Hey neighbors! The Lisko Artisan Deli and Fish Market‘s Grand Opening is today, August 21st, from 8am to 3pm.

Lisko’s is located on Rolando Boulevard at El Cajon Boulevard, catty-cornered from the Seven Eleven. For those who remember, it’s in Woodstock Pizza’s old location.

6548 El Cajon Boulevard, San Diego, CA 92115

I dropped in yesterday for a cappuccino and later for delicious cheese, fresh fruits, and beautiful olives.

UPADTE: It’s now almost time for this year’s Rolando Street Fair. Hope to see you there!

The 15th Annual Rolando Street Fair is on Sunday, March 27 this year.

Come out, meet your neighbors, enjoy over one hundred vendor booths and support your community organizations selling hand-crafted items, scrumptious food, and other services at Rolando’s annual street festival.

As usual the carnival rides will be present. Show your kids centrifugal force first-hand by sending them for a spin on the RoundUp! Enjoy the massive bouncy world, and conquer the climbing wall.

Enjoy live music performed by local talent including:

• Gone Tomorrow
• Steph Johnson
• Billy Midnight
• Quino of Big Mountain with full band
• Len Rainey and the Midnight Players

The hub of the street fair is at the Rolando Village Triangle located on Rolando Boulevard and Serrano Place just a block south of El Cajon Boulevard. Here’s a map for you.

A big thanks to everyone who makes this possible. Including but not limited to:

• The Rolando Community Council (a local 501c.3) for organizing this event
• Marty Emerald’s 7th District Council Office for a generous grant of $3,000
• The San Diego City Arts Council for awarding $3,100 to support this production
• Doug Lister and all the tireless volunteers who make me feel lazy and guilty
• All the fun people near and far who come each year to enjoy the fair

Dear fellow Rolandos! Joining the Rolando Community Council is a great way to support your community and stay involved. You can join the RCC and pay your membership dues online with this form. If you’re an existing member you can renew your membership by paying your dues online. Thank you for supporting the RCC.

Full disclosure: RolandoVillage.com is independent from the RCC. However, RolandoVillage.com really likes the RCC and appreciates their hard work very very much.

By Aimee Lee Cheek

Below is a fun piece of history from 1947 … the VERY FIRST ROLANDO VILLAGE STREET FAIR. Take a look!

The trees and the rides look familiar. It must be the Rolando Street Fair, now in its fifteenth year. But wait a minute. The poster, plain as day, advertises a Rolando Village Carnival in September, not March 27, when this year’s Street Fair will be held. And who are those girls in the formal gowns?

Thanks to Mrs. William E. Flohr, who still lives in Rolando with her husband of nearly fifty-six years, who excavated this photograph from her closets, we now know some of the answers. Moreover, we are able to establish that the Rolando Street Fair had a precursor sixty years ago.

Claribel Houston (far right, above)—or “Tootsie” as she had been nicknamed as a baby and has been known ever since—was seventeen years old in 1947. When she was six years old, in 1936, her family had moved to a house with a half-acre lot on 67th Street. They kept cows, chickens and pigs, she recalls. “Our side of the street was all dirt and there were no sidewalks.” She and the other little girls took their roller skates and wagons over into the slightly more developed section just to the west and “the boys played cops and robbers up and down the sewers.”

Her father, Verl R. Houston, was a builder eager to attract customers for new houses. Rolando, its development slowed by World War II, seemed the perfect opportunity. He drove around in a pick-up truck filled with signs emblazoned Rolando Village. Then, in late summer 1947, he and others planned a carnival to draw in potential buyers. By chance or design, La Mesa staged a street parade. Mr. Houston seized the moment.

Mrs. Houston had decided that for her senior prom Tootsie had to have a gown. It was pink, full length, with an enormous skirt and a diaphanous overlay. Perhaps it was the sight of his daughter in her beautiful dress that inspired Mr. Houston and his collaborators to dream up an elaborate float to enter in the La Mesa parade to advertise the upcoming Rolando Village carnival.

Tootsie remembers that her neighbor, Yvonne Massa (far left, above), also rode on the float. It was mounted on a flat-bed truck with a decorative skirting to conceal the unglamorous underpinnings of the machinery. By the time they made it back to Rolando Boulevard where the photographer set up his camera, a huge rent had appeared in the skirting. The young women spread their own skirts to hide the damage and smiled their best smiles into the afternoon sun.

Tootsie’s father went on to construct and later build and sell a number of houses on Rolando Boulevard and in the neighborhood as it expanded, most if not all still standing. He built the house that she and her husband Bill moved into shortly after their marriage. Here they raised their four children. Here they still live.

Tootsie hopes this photograph might jog someone else’s memory about that long ago day of the parade, perhaps of the other three girls in the photograph whose names she cannot recall. She’s sure they weren’t called princesses. “We were just girls,” she says with a smile. But looking at them, and listening to Tootsie now, it’s easy to see that Rolando indeed had royalty.

Do you have historic photos of Rolando?

If you, or anyone you know, have photos of Rolando Village they would be willing to share please email photos@rolandovillage.com and we can help arrange to digitize the photos with loving care so we can shared them here.

If you have an Android, Blackberry, iPhone or Windows Phone 7 please install the CitySourced app and use it. CitySourced makes reporting potholes, graffiti, burned out street lights, and other civic issues a no-brainer.

This has been mentioned here before but the service keeps getting better. Give CitySourced credit for fixing that pothole on Alamo Drive at Rolando Boulevard and many burned out street lights.

Here’s a live map of issues reported with the CitySourced mobile app.

A more detailed map is here.

It’s time again for the BOO! Parade, San Diego’s biggest costume party followed by the BOO! Carnival.

The Boulevard BOO! Parade travels through the College Area at 10am on Saturday, October 23, 2010. Beginning at 59th Street in El Cerrito, the Boulevard BOO! Parade will travel east along El Cajon Boulevard, crosses College Avenue, and concludes at Rolando Boulevard in the heart of Rolando Village.

Bring your family to the BOO! Carnival 11am-5pm, Admission is FREE, Clay Park at Art Street.

Details at BOOparade.com

Rolando neighbor Richard Burkett and his bluegrass band, Gone Tomorow, will play a free (thanks guys!) concert this Saturday at Clay Park. The show runs from 5:00pm to 6:30pm.

The Rolando Community Council have arranged to provide shade. So come with blankets, chairs, drinks, or just yourself and be ready to have some fun.

Photo credit: GoneTomorrowBluegrass.com

Clay Park on Google Maps

CitySourced is the easiest way to report civic issues (graffiti, potholes, trash, urban blight) directly to city hall and make a difference in our neighborhood. It is free for your Android, BlackBerry, or iPhone.

Install CitySourced on your smartphone today for an easy way to make a difference.

The map below shows CitySourced activity in Rolando Village.

Happy 4th Rolando!

Declaration of Independence

Hey Rolandos,

Just got my spankin’ new smart meter installed yesterday. Just in time to meet SDG&E’s scheduled rollout for Rolando Village.

In about three months we’ll be able to link our SDG&E accounts to Google’s PowerMeter to get a play-by-play dashboard of our hourly/daily/monthly energy consumtion. Lord Kelvin said “If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it.” Well now Google says you CAN measure it so you CAN improve it. Real people are reporting real savings without even adjusting their lifestyles. They’re able to easily see where and when they’re throwing away energy and money.

Here’s what mine looks like.

Questions, answers, comments? Post them below!

14^th Annual Street Fair, this Sunday, March 28^th

Rolando Blvd. just south of El Cajon Blvd.

10 AM to 6 PM

Some highlights:

• Police Museum antique vehicles
• 120 Vendors….lots of good food, crafts, services, government reps, commercial products
• Free Local Merchant Discount Books (at the Information Booth) 25 discount coupons
• Police SWAT vehicle, police recruiters, and our local Community Relations Officer
• Project Heartbeat (learn about defibrillation)
• Great music (see schedule below)
• RCC Community Service Award announcement (11:30 at the stage)
• Kiddie activities and rides
• Fire safety house: Firemen will instruct kids on fire safety
• ROL car window cling logo. Identify yourself as a proud Rolando resident ($1.00)

Rhonda Johnson, Fair Coordinator, and her team have been hard at work to make this the best fair ever. Stop by to visit at the RCC/Information booth, and join RCC if you are not already a member! See you there.

Live Music Schedule

10:30 AM – 11:30 AM: The San Diego School of Rock:

• Saving Rock and Roll one kid at a time!! These kids are here to ROCK!!

12:00 PM – 1:00 PM: The New Primordials:

• Old time Rock and Roll…..a well seasoned old band with a new name! Bandmember Chuck Knight is a long time Rolando resident!

1:30 PM – 2:30 PM: Steph Johnson – A San Diego singer/songwriter:

• Blends blues, soul, jazz and R&B
• Powerful sultry voice
• Rhythmic jazz inflected guitar
• Nominated for Best Acoustic Performer at the 2005 San Diego Music Awards

3:00 – 4:00 PM: Len Rainey and the Midnight Players: Returning favorite

• Ready for some blues, jazz, and rock and roll?
• Len Rainey’s Chicago roots do drive his performances
• His music is influenced by Stevie Wonder, James Brown, BB King, Ella Fitzgerald and many others
• Played in DC at one of the inauguration parties

4:30 PM – 6:00 PM: Lee Coulter

• Refreshing “Funkacana.” Influenced by the music and free minds of Paul Simon, Bob Dylan, and Bob Marley
• “This is good time music that makes you dance and feeds your soul” – San Diego Troubadour Magazine

Save the date!

More details to come.

According to SDG&E’s interactive map Smart Meters are coming to most of Rolando Village and Rolando Park by June 2010.

What does this mean?

It means, among other things, you’ll be able to use Google’s Power Meter software to help you monitor and manage your home energy use.

Welcome to 2010 fellow Rolandos! Here’s a photo of 2009′s last sunset over Rolando Village, a perfect farewell.

New year’s resolution … Post often to RolandoVillage.com!