Business

A Bird Rock business is revolutionizing the wine bar business, creating craft wines and pouring innovation into every glass. Lowell and Anne Jooste, the married owners of LJ Crafted Wines on La Jolla Boulevard in the heart of Bird Rock, explained how they’re helping to improve the community, one beverage at a time.

Make La Quinta Art Celebration the priority destination for a fun desert road trip. Experience the awesome array of artwork showcased at the stunning La Quinta Civic Center — a short drive from Palm Springs — where 225 world-class artists from 35 states and abroad will exhibit their spectacular creations spanning 12 media categories in styles ranging from classical to whimsical, March 5-8, 2020.

From changing financial incentives for solar+storage, to new promising programs like Community Choice Energy and the growing importance of battery backup power during frequent blackouts, there is a lot for residents to prepare for in the new decade. For this reason, the San Diego Solar Experience is back for the fourth consecutive year, taking place on Saturday, Feb. 8, 2020 with five solar+storage seminars across the county followed by a celebration at AleSmith Brewing Company in San Diego. All events are free and open to the public.

Alan Alda appeared in the auditorium at Scripps Research in La Jolla on Jan. 16 to announce a partnership that will teach scientists how to communicate more effectively to the public and to other scientists. The Emmy-winning actor is making Scripps the West Coast home of Alda Communication Training, a Long Island-based program that sharpens the communication skills of people who spend much of their days staring at computer screens and microscope slides and speaking in the language of their academic papers.

Now that it’s the New Year and the rapid succession of fall-to-winter holidays has passed, it’s time to get more organized and properly store holiday decorations away. Most people enjoy breaking out decorations to add a little festivity during the holidays. But sometimes that trip to the garage can leave you scratching your head — like where did you store the holiday decorations or that special set of holiday place settings? Or who put the big tabletop turkey in with the Halloween costumes? There are simple ways to get more organized, and Solana Beach Storage and Morena Storage have some strategies for getting organized in the New Year — and storing things properly to help take some stress out of 2020 holidays to come.

Zillow survey: About a quarter of experts said San Diego home values would grow faster than national rate

Put sushi on the menu and Nak Joon Kim behind the bar and you have Haru Sushi, La Jolla’s “neighborhood” sushi bar since fall 2018. “I don’t want a big restaurant,” he said. “I prefer a smaller, quiet one (it seats 60) where we’re part of the neighborhood and our customers are our friends.” Kim believes that good food makes you comfortable and 90 percent of Haru’s patrons are locals: “They come in and enjoy the environment, the experience and the food.” They must. Kim claims that 50 percent of first-time customers come back. One customer told Kim he enjoyed Haru because he “didn’t like to feel like a mackerel in a can.”

Jackson Design and Remodeling’s award-winning team of designers and architects have compiled their annual list of the top design trends for the new year. Continuing an evolving movement toward expressing individuality in home design, 2020 trends range from the humble to the bold. Organic handmade elements, “lived in” minimalism and “Japandi” design connect with an emphasis on simplicity and wellness. On the other end of the (decidedly retro) spectrum are bold geometrics, 3-D walls, and nostalgia for colors and materials from the 1970s and 1980s.