Two Rainstorms Put Damper On San Diego Holidays, Policing Stoned Drivers A Challenge In California And How Black’s Beach Became Clothing-Optional

Speaker 1: 00:00 Wet and chilly holidays are in store for San Diego and we begin looking back at the music and podcasts of 2019 I'm wearing Kavanaugh. This is KPBS mid day edition. Speaker 1: 00:23 It's Monday, December 23rd it may be a white Christmas for some people in San Diego County. The snow level is expected to drop as this cold wet storm continues through mid week. For the rest of us, it's just a wet, slippery, cloudy and Chile holiday making visits to friends and families. And last minute Christmas shopping, a bit more difficult. Joining me is national weather service meteorologist Alex tardy. And Alex, welcome. Thanks for having me on. Let's talk first about this possibility of snow in the mountains. When and where could that happen? Well, actually with our first storm moving in today, uh, we're seeing widespread rain and it's just cold enough on the top of Mount Laguna at 6,000 feet. It's 37 degrees and we're starting to see some wet flakes, but it's not sticking. So we don't want to get too excited and we're not really expecting it to stick other than maybe a little bit of slush. Speaker 1: 01:19 But the next storm that comes in quickly on Wednesday, Christmas day, and especially Christmas night, that's almost certain to a guarantee, a white Christmas for areas like up around Mount Laguna and Palomar mountain. And of course lots of people are off this week. They may want to drive up to see this. Now what should they keep in mind? You gotta go prepared and really expect the worst, you know, bring chains. All it takes is an inch or two of snow that sticks on the road and a few spin-outs and the roads are a mess and traffic is all backed up. So bring extra blankets, you know, bring different clothes. Your feet are probably going to get wet, so different shoes come prepared and know that um, at any moment Caltrans can post the chains and sometimes that can be all vehicles, even four wheel drive. So they really recommend carrying the chains if you're really going to go right in the middle of the storm, like on Christmas day or even the day after Christmas. Speaker 1: 02:14 Okay, so it poured this morning. Is that amount of rain expected to last through today? Yeah, it did. Pour, um, woke me up this morning. It was really coming down hard. Most coastal cities from Oceanside all the way down to downtown San Diego saw about an inch of rain. So that's a, that's a pretty healthy storm for us. We see the storm pulling out now, so we expect just for tonight and Tuesday, Christmas Eve, just some scattered showers. So the type of situation where, you know, bring the umbrella, bring the jacket, but most likely you'll be able to escape, uh, any real rain over the next 24 hours. Now on Christmas day it's a different story, uh, because by the afternoon, the late afternoon after we're kinda antsy and been sitting around all morning and we want to get out and, and do something. We do expect the rain to be widespread for Christmas day, evening and really all night into the morning hours on Thursday. Speaker 1: 03:12 A real soaker, widespread rain with probably most places where everyone lives on the coast, seeing another inch or two on top of the rain. We just saw this morning. Are there any flash flood warnings expected for a, from that rain? It actually is enough rain that we're a little bit concerned about some urban flooding all the way from like Oceanside down to San Diego and that would be mainly Christmas day, night and Thursday morning, but we're also concerned about the bigger rivers like the San Diego river right now it's looking like that river will have some flooding and we'll probably get up to around 11 feet if not slightly higher. So for the low lying areas and the shopping areas, if you're returning gifts on the 26 do expect for some closures down in mission Valley Thursday morning because of that heavy rain that comes through on Christmas. Now this is a cold storm or let's say a cold ish storm, but I read that this was what they call a pineapple express storm that travels across from Hawaii. Speaker 1: 04:15 Isn't that usually a warmer storm? Yeah, actually these storms are coming all the way down from the North of the origins of the storm like we had today. And the one for Christmas day and Thursday, they're, they're literally the, the source of the storm even though it's modified and warmed somewhat when it gets here, the source of the storm is coming all the way down from Alaska. Um, and taking a direct dive into Southern California. Now it does tap into some moisture from, from the subtropics, but overall, the nature of the storm, I would call it, uh, definitely call it more of a polar type storm. When we get the pineapple express storms, those are so warm that you have rain all the way up to 9,000 feet and it's just miserable for the ski resorts. This type of storm is really beneficial for the ski resorts up at big bear. Speaker 1: 05:04 And even like we talked about for getting some snow Wednesday night and Thursday amount Laguna cause they're, they're much colder source from the, from these storms. Okay. So what about the rest of California? Is this storm system widespread across the state? It is widespread, but believe it or not, um, the storm track that we saw today coming right into Southern California and the one we're going to see literally a dive into Southern California directly from the North, uh, Wednesday and Thursday is very favorable for Southern California. So in other words, um, if you have friends up in Sacramento, Stockton or something, or we're actually going to get more rain here in San Diego for Christmas day and Thursday, then they're going to get in Northern California. So this, this kind of track of the storm is really favorable. Um, even though everyone gets rain and all the mountains get snow, uh, we're kind of the ground zero. Speaker 1: 05:59 We're, we're taking the direct hit in Southern California with this particular storm track. Well, I guess the good news about these storms is that they shouldn't be turning around the near drought that we were entering. How close are we to average rainfall now? Yeah, it's been quite remarkable, especially in Southern California. It's been, it's been really opposite of, of any normal year where we've been sharing the brunt of the storms since about Thanksgiving day. That storm really kicked it off. We're now over five inches for San Diego. Our annual average is 10, a little over 10, so we're about 50% of the way if it were not to rain again. So, and then we're expecting another inch or two rain on Wednesday and Thursday. So we're doing really well. We're basically two and a half times more than we should be for any average year. So you could safely say we've started off the year, uh, very wet, uh, here in San Diego County. Speaker 1: 06:56 I saw that there is another storm expected next week, the week of new year's. Yeah, we've been kind of struggling with that storm, uh, in terms of where exactly it's going to go. But the bottom line is, uh, it looks like a dry weekend. So Friday, Saturday, Sunday looks dry. If you're out, uh, heading to the mountains or doing other plans or going to visit relatives, it looks dry Friday, Saturday, Sunday, once that rain ends on Thursday. But you're right. Um, right before new year's, there's still a good possibility that we're going to see some more rain. Um, and, and it's the same type of storm where it's coming directly from the North. So it does look cold enough that even our higher train we'll see more snow. The only uncertainty with that storm is, is how strong will it be. Will, will we be a direct hit like we see Christmas day and Thursday or will it just kind of brush us by? Um, so we're a little uncertain seven days out, but if you do have plans for December 30th and 31st, right before new year's Eve do check the forecast because there is still a good chance we could see some more rate in snow. Uh, that Monday, Tuesday I've been speaking with national weather service meteorologist Alex tardy and Alex rain or shine have a happy holiday. Yeah, same to you. Thank you. Speaker 2: 08:17 [inaudible] Speaker 3: 08:20 it's been two years since California legalized recreational marijuana, but KPBS science and technology reporters Shalina Chad Lani says law enforcement is still figuring out how to police people who drive when they're high. She brings us the final installment of our series, high hopes California's pot experiment. Speaker 1: 08:40 Once you close your eyes, I want you to think 30 seconds in your head. Why don't you think 30 seconds pass open your eyes and let me know. Do you understand the test? Yes. [inaudible] demonstrates what you would do if you pulled over a driver under the influence of a drug like marijuana. Drugs will make Speaker 4: 08:56 the eyelids flutter. Speaker 5: 08:58 A police officer with the California highway patrol and a drug recognition expert or Dre for short Speaker 4: 09:05 drug recognition experts have additional training in detecting and determining whether the determining whether or not a person is under the influence or a specific category of drugs. Speaker 5: 09:17 It says in the two years since the sale of recreational marijuana became legal, he seen a rise in vehicle crashes. Speaker 4: 09:24 Now that people that smoke marijuana, they tend to smoke marijuana before they go to bed and then immediately after they wake up and now we're seeing crashes. DUI crashes in the mornings. Speaker 5: 09:37 Marijuana is hard to police. THC, the compound in marijuana that gets you high affects everyone differently. So traditional tools used on drunk drivers like breathalyzers don't work and California doesn't have a legal limit for drug driving. Like with alcohol. So it's up to Marielle and other DRES to decide whether someone is under the influence. Morrill says California has about 1400 DRES, that's the most in the nation, but he thinks the state needs a lot more. That's because cannabis consumption has become normalized in West Hollywood. Original cannabis cafe opened in October. It's the first eatery in the nation where customers can consume marijuana products with their meals. Ricardo Baca is a renowned independent marijuana journalist. Speaker 6: 10:22 There is open consumption happening all around us. It just says that we're finally entering an era of normalization. Speaker 5: 10:32 Baka says, marijuana has become a mainstream drug, much like alcohol, and it's still unclear how to regulate it, but he says, relying on drug recognition experts opinions instead of a scientific tool can be unfair. Speaker 6: 10:44 They're using the roadside sobriety tests that were familiar from black and white and movies. It's like touch your nose and that's how they're telling. Are you high or are you not? So there is no scientific objective, and that's problematic. Speaker 5: 11:00 So San Diego researchers are trying to address drugged driving at the UC San Diego center for medicinal cannabis research. Tom Marcott hits the gas and drives down a busy road, mingled up to the next intersection. At first it's an easy trip, but soon Speaker 7: 11:18 I think the interactive simulator with gas and brake pedal steering will Speaker 5: 11:24 Mark Cod is the co director of the center. He uses his machine to research how people behave when they're stoned. These types of studies have been happening for a while, but my card says they have their limitations. For example, people often use different amounts of pot. Speaker 7: 11:37 Well, one of the things that our study looks to do is to say, if we take people who are regular users, the people most likely to go on the road and tell them to smoke a joint as they normally would to get high. Uh, we want to see well what would that look like on the road? Speaker 3: 11:52 The study tests, other tools that might tell if someone is too high, like a memory test on an iPad. Marcotte says, we've long studied how people behave when they're drunk, but not so much when they're high. Speaker 7: 12:03 The impression is, and most research is that with cannabis people tend to become more cautious, tend to drive slower. Speaker 3: 12:08 Marco says close to 200 regular pot smokers have gone through his driving simulation. He's excited to see what the data show, but he says the study will not be a catchall solution for law enforcement. Speaker 7: 12:18 Looked at edibles, so dabbing where someone gets a highly concentrated form of THC. We can't do that kind of research because those materials aren't available from the federal government. So there are a lot of questions when it comes to public health and safety, that researchers right now just are not able to openly address Speaker 3: 12:36 and law enforcement won't be able to use any new technologies from this research until they're approved by the state, which can take time. Shelina Celani KPBS news to say all the stories in our series, go to kpbs.org/pot this is KPBS mid day edition. I'm Maureen Cavanagh, one of the podcasts produced by KPBS this year. Took a deep dive into a crime that shook a San Diego neighborhood almost 17 years ago. The incident has reverberated through the years and led to change in the whole of San Diego. Here's the first episode of the series. Dr J's, how a gang shooting changed Southeast San Diego and it's hosted by KPBS investigative reporter Claire Turga, sir Speaker 8: 13:31 [inaudible]. Speaker 9: 13:34 It's long been a tradition at the true faith missionary Baptist church to hold a service that ends at midnight on new year's Eve. The mostly African American church in San Diego's Azalea park neighborhood is small, about 50 people. Some of them gathered that night for a few hours to sing, read from the Bible. Thank God for the outgoing year and pray for the year about to begin. Speaker 8: 13:57 There are people right now behind these walls that need to hear our testimony. Speaker 9: 14:04 The prayers are for safety. People pray for the safety of friends and family members who are out at parties and they pray for their own safety. While driving home that night. Speaker 8: 14:14 It really was something for me to even get out of here. Cause here in the bullets and every yet God is dead and I had faith that he bring me here safely. Back Speaker 9: 14:22 in 2003 in the first hour of that new year, Carol waits left this midnight service and gotten the car to drive home. She was with her friend, her seven year old nephew and her two year old granddaughter. They stopped to buy a fireplace log at a small liquor store called dr J's. A group of gang members pulled up and started shooting. Both women were killed. The seven year old was shot multiple times while he shielded the year old with his body. Remarkably, he survived Speaker 2: 15:08 [inaudible] [inaudible] Speaker 9: 15:17 more than 15 years later, people still talk about what happened that night. The crime was so perfectly horrific. Two innocent women on their way home from church, no less. Two kids in the backseat caught in a senseless gang drive by shooting. It made people pay more attention to what was going on in Southeast San Diego, a lower income and predominantly African American pocket of the city. There had been escalating gang violence that year and the shooting at dr Jay's was part of it or retaliation for a gang member who had been killed the day before. Speaker 10: 15:58 Everybody felt it. Like you have to [inaudible] you have two innocent women that were just coming from church, you know, that had nothing to do with anything. Speaker 9: 16:07 Armand King spent part of the time growing up in Southeast San Diego and got involved with street life. He said right after the shooting, there was even more violence between rival gangs in the area. Speaker 10: 16:19 Even both sides were mad that it was supposedly one side that did it and one side the area that it was done at felt like they was getting attacked them. But then these two women who had families who people knew it happened in their areas, so now they're mad because they think this side did it. This side's mad at whoever did it and but now more people are being killed, more people are being incarcerated. So it's just, it's a, it's a ticking, not even a ticking time bomb. It's exploding at this point. Speaker 2: 16:53 [inaudible] Speaker 9: 16:58 just before Thanksgiving last year, King was rushing around an intersection in Southeast San Diego, used to be a place with a lot of gang activity. Now there was a line of people waiting to get free turkeys and King was giving them away. He now helps run a nonprofit called paving great futures that trains people in culinary programs. The point is in part to take the place of [inaudible]. Speaker 11: 17:23 This is, this is, this is grassroots work at its finest. This is how our community is transformed, not will. It is transformative. King Speaker 9: 17:31 has turned his life around after spending time in prison and he says Southeast San Diego has made changes to after Carol waits and our friend Sharon Burton were killed. Local leaders formed a group called black men United. They passed out flyers offering a for finding the killers and they also started organizing charity work and gang outreach. That group is still going strong today. The city of San Diego also took notice and formed the commission on gang prevention and intervention. It advises city leaders and the police on how to decrease gang violence. The gang commission is also still working and just got a new director late last year. Speaker 9: 18:20 It took six years for police and prosecutors to bring someone to trial for the shooting. The lead prosecutor was Robert Hickey who still works in the district attorney's office. He ran for city attorney two years ago and brought up his work on that case a lot as proof of his leadership and ability to work with people in Southeast San Diego. This horrible crime created major change for everyone involved from the victims to the man prosecuted to informants in the case to people who still live in the community. If you walk the streets in the area today, people still talk about the shooting and the lasting impacts it had. Armand King said, people definitely paid more attention to Southeast San Diego after the shooting, Speaker 10: 19:07 but it not necessarily looked at it in a positive light like let's come in with resources and help them or opportunities and help them not go down these routes. It was more of a negative lock them animals up type atmosphere. Speaker 3: 19:28 A year ago when 13,000 households were displaced from the town of paradise in the surrounding area. They were only around a thousand vacant units in Butte County to absorb them all and rental prices there jumped more than 20% in the immediate aftermath of the fire. People lived in their cars. Spare bedrooms on couches, KQBD reporters. Sonya Hudson introduces us to one family that managed to stay in paradise. That's because they figured out a living arrangement they never planned on. Speaker 5: 20:02 It's my son and my oldest daughter and my youngest son. I only have two. That's her husband. It takes Lori Horn back a couple minutes to introduce all her new roommates. Ages two to 58 okay. Is standing around the kitchen Island with her husband, their two kids and their spouses, four grandchildren and their daughter in law's mother. A couple of them are sitting on the ground next to the sink trying to fix a pipe. The rest are standing and sitting on barstools eating dinner by the glow of electric lanterns. The day I visit PGNE has shut off the power again to try to prevent another wildfire like the campfire. After living out of trailers for four months and each scouring the County for their own homes, the extended family decided to pool their together to buy this big house on the outskirts of paradise. I'm going to take you upstairs real quick. Yeah. Laurie is so excited to take me on a tour. This is my grandson's room. This is Mike and Brittany's room. Oops. Sorry. We walk on plush carpet, a big antique wooden bed onto a huge deck. There's a loud generator humming in the background. Since the power has been shut off, Speaker 12: 21:07 the sunset is prettier than Hawaii sunset and you have a three 60 view of the Valley. Speaker 5: 21:16 The horn backs are happy to have a place to live, especially one with a view, but putting 11 family members under one roof has meant some big adjustments. Says Lori and her husband, John. We were empty nesters and now we're one huge family. 24 hours. Now they don't go home. They stay here. Yeah, nothing is really the same. Forest, they hardly ever watch TV anymore. For example, everyone's streams on their own devices so they don't disturb or wake up other family members. And we've learned to app just about everything that's meant. Some adjustments in John's morning routine. If you want to watch regular like news in the morning, I watch it on my phone most of the time in the morning because, Oh, I can turn on the TV. But you know, it's so it's in a big room so it's kind of loud and ended up waking somebody up when they're not trying to be quiet in the mornings. The horde Macs are allowed family actually, I mean there's at times you can't hear yourself think Laurie says they have a solution for that too. Even though this house is only three bedrooms, they've converted the garage and a couple of other rooms into extra bedrooms. And when it gets chaotic for one or the other, we uh, go to our perspective corners and put ourselves in timeout. Speaker 5: 22:26 The setup seems to work for nine year old Aiden Richardson, John and Lori's grandson. There's houses. Very nice. And I love living in it. It's my future home. Future. Future home. Forever home. Yeah. Forever home. And what's it like living with uh, this many people and with your whole family? It's crazy. Why is it crazy? Because I've been used to only living with five and I didn't have them in my house, but now I do. And it's like, Whoa. His mom, Brittany, she's John and Laurie's daughter. So she and her husband looked for a house on their own, but it was especially hard to find places close to paradise. And I didn't want to be away from my family and I wanted to go back home, but not everyone was sold on moving back to paradise, especially her mom, Laurie. She was too traumatized from the day they escaped the fire and was worried about lingering toxins from the debris we were running from flames and smoke. Speaker 5: 23:25 The morning the fire broke out. She caravan with Brittany and her kids out of town with flames closing in on them and propane tanks exploding everywhere and that's all we heard was paint tapes. I was picking my son up from elementary school and there was just these big embers. A lot of the horn backs are still struggling with trauma from the fire and living under the same roof is helping them deal with it. That's very visible on this Wednesday night as they sit around the kitchen table talking and something starts beeping and wondered why are um, we would have Brittany and Kelly run upstairs to check. Turns out nothing is burning. They come back downstairs and tell everyone the alarms had gone off because smoke from their generator had come into the house through a window. They're also freaked out because the power's out and the candles in one of the bathrooms are casting a big red glow on the wall. Speaker 13: 24:25 And so it was just a big trigger for me and my sister because you know, the glows of fire is something that we don't like to look at. So when you see certain things, you freak out. Speaker 5: 24:37 There are also other reminders too of Brittany's kids who were in the backseat of her car as she drove out of paradise to escape the fire have started regressing. Her daughter Mackenzie, who was one at the time, stopped crawling, Speaker 13: 24:50 you know, she wouldn't even do anything. She would just sit there and just Speaker 5: 24:53 cry. And her four year old daughter Marley, who used to be really talkative, pretty much stopped speaking. Speaker 13: 24:58 It doesn't feel good. I was really sad because they went backwards and that's not good. That's not a good sign. Speaker 5: 25:04 Marley's sitting on Brittany's lap holding a doll. They were able to rescue from the ruins of their house. It's plastic head was partially melted by the fire. Speaker 13: 25:13 That was the only thing that she had left of her home and so it was, that's the only thing that we named him Ash after the fire and he survived Speaker 5: 25:22 and they're grateful. They all survived too. Grandma Lori says, when she first saw this place, she knew this was the house where living altogether would work. And then I got into [inaudible] and I said, I'm home. I didn't have to look around. Nothing. It just sounds weird, but it just fits. The fire changed everything for the horn backs who like many other white middle class families in paradise. Never imagined they'd all live together. They were always close. But now John and Lori get to watch their grandkids grow up every day. I'm Sonia Hudson in paradise. Well, you may be dreaming of a winter Wonderland. For this next story, we're going to take you to the beach. Here's mid day edition cohost Jade Hindman. Speaker 13: 26:23 Black's beach is one of San Diego's most popular surfing spots, known Ford's big winter swells. It's also a favorite among nudists, but how did Black's beach become a nude beach? That's the question on the mind of at least one San Diego resident. Speaker 14: 26:38 My name is Liam Bay. I live in Carmel mountain ranch and I've lived in San Diego since March and yeah, I was just interested in finding out a little bit more about the history of black speech and why it is the new to speech and how it came to be. Speaker 15: 26:52 I'm a newish San Diego too. I moved here about two years ago and I too wanted to get to the bottom of Liam's question. But first I had to see black speech for myself. I went with K PBS producer Brooke and videographer Mac. We drove to the LA Jolla farms area, which is near UC San Diego, where there are multimillion dollar homes with ocean views. We parked in front of one of those homes and then tracked about a mile down a windy, steep access road to get to the beach. And then we walked along the ocean waves until I started to see bare bodies. Black's beach is an over two mile long stretch of sand up against steep 350 foot cliffs that Torrey Pines glider port is above the cliffs and hang gliders in, be seen soaring above while surfers are in the water, enjoying this popular and secluded surf spot. So with microphone in hand, I went to talk to a few of the nude beach goers. That's when I met Julio Rivera and Madison funk who were visiting San Diego from Kansas. Speaker 12: 27:57 Uh, I'm on vacation with my friend Madison and we decided just abruptly that we're definitely going to try to check out a new beach. So we're in the area. Um, just Googled nude beaches near me. Saw this one, had good ratings. I saw a few pictures as the cliff side, so I was like, you know what? Yeah, perfect. This is like number one on the list. We were like, get there, get naked. What is so intriguing about going to a nude beach? Um, well I mean it's just, I guess like it feel, it just, it feels nice, you know, like you're no tan lines for one. I don't, I don't like tan lines, but it just, it feels nice. Get in the water. It's like nature's bath. It's great. I love it. It's really freeing. But there's also like a childish innocence to being naked at the beach. Like you're just like playing around, you're having fun. And some people are like, Oh, isn't it like weird being out there? Which was like all these people you don't know, like you're not paying attention to them. Like you're there to have a good time. You just happen to also be naked? Speaker 15: 28:49 We tried to ask a few more people questions, but they waved us off. Who knew? People in the nude would be so bashful about doing a news interview. So back to Liam's question, how did black speech become a nude beach? Longtime LA Jolla resident, Carol Alton has been the historian at the LA Jolla historical society for the past 15 years. She explains how Black's beach got its name. Speaker 16: 29:12 It's called black speech after William Black. He was a gentleman who came out here from Santa Fe, New Mexico, and he asked the architect William Lumpkins to design a house for him. And he had a large house on the Hill above black speech and he raised thoroughbreds there for, for several years. And so it just, since he owned the land up top, it just became known as Black's beach. Um, his widow after he, I have the city formally received the name Black's beach. Speaker 15: 29:45 It's now called Torrey Pines beach, but all the locals still call it Black's beach. Carol said people started going down to blacks in the early seventies and word quickly spread. Speaker 16: 29:55 It was just a place you could go is very forsaken. People took their clothes off. Other people found out about it. Speaker 15: 30:03 Black's beach becoming a nude beach was a sign of the times. The neighboring UC San Diego campus was relatively new and there was a lot of liberal thought on the campus. Not to mention it was the end of the counterculture movement. Speaker 16: 30:16 Uh, people had a, um, a desire to be very free, so to speak. And um, a nude beach was an expression of freedom. Speaker 15: 30:24 In 1974, the issue of nudity at black speech came before the San Diego city council. According to newspaper archives, the representative for the LA Jolla farms homeowners association told the council that area residents were concerned that making Black's beach a nude beach would change the character of the wealthy neighborhood. Following hours of testimony, the council voted five to two to make blacks beach a clothing optional beach while prohibiting nudity at all other city beaches. That vote made black speech the only legal nude beach at the time in the country. Carol said the neighboring community was not happy with black speech being a nude beach and not for the reasons you may think Speaker 16: 31:04 it was that a, it was a very, it was a nude beach that was very, very difficult to get to and you had to go down a very severe cliff to get there. Uh, there was new, a really good public access. Uh, so people parked in this wealthy neighborhood around LA Jolla farms road, and of course, when thousands and thousands were turning up on a single day, it became a nuisance with a trash and people parking cars and being noisy, et cetera, et cetera. So that led to a lot of the controversy about it. Speaker 15: 31:39 In September of 1977, San Diego [inaudible] went to the ballot box to weigh in on proposition D, which asked if it should be illegal to be nude at all public beaches in the city. The majority of voters said yes, and nudity was banned on city beaches. That's when black speech lost its distinction as the nation's only legal nude beach. Speaker 16: 32:00 It became illegal to be new to the beach. But of course the nude beach enforcement was very difficult for a lifeguards and police officers. So even today, I mean people go down there and it's a nude beach. Speaker 15: 32:14 Here's Madison funk again who was visiting from Kansas. Speaker 12: 32:17 We like kind of walked. We're like, okay, we kind of see people in clothes over here, kind of more people naked down here, like got farther down there. He's all these cones and we're like, maybe that means something. So we kind of stuck close to them not knowing which side was like really the line. Cause we've seen there's some people right over here, but there's also some people like right over here. So we were like, we'll just show right here. We don't want to take it or nothing. We're trying to have fun. Speaker 15: 32:38 Those orange cones, Madison's Speaker 3: 32:40 talking about Mark the boundary separating the state and the city portions of the beach on the city run portion, which is the most Southern part. City lifeguards enforce the clothing requirement. But that's not the case for the Northern part. Run by the state in a statement, a state parks spokesperson said quote, even though nudity is prohibited due to limited resources, state park police officers patrol the beach on an as needed basis. He said state park officers respond to the highest priority calls that impact public safety and health issues, so it's not actually legal to be nude on the state run portion of black speech, but you probably won't get ticketed for it either. Speaker 3: 33:21 That was a brief history of San Diego's Black's beach, hosted by midday additions, Jade Heinemann and produced by Brooke Ruth. This is KPBS mid day edition. I'm Maureen Cavanagh. We spent our summer in 2019 celebrating local bands playing everything from blues to bluegrass, the hip hop band in our summer music series. We're the winners of this year. San Diego music awards for best hip hop rap artists and best hip hop rap album. Parker Edison, Nathan Hubbard and John Reed are on base make up the band, the Parker Meridian. They joined us in the in the mid day edition studio to perform and talk about their music and here they are with their song, 40 foot tall, Speaker 17: 34:05 40 foot tall, 40 foot tall, 40 foot tall, 40 foot tall. Speaker 8: 34:24 You had to live that nascent. You make new Dodge Ram. If you had to live the things that you drink, you died because you [inaudible] artichoke beat street and mean need means up. My blow started. I couldn't afford a Palmer right? Come up here. Ended up you could track them. But number two, the younger up up was friend. If I opened up shop main stock to take all the waste back down from the set [inaudible] I'll tell you about that later, right? I think I, I take over Speaker 18: 35:04 the whole world. Tall, tall, make money cause walls don't make bills. I call him boxing because that's how this dang feels like I'm [inaudible] but with my having the game and let me get my [inaudible] I don't know what the way to do it. I was up in the note game, our coverage and fluid and it's back on [inaudible]. I'm from a place, whatever. Let yellow fit like [inaudible] about my numbers, like I can help you native set up all about my numbers. [inaudible] Speaker 8: 35:50 I might. Let's go and take over the world, man. I got a master plan. Let's pull up to the bank. We hopped out the car. Everyone just runs it. We got the snakes Speaker 18: 36:04 and it's like 2040 6,800 dad, I want a hundred I'm trying to get to all that money. That was one 40 I want 120 4,800 I want a hundred I'm trying to get to, Speaker 3: 36:26 wow, thank you. That was the Parker Meridian off their latest album, 20 fist street sessions and it's called 40 foot tall. The Parker Meridian is Parker Edison on vocals. Parker, welcome. Good morning Nathan Hubbard on drums and samples. Nathan. Hello. Hello. Thanks for having us and John reader on base. Welcome to midday edition. Thank you. Nathan, you were playing drums in that last song, but I noticed you were also doing some samples. Do you sample your own music in a performance? Speaker 19: 36:56 Oh yeah, definitely. There's definitely our voice. Everything that we use is a sample of ourselves. Like 40 foot tall started with that hook. I was driving around really late at night. I had got off work or something and I have one of those apps on my phone that you can record into and I just, you know, 40 foot tall. I was kinda like hilarious and creepy and really interesting and a lot of ways. So that 40 foot tall is just me and it's pitch shifted down a little. So it sounds more manly now, Parker, lots of the lyrics. I mean they sound, I know they're not, but they always sound improvised. Like you're telling somebody a story because you are right. You're having a conversation with the listener. Right. Speaker 3: 37:36 And is that hard to pull off all the time? I mean, it's the same story, right? Speaker 19: 37:44 Because it sits differently in different environments. So you get in a referee environment and they relate to it. You get to an alien environment and they take it in as spectacle. You get into someone who's filling experimental in there, you know, they're, they're digging the Sonic value of it. So it always has kind of a different layer for different listenings. Speaker 3: 38:02 Now. Nathan, you and Parker have both been working in the San Diego music scene. Nate in jazz, Parker in hip hop. How did you meet? Speaker 19: 38:11 We actually, I think the first time we ever shook hands was onstage. He came up and literally just out of the audience and sat in with a group. I had at seven grand in North park and we did a couple of songs. So you just met and you were on the mic. Life is good sometimes. John, what? What were your musical influences? Did you start out in jazz? No, not at all actually. I, you know I, I'm a huge fan of avant garde jazz and free jazz and a lot of 1960s jazz there. Nathan and I connect on that level, but I'm not necessarily educated in jazz and certainly not educated in hip hop. This has been an education now. What are you working on for your next album? It's kind of cool. I think right now we're like, we're in the thinking of the brainstorm phase. We have a set of songs put together. I think it's coming together kind of organically. We're going to get kind of a sneak peek our way. Yeah. One new tune and it's called a thin line. Okay, thank you. Speaker 20: 39:12 [inaudible] Speaker 6: 39:12 it's a thin line. Some new music. When you trial, don't keep your ears open. There might be a new album. Cross the line. Take the mite out. You land those fine. Excuse me. Into out incentive. Hey. Hey. When you draw the line, when you cross the line, when you cross the line and those spines, Nope. Nope, Nope, Nope. When you travel, when you cross the line, cross cross. Nope. Nope, Nope, Nope. Nope. You draw the line when you cross the line, that little spot? Nope. Nope, Nope. You'd seen him. Vocal duet. These you CBRE folk get a couple buck is photo. Duck is like the same info has going to be if they own it and it's Hey you that day man, you get crazy. [inaudible] [inaudible] Speaker 6: 40:16 million ABA keeps it out. My PO one day you gone. Oh wake up like a thousand cuts us all man. You out outfit nutty as an outlet as Austin form and voting questions on an ad. Mitch Michonne out of the see me Z you double cross. Your level of IQ is elbow reading. Reading reader Rian Kachin for. Okay. I'll try to make a story out of there that they outfit this up line and you draw the line, you draw them and you cross the line crossing those spine. Nope. Nope, Nope, Nope. [inaudible] you cross those back in the middle like a calendar. Always check your sources. Sources cause we take up this app. To me that is the sound of this anthro cactus. He just got us down back auto dip, dancing around. Don't catch up there to there. Look on and Hey [inaudible] got the note at that though. It's okay. Alright. Alright. Listen to the radio. You can't see [inaudible] got 22 break dancing monkeys. Oh my God. Right. Campbell's never been this. When you crossed the line, that was the Parker Meridian performing at the KPBS studios earlier this year. Speaker 2: 42:43 Stay alive.