This week's feedback

Give Dirk’s another try

About your description of Dirk’s Niteclub in your July 29 Bars & Clubs issue: I am Dirk from Dirk’s Niteclub, in sunny Lemon Grove, on the outskirts of San Diego.  My wife and I have owned our club for 23 years, taking its  image from a rough bar with a bad reputation to a pleasant and happening bar to frequent.

We have some of the hottest local rock bands in San Diego and a great karaoke host, as well as pool, darts, a smoking patio and many other thought-out activities. We pride ourselves on great service and great atmosphere, and our slogan is “Something for Everyone.”

We invite you to have another look at Dirk’s before your next review.

Editor’s note: It so happens that Enrique Limón visited Dirk’s and wrote about it in the “Nightgeist” feature in our Aug. 12 issue.

Different ‘animals’

To set the record straight, conservatives and libertarians are not the same animal, and it is grossly inaccurate to lump them together, as was done in your Aug. 19 editorial, “Kittle kaput.” Libertarians believe in liberty, pure and simple; they’re not “pro-business,” “anti-worker” or “anti-environment,” as stated in the article. Most are not issue-oriented at all but, rather, believe in the fundamental premise that individuals have a right to make their own decisions about their lives, without infringing on the rights of others and without the government or anyone else acting as caretakers.

Editor’s note: We didn’t say conservatives and libertarians were the same thing; we were trying to identify the Union-Tribune’s distaste for business regulation as a conservative strain of libertarianism. Sorry we confused you.

Classic composer scene

In your Aug. 11 “City Week” feature, you write that “San Diego may not necessarily be a top destination for modern composers.” For anyone familiar with all the daring, vibrant new classical music being made in San Diego, it’s breathtaking how wrong you are—San Diego is well known throughout composition communities in the U.S., Canada and Europe as one of America’s top cities for modern classical music. Of course, this music happens on the city’s cultural fringes, but that’s true everywhere, and San Diego’s modern classical scene is extraordinarily dynamic for a city its size.

UCSD’s graduate program in contemporary music attracts top young musicians from all over the world to study with highly regarded UCSD professors like Steven Schick (who is a percussionist and not, as you write in the article, a composer), Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Roger Reynolds, Grawemeyer Award-winning composer Chinary Ung, leading music-software programmer Miller Puckette, world-famous improviser Mark Dresser, and many others. San Diego has also recently hosted visits by top composers like Philip Glass and Helmut Lachenmann and ensembles like the Arditti Quartet.

The upcoming season in UCSD’s gorgeous new concert hall will include regular Wednesday-evening performances of innovative music, including concerts by top groups like the International Contemporary Ensemble, Tone Road Ramblers and San Diego’s own Red Fish Blue Fish and Camera Lucida. It would be a shame if anyone saw what you wrote and missed out, because San Diego’s contemporary classical music scene is one of the best anywhere.