Counterpoint San Diego

09/18/2026

Nights like these put that music in my head every single time. I’ve never taken them for granted, they’re little bits of medicine, vignettes that land like an anti-depressant for me, for us.

I’ve said it a thousand times, and I’ll say ten thousand more, the antidote to all our maladies is all around us, all the time, and it is each other. Being together. Sharing the shared experience of being human. Telling lies, laughing loud, or sharing weight (talking to you in this one, David Patrick Tye) … it’s the thing. It is the fu***ng thing.

Let’s do that. Let’s do that a lot this weekend. We’ve got laughter for days. Happy Friday, people. May all of yours spread like butter, and if we are lucky, lead your orbits to ours, we’re here for it.

09/17/2026

I find it patently embarrassing the number of current circumstances to which this statement applies, but it does, and I agree with it, and feel compelled to speak. Not just for me, but for this group.

I suppose I could close my eyes and pick one of any number of issues at random to which to apply the statement, but, frankly, I find it so embarrassing we are at a place we even have to discuss the proper or improper nature of such inhumane, awful, sometimes evil things going on, it’s hard to know where to start.

It occurs to me that, beyond stopping looking to our phones for our opinions, maybe we just need to reframe. Take the Who out of the equation, and switch to the What.

Like … do you think a state should sponsor bombing a little girls school because adults can’t agree? No sane person would.

Like … do we think we are better as a culture with masked gunmen marauding about cosplaying police … would we want that for our children? No sane person would.

Like … do we think mass murder of civilians - human beings all - is a good or acceptable policy of state? No sane person would.

Like … do we honestly believe ethnicity ought to be a marker for judgment in general? No sane person would.

F**k man, do we honestly believe that one gender is somehow better or more qualified or capable than the other? I’m not even answering that stupid fu***ng question.

And of course, above, operative word is “sane.”

I will say I believe our humanity is on the metaphorical ballot right now. And speaking seems the least we can do, I just don’t think I have the right to stand mute.

As my brother Midnight Matty Raab is wont to say, silence is violence. Literally.

I could go on, but the point stands. And before you ask me why I’m using my wee tiny neighborhood bar to “be political,” I am not, these are human issues, not political ones, and my question to you is … why aren’t you?

It is time. We are and should be defined by where we stand amongst our brothers and sisters. And for me, you’ve got a heartbeat, and you’re trying, you are my brother and/or sister.

We should talk about it, all of us, together, but I’m 10 toes down right here, right now.

09/12/2026

Well, dang, the kid came home from being away. Johnny Duggan Day, back behind the stick today, sliding awful puns into every equation, and generally making me smile so hard it hurts - which is the best thing to do.

30 years of CP patina in this pic, 45 years if you count Jack, but he’s mostly just been bare assed in the bathroom so we’ll call it 30.

Midnight Matty Raab, Johnny Duggan, my arms again around both … be still my fu***ng heart.

Duggan standing post til 4:00pm today, YOU TOTALLY FU***NG SHOULDDDDDDD

Welcome back, brother, it’s good to have you behind the stick, made my morning.

09/08/2026

My word … Work was done yesterday, capital W, front and back of house both, these fine folks were a veritable hurricane of labor, pushing long into the night, reminding me once more how lucky I am, and proud of this place and the people in it. Bananas. Just freaking bananas.

Fun was had, very surely lies were told, and laughter held no bounds.

More importantly, the patio tables are brand new again, they won’t be brand new again until the Tuesday after Labor Day next year, you’d be crazy not come post up at one, maybe leave the first drink ring in it, maybe just listen to one of about a hundred and thirty two trillion stupid (hilarious) stories from yesterday. It can go any way you want. We don’t mind.

Happiest of Tuesdays, people. Come cool off with us … we’d be so pleased to see you.

09/07/2026

The sign says it all, Turf open 5:00pm, let’s go support (annoy the f**k out of) them tonight. Weekend ain’t over yet.

09/07/2026

08/14/2026

Well this is a pretty raw video - couldn’t get Waterboy out here to polish it and I’m too old for that kind of crap so we did it in one go. But I stand by the message.

There’s about we can’t control, Mr Gloria, but it seems to me this is something we can. Daniel Joseph has won my respect and my heart, too, and I sincerely hope you can step in on this. Hell, I hope you come down. It’s one of the most beautiful things I’ve witnessed in San Diego, and that because it’s … just humans being human.

Happy Friday, everyone. If this is the last one, let’s soak it up. Together. As it should be.

08/09/2026

It’s smashburger Monday tomorrow! Starting at $10 for a burger and fries 🍻

08/06/2026

Apparently Adele does her best work when it’s sultry af out. Positively sticky.

But, she came with a remedy, a mango margarita slushie and a strawberry jungle bird.

Seems like it’d be crazy not to … let’s get brain freeze. It’ll be fun.

08/01/2026

Huge respect for Daniel Joseph 🎧 for staying in the fight against our city government over the last year and making this happen for our community. Magnificent, and what we need. Every kind of human imaginable spread out in close confines on the grass in a park on a summer Friday evening, no one on their phones, smiling, laughing, together. Tears in my fu***ng eyes.

The music was immaculate, the space perfection, but … the humans, man … the community … unreal. Incredible thing you’re doing Daniel Joseph 🎧, may karma dump sunshine upon you, I can’t wait for next. Awesome. Just awesome.

If you’ve not yet had the pleasure, I highly recommend. One of those evenings where San Diego Rent got just a little easier to swallow.

07/28/2026

Stone fruit season … man if I had a religion this would be it. Helping hands from a soon to be high schooler with id imagine a whole bunch of s**t he’d rather be doing, but helpful and cheerful anyway, best kid EVER.

This will be half of this year’s maraschino cherries, and holy crap I can’t wait to put them in a drink for you sooooooooon.

And get this boy to the beach - or something fun - but rewards after effort, and for now we stem, we pit, we repeat.

May your days be spreading like butter, and maybe appetites building … for later. We’d be so pleased to see you.

07/21/2026

It’s hotter’n I care to deal with outside, but we’ve got the AC cranked, and, more critically, we’ve got Adele. Among the hundred and thirty two trillion bats**t crazy good things she does around here (that’s a lot), she makes the slushies. These are in the can just now.

You totally should. Bring a dog, we’ve got bacon. Or pull up solo, we’ve got stories. It’ll be great. It’s Tuesday, for craps sake. It won’t make itself fun on its own, people. Let’s fu***ng go.

07/18/2026

Another one from the archives, makes me smile down to my toes, my baby boy been getting stamped with “LOVE” on Pride weekends for a looooong time … who says you can’t raise a good man in a bar. I call bulls**t.

Happy Pride, people, be safe, but not too safe. It’s a fu***ng celebration. **kers

07/17/2026

One of my all time favorite pics ever taken here, a Pride weekend a few years ago I realized I’d managed to make CP t shirts in all the colors of the basic Pride flag, and so we snapped this.

Never has felt more imperative to show up w love and grace and support for our brothers and sisters this weekend - and it has, sadly, always been imperative.

Things have been exhausting, and not just a little hateful, but this weekend we can join in a celebration of love, which is the absence of hate, and I think we could all do with a bit of that. I’ll be out, and I hope you will too, weekends like this, in times like these, I think we all need to be a little bit gay, metaphorically speaking, even if only in support.

Happy Pride, people. Let’s put some cleats on and go after it like we want to win a prize. ***nglove

06/30/2026

You’ll please excuse the horrid filming/audio - Waterboy is at present trampling around Europe, hopefully having the time of her life, and we at, as is usual when she’s on the gone, raw do***ng it. All annoying unedited utterances and scratchy audio, entirely upon us.

That said, let’s celebrate the s**t out of the possibility of this country of ours together on Saturday … it won’t be the same without you.

06/24/2026

I can’t possibly be alone in feasting my soul upon the wide wonder of the … fu***ng healing this World Cup seems to be visiting upon the world at large, and specifically here at home, delivering what seems like relentless doses of national therapy, a welcome reminder that we are much more than the sum of the treachery of the news makers and reporters, but humans, and largely good ones, too.

Soccer, football, isn’t my sport, but I’ll be damned if it doesn’t feel like a treasure gifted to humanity in general right now … tens of thousands of Americans who can’t seem to agree upon anything whatsoever, but arms around one another singing an old John Denver song, lining up to drink with Scotsmen (what wouldn’t?), crossing fingers and praying to deities of all manner and stripe that the universe will deliver a U.S.A./England match on 4 July … I didn’t see any of this coming, but it is a tonic, and one I’ll slake my thirst with happily.

As for today, we plan on rowdily cheering on our brothers from the south, and we’d love it if you lent your voices - and f**kery - to the effort. Doors at five, screaming at 6. I like six. Six is good.