Game Towne


Game Towne is located in Old Town San Diego. (Or should it be Olde Towne?) Either way, Game Towne is a delightful game store, which packs a huge selection into a tiny square footage. On top of that, about half the store is dedicated to D&D type stuff, which is important to have, but doesn't particularly interest me. That said, in the other half of the already smallish shop (shoppe?), you can find the most engaging and interesting game collection in all of San Diego.

First of all, there are puzzles. And I'm not talking jigsaw puzzles, I'm talking all kinds of puzzles. From wooden puzzles to metal ring and string puzzles to puzzles that combine wood, metal, and string to plastic puzzles with moving parts to just about any kind of puzzle you can imagine. Some of my favorites include the classic Rubik's Cube (these come with stands for when you finish them), the wooden puzzle that locks down a bottle of wine until you can figure out how to open it (great gift to a puzzle-loving wine connoisseur!), and Tantrix, a metal pieces puzzle with infinite number of incarnations (too complex to explain, though simple to play - see picture above).

Second of all, there are wooden games galore. Wooden board games! These are my favorite kind of board game, and they abound at Game Towne. You can get Mancala, the Egyptian game where you move stones around, in any size, from travel size to jumbo full coffee table size! The stones in the biggie are beautiful! Then there are games like Quatro (kind of 3-D tic-tac-toe). Also the classics like Backgammon and beautiful checker boards.

Third, there are really just a delightful number of games that you would never find at your typical toy store. For example, a Sudoku where you make your own combination so you can play on the same board forever. Brilliant! They have games for childre and adults (either of any age).

Most of the games have samples so you can try them out, and the owners and employees are incredibly knowledgable and friendly. They know pretty much all the games and can explain them and make recommendations. Game Towne is a fantastic treat and an inspired choice for shopping when in Olde Towne.

www.gametowne.com
3954 Harney St
San Diego, CA 92110
(619) 291-1666

Going Native Resources

Thinking about doing some gardening? There are a lot of factors in choosing to garden, including if you have the time to maintain the garden, what kinds of plants you will put in, how much time and money you want to put in, and how you will maintain it. For a beautiful garden that requires very little maintenance, and saves you big bucks in water, think about going native!

Many choices for lawn and garden require massive amounts of water. One of the worst offenders is one of the most common: The grass lawn that we are so famous for in the USA. Native plants, on the other hand, are chosen for the specific clime they reside in, so they naturally use the amount of water available for the region.

Going native can also mean you won't have to amend the soil, because the plants are made for the soil where you are planting them! Again, that means saving money on fertilizers, and it also means you are preventing fertilizers from being washed into the water system (local rivers, lakes, and eventually bays and oceans), where they disrupt the natural balance of the ecosystem causing disruptions in plant and animal life than can eventually leave entire areas dead.

Especially in arid or semi-arid climates, it is especially important to consider drought tolerant and low water using plants. And if you're going that far, then go ahead and look into natives. They help preserve the unique natural beauty of your corner of the world by giving native insects more terrain to live in and a wider selection of plants to pollinate. This also means you will be attracting native hummingbirds and butterflies to your garden when your native plants flower. Beauty attracts beauty!

Some resources in San Diego for going native:

Water Conservation Garden

San Diego Native Plant Society

Walter Andersen Nursery

Quail Botanical Gardens

Landscape Watering Calculator

Ocean Beach People’s Organic Food Market


Ocean Beach People’s Organic Food Market is a really long name for a grocery store, but perfect describes the store. “People’s” as it is often called in short, is located in Ocean Beach, (practically) on the corner of Sunset Cliffs and Voltaire. It’s is the “People’s” because it is a cooperative; it is member-owned and operated. They sell largely organic products, and it is primarily a food market.

People’s is the most beautiful, aesthetically pleasing grocery store I have EVER been to. It was not always this way. This is actually their third building, though the previous two were also in Ocean Beach, and the last one was literally on the same lot. I never saw the original store, but the second store was nothing special to look at, in fact it appeared a little run down. But excellent management had big visions and great planning, and they built the most recent store from the ground up.



The store has ambient, natural (sun!) lighting. The windows take advantage of the ocean breeze and can maintain a comfortable temperature year round without air conditioning. They have solar panels on the roof, and the lay out is really natural. The deli is located upstairs, and the seating goes around a balcony so you can look down into the store and watch people pour over soymilk for hours.

Hillcrest Farmer’s Market

The Sunday Morning Hillcrest Farmer’s Market is on of the best Farmer’s Markets in San Diego County. It used to be held in the parking lot of the Department of Motor Vehicles near the corner of Park and University, on the east edge of Hillcrest. However, the market continued to grow and the surrounding parking wasn’t ample, so now the market is held on a long block of Park Boulevard, and the parking lot has returned to it’s usual purpose.

At the market there is a huge array of natural, organic, and always-local produce stands, selling everything form tropical fruits to Mediterranean delights, to heirloom varietals, to the basics. There is a mushroom booth, a nuts and grains booth, and a tea booth, as well. There are also a great number of prepared foods, to eat at the market or to take home. There is granola, olives, specialty olive oils, artisan cheeses, samosas, agua fresca, and many more.

My personal favorite prepared food booths are Gourmet Tamales from Carlsbad, and Guanni Chocolates from Fallbrook. The tamales are $2.50 each, which at first seems expensive, until you see how huge they are. One tamale is a full meal, and then the price seems fair. But when you bite into them you realize they are actually a bargain because the ingredients are incredibly fresh and high quality, with flavors like spinach feta, potato cilantro, and poblano in sweet corn. Guanni chocolates provide a similar experience, except sweet instead of savory. Again they seem expensive when you see only the price, but they are delightfully enormous, and when you bite into the decadent flavors you feel like you should be on a credit card commercial oohing and aahing over how priceless this chocolate experience is.

The market also hosts a number of craft booths, which range in products and quality. I would prefer that these booths be limited to hand-made goods by local artists and craftsmen, but the yare not. This means that some booths offer locally made products, but others offer goods imported. Some of these imported goods are nice products, but I think that these products are not appropriately sold at a farmer’s market. Still, the range of products by local artisans includes handmade books, beautifully crafted scarves, clothes such as skirts, shirts, and dresses, and jewelry.

The must-tries include the heirloom tomatoes and watermelon, the fresh herbs, the exotic fruits, the chocolate, and tamales. Bring your grocery list, because the farmer’s market is one of the best places to stock up on all your basics. You can’t beat the freshness, and the prices are great, too.