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On a recent Friday night, a few dozen people gathered at Marston Point, a parking lot and lookout perched at the southwestern end of Balboa Park. It was a particularly cold night, so some folks huddled around a portable fire pit gripping hot...

On a recent Friday night, a few dozen people gathered at Marston Point, a parking lot and lookout perched at the southwestern end of Balboa Park. It was a particularly cold night, so some folks huddled around a portable fire pit gripping hot cider, others jumped in and out of about 15 parked cars spread across the lot. Inside each car, audio stories played on repeat. Each was a memory of Balboa Park's gay cruising culture. Things have calmed down considerably in recent years, but Marston Point and the road leading to it were once an epicenter of gay culture in San Diego. Especially in the '50s and '60s, gay people pushed underground by the reigning mores of the time used the secluded area as a meeting place. Some folks, gay men mostly, used the dark pocket of the park to meet for anonymous sex. A few still do. The area eventually earned itself a nickname: The Fruit Loop. And especially after the sun went down, the illicit activity cranked up. Things got so wild, city officials permanently closed the nearby public bathroom, and the two-way street leading to the Marston Point parking lot was made one-way to cut down on opportunities for drive-by eye contact. The stories playing in the cars that cold Friday night were collected by artist Kate Clark and Lambda Archives, a nonprofit that collects and preserves the history of the local LGBT community. The event was part of the offbeat programming Clark produces through her public art series called Parkeology. Clark embeds in urban parks and unearths long-buried stories, forgotten sites and other stuff kept out of public view. For the last two years, she’s been entrenched in Balboa Park. In this episode of Culturecast, Voice of San Diego's podcast covering local arts and culture, I crawl in and out of the cars parked at Marston Point and take listeners along for a ride through the diverse stories Clark collected about The Fruit Loop and the gay culture that flourished in Balboa Park. "You could think of that era of cruising as a negative but the fact of the matter is, people were coming here because it was a time when being gay was illegal," Clark said. "I think this history is actually really important because it speaks a lot about an era and the way people socialized and connected."

Home prices in San Diego are high, but that doesn't mean we're in the middle of a bubble that's about to burst – it's more complicated than that. Rich Toscano, a financial adviser and housing market analyst, joined hosts Scott Lewis and Andrew Keatts to explain. He broke down the strangeness that's happening in San Diego's housing market right now. "The especially interesting twist this time around is the interest rates are very low," Toscano said, "rendering monthly payments actually pretty reasonable." Toscano dug into the historically tenuous relationship between interest rates and mortgage rates and answered everyone's burning question when it comes to the housing market: Is it a good time to buy? Spoiler alert: There's no easy answer, but Toscano does get down to brass tacks. While prices are indeed a bit higher than they should be, it's not absolutely nuts to buy a house right now. Murders in San Diego Up Again Murder rates in San Diego are up for the third straight year in a row. Exactly 100 people were murdered in San Diego last year, a number that's been climbing since 2014. San Diego Union-Tibune reporter Lyndsay Winkley joined the podcast to talk about her story that puts the alarming numbers into context. For one thing, she said it's worth remembering that San Diego is still pretty darn safe, especially when compared with other cities its size. "San Diego still has the lowest murder rate among the top 10 biggest cities," she said. Winkley also explains that the number is confusing since other violent crime in the city has gone down. She added that crime statisticians are always quick to point out that the numbers don't always point to a trend. Also on the this week's podcast, Lewis reacted to a letter sent by the local YMCA that said the organization would be raising membership prices due to the hiked minimum wage. Keatts and Lewis also talk about the SoccerCity plan that seeks to remake the Qualcomm Stadium site. Hero of the Week The California Supreme Court ruled this week that public business conducted by government employees on their own private cell phones or from personal email accounts is still subject to public record requests. It's a big win for open government. Goat of the Week San Diego Unified gets the goat again for its continued refusal to provide clarity about what's getting cut and what parents can expect after district officials are done shaving over $120 million from next year's budget.

Details of the SoccerCity plan have been unveiled, and pieces of it are already being scrutinized. Nick Stone, partner with FS Investors, the group that wants to replace Qualcomm Stadium with a new joint-use soccer and San Diego State football stadium and develop new housing and entertainment on the adjacent land, joined podcast hosts Scott Lewis and Andrew Keatts this week to dig deep into the proposal. Lewis laid out three main groups likely to oppose the SoccerCity plan: NIMBYs and environmentalists, rival investors who want the same plot of property and political institutions with concerns about how the public land is developed. Stone addressed each potential challenge and answered big questions like why the deal is a long-term lease versus a purchase. He also addressed concerns about density, whether the deal is a public land grab and other issues that have come up, including SDSU's apprehensiveness. Stone said it's hard for him to see the SoccerCity deal as anything but a gift to SDSU. "What we're doing is giving them a stadium," he said. "They come out of that owning their game day revenues, minus their game day expenses, but only half of the operating cost, because we're staying on the hook for the other half. It is functionally exactly a gift." San Diego Unified's Struggles  San Diego Unified has to slash $124.4 million from next year's budget. As details of the cuts have emerged, the district has been doing a big public relations push to try to explain why the cuts are happening. In a recent interview with NBC 7 San Diego, district Superintendent Cindy Marten characterized the budget cuts as a "long-term structural deficit." Lewis and Keatts analyze that claim, plus question whether the proposed cuts are, in fact, the type of permanent fixes that would solve the district's structural problems. Also on this podcast, Lewis can't get over these pictures of Rep. Darrell Issa serving coffee at a local Starbucks. Hero of the Week Discovering new planets is cool, which is why UCSD physics professor Adam Burgasser and his team at the school's Center for Astrophysics & Space Sciences get a big thumbs-up for their role in spotting seven Earth-sized exoplanets orbiting a nearby star. Goat of the Week National City Mayor Ron Morrison, at a Council meeting, voted in favor of asking SANDAG to investigate the agency's burgeoning forecasting scandal, but not before he noted that most of the seven board members who requested an investigation were newly appointed to SANDAG's board. It's true: Many of them are newly elected. Yet Morrison ignored the flip side of his observation: Most of the board members who had stayed silent on the issue were on the board when the scandal took place.

The controversies surrounding Betsy DeVos' strong support for school choice hit home just as she took office as secretary of education. When Diane Ravitch, an education researcher, suggested that DeVos , local teachers unions were furious to find out...

The term "sanctuary city" is a dangerous misnomer. Living in a city that's named itself a sanctuary city does not, in fact, mean undocumented people are safe from deportation. On this week's episode, hosts Scott Lewis and Andrew Keatts explore what elected officials in California are saying about sanctuary cities and what's actually happening in the places where it sounds like undocumented people are shielded and protected. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's San Diego Field Office, for example, deported 23,729 people last year. Of those, just 10,872 had criminal convictions. San Diego's been called a sanctuary city, yet clearly the term is quite misleading for those who actually have to worry about being deported. Six Degrees of Fake News Lewis offers his hot take on the whole fake news thing, breaking down six different categories of fake news. There's real fake news that's actually been purposely fabricated, then there's real news stories that people are simply labeling fake, but there are a few stories that fall somewhere in between. Journalists make mistakes, for example, but those stories, which are later corrected or retracted by the original source, can quickly spread across the internet like wildfire, taking the falsehoods along for the ride. Trickling Down From Trump President Donald Trump tapped Alexander Acosta as his new pick to head the Department of Labor. The announcement came just a day after Andy Puzder withdrew from consideration. Clare Crawford, the executive director of the Center on Policy Initiatives, and Peter Callstrom, the CEO and president of the San Diego Workforce Partnership, also joined Lewis and Keatts this week to talk about the ways in which San Diegans could feel the impact of major idealogical and philosophical changes at the Department of Labor, a federal organization meant to protect workers. "It's a new day," Callstrom said. "We'll see what the new nominee brings, but we need people who are fighting for workers ... to help people go from where they are to where they can be." Also in the podcast, Lewis talks about the joy and hilarity of coaching tee-ball and the city gets a big thumbs up for its drop in crime rate. Hero of the Week Jamie Wilson, the parent of a teenage boy who had DNA samples taken by San Diego Police Department officers, is speaking out against the SDPD policy that seemingly skirts a state law meant to prevent officers from doing DNA swabs of juveniles without parent permission. Goat of the Week San Diego County Supervisor Bill Horn gets a big ol' goat for this whopper of a quote in a KPBS story this week: "If climate change is bringing us all this rain, I'm all for it."

The San Diego Association of Governments knowingly misled voters with its Measure A ballot proposal. Earlier this week, Andrew Keatts uncovered revealing emails from SANDAG's chief economist that showed the agency's executives knew about a problem with their forecasting model almost a year before they put Measure A, a sales tax hike to fund transportation projects, on the November ballot. Rather than taking the problem to SANDAG's board, the agency's management kept using the $18 billion number they now admit was way off. That $18 billion number is important, by the way, because SANDAG used it to come up with the long list of transportation and open space projects it dangled in front of voters in November. Keatts gets super fired up in this week's podcast as he and cohost Scott Lewis distill the big SANDAG news. Nonprofit Exec: San Diego Leaders Aren't Doing Enough for Refugees There's a lot of new energy and interest related to San Diego's refugee population since President Donald Trump's controversial travel ban. But Ramla Sahid, executive director of the nonprofit Partnership for the Advancement of New Americans, said San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer and other elected local leaders have yet to react to the refugee ban as passionately as other people in the community. "We don't see folks like Kevin Faulconer stepping up to the plate and saying, 'These are our neighbors, these are our community members,'" Sahid said. "As a city we [should make a] commitment to protect and ensure that they feel welcome. I think that's a missed opportunity and we just need to call that out." PANA is a relatively new nonprofit that serves refugees through research, public policy and community organizing. Sahid joined Lewis and Keatts this week to talk about the issues facing the estimated 82,000 refugees who've resettled in San Diego since 1975. Also on the podcast, Lewis has become the go-to "cannabis forum moderator guy." He said his jaw drops when he looks out in the crowd at these forums and sees the economic mania surrounding the budding industry as potential investors try to ensure they get their piece of the pot pie. Hero of the Week On Monday, Faulconer and Tijuana’s new mayor Juan Manuel Gastélum stood side by side at a press conference to tout the benefits of binational collaboration. It's a good start, but the pair will likely have to do a lot more than hold a press conference in the future if they want to ensure that the region's binational economy doesn't get disrupted. Goat of the Week The impending budget cuts at San Diego Unified are getting real as local schools and district staff are making moves to start slashing costs.  The district gets the goat this week for not leaning into the problem earlier on, and instead pretty much doing the opposite.

The dust the Chargers kicked up on their way out of town has barely begun to settle, but San Diego has already moved on to the next big thing: soccer. The new pitch for the future of the Qualcomm Stadium site has something for everyone – a joint-use soccer and San Diego State football stadium, an entertainment district, housing and a huge new riverfront park. What's not to like? On this week's podcast, hosts Scott Lewis and Andrew Keatts come up with a few things folks should consider before the city green-lights selling a giant swath of city land to a group of private investors. They also play some clips from a talk they had with Mike Stone, one of the principals of the investment group behind the pitch. Stone explained the role his investment group will play. Part of what they'll be doing, he said, is leasing parts of the land to other developers. "We'll serve as the very high-level master developer," he said. "But there are a lot of guys out there who want to develop parcels on this, so we're going to entitle them and allow people to compete for that." Also on the podcast, Lewis attempts to defend his controversial take on tomato-less sandwiches, and the duo discusses their rationale behind giving goats a bad name. Hero of the Week Fifth Avenue Books in Hillcrest gets the honor this week for hanging in as long as it did. The bookstore has been in business for 30 years, but it's closing its doors at the end of the month. Goat of the Week San Diego Unified gets the goat yet again, this time for missing local hiring targets.

In this episode of Culturecast, Voice of San Diego's podcast covering arts and culture in the region, I talk to buskers who think city policies need to change so San Diego's street culture can thrive.

In this episode of Culturecast, Voice of San Diego's podcast covering arts and culture in the region, I talk to buskers who think city policies need to change so San Diego's street culture can thrive.