Entertainment

Thousands Attend Escondido Street Faire

May 19th, 2008 Categories: Entertainment, Escondido

Twice a year, the street in front of our office is filled with tens of thousands of people. Every May and October, the City of Escondido holds it’s Street Faire, the second largest in all of California!

Our office at Windermere Exclusive Properties is located at the center of it all in the heart of downtown, and our agents participate along with our sister company CW Mortgage. Braving near 100 degree temperatures, over 600 vendors, lots of live entertainment and all types of food adorn the downtown streets.

Even though the faire is supposed to start promptly at 9am, folks are arriving looking for the latest in folding tailgating chairs, herbal remedy’s, getting the spine stretched by a bevy of chiropractors and searching for Fido’s latest dog collar.

The faire looked a little less crowed this year, and I
think there were a few less vendors than in years past. I take this as a sign of the economy today…

Many of the people who display their wares of offer services may have been driven out of business or have had to confine their street faire schedule to areas closer to home. The city says they expected 60,000 people, but my guess is that we may were two thirds of that.

It’s still great fun, and we meet lots of people who never knew our office was right on one of the busiest corners of downtown Escondido.

We offer cool water, candy and snacks, and of course have the requisite contests and giveaways, all in an attempt to get noticed and meet new folks who may need to buy or sell a piece of real estate this year. We

We break up the eight our day in shifts of 3 hours and hand out hundreds of flyers. This year our flyer was focused on bank owned properties, or REO’s (Real Estate Owned) as they’re known to us. We’ve got a ton of them in Escondido…one of the hardest hit areas of North County; but there are some incredible deals here right now!

Lately, I’ve seen listings of 3 bedroom two bath homes on decent lots for under $200,000! This has been unheard of for quite some time and investors are cashing in on these deals by the dozen right now. I estimate that about 70% of our escrows open today are bank owned or short sale properties.

All in all, another great day downtown followed by relaxation. I even bought a couple of new shirts from a one of a kind surf shop. Stay tuned, as we’ll wrap up fall with another one in October!

Superbowl Sunday In San Diego

February 3rd, 2008 Categories: Entertainment

It’s here again, that one day each year that we all get together to watch the big game. We fire up the barbecue, buy tons of chips, salsa, guacamole (all very San Diego) and beer. Yes, it’s Superbowl time again, only this year as I look out into my backyard, which I designed specifically for this type of day….It’s raining cats and dogs!

To the right you’ll see the aforementioned “barbecue” that was created in anticiapation of having the annual “event” at my home in front of my new 55″ inch big screen TV.

San Diego in recent years has had very little rain..In fact as you probably know from last year’s San Diego Wildfires news, the lack of rain contributed greatly to the conditions that sparked and eventually caused the fires to get so overwhelmingly out of hand. This year it has been a slightly different story, with our area getting more than our usual rainfall. While most of us here welcome these days as they are so sparse, I just don’t want them to come on my Superbowl Sunday barbecue event!

I look out my front door to see if the neighborhood is brimming with cars and people coming to our friends homes for their own celebrations of the end of the football season (and hopefully the New England Patriot’s perfect season…sorry to my New Englander friends reading this article) and what do I see?

There is no one here!

To the left is my street out in front of my house, and as you can see there are no friends here yet. They say that San Diegan’s don’t know how to drive when the rain comes. Basically, we see so little of it, that when it does come down we all just freak out and start driving totally erratically and getting into lots of accidents. This must be the reason why no one is here yet. I’ve been watching the “pre-game” show on TV since 7am this morning, but now I’m checking our local affiliates for information on what surely must be huge traffic snarl-ups on our local highways. The stations have begun counting down…”only 5 hours, 19 minutes and 22 seconds till kick off of the big game”, but no traffic reports…hummm.

I think that most of my friends and I are only watching because we have some large bones to pick. The New England Patriots literally stole a win from us in last years playoff game. We got a rematch with them in week two of this season, but we were no match for them. After getting our “you know what” together as we progressed through the season, winning our last 10 straight to get the rematch in the AFC Championship Game two weeks ago, we again fell short as injuries to our top three players contributed to us losing again (wait till NEXT YEAR!).

Of course you would have to have lived in a cave not to know that the Pats have had the “Perfect Season”, going 18-0 leading into todays Superbowl. We live today to see them lose (yes, we DO NOT like the Patriots)!

Their opponent today is also another east coast team, the New York Giants. Every winter in San Diego is filled with happy New Yorkers visiting paradise to bask in our sunny weather and tell us everything that’s wonderful about New York. Only problem is that the Giants have a quarterback, Eli Manning, who wanted nothing to do with San Diego when he was drafted in 2004 by yes, the San Diego Chargers.

We subsequently traded with the G-men to get Phillip Rivers and got rid of the plague called Manning, and have never looked back. Now we’re also forced to endure the possibility of a perfect New England season (which Bostonians will never let us forget when they come here to partake in the “perfect weather) or that QB that rejected us.

I vote for the latter…go Eli!

I’m thinking now that since I cannot “fire up the grill” and also since there is no one here, maybe I should go to the local Dave & Buster’s where I might run into my local radio hosts Billy Ray Smith (a former Charger) and Scott Caplan from XX Sports Radio hanging out (see picture below right), still mourning the Chargers loss and arguing who should win this game.

I also thought about going to Seau’s the restaurant, another popular sports hangout until I remember that Junior un-retired and went to work for the hated Pat’s. It’s still a great place to go see the game and full of Seau’s memorabilia from when he was a beloved Charger. We also have to cut Junior slack because he is a born and bred San Diegan, having grown up in Oceanside and playing high school football here before he went on to USC and later the San Diego Chargers.

After weighing my different options about what we could do today to watch the game, I decided not to take the trip to the local sports bars (all those crazy fans in San Diego who don’t know how to drive on rain slicked highways). Instead, the family and I will enjoy a day indoors, which in itself makes it a unique day here in America’s Finest City.

We’ll go to Von’s and buy a couple sawdust logs and “fire up” the fireplace which we use about 3 times a year, flip the game on and eat our chips, salsa, guacamole (all very San Diego) and, oh yeah, the beer. Then and only then will we enjoy two east coast teams battle it out on Superbowl Sunday.

Our singular satisfaction, no matter who wins…is that we live in San Diego all year round!