@mrtonylee of Marvel UK has his finger on the button

For those of you hoping to acquire lodging downtown (or anywhere remotely in the vicinity) hotel registration opens a few hours from now.  The online registration process has been upgraded this year, allowing users to que up for a hotel slot with priority given by time of visit.  For full details, including the official list of participating hotels, hit the ComicCon hotel site, located here.

Follow the joy of victory and agony of defeat on twitter search as people invariably tweet about their hotel luck (or lack thereof).

UPDATE: several twitter users reported that ComicCon’s new hotel booking service, TravelPlanners, crashed under the load two minutes into the rush. It’s back up again, but EXTREMELY slow from all accounts.

Since my last post on homelessness, I’ve been paying close attention to the downtown homeless population.  NPR had a great send up of the changing demographic here in San Diego and across the country.  Even though the winters here in San Diego aren’t too harsh, I’ve been wondering about how these folks continue to sleep out in the cold or rain every night.  Then a few weeks ago I noticed the tents.  At first one or two, but then recently I saw a nice orderly row of pink tents while I was out skating the other night.

You may have seen them yourself, especially if you’ve been around the Central Library or Post Office on G Street after closing or on C Street near the recently defunct Hotel Churchill.  Tents, many of them pink, have been popping up along sidewalks throughout downtown at night.

My question is: where did all the pink tents come from?  Is it a city thing?  A church donation program thing?  Were they surplus from somewhere?  If you know, please drop something in the comments because I haven’t been able to find out.

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22nd Street...bizarrely popular

The block I live on in Golden Hill is popular in the most bizarre way. Though it only has 6 residential buildings, all single-family homes except for one duplex, it has 32 public parking spaces, which are always filled, day and night. Even more bizarre, my side of the street has 20 of those spaces–and only 2 residences.

It gets better.

– My next-door neighbor doesn’t drive and doesn’t own a car. Even if he did, his property has a small parking lot on it. He doesn’t use or need public parking.

– Of the other 4 residences, 3 of them have driveways. They don’t need public parking.

– The one business on our block, a Victorian home converted to office use, has its own parking lot. Oh, and it’s vacant right now.

So who owns all these cars and why are they parking here?

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