VOSD Podcast: The Convadium Goes National and a Ballot Rundown

There are a whopping 12 citywide measures and two countywide measures on this year’s totally bananas ballot.

On this week’s podcast, hosts Scott Lewis and Andrew Keatts go through the local measures one by one, presenting the arguments for and against each proposal and explaining everything as clearly as they can. For folks looking for help with the rest of this year’s massive two-card ballot; Ry Rivard and Sara Libby tackled the 17 statewide measures in their elections podcast, San Diego Decides.

Lewis and Keatts also break down the etymology of the term “convadium,” the word that’s come to represent the Chargers’ proposed joint-use stadium and convention center annex. It’s an important piece of local lore now that the word made it on the national stage via sports columnist Bill Simmons’ weekly HBO show, “Any Given Wednesday.” Simmons’ segment urges people to vote no on Measure C, and in laying out an argument it makes one big mistake: The Chargers are credited with coining “convadium.”

But Lewis actually conjured up the word back in 2011, and it’s since been adopted by just about everyone in San Diego, including the Chargers themselves.

Lewis says he’s conflicted because, while he’s proud of inventing convadium, the HBO segment mocks the word and makes it a big punchline — Simmons even recruited famed skateboarder and San Diego native Tony Hawk to trash-talk the term.

So, really, that whole portion of the critique should have been directed at Lewis, which is why he’s kinda sad, but also pretty happy that the word is now officially famous.

Also on the podcast, Keatts and Lewis do a lot of laughing as they revisit a recent press conference supporting Measure C. Mayor Kevin Faulconer said some things at the event that Lewis and Keatts poke fun at, including this cheesy football metaphor: “I’m happy to be here today, of course, with Luis Castillo and Philip Rivers encouraging people to turn in their ballots so we can move the ball down the field, keeping the Bolts right here in San Diego.”

Hero of the Week

Jin-Quan Yu, a researcher at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, was named one of this year’s MacArthur Fellows, winning $625,000 of no-strings-attached grant money to continue his work breaking the connections between carbon and hydrogen atoms, which could uultimately make the manufacturing of drugs cheaper and easier.