They’re still building roads out on Otay Mesa, about three miles north of the international border. The hot tar takes longer to set in the incredible heat. The smell hangs thick over the brown hillsides …

On June 3, Election Day, Steve Aceti’s cell phone wouldn’t stop ringing. Calls came flooding in about Proposition G, a measure to help fund sand replenishment on Encinitas beaches by charging an extra 2 percent …

Baby Talk Recently you published a letter (“We’re Cornball Rednecks,” October 2) from a reader bitching and complaining because you dared to print something positive about San Diego (“Foreign Tourists Invade,” Cover Story, September 18). …

On Thursday, September 4, viewers by the millions tuned in to see Republican presidential nominee John McCain make his acceptance speech. But those watching KNSD, Channel 39, the NBC affiliate in San Diego, got an …

San Diego mayor Jerry Sanders has entered the fight against Proposition 8, the anti-gay marriage measure on next month’s ballot, at least by proxy. The Sanders family imprimatur comes in the form of a fund-raising …

Thirty Years AgoTO RELATIVES of PSA-Cessna crash: Do you want the truth, the facts? Write J.P., P.O. Box 9224, San Diego 92109. PHOENIX SUNSHINE: I’m male, 17, and interested. Would you like to see Styx? …

“Maybe I should just shave my head like that Sinéad woman did,” complained Aunt Azelda, dropping a rare pop-culture reference. Azelda was staring at her reflection in the vanity mirror, lamenting time’s gradual ruination of …

I went to a fund-raiser for the music departments of Point Loma High and a community middle school. The small donation included a spaghetti dinner that came with an impressive spread of food. But it …

One way to prevent conversation from being boring is to say the wrong thing. — Frank Sheed ‘How do you say, ‘Your mother is a toad’?” I said, lifting my pen in expectation. “I don’t …

Waiting for Sarah Palin’s appearance at the vice-presidential debates was like waiting for one of those predator crab things to latch onto my face and lay eggs in my mouth. Something horrible was on its …

In 2003, a big parcel of land on the west rim of the San Fernando Valley — the private Ahmanson Ranch — was reborn as the Upper Las Virgenes Canyon Open Space Preserve. The new …

“Bikeroni” means urban biking, music, and art all combined together. It’s all about an experience that can’t be defined by what it really is; it’s what you make of it. I ride a road bike …

The pale-blue elementary school auditorium that houses the Chapel was a little more full than usual on Sunday. The extra attendees were there to witness the ordination of Roger Ziegler, a minister to Yard Three …

There is no I or, in this instance, no finger in “team.” As you’ve heard by now, Trevor Wikre, a 6-foot-3, 280-pound offensive right guard for the Mesa State College Mavericks, snagged his little finger …

As always, it is a little odd writing this column at something of a remove, a matter of a week or two, sometimes as much as a month, though I try not to do that …

At a time when the light at the end of the tunnel must be an oncoming train, Lamb’s Players Theatre is staging Adam Guettel and Craig Lucas’s harbinger of hope. Based on Elizabeth Spencer’s 1960 …

"Spare a buck?" Scott asks. That's what starts it. I'm ambling innocently up Fifth toward University when I come across Scott, squatting against a wall, smoking. He gets me at a weak moment. So happens …

"Let's do it," said Naomi. Wow. I never thought she'd agree. I wanted her to show me what's going on with these new, like, artisanal dessert places popping up around town. Turns out she's curious …

Jolie Holland didn’t come from out of nowhere, she just sounded that way. The Texas-raised singer-songwriter had already been a founding member of the Vancouver, B.C., old-timey band the Be Good Tanyas before she moved …

“Music speaks to us so powerfully,” writes Diane Ackerman in her book A Natural History of the Senses, “that many musicians and theorists think it may be an actual language, one that developed about the …

The origin of Hotel St. George dates back to a night at the Casbah in November of 2007. “Erik [bass] and I met and had ourselves a bit of a pity party about the demise …

“One electric motorcycle, called the ‘Killacycle,’ goes from zero to sixty in one second,” says Paul Thomas, organizer of the Kick Gas Festival, an electric-car-racing and eco-fair event being held at the Barona Drag Strip …

Like any aficionado of the Western, or of any other genre for that matter, I’m picky. The nonaficionado, if he ventured to attend at all, might have been quicker to accept last year’s remake of …

“It was like playing Bob’s Country Bunker in The Blues Brothers.” Guitarist Ben Jones says his band Soul Plow didn’t get pelted with beer bottles, but playing Mulvaney’s Wagon Wheel in Santee on September 26 …

The Penetrators got their break in the mid-’70s, opening for the Ramones at SDSU’s Montezuma Hall. “During that period,” says singer Gary Heffern, “we racked up a number of concert disasters all over San Diego. …

The Legendary Mighty Raw Tones Experience and Revue has been playing San Diego for over 30 years. The rock/blues band’s current lineup has been together “easily 20 years,” says Point Loma guitarist/surfboard-shaper Scat, who explains …

“I couldn’t speak English at all when I moved from Japan to America [in 2003],” says Four Minutes Til Midnight guitarist Kenta Hayashi. “I had a really hard time. I was totally alone.” He says …

Twenty-nine years ago tomorrow (10/10/79), the Clash headlined a bill at downtown’s Golden Hall that included the Standbys, a local band. For this date on the “Clash Take the Fifth” tour (a few weeks before …

Album: Crime Desire (2007) Artist: Crime Desire Label: self-released on Life’s a Rape Records Where available/price: Lou’s Records in Encinitas for $10; online at myspace.com/crimedesire for $10. Songs: 1) Untitled 2) Succubus 3) Nadir 4) …

Floyd Smith and Larry Gordon, 1963. The duo started Gordon and Smith Surfboards four years earlier. A local surfboard shaper, who did fiberglass work for Gordon and Smith in the ’70s, says for each fin …

In San Diego’s hemorrhaging real estate industry, it’s better to be upside-down and rich than upside-down and poor. That may sound axiomatic — it’s always nicer to be rich than poor — but carriage-trade folks …

Recipe by Brian Malarkey, Oceanaire Restaurant. I became a chef after a lot of trial and error with other professions. The culinary major came after the business, history, theater, and liberal arts majors. When I …