{"id":102012,"date":"2025-07-29T12:11:09","date_gmt":"2025-07-29T12:11:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/102012\/"},"modified":"2025-07-29T12:11:09","modified_gmt":"2025-07-29T12:11:09","slug":"5-places-to-explore-in-college-area-from-an-sdsu-professor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/102012\/","title":{"rendered":"5 places to explore in College Area from an SDSU professor"},"content":{"rendered":"

Music and the College Area have been parts of Kevin Delgado\u2019s life for more than 20 years.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Delgado, an associate professor and director of San Diego State University\u2019s School of Music and Dance, said even though he listened to music constantly growing up and sang in his high school choir, he didn\u2019t become a musician until he was about 22 years old.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIn a former life, I was a local professional musician working as a bass guitarist and Latin percussionist,\u201d he said, adding that he initially attended college as an English major before quitting school to pursue music. \u201cEven while I was writing my papers, I just had music running through my head, and I\u2019m like tapping tapping on the desk when I should be typing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eventually, Delgado returned to school to study music, with an emphasis on jazz, and received his bachelor\u2019s degree from SDSU. He continued his studies and earned a master\u2019s and a doctorate from the University of California Los Angeles.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He has also traveled to Cuba several times to research music and culture because, while studying at SDSU, he was introduced to Brazilian and Cuban music and Latin jazz by musician and percussionist Michael Spiro.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe encouraged us (students) as much as possible to go to the source, and for him, that meant going to Cuba and that just seemed like this really extraordinary thing, so when he came back and he said, \u2018Well, this is what they say. This is how it\u2019s done, and this is the right way to do things,\u2019\u201d Delgado remembered. \u201cI was kind of really impressed by that.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Since 2002, Delgado has worked at SDSU and lived in the College Area with his family. As SDSU\u2019s School of Music and Dance director, one of the things he is most proud of is all of the concerts, recitals, dance events and master classes the school<\/a>\u00a0holds.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs much as we\u2019re a research university, we are serving San Diego,\u201d Delgado said. \u201cWe\u2019re serving California, and we never wanna lose sight of that part of our mission. And we would love to see the community come and see the wonderful work that our students and faculty are doing.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a resident of the College Area for more than 20 years, Delgado describes this community as uniquely diverse with older homes, student housing, canyons and diverse businesses.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of character in the neighborhoods that I really enjoy,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

For this series, Delgado gave us his favorite mix of places for dining, entertainment, artwork and open spaces in the College Area.<\/p>\n

\"KevinKevin Delgado is an associate professor and director of San Diego State University\u2019s School of Music and Dance. (John Hancock)<\/p>\n

Q: Where is your favorite dining option?<\/b><\/p>\n

A: <\/b>The Living Room Coffeehouse. There are a ton of places near the (San Diego State University) campus and along El Cajon Boulevard, but this caf\u00e9 is just the right mix of everything where everyone fits in, whether they just rolled out of bed or are dressed for a business meeting. Everyone goes there: students go to study, faculty drop in to work and friends and neighbors meet up. It\u2019s a great place for breakfasts and desserts, and I love that it\u2019s just a walk or short drive away for so many people.<\/p>\n

Q: What is your favorite small retail business or pop-up vendor to support?<\/b><\/p>\n

A:<\/b> Flavors of East Africa. If you go to a farmers market in town and walk past some delicious African food stand, it might be them. They come to the farmers market on campus every Thursday at San Diego State, but they also have a little restaurant on College Avenue next to the campus footbridge. My wife is a vegetarian and loves their dishes, and I love their sweet jerk chicken, too. We have such a richness of food cultures in San Diego, but I think we can stand to have some more African food.<\/p>\n

Q: Where is your favorite open space?<\/b><\/p>\n

A:<\/b> In the College Area, I just love all the canyons. Whether you\u2019re walking, driving (or) whatever, you are going through or around canyons. So many people\u2019s houses and apartments are within sight of a canyon. But really, that\u2019s kind of true of many neighborhoods here. The thing about living in San Diego is we\u2019re in a year-round outdoors city, and we are fairly close to so many things. <\/p>\n

Q: Where is the best piece of artwork?<\/b><\/p>\n

Q: <\/b>The SDSU campus has a wonderful little Native and Indigenous Healing Garden that contains circular gardens and a mural, and no matter how many people are on campus, it always feels open and calm there. For a more public space, I\u2019m going to cheat a bit and consider Snapdragon Stadium as part of the College Area, given it\u2019s on SDSU property. I really love the mix of art there: indigenous art, historical art, sports art and postmodern art. I would recommend going to an event really early and just walking around and checking out the art there. I think they did a really nice job of putting a San Diego stamp on it.<\/p>\n

Q: Where is your favorite entertainment attraction or historic landmark?<\/b><\/p>\n

A: <\/b>While I would recommend the excellent concerts, dance performances, plays, operas and musical theatre on the SDSU campus, as well as the campus\u2019s big pop concert venues, the College Area truly is blessed to have The Jazz Lounge on El Cajon Boulevard. It\u2019s a labor of love run by local musician Leonard Patton and family. It\u2019s just a little storefront, and the club only seats 40 people, but it\u2019s made for music lovers, and the audience is there to listen. They host veteran and up-and-coming local artists, as well as wonderful visiting or touring artists from Los Angeles and beyond. Last summer, I took my family to see Leonard lead a stellar seven-piece band through a complete performance of Stevie Wonder\u2019s \u201cFulfillingness\u2019 First Finale\u201d album, and for an old Stevie fan like me, it was heaven. Leonard is doing half of Stevie Wonder\u2019s \u201cSongs In The Key of Life\u201d album (later) this summer, and I\u2019ve already got my tickets. The fact that this little club is in our neighborhood is just all the more special. The Jazz Lounge is a musical flower in the concrete jungle of El Cajon Boulevard: give it some water and some love.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Music and the College Area have been parts of Kevin Delgado\u2019s life for more than 20 years.\u00a0 Delgado,…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":102013,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5134],"tags":[5229,1582,276,171,66363,1370,3549,7264,1072,7289,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-102012","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-diego","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-california","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-handpicked-by-locals","13":"tag-latest-headlines","14":"tag-san-diego","15":"tag-sandiego","16":"tag-things-to-do","17":"tag-top-stories-sdut","18":"tag-united-states","19":"tag-united-states-of-america","20":"tag-unitedstates","21":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","22":"tag-us","23":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114936458982207574","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102012","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102012"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102012\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/102013"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}