

We missed out on Ray at Night last weekend, much as we might have liked to have been there, admittedly not so much for the art as to bare witness to the inevitable victory party on Ray Street celebrating an apparent triumph over North Park Nights, Ray at Night's former monthly art walk nemesis.