- this month’s GQ feature on m.i.a. includes a pit stop in san diego for her 2009 street scene set (timely, no?).  author gary shteyngart manages to diss the city more times in a single paragraph than an entire sunday LA Times:

Onstage M.I.A. is nonpareil, a stunning performer. I fly out to the San Diego Street Scene music festival to see her show. Maya has talked about “how the First World is collapsing into the Third World,” and San Diego, with its goofy-looking street rickshaws and omnipresent condo foreclosures, feels Third World these days. The festival is hot and stupid. All evening long I’ve been running into people who resemble the Family of Early Man, but things get noticeably better when M.I.A. hits the stage. Here’s a true mélange of humanity: white hippie chicks, some wayward Vietnamese young ladies, a woman wearing tight shorts with the legend girls don’t poop on her ass. Maya is rocking it in sunglasses, a tiny woman dominating a big venue, shooting off imaginary air guns as out-of-date dorks in porkpie hats shoot them right back. “Let’s pahr-TAY,” she shouts, and even though she’s tired (this gig was a last-minute thing), she’s just the best fucking dancer out there, and the chances of taking your eyes off her grinding form are nil. When it’s time for “Paper Planes,” the crowd has a collective seizure; even San Diego’s blonde navy-brat girls know every single word, follow every ka-ching, every bang!, every and take your money.

psst – you forgot to mock street scene’s semi-bankruptcy and failure to pay some artists.

- mission hills’ inaugural farmer’s market starts tomorrow, the 25th, and will run every friday from 3-7 on falcon street – which will be closed during market hours.

- ob’s street fair is this saturday and the san diego urban bike and social club will be heading down there at 11 am from adams ave bike shop.  meanwhile, denver’s bike sharing program has begun, and while the bikes aren’t quite as high tech as montreal’s bixi system, they’re still 100% better than san diego’s non-existent one:

on the bright side, registration is now available for the 2010 bike the bay event, the only time all year you can bike over coronado bridge.

- there’s a new scaled-back proposal for city hall downtown.

- we had dinner at the smoking goat in north park last night and were impressed by how much the cozy interior has improved (dim lighting and dark tones) since it was commonwealth cafe.  and just how do they get their “burger on brioche” so amazingly juicy?  duckfat truffle fries and melt-in-your-mouth pork belly were also highlights.  still haven’t made it to banker’s hill bar and grill, but if the chowhound posts are accurate, maybe we’ll continue to wait…