Sea Rocket Bistro will be hosting our first ever Guest Chef Cooking Class on Sunday, September 12th. Join us for an evening of fun and good food that you help prepare as Chef Jenn Felmley takes you through a hands-on class featuring some of our best local ingredients...prepared in totally different ways than you've ever had on our menu!

Check out the flyer below for details. If you're interested in participating, just call us for reservations, which are limited to the capacity of our front room in order to keep things intimate and allow all students to roll up their sleeves and get cooking! 619-255-7049.

Sea Rocket is proud to present the artwork of our Ray Street neighbor, Katherine Brannock. Katherine is showing some incredible ink drawings, "Creatures", as well as a unique painting throughout the restaurant interior that will change over the coming weeks.

Brannock is a San Diego native and received her education in University of California Santa Cruz, and Watts Atelier in Encinitas. Her exhibition experience includes Mark Murphy's "The Know Show" at Art Basel, Miami. Her mastery of drawing and unique subject matter pull the viewer in to what seem to be elements of a reality or story we want her to complete for us. Brannock explains this has always been her goal: to tell stories. She is continuing in the essentially American tradition of pulp comics and taking the art form to a new level.

We're throwing a party to welcome Brannock on Thursday, September 2, 2010 at 5pm. Please join us to celebrate this collaboration and check out some really amazing work.

We're located in the center of a vibrant creative community and invite local artists to show their work in our space so we and our neighbors have a chance get to know them. 100% of art sales go to the artist.

I've been to a lot of weddings. We all have. But yesterday, I went to a wedding that changed the lens through which I'll experience all future weddings. Watch this video and you'll see what I mean...

You know you live in a cool neighborhood when you get invited to a wedding at a bike shop, especially one called Velo Cult. This video only captures about 2 hours of the entire weekend's worth of activity, starting with picnics in Bird Park with Miho Gastrotruck serving food, drinks at El Take it Easy, then what you see in this video (Velo Cult and The Station), and finishing with a party at Jay and Katie's house.

By the way, the music in the video is The Silent Comedy. Maybe you've seen them at the Casbah or the NPMT. If you haven't, do yourself a favor and see them live! They're doing a free acoustic set at the W this Thursday, August 26th at 7pm.

So I hope you're noticing now that the video is time lapse. Back in March, CNN published an article about time lapse photography and ever since I've been fascinated with it. Most cameras can be rigged to take photos on a regular basis, say every 60 seconds, but I ended up buying the Go Pro which has that feature built in. It has the advantages also of being super small and made for sports so you can knock it around all you want, or mount it to the top of your electric motorcycle helmet!

Creating the video is easy on a Mac with the software you already have.

The beauty of time lapse is that you can compress time and see things in a way that you wouldn't ordinarily be able to. This wedding time lapse helps you feel the 2 hour event overall without being distracted by every detail. Or a time lapse of the stars helps you see their path when it would normally happen too slow to perceive. Different ways of looking at life help us see things we never saw before, even if they seem obvious after the fact. We've all been guilty, at one time or another, of not seeing the reality right in front of our faces.

A lot of restaurants close their doors on Mondays. And it's natural that after a long weekend of enjoying the weather here in San Diego, you need to buckle down and re-focus on your work week. But we're open 7 nights a week at Sea Rocket and we miss seeing you on Mondays. We recognize that it's not practical to eat out every night of the week because things can add up when you're tempted by such great food and end up getting a starter, entree, dessert, and drinks! So, because we also like to eat out and get a great deal on great food, we'll be offering a Monday Night Prix Fixe Dinner option starting on Monday, September 13th (we're closed on Labor Day, Monday 9/6). This special will run for the rest of the year 2010!

Here's how it will work. For $25 total, you get:

***Choice of Draft Beer or House Wine (currently from Pear Valley)

***Cup of Soup or Starter Salad (currently Roasted Beet Salad or Summer Farm Salad)

***Choice of Entree, not to exceed a $16 menu value

***Choice of Cupcake (currently Red Velvet, Coconut, or Carrot)

Depending on what exact combination of things you order, you'll be saving up to $9 per person! Prix fixe deal is per person, not to be shared and not to be combined with any other offer, discount, coupon, or promotion. Available on Mondays only.

The other evening, I went to the North Park Planning Commission meeting to learn about the remodel that Jack In The Box is planning for their 30th and Upas location. So I met Jerry Thiebolt there. Turns out he's my neighbor. He's also an artist, a teacher, and business man.

Gerry walked me through the Clay Associates studio the next day. He looked confident, content, and proud while telling me about how he and eight other artists founded a non-profit in the early 80s after the previous studio owner retired. The non-profit then bought a house on Adams and converted it to studio space. Funding came from the income from classes they taught, money from the semi-annual sales, and private loans from supporters.

Financially, and for the associate artists, this is a fascinating arrangement. The artists get studio space, access to shared equipment and supplies, and to be part of the creative community that the studio provides. Four of the members teach and earn some income and they are also responsible for day to day operations of the studio. The other members contribute specific work to the studio each month to keep the studio maintained. The members who do not teach have jobs outside the field.

The association makes it possible for two of the members to earn a living and two others an income supplement in their field through teaching, and also helps them gain exposure for outside artistic work or sales of what they produce. If they become famous artists, that's great. But if they don't, in the meantime they don't have to get regular jobs if they don't want to.

The associates do not own the assets of the non-profit. If the house were ever sold and the non-profit ended, the funds would have to be donated to another non-profit. This prevents the associates from changing the character of the organization to something more commercial.

They have semi-annual fundraising sales which begin on the first Friday in December (3 weeks long) and the first Friday in June (1 week long). On those evenings, they have a display of work from their members throughout our studio space. The next day, they also display student work and more work from members.

They also have a fundraiser peculiar to the world of ceramics. Anyone who donates $150 or more to their building fund each year gets an invitation to a Kiln Opening the third Sunday in March. The members make things and the kilns are all fired before the event, but not opened until the donors arrive. Then associates open the kilns and unload them and the donors deliver the pieces up to the tables for display. Everyone gets a chance to look at the pieces to see which ones they would like to have. Then, numbers are drawn so each person gets to choose a piece to keep as our gift to them for their support. The donors love it and the associates love it because it forms a personal bond between the studio and the community it serves.

Jerry has been commissioned by a couple churches in San Diego to build sculptures providing an outside source of income. One of the pieces is pictured above.

It was great getting to know Jerry and meet some of the people at the studio. We support what they do and hope to collaborate with them in the future!

Clay Associates are Eric Woods, Gerald Thiebolt, Warren Bakley, Evelyn Goldman, Moni Blom, Shaun Craig, Ava Bhavsar, Ashley Kim, and Jaci Springfield.