Miriello Grafico

BARRIO LOGAN DESCUBIERTO is a visual celebration of the working waterfront Hispanic neighborhood in San Diego, called Barrio Logan. The 88 page book is a graphic expose of the visual richness and unique creative energy of the community, featuring details of murals, typography,  sign painters, activists art and general community visual richness.
The book is designed by the team here at MG, led by Lauren English, many who have been active in the promotion and celebration of the community and it’s passionate and active creative members. The book contains a listing our neighborhood discoveries of cool, including artists, restaurants, activists, cafes, place we as designers have discovered and wanted to turn others onto.

While many work so feverishly to be wealthy, then build a fence around the property and never come in contact with the real world, the Barrio stands for the opposite. It’s a place where people share their feelings, their color, and eccentricities. The pathway to riches very much depends on how you define the riches. - RM

Preview the complete book at  http://www.miriellografico.com/mg/barriobook/. The book is available from that link for about $68.  That’s the publishers price, but they do a decent job. (We’ll even customize it with tipped-in found objects from the streets if you want to bring it in.)

Viva mejor.

When Miriello Grafico moved to Barrio Logan in 2007, it was to become a part of an authentic, emerging and vibrant community. And there are no regrets. Quite the opposite. It’s been an electric few years being a part of a community hungry to be better understood and more appreciated for what it is. A visually rich place that makes you kick yourself whenever your out without a camera by your side. A place where you see families actually walking and holding hands.

So when my friend Enrique Limon from Riviera Magazine stopped into MG this week to compare cool Barrio-finds, he one-upped me with his report that there’s now a winery starting-up in the Barrio. Time to give the Barrio Logan Winery and Enrique Limon their due. (We’re heading down to meet Juan and his Nebbiolo.) Here’s Enrique’s scoop:

Hush-Hush Crush
An industrial warehouse just a stone’s throw away from the Navy Exchange complex and surrounded by auto mechanic and upholstery shops, is about the last place you would expect a budding winery to be housed. Just don’t tell that to 62 year-old Juan Díaz; who with a zest for life and a need to help out his community founded Barrio Logan Winery . Located in the back of Díaz day operation -a construction products testing and inspecting center- it’s the up-and-coming hood’s best kept secret. “I wanted to help out local barrio charities, but didn’t have any money to donate, all I had was my wine,” he recalls. “Then a little light when off in my head…it was one of those 2am things.” The result –thanks in part to his Valle de Guadalupe imported Vitis, is a winning sulfite free/organic combination whose sales have already helped organizations like the Urban Corps and the César Chávez Service Club .

His reward? Watching ladies leave kiss imprints in the casks of his not yet open to the public tasting area for good luck, as he sips on a glass of ANP–his trademark Anglicano, Nebbiolo and Petite Sirah blend. “It’s funny–30 years ago they used to kiss me, now they kiss the barrels,” he jokes.

-Enrique Limón

A different version of this appeared in the January issue of RIVIERA magazine. Enrique Limón is a San Diego-based writer and a recipient of the 2009 Academy for Alternative Journalism residential fellowship at Northwestern University.

Instead of having the circus come to town once a year, what if it was a monthly deal in the backyard of an old house- showing the bizarre instead of the banal? That’s what’s been happening at Bruce Cartier’s Technomania Circus a few blocks from Miriello Grafico, here in Barrio Logan.

Here’s what Cartier says about it, “Technomania Circus is difficult to explain, but easy to enjoy. You never know what you’ll find happening in the Blackyard: blacklight illusion, performance art, dance, puppetry, music, and more. Whatever you find, it’s never ordinary. From our inception in North Park’s Xanth Club in 1999, to a several-year stint in the Bay Area, to the current location at the Center for Amusing Arts in Barrio Logan, we’ve been breaking down the barriers between performer and audience, between culture and crudity, and changing everything you thought you knew about theater in the process. We strive to remain all-inclusive yet retain our edgy and experimental nature.”

I’m making it part of my 2010 entertainment plan. Gotta love the grassroots, underground energy behind it all. And besides I seemed to have outgrown the Barnum’s thing a while back.- RM