Decent men elude Mark Twain’s daughterDespite Clemens’s preferring one daughter over the others, all three sisters experienced the frequently tyrannical side of their father. Caroline Harnsberger, Clara’s biographer, has written that Clemens’s daughters were afraid …
Real hardcore true punkThe roots of the San Diego music scene run deep. Musicians who began gigging around town in the mid- to late 1980s later became the bedrock of the diverse early ’90s scene, …
Tugboats of San Diego Bay“We got a call from a friend with the Navy on a Saturday morning before Easter, and he said, ‘How fast can you get to Camp Pendleton?’ We said we could …
Birds squared “Five days out of the last seven I’ve been on ten-mile hikes. I’ve been birding in really remote parts of the county. What people for this project do is adopt a square. They’re …
Eight Ball in the Corner Pocket You could smoke a joint so long as you kept it at a respectable distance from Mrs. Yamada. You could do most anything you wanted except fight, which brought …
Valley Love The Lower Sweetwater Valley has served as a recreational and inspirational resource. One morning I looked up on the levee and saw a colorful line of kindergartners singing to the ducks in the …
A Long Shelf Life Valverde unburdens a perspiring white-haired man loaded from waist to double chin with titles about World War II. He says to Valverde, I'm just kinda reminiscing about my war.” Waiting in …
Class Struggle “We had a lot of cliques at my school. There were the drama kids, and we had a group we actually called the Clique. It was just the people that seemed to party …
140-Mile Mistake Ritz calls the Chinese the railroad’s “unsung heroes,” but new evidence suggests that labor problems were perhaps the major reason why the railroad took so long to be built. The route of the …
Captain Billy Hunts a Human Martinez escaped in the brush. But his wounds— three buckshot near his right lung, two lower down — and the December cold forced him to the Gaskills’ house at 4:00 …
A Living Cloud The next morning, I am greeted by my media escort, Penny. This is a fascinating new feature of my life — escorts. They pick you up, drive you around, provide snacks, meals, …
Creepy Bamboo Language Most San Diegans, he explains, believe that the leafy, green and beige stuff that grows in their back yards, canyons, and along the San Diego River bed in Mission Valley is bamboo. …
Radical, Whole-Wheat Architecture He describes Dryden, who died in 1946, as “flamboyant, quixotic,” and “a personality who ranged from high to low.” He says, “He also describes this scene: “His family said he made and …
How to Do Genealogical Research in SD “On July 1, 1769, soon after the arrival of Father Serra, burials began in consecrated ground on Presidio Hill.... Even though people began moving off Presidio Hill and …
Murder in Mission Valley There was a history of immigrants to the area penning Indians up in reservations after throwing them off Mission lands. Indians tried to regain their lands, but they were often unable …
Lie Down in Darkness The submarine had been discovered by two San Diego State students who were financing their educations by salvaging objects. They had located S-37 about 300 yards off the coast and in …
Happy Endings on Convoy Street In all the years I lived in and visited Korea, almost always staying in some relative’s household, I went to countless parties. When they were outside the household, they were …
Are Off-Roaders Destroying Anza-Borrego? "A green-sticker dune buggy decides to drive in past the closure sign and fiddle around. There’s a camper back in there, and they have a verbal duel. The camper takes down …
Raised Not to Hope Too Hard Sherley Anne Williams built her career celebrating the ways black folks talked and acted. School-wise, street-smart, and quick-tongued, she reserved her deepest antipathy for those outside the African-American experience …
Everybody I Need to Know I Met in Kindergarten “My dad told me that blacks were moving in because they couldn’t go anywhere else,” Kenny recalls. “But he told me they were just like us.” …
The Man Who Broke the Rules He worked for several months at a bakery injecting jelly into the jelly donuts. The job paid minimum wage, but it had great benefits: he could eat all the …
Dots on the Map Bankhead Springs is wholly owned by Helen, an 87-year-old woman who purchased it m 1939 with her husband Alvan. (The place is named after Senator John Hollis Bankhead of Arizona, who …
Arms and the Men: Shooting for Happiness These were good men, overzealous to a fault, maybe, but not killers. Hell, Rudy is of Samoan descent. Wil is a liberal Communist activist actor. It was the …
Rustic Firetraps Imagine a wildfire driven by winds gusting at 80 miles per hour is racing toward your house east of Alpine. In the predawn darkness, you can see the red-orange glow of the inferno …
Pioneer in Oceanside “In San Diego, the most important piece of architecture is, of course, the Mission San Luis Rey. But I feel strongly that this [the Oceanside museum] is the next most important piece.” …
My Gender Is Bunny Cárdenas is spending more than 15 consecutive days living in Second Life. “My contract with myself was to be in Second Life for 365 hours [wearing the headset], except when I …
Trigger Happy or Just Plain Happy? Who is David Medina? Dressed neatly in a white oxford cloth shirt with a blue pullover sweater, David Medina, a.k.a. “Happy,” pursed his lips and appeared to listen closely …
Hive Mentality Beekeeping runs in families. “The book said to call the fire department and tell them you’ll take swarms. That’s what I did. I got the swarms.” By Shari McCullough, Sept. 16, 2004 | …
The Forgotten War Conversations with men who never forgot I do not recall putting my foot on Korean soil for the first time. I only remember the cold rain, and running, and others running with …
She told me my arm was gone. We argued about that for five minutes. I mean, I could feel it. When I was in school, I was given two pieces of information about the brain …
Trigger Happy or Just Plain Happy? Who is David Medina? Dressed neatly in a white oxford cloth shirt with a blue pullover sweater, David Medina, a.k.a. “Happy,” pursed his lips and appeared to listen closely …
The Forgotten War I do not recall putting my foot on Korean soil for the first time. I only remember the cold rain, and running, and others running with me. By David Burge, June 20, …
The white mask On Saturday, September 6, 1958, Marilyn Monroe and the 175-person company of Some Like It Hot arrived at the Hotel del Coronado to begin location shots, after filming in Hollywood the previous …
He's sad for ships DeRosset doesn’t speak abstractly about his work. He’s a storyteller. “What’s really nice,” he told me before I’d had a chance to see the painting at the church, “is that I’ve …
From 1998 to 2004, Schinto wrote feature stories for the Reader. Editor's picks of Schinto's stories: Auction of the Copley Library Someone paid $5313 for an Abigail Adams thank-you note. Another bidder spent $7500 for …
Bidders at the fourth and final auction of the now-defunct James S. Copley Library, held at Sotheby’s in New York City on May 20, did what they had done at the previous three sales. They …
Bidders at the auction of the now-dissolved James S. Copley Library, held at Sotheby’s in New York City on April 14, drove the price of a 75-word letter signed by one Button Gwinnett to a …
“Descriptions of her say her clothes were rarely pressed and always dusty. This was someone who wasn’t into ‘fussy doodles,’ as she called any kind of societal finery. She was a straight shooter, unimpressed with titles."
"The students decided to have a Watermelon Drop.... And so I made it the last page of the final exam. And then in a fit of nonsense I proceeded to write an entire exam on watermelons.”
Like many hackers, David Nakamura Hulton goes by more than one name. His other one, his handle, is h1kari. Some people say you shouldn’t ask a hacker what his handle means. Handles aren’t always meant …
La Jolla also impressed Baum, and two of his non-Oz books are set there, The Sea Fairies and Sky Island. A third, The Scarecrow of Oz, is a hybrid. “It begins in La Jolla.
Between the place where ground was broken for the line in 1906, near the foot of 28th Street, and the eastern terminus, in El Centro, there was never land more ill-suited for train tracks.
"The best thing we can do is to tell people to stay inside. They’re going to be better off there than if they tried to get out of Coronado.” This is especially true if it’s an airborne hazard.
Antique Row is well-placed, between two historical destinations, Kensington and Mission Hills, and two others. North Park and South Park, starting to gentrify. “This furniture comes out of those homes and goes right back into them.”
"I live a perfect life,” Lester Tenney told me. “I’ve been a very fortunate man.” We were sitting in the sunshine on his patio on Mount Soledad. Betty, his wife of over 40 years, had …
“He was leading a funeral for one of the Indians on the reservation.. He was carrying the cross at the head of the procession, and as he was walking along, he dropped dead.”
Richard DeRosset was shipwrecked on the 21st of May 1977 while returning from a commercial fishing trip off the banks of San Nicolas Island. There was a stack fire on the Petrel that night. It …
As we drove through the San Felipe Valley, Ann and Tom Keenan pointed out a lone house ringed with greenery on the blackened hillside. A small circle, saved. It's one of several hundred homes that …
“It’s humbling to be beaten by Blondie,” says David Fogel, who many times has stayed up late to play checkers with her. I tell him I wouldn’t be humbled if Blondie beat me. I don’t …