Education of the Modern Doctor: Marcus Welby vs. House 
Locals Only
The San Diego Music Foundation (SDMF) has booked rapper Jimmy Powers, who’s been nominated in the best hip-hop category and whose record Califoreigner is in the running for best hip-hop album, as one of the performers for the San Diego Music Awards ceremony on Sunday, Sept. 12. The booking comes amid a debate playing out on SDRaps.com over hip-hop nominations in the awards. SDMF President Kevin Hellman (CityBeat’s publisher) says he booked Powers because he wanted to diversify the lineup. Powers wrote via e-mail: “Regardless of the flack surrounding the nominees or the process, I think it is an extended hand that I was asked to perform. It may or may not be a response to the backlash, but I am really not concerned with the semantics of it.” The foundation has extended the voting deadline for the awards to Monday, Aug. 30.
Dave Brown, founder of cool-hunting company Holiday Matinee, is leaving town for his native New York. Arts nonprofit Sezio.org declared Aug. 24 “Dave Brown Day” and hosted a party for him that night at the Starlite Lounge. “I’m equal parts embarrassed and flattered,” Brown wrote via e-mail.
He’s written on his blog that he’s taken a full-time job with Brooklyn-based Etsy.com.
Why did Sight & Sound, the monthly arts-and-music event put on by promoters Jon Block and Adam Rosen, suddenly get canceled last week? “I can’t really talk about it,” Block says, adding that he doesn’t want to “incriminate” people involved. Future dates have been cancelled, he says, but he’s planning a new, bigger Sight & Sound that will “most likely” be at a new venue—last week’s was scheduled for Queen Bee’s—and he hopes will expand outside the North Park scene.
—Peter Holslin
The Enrique Experience
Back in May, I stumbled upon a South Bay dive reminiscent of Dante’s fourth layer of hell called On the Rocks. Among its quirks, it featured an area dubbed “The Shit List” that featured pictures of double-crossing regulars heading to a bar called the Dakota Inn.
Well, after an exhaustive, three-month investigation (i.e. meandering about National City in search of a 99-Cent Only store and casually stumbling upon it), I finally came across the Dakota (831 E. Eighth St.), the bar famous for luring the lowliest of patrons from shit-holes near and far.
As I turned off Highland Avenue, an early-evening prostitute stuck her thumb out at me asking for a ride. Promising? Sure, but I’d just recently revisited Charlize Theron’s Monster, and I knew it wasn’t a matter of if, but when she’d shoot me in the balls. So, with my genitalia intact and enticed by a sign boasting the haunt’s seven-hour-long happy hour, I anxiously made my way inside.
Warrant’s “Cherry Pie” was blaring as I noticed a stack of Navy recruitment pamphlets resting on the bar and an appetizer menu that—along with the expected fare—included lumpia and chicken gizzards.
The beer-only locale boasts flimsy shower curtains as toilet dividers and a taxidermy corner featuring a couple of stuffed pheasants alongside other, less-natural creatures like a bass with deer antlers.
All and all, it was charming but not that eventful until a 4-foot-9 Asian woman on the wrong side of 50 stormed in through the back door with the voracity of a Pinoy Tasmanian devil and approached a man who was nursing his MGD, asking: “You looking for pussy tonight? It’s a full moon, and I want chak-chakan.”
Her name, I came to find out, is Mimi—the bar owner.
With a persistence trumped only by her horniness, she continued in her pursuit, suggestively spanking herself, giving pretend BJs to red coffee straws and blaming it all on the moon.
Using a pool cue as a mic, she then put her own spin on the all-strip-club-all-the-time musical selection and regaled patrons with Mimi-fied renditions of “Love in a Pussyvator,” “Dude (Looks Like a Pussy)” and the reggae hit “No Woman, No Pussy.”
During an interval and as she scratched off a lottery tickets with her nails, I asked the spitfire about the pheasants. “They my good luck charm,” she said. “Just like that one—the buffalo.”
She was pointing at a jackalope. Needless to say, I was sold. On the Rocks, you can add my picture to your list now.
—Enrique Limón
Pass the Mic
A new series on local hip-hop heads. We let ’em talk, then we let ’em tell us who to talk to next.
The man: Norman Rocwell Ilano, aka DJ Norm Rocwell
The music: Rocwell spins classic hip-hop, indie hip-hop, soul, funk, reggae, dancehall and a few old-school songs that have been sampled in newer hip-hop songs. He’ll throw in indie rock and electro if he’s feelin’ it.
The scene: Rocwell can be found spinning every Friday and every second and fourth Thursday at the Red C Lounge (756 Fifth Ave., Downtown). Every so often, he spins at U-31, and, lately, he’s been filling in as a DJ for touring artists like Dannu of Visionaries, Qwel and One Be Lo. “I guess I’m the fill-in guy,” he laughs, explaining that he has to just go with the flow when he’s playing music he’s never heard. When he’s not spinning, Rocwell can still be found surrounded by music—he’s worked at Access Music in Pacific Beach for six years.
The story: Ten years ago, Rocwell was one of those kids you’d see on college campuses with a big backpack weighed down with hundreds of fliers. He’d hit you up and tell you about the show he was promoting as you walked to your next class. He moved to San Diego from Germany (he’s a military brat) in 1999.
“When I moved out here,” Rocwell says, “I was kind of lost because you have to find the scene out here, but there’s a big scene. There’s a big, healthy, strong scene out here in San Diego.”
Rocwell’s first entry into the scene came when he was going through his Hotmail junkmail folder. He found an e-mail with a subject line that read, “Chongo’s hip-hop workshop.”
“The location in the e-mail was literally a two, three minute walk from my house,” Rocwell says. “So I met up with Chongo.”
Rocwell and the rest of the Chongo crew started putting on some of the bigger hip-hop shows in town. They were the first to bring Atmosphere, in 2001.
“We threw a lot of hip-hop shows at The Scene in Clairemont,” Rocwell says. “Every show sold out. Our second Atmosphere show, we sold out before we even got the fliers…. We promoted very well. We’d run through a campus and drop at least 1,000 fliers. Chongo and DJ Artistic would come with us. They were the main promoters, but they’d work just as hard as us.”
Since his show-promoting days, Rocwell’s been a DJ for the now-defunct Dialectx Crew and a group called Jeshno. He’s currently a member of Kids of Soul, and he’s one of the voices behind Earthbound Radio, a local hip-hop internet station. He’s released one mixtape CD, Escape(ism), and he’s currently working on three more.
Who’s CityBeat talking to next?: “JABAone,” Rocwell says. “He’s like a brother to me.”
—Kinsee Morlan
