The to-do list

Art

The prize is right

For three years, the San Diego Art Prize has been pairing an established artist with an emerging one, both having shown outstanding achievement in the visual arts. Beginning with a reception from 7 to 9 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 19, works by William Allen Morris and Tom Driscoll will be displayed at the L Street Fine Art Gallery (628 L St., Downtown). Having shown all over the world, Morris will exhibit his bizarre collages made up of scraps from around his studio, while Driscoll will display his large-scale sculptures that use negative space and abstract shapes to leave the viewer delightfully bewildered. www.lstreetfineart.com.

Do as Roman does: There are many reasons Roman de Salvo is considered one of the most important local contemporary artists alive today and why everyone from the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego to the Orange County Museum of Art has snatched up his sculptures and art for their permanent collections. Both conceptual and humorous, Split, Splice, Splay, Display, his fifth solo show at the Quint Gallery (7739 Drury Lane in La Jolla), explores his fascination with wood and its natural patterns and his Tinkertoy-like approach to building with the material. The show opens with a reception from 6 to 8 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 17. www.quintgallery.com.

Music

Pout at the Devil

Named after the infamous Andy Warhol documentary, all-female rock ’n’ roll cover band Chelsea Girls has, predictably, gone over well on the Sunset Strip. Bleached blonde, insanely hot and ready to shred, 6-foot-plus bassist Corey Parks and vocalist Tuesdae strut across the stage like silicone-enhanced sex machines, as the group pleases crowds with classics by AC/DC, Guns ‘N Roses and Motley Crüe while dialing the camp factor up to 11. They’ve already received the thumbs up from Lemmy, so it shouldn’t be long before their new monthly residency at Brick by Brick (1130 Buenos Ave. in Bay Park)—starting at 8 p.m. Friday, Sept. 18—has aging local rockers coming out in droves. Opening sets by Deeper Purple and The Gift Curse. $15-$20. www.brickbybrick.com.

Food & Drink

Beer me!

How many different brews do you think you can sample in five hours? Test your drinking limits from 6 to 11 p.m. Friday, Sept. 18, when the 15th annual Festival of Beer hits the corner of Columbia and B streets, Downtown. Some 65 breweries will be pouring 130 different products, and there’ll also be two stages for live music, including Len Rainey and the Midnight Players, Nightshift, 5 South Band and The Hong Kong Cavaliers. But, no, it ain’t only about gettin’ your drink on—the fest also raises money for cancer research and patient services, so you’ll know you’re gaining weight for a good cause. $25 in advance, $30 at the door. A $5 parking lot is a block away. www.sdbeerfest.org.

Special Events

Cause for celebration

Fruit of the Soul is back for the fourth time to combine a good time and a good cause. From 6:30 to 11 p.m.-ish Saturday, Sept. 19, at Specialty Produce Warehouse (1929 Hancock St.), the annual fund-raiser will showcase local art, music and food and collect money for three worthy organizations aimed at teaching kids and helping them succeed: the Monarch School, A Reason to Survive (ARTS) and Olivewood Gardens & Learning Center. That’s the good-cause portion. For the good-time part, organizers have rounded up food and drink from more than a dozen of San Diego’s best restaurants (many of them CityBeat-approved). They’ll also show works from lots of local artists and feature performances from The Loves, David Maldonado and The Monarch School Steel Drum Band. 18-and-older. $25-$75. www.fruitofthesoul.org.

Things going kablooey!: Nineteenth-century wooden ships may be the most beautiful fighting vehicles ever created. Under a pyramid of white sails, these graceful ships relied on wind to seek out other graceful ships, maneuver for position and blow the ever-loving crap out of each other with cannons that launched 12-pound metal balls at 400 mph. San Diegans can witness this artifact of the Age of Sail when the San Diego Maritime Museum presents Cannon Battles on San Diego Bay. You can board Californian and Lynx before they sail out onto the bay to engage in mock combat from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 19 and 20, and again on Saturday, Sept. 26. Ships depart from the Embarcadero on Harbor Drive, and tickets cost $40-$65. www.sdmaritime.org.

Books

Going viral

The absolute best part of The Matrix is when Agent Smith delivers the perfect metaphor for what humanity has become: “A virus.” In Hugo Weaving’s sibilant hiss, rarely has the human race been so roundly condemned. Darrel Ray, author of The God Virus, imagines humanity as an organism infected, rather than the infection itself. To him, the meme of “God” has infested civilization’s brain, wreaking all sorts of havoc throughout history. He’ll defend that view at a lecture and book signing sponsored by the Humanist Association of San Diego, at noon on Saturday, Sept. 19, at the Downtown Library at E Street and Ninth Avenue.

Photography

Baja bound

How cool would it be to have “Expedition Leader” in your job title? Ralph Lee Hopkins, photographer and author for National Geographic, explored the 800-mile-long Baja California peninsula for Baja California: Photography Exhibition, his upcoming showcase at the Ordover Gallery at the San Diego Natural History Museum (1788 El Prado, Balboa Park). Beginning just across the border, the show works as a visual guide of Hopkins’ journey through places like the Sea of Cortes and the Sonoran Desert. The exhibition will open with a 9 a.m. lecture from Hopkins on Saturday, Sept. 19, and continue through Jan. 3, 2010. www.sdnhm.org.

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