News 2008 June

Stories for June 2008

Monday, June 30

Farmers' Market Welcomes Food Stamps

Anyone that's ever been to a farmers' market knows perfectly well that fresh produce isn't cheap! People who shop at the nearly thirty fresh food bazaars spread across San Diego County think more with their ...

Booze Ban Driving Homeless Inland?

Two opposing views regarding the ban on brew at San Diego's beaches inadvertently surfaced during the June 25th meeting of the Ocean Beach town council. When Officer David Surwilo, community liaison for the police department's ...

Friday, June 27

Hillcrest vs. High Rises

"I've never seen the community this galvanized over one issue," said Nancy Moors. The issue: getting an interim height ordinance, far below current zoning standards, approved by the city council. The vote is set for ...

Wednesday, June 25

Falling sky

Problems aboard a San Diego–based “mini-jet” have caused the temporary grounding of the nation’s fleet of Eclipse 500s, a new generation of light executive jets capable of ferrying four business passengers into small airports. On ...

The Writing Class

What have you written? “One collection of short stories: Jenny and the Jaws of Life, published by Thomas Dunne Books, St. Martin’s Press, in 1987; reissued in paper in 2002 with a foreword by David ...

Hellacious L.A.

A Scribe Amidst the Lions singer/guitarist Kristofer Towne says the band was unloading before a recent gig at L.A.’s Viper Room when… “Out of nowhere, a speeding car [was] careening into the parking lot at ...

Fastest Gun in the West, 1964

Eldon Carl, “Fastest Gun in the West” and a San Diego County sheriff’s deputy. A 1964 Union article noted that “he has three times won the championship contest in quick-draw combat shooting...one of six combat ...

Best Man?

This approaching Sunday, the 29th, will be the birthday, assuming he is still living, of Andrew “Legend” Stevens. Andrew was best man at my wedding on July 29th in 1977. Born in Cornwall, England, in, ...

Dust Up

“By the time we went on stage, everybody had been drinking all night,” says singer Richard Gwaltney of a recent House of Blues gig featuring his Guns N’ Roses tribute band Dust N’ Bones. “About ...

San Diego's Least Remembered Great Man

Thirty Years AgoOf Big Wednesday I have heard almost nothing good. My sources range from a Warner Brothers studio insider who rather traitorously has nicknamed the movie The Endless Bummer, to an Ocean Beach surfer ...

Panty Party

Brevity is the soul of lingerie. — Dorothy Parker Most of the “lingerie parties” I’ve attended have featured women arriving in their finest lace or leather thongs and teddies. But the invitation on my desk ...

The Creek Reeks

On June 11, the local division of the state water board ordered the North County Transit District, which recently completed the Sprinter rail project, to pay a $685,000 fine for discharges of construction sediment into ...

I Was Hoping It Would Come to Fists

March 11, 2008 — It’s past noon at the Round Table Pizza in the Price Center at UCSD, and there are three groups of young men watching European soccer quarterfinals on five different large plasma ...

Father's Day Gift Ideas

"Fatherhood is pretending the present you love most is soap-on-a-rope." — Bill Cosby Insert tie for soap-on-a-rope in the Kelly household. Another boring Father’s Day rolled by. Hubby Patrick got the tie; the man doesn’t ...

So Ill on the Mic

Brendan Bohan (aka Brendan B) is a rapper out of Ocean Beach. Like many San Diegans, he’s a transplant. Brendan grew up in Chicago — or “Chi-Town,” as he likes to call it. He doesn’t ...

Mission Valley Walk

Bounded by some 32 freeway lanes carrying a half million vehicles a day, and smack dab in San Diego County’s busiest commercial zone, the San Diego River greenway in Mission Valley offers a surprising bit ...

Goodbye, Ol' Girl

Like an elderly pet, my television shows signs of physical and mental decline. And not one of those throwaway pets like a county-fair goldfish; no, my TV is a loyal Weimaraner, so noble. Now she’s ...

Dumpster Diving for Dinner

Half of a “nutrition bar” sat before me on the wobbly café table. I couldn’t eat the rest because it was oily yet granular but also couldn’t force myself to throw it out. I had ...

Great, Just Fabulous

The Fabulous Rudies, a seven-piece North County ska band booked to return as the “BBQ band” on this year’s Vans Warped Tour, have had a change of plans. In exchange for towing a large grill ...

Debt Doesn’t Pay

"Live well. Retire rich.” That was the proverb that Dan Holbrook preached over radio and TV, as he exhorted San Diegans to take on debt and pour the proceeds into real estate investments. “Real estate ...

Black's Ripper Goes Easy on Fledglings

Name: Erick Castaneda Age: 27 Lives In: North Park Surfing: Tourmaline Pre-Surf Music: The Adolescents Post-Surf Food: Breakfast burrito Erick “Carne” Castaneda says, “I used to be sponsored with P.B. Surf Shop when I was ...

Junk City

Along with dents on every fifth car, which people can’t afford to repair, and a beer at Petco costing more than the hourly minimum wage, short theatrical runs are a sign of the times. High ...

What's Up? by Peter Hoshi

It must be because he just rode his bike here to meet me, I thought. Why else would a twenty-something male who appeared to be in good health be sweating profusely on a cool fall ...

History and a Side Salad

Boy, this is straight out of The Jungle Book. A ginormous fig tree spreads over me. I have to tilt my head back to look for the giant snake Kaa, just in case he’s wrapped ...

Letters

Library Love Wow, what a great story (“No Shushing in This Library,” Cover Story, June 19)! I’m happy to learn so many young people love the library too. Ernestine Smith Student Support Services San Diego ...

Robert Plant and Alison Krauss

The Led Zeppelin reunion got all the big headlines last year, but the really good reviews went to singer Robert Plant’s collaboration with bluegrass star Alison Krauss. The resulting album, Raising Sand, produced by T-Bone ...

Duck Tape, Classical Radio Station

Heymatt: This is a question about the most useful stuff in the world: duct tape. I used to call it duck tape until some friends laughed at me and said no, it’s duct tape. With ...

Armadillo for Dinner

“Once I ran out of dry underwear I started hitchhiking, which is something you can do easily on a bike,” says author Jim Malusa. “A bike evokes a certain amount of sympathy. And everyone knows ...

Not for Velvet Underground Fans

Artist: Charles Musket Song: “Tapes” (from myspace.com/charlesmusket) Heard By: Jason Campanile, Boulevard It started off strong. It had a really catchy melody. I saw what they were going for, and I don’t think they made ...

Olympics Loophole

I am at a table in a Chinese restaurant, inside a Chinese shopping center. Both entities are crowded with Chinese shoppers. Opposite is Todd Anderson, gnawing on a pork rib. Todd says, “This is a ...

The Wedding Planner

A while ago, I crashed two parties that were a good distance from each other. Luckily, it was before gas was so damn expensive. The first event was downtown. It was early, and I knew ...

World Gone Mad

The advent of a Dario Argento film is an undoubted occasion, whether or not one to celebrate. Not since 1991, by my records, has one of his films circulated in American theaters, and only then ...

Word of Life Pentacostal Church

Among the posters and banners lining the long wall behind the pulpit in the storefront church was one that collected the names ascribed to Jesus in Scripture: “The resurrection and the life/ Judge/ Lord of ...

Unforgettable: La Beata

LA BEATA: THE LIVES AND TIMES OF APOLINARIA LORENZANA (Part One) In the spring of 1878, Thomas Savage went to Santa Barbara to record recollections for Herbert Howe Bancroft’s massive History of California. In particular, ...

Far Out, Man

While the music industry waits for something that will lift the business out of the doldrums, San Diego—based Passmore Lab has found the new in something old: 3-D. Started in 2003, the company has taken ...

For Love

The San Diego winemaker tour continues. This month, Costa Brava in Pacific Beach played host to Spanish winemaking icon Alejandro Fernández and his representatives from Classical Wines. “I was working as a retailer in the ...

Pitch-Slapped

Thursday 26Songstress Nikka Costa will exercise the pipes at House of Blues tonight. The L.A.-based artist is daughter to famed pop producer Don Costa, who recorded and arranged the vocalist’s first albums, and goddaughter to ...

A Great Escape

Red Marlin is the answer. If you can find it. The questions are: Where do you take visitors for dinner when you want to show off San Diego’s shoreline beauty, while sharing food that everyone ...

Fine whine

Ex-Democratic congresswoman Lynn Schenk, fresh from the local campaign trail as Hillary Clinton’s San Diego chairwoman, has circulated a lengthy email to volunteers and contributors giving her take on her candidate’s defeat, which she attributes ...

Stone Temple Crises

Atlantic Records filed a lawsuit against Scott Weiland and Eric Kretz of Stone Temple Pilots on June 12, demanding that the reunited band live up to its record contract to deliver new albums. The lawsuit, ...

P.B. Isn't Getting M.A.D.

Some residents of Pacific Beach don't want to pay to get a MAD — Maintenance Assessment District — because they feel the property owners shouldn't have to pay to clean up after the bars and ...

Monday, June 23

Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road? To get to I.B.!

Last week, the Imperial Beach City Council voted to overturn a citywide ordinance that banned chickens as pets. Coronado is now the only city in San Diego County that is not considered a haven for ...

Friday, June 20

CDC Calls for Mediation with MAD

The Greater Golden Hill CDC doesn't want their MAD to be upset with them anymore. Instead, the President of Greater Golden Hill's CDC is calling for a mediation to take place so they can move ...

Thursday, June 19

PB Police Prepare for Beach Booze Ban

The 4th of July is quickly approaching and the San Diego Police Department is treating Pacific Beach as Ground Zero. Lt. David Nisleit spoke to the Pacific Beach Town Council, on the 18th of June, ...

Wednesday, June 18

A Pinch of Porn

Thirty Years Ago“Larry was so nice at first,” Mary sighed, recalling the nights she had spent in his warm embrace. “But then he started getting weird. He bought a big German shepherd and brought him ...

Name This Place

Clue: The palace of Shangri-Laos? Describe this location, name the nearest cross-streets, and win a Reader T-shirt. Enter by completing the form below. Last week's place: (clue: Yowler at the third jewel's theater?) Life-size sculpture ...

Big Blues

It’s been a very good San Diego election cycle for Linden Blue, proprietor with his brother Neal of General Atomics, the La Jolla defense contractor responsible for the Predator unmanned aerial vehicle and other nifty ...

Islands

Montreal’s Unicorns had good songs, but they were one of those indie pop acts that gets by mostly on goofy charm. Their cheap-sounding instruments, unpolished playing, and silly onstage puppet shows were part of their ...

You Rock…No, You Don’t…Yes, You Do

For about five years, singer-guitarist Joe Rathburn has played on the outdoor patio at the Tin Fish restaurant and bar at the foot of Fifth Avenue. When nearby Petco Park opened, Padres fans would walk ...

Spring Vegetable Pasta with Butter and Parmesan Nage

Recipe by Trey Foshee, executive chef, George’s at the Cove I cook at home just like everyone else cooks at home — I look in the fridge and see what’s in there. But I have ...

Fly like an Egyptian

La Jolla’s Blue brothers aren’t the only locals in the business of making unmanned aerial vehicles. In fact, San Diego is such a hotbed of UAV development that last week it hosted the Association for ...

Updates

Former Union-Tribune enterprise reporting editor Susan White has departed the paper and is now in New York working as an editor for a new foundation-funded website that debuted last week, promising to deliver in-depth reporting ...

Ruthless Sandwich

It’s an amazing feeling, sitting up to a bar watching the Padres on a bunch of great screens, including one that’s 12 feet, while the actual Padres are playing in the actual ballpark about, oh, ...

It Started with Karaoke in Krakow

“As a singer, I sound like Elvis Presley, no matter how hard I try not to,” says James Kruk, who disbanded his former group Fake Booby Judy and became, for a time, one of Poland’s ...

RV Rentals

My folks have been retired for five years, and they’re spending their golden years on the road. There have been trips to China and Peru and a train tour of Canada. This year, they’re sticking ...

Death of the Zombie

“I heard from one of our customers that the Zombie Lounge was going to be for sale,” says Chris Heaney, owner/operator of the Kadan in North Park. Heaney is now the principal owner of the ...

Tinnitus Night

Thursday 19Montreal sextet Islands drift into all-ages Epicentre tonight. Islands is fronted by ex-Unicorn Nick Diamonds and picks up where that art-pop troupe left off, turning Unicorns’ quirk on its ear for dancehall beats and ...

Rock That Bears Its Soul

Nautical Disaster plays bluesy pop with a dose of ’80s new wave to keep things clubworthy. The three-piece rose from the ashes of the Daffodils, who split in July 2006. “Everything was going great,” says ...

Crossroads

As I begin this I am looking out the back door onto the rain-spattered deck, which in turn looks out on a common garden area and its foliage bowing and scraping to me in the ...

Super Why?

The city is a procrustean bed for man’s wildness. His heart and eyes disfavor straight line and timidity. Children know this. Set a child down on grass, and he’ll strip his shirt off, pick a ...

Secret Samurai

The Tiki House in Pacific Beach is a very surf-friendly venue. I’ve seen surf bands from around the world tear it up behind the pool table and on the stage built for a one-man band. ...

Hotel St. George

Album: Yippee!!! (2008) Artist: Hotel St. George Label: self-released Where available/price: Taang! Records downtown, Thirsty Moon in Hillcrest, and M-Theory Records in Mission Hills for $8 Songs: 1) Old Lies Told Well 2) It’s the ...

Vaporous Volumes

Asilk thread seams together the Irish poet William Butler Yeats, the tarot, feminism, and Alfred Stieglitz, the photographer whose impresario activities in the early 20th Century promoted American modernism and the careers of Charles Demuth, ...

Mr. Pouty-Pants by Jennifer Herring

You almost kind of expect to have some bad dates in your twenties. I’ve had my share: Still Living at Home Guy, Always on His Cell Phone Guy, Just Not Ready for a Relationship Guy, ...

Greed, Gambling Society

From superior product engineering to reckless financial engineering: that’s how America has declined from a society that makes goods to one that shuffles money around — obsessively gambling with excessive debt. This is the gist ...

Smithereens

The Smithereens spent the first few years of their career developing a formula and the next two decades touring behind it. Some have correctly identified the celestial hierarchy of their harmonies as a postcard to ...

Marshall Canyon

The multiuse trails of Marshall Canyon Regional Park (for hikers, mountain bikers, and equestrians) thread through Marshall and Live Oak canyons in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains. The inner recesses of both canyons ...

Mac Down

The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese. — G.K. Chesterton It was not an invitation — it was a challenge. It didn’t say “Mac and Cheese Party,” it said, “Mac and ...

Take Note, High-Five Idiots

Steve Weinberger wants to keep you from embarrassing yourself at the next concert. In his new book No Air Guitar Allowed, Weinberger runs down nearly every humiliating move and bad rock stereotype that can be ...

The Albatross, Booger Edibility

Heymatt: I have read many a time that albatross spend most of their lives out over the ocean and never come ashore. Well, I guess they have to come ashore to lay their eggs. If ...

Sui Generis

Greg Budney is curator at Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds (Cornell University). Among birders, this is authentic fame, as good as it gets. He’s been working at the library since 1980. Budney’s job is like ...

Dixie-Fried

Since the last time I reviewed Chateau Orleans for Mardi Gras, 2001, it’s been through at least two changes of ownership. I wasn’t crazy about the food, and then the second-to-last owner complained that our ...

Trail Doggies

“If your dog cannot be commanded with ‘come’ and ‘stay’ 100 percent of the time, you should probably not have your dog on a trail,” says Allen Riedel, author and hiking enthusiast. “Most places in ...

Divine Dough

Because money from both major and indie labels is drying up, bands have had to get creative to raise funds. Eve Selis offered six “levels of participation” to help fund the recording of her new ...

Letters

Where Was Mom? I just had a comment about that article about Jadean, the girl that got killed in the car accident (“There’s Been an Accident,” Cover Story, June 5). It really pisses me off ...

No Shushing in This Library

Grace Carroll is the kind of girl you’d trust for a scoop on the San Diego scene. She’s pretty, blonde, smart. She tends bar in one of La Jolla’s hottest restaurants, where the clientele isn’t ...

Beasty Snood

I came up with a term because I hate the term “beastly”; I think it doesn’t rhyme off the tongue as well. But “beasty” describes something so gnarly. It’s just, like, anything that is a ...

White Trash Crash

Earlier this year I got an Evite to a “white-trash party.” I could tell these partiers would be trouble by what was written in the Evite: “We have spoken with the bus drivers and they ...

Bayview Baptist Church

It was Father’s Day on Sunday, and fathers got at least three rounds of shouts and applause at Bayview Baptist Church — grandfathers and great-grandfathers, too. (At least five of the latter were in attendance.) ...

This Never Happens in Fallbrook

Giovanni Cornejo had his head under the hood of a car when he first heard the commotion. He looked up and saw a woman at the Shell station across the street trying to hold a ...

The Spinster

All my adolescence I spent here. In Mauritius. This island is more home to me than any other place I’ve been. Not that I prefer it or anything of that sort but in the sense ...

Scaling Down Design

It's common knowledge that the housing market is in the dumps. In last month's Standard and Poor's/Case-Schiller home price index, prices for the first quarter of 2008 plummeted 20.5 percent compared to first quarter numbers ...

Tuesday, June 17

MAD: Advisory or Oversight Committee?

The acronym for Greater Golden Hill Maintenance Assessment District, MAD, could be used as a lesson in irony. The monthly meeting, inside the Balboa Park Clubhouse on June 16th, was yet again full of wild ...

Friday, June 13

A Strip Mall Feel

Some members of the La Jolla town council say the multiple signs on the Vons storefront, located at 7545 Girard Avenue in La Jolla, makes the grocery store look like a strip mall. The grocery ...

Wednesday, June 11

Gearing Up for the Big Day

At the Hillcrest Town Council, on June 10th, camera crews from three local news stations filled the meeting room at the Joyce Beers Community Center. The crews focused their lenses on the guest speaker, Chief ...

Egg Orientation, Flavorless Strawberries, Human Combustion

Matt: When a hen lays an egg, which end comes out first? Settle our bet. — Fat End and Pointed End, via email Ever seen a pregnant hen? There’s an even better question. With hens ...

North Coast Calvary Chapel

Portrait of a church on the cusp: North Coast Calvary Chapel, founded as a home Bible study in Encinitas, was housed five years in a YMCA, then ten years in the Vulcan Center (now Encinitas ...

U.S. Open Edition

‘Actually, I’m walking the golf course right now. Give me a call around 7:00 or 7:30 tonight.” That’s Craig Barlow, professional golfer, scouting Torrey Pines GC, preparing for today’s U.S. Open. I found him by ...

Dying Ocean, Dying Bay

“In the mid to late 1990s, we saw a lot of contamination — from places like the shipyards in particular — flowing freely off those sites, like Southwest Marine and NASSCO [National Steel and Shipyard ...

Metal Moratorium

In February, the all-age music venue Channel Twelve 25 opened its doors in down town El Cajon. Adam Paul helps book hip-hop, acoustic rock, blues, and folk acts. “The only thing we’re not booking is ...

Dance, Monkey Boy, Dance!

Kim Cattrall is a vampire. By night, Kim Cattrall feeds on Hooters girls innocently making out with each other in the parking lot. I haven’t looked up her Wikipedia entry to verify this fact, but ...

Arm the Angels

Album: Haunt This Town (2008) Artist: Arm the Angels Label: self-released Where available/price: CDBaby.com for $12. iTunes, Rhapsody, Amazon, MP3.com, and Napster for 99 cents per song. Songs: 1) Last Goodbye 2) Haunt This Town ...

Woman on a Mission

The Gaslamp 15 still bears keeping an eye on. Hopefully this won’t turn into a deathwatch, though I note that the hours of operation have been scaled back on weekdays to a late-afternoon start, a ...

Blackest Thumb by Amy Woods

When I first met my roommate, she was a very involved and social person. We were fine for the first year; neither of us was home often, as we kept busy. In the second year, ...

The Whole Friday the 13th Thing

I suppose it can be classed as a superstition that I have an irrational fear of things going too well. I look forward to these: Fridays falling on the 13th of a month. It appeals ...

Guitar Man

I had the opportunity to catch Bo Diddley’s show at the Belly Up back in June of 2005. I have been collecting guitars since the early ’80s. I got the bug from watching the Who ...

Letters

Profitable Police I may not agree with everything in Staci Thrasher’s story about her daughter (“There’s Been an Accident,” Cover Story, June 5), but there is one thing that she is dead-on about, and that ...

Happiness, Ocean, and Kebabs

Baktiar has surely found the sweet spot. This is where folks wandering down Fourth start running out of steam. They can’t see anything ahead except the bricky Horton Grand Hotel. They hesitate and, most of ...

Drummer Man

On June 2, 2008, 79-year-old Bo Diddley suffered heart failure and passed away in his Archer, Florida, home. One night in Fresno about ten years ago, I was his drummer. Bo was on tour, and ...

Freakin' Neighbors

Although music on local television has not had much staying power, KNSD-TV resumed its weekly “Concerts on the Square” last month. Taped outdoors at Horton Square (225 Broadway, next to the station’s studios), the music ...

Clinton’s minions

Now that Hillary Clinton has finally bowed out of the Democratic presidential race, the bets placed by local contributors can be tallied. Perhaps the biggest loser is Lynn Schenk, an ex-aide to then-governor Jerry Brown ...

A Few More Seats. A Lot More Money

Thirty Years AgoIt grieves me that my first letter to the Reader should be in criticism of my favorite columnist, Eleanor Widmer. In writing about Sheldon’s Restaurant, her comment about “aging waitresses in orthopedic white ...

Time to Kill

“I know it sounds lame, but I actually did come down here [to San Diego] seven years ago to follow my dreams of grandeur,” says Ambient Bob, bass player for the Vulgar Herd. What was ...

Wake Up!

Hubby Patrick’s brother Kevin has been a small-time rock musician since he was 18. When he turned 38 this year and the band — Youth Movement — still hadn’t made it, he came to the ...

Cubicle Gal

We watch a woman just home from work. Her eyes are so blank, it’s hard to tell if she’s glad to be back in her spotless studio apartment or relieved to clock another eight hours. ...

If You Sue Me, I Can't Be Your Physician

“The pain is in my heart. I want you to send me to a heart specialist so that I can have an angiogram and have this taken care of right away.” Stephan’s deep, subdued tones, ...

Legally Blind

Men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses. — Dorothy Parker When I was six years old I had an imaginary friend named Jesus. Like most children, I attributed nearly everything that happened or ...

Dodels and Codels

I have an adorable golden retriever named Charlie who was four years old on May 9. I have always said he should be a dodel, which is a dog model. I don’t know if there ...

Name This Place

Clue: Yowler at the third jewel's theater? Describe this location, name the nearest cross-streets, and win a Reader T-shirt. Enter by completing the form below. Last week's place: (clue: Crown this our smallest park?) Rotary ...

  • June 11, 2008

Long Island, Australia, Fiji...S.D.

Name: Jamie Nelan Age: 23 Lives In: P.B. Surfing: P.B. Drive Pre-Surf Music: Muse Post-Surf Food: California burrito “I lived in Australia in my junior year of college,” says Jamie, “and when I was there ...

Dreadful News

A radio station doesn’t usually have the same DJ on for 20 years,” said Makeda Dread in 2003, the 20th anniversary of her Reggae Makossa program on 91X. On May 18, Dread’s run as producer/host ...

The Oil War

My brother is an addict. He contaminated me. I’ve gotten over it. Not he. His eyes are bloodshot. His fingers twitch all the time. He looks haggard. He’s lost and is still losing weight. Whenever ...

Bikers, a Bust, and Bachata

I tried to fit three events into one day. It almost worked. The first thing I went to was a motorcycle ride for the troops. I heard about it from DJs on Rock 105.3. It ...

Times New Viking

Here’s how I imagine the recording process went for Times New Viking’s Rip It Off: Guitar, keyboards, drums, and shouted vocals play at maximum volume around a cell phone. Studio receives call, presses sound directly ...

Stealthy

Last-minute political expenditures made in local campaigns are often an indication that the people spending the cash don’t want their identities to become an issue with voters. The tactic works well because local media outlets ...

Hiromi

There’s jazz, and then there’s jazz — there’s traditional jazz that has not changed since the ’50s, and there’s a newer breed of jazz informed by pop. Hiromi is a jazz pianist who fits into ...

Spreckels Theatre, c. 1915

Spreckels Theatre, c. 1915. Signage also advertises “Vaudeville Hippodrome.” Clarence Alan McGrew’s 1922 book City of San Diego and San Diego County mentioned, “In 1915 the Hippodrome vaudeville started to appear at the Spreckels Theatre,” ...

Lake Wohlford

Serene Lake Wohlford lies near the headwaters of Escondido Creek, its mirroring surface reflecting the shaggy-with-chaparral, boulder-studded hillsides that confine it. As early as 1895, water impounded for the benefit of Escondido’s farms and households ...

Ephemera

The library at UCSD has just purchased some letters and related miscellanea belonging to Gary Snyder, a Northern California poet famous for hanging out with fellow Beat Generation writers Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Philip Whalen, ...

You Wanna Pull?

On a Saturday spring morning, in a small fenced-in backyard in San Marcos, 40 or so rather dangerous-looking men (and a few women and children) have gathered to celebrate arm wrestler Harold “the Rattlesnake” Ryden’s ...

Let the Bank Cut the Lawn

In the first quarter of this year, three times the number of San Diego County homeowners failed to pay their mortgages as during the first quarter of 2007. According to DataQuick Information Systems, a company ...

Where the Pain Is

What’s the difference between National City and Rancho Santa Fe? Well — er, uh — money comes to mind. Last year, median household income in National City was $44,130, according to figures provided by the ...

Italian Green

The old Naval Training Center at Point Loma is now a perfect new neighborhood, a salmon-colored village with shops, groceries, restaurants, and even an arts center, all within a short walk — something like urban ...

Like Lil Jon Took Some Ecstasy

Artist: Trend Setters Song: “No Friends” (from the CD Cali Crunk Vol. 1) Heard By: Graham Goodenough, College Area It was generic, standard, recent hip-hop that’s got that Southern beat — kind of slowed down ...

Wednesday, June 4

White Asparagus Soup

Recipe by Stéphane Voitzwinkler, executive chef, Bertrand at Mister A’s I am from Alsace-Lorraine, which is east of Paris, so I am a country boy. I am very simple and live a simple life. I ...

The Counter of Monte Cristo

‘The problem with La Jolla,” says Siamak, “is that its people are not experienced in sociability. It is a wonderful town, but it is very conservative. The locals don’t socialize.” Derissi strokes his beard and ...

Porky Piggin' It

You know how sometimes you’re just kickin’ it at home, wearing a shirt but no pants? That’s called Porky Piggin’ it. If you’ve seen the cartoon Porky Pig, you know he wore a top but ...

Uneasy Lies the Head...

Bottom line, David Stern got the finals he needed — Lakers vs. Celtics — and people are watching. Mediaweek reports fat times in NBA World, Playoffs Subcontinent. ESPN ratings are up 35 percent, TNT ratings ...

Comfortable Creeps

Album: Paycheck to Paycheck (2007) Artist: Comfortable Creeps Label: FTB Recordings Where available/price: All Music Trader record shops for $8. Online at accesshiphop.com for $7 or iTunes for 99 cents a song. Songs: 1) Kerri’s ...

Tickets to Slide?

Although tickets for the August 27 Radiohead show at Cricket Amphitheatre are selling well, local concert promoters may be facing a tough summer. “AEG is hurting with George Michael,” says one insider about how AEG ...

Chimp People

Some people look like chimpanzees, and that’s the truth of it. I’m not being mean or hurtful. You’ve seen that person who looks like a chimpanzee. And you’ve caught yourself thinking of that person in ...

Not in the lobby

An engineer from Burlingame, California, has been told by the City of San Diego’s Ethics Commission that he doesn’t have to register as a lobbyist if he provides only “technical data” to city officials. “If ...

Firewater

Firewater’s first album, 1996’s Get Off the Cross, We Need the Wood for the Fire, introduced the public to an agitated blend of world music and the sometimes brutal sense of humor of Firewater’s founder, ...

A Californian Song and New Grunge

Artist: The Paddle Boat Song: “A Little Time” (from myspace.com/thepaddleboat) Heard By: Michael Dunford, Mission Hills I thought it was good. I think it’s a very appropriate song. What I mean by that is the ...

Bite-Sized

The men behind You Don’t Mess with the Zohan, who would include director Dennis Dugan and producer-writer-star Adam Sandler, must be holding their collective breath in hopes that, before or during its opening weekend, no ...

Errant Knaves

I remember going to an Alice in Wonderland party in costume. When my old girlfriend and I saw the crowd in the living room, we thought we were the only ones dressed up. Luckily, there ...

Chefs Call Him "Awesome"

Nearly every week, I pour myself a glass of Japanese fizzy-water (Nigori sake), take a deep breath, and call up some rank stranger — the chef of the restaurant I’m currently reviewing. Between the serious ...

Name This Place

Clue: Crown this our smallest park? Describe this location, name the nearest cross-streets, and win a Reader T-shirt. Enter by completing the form below. Last week's place: (clue: Regal entrance to Winnie's place?) The jeweled ...

Turkish Barbers

There are two barbershops on Camp Fallujah, about a ten-minute walk apart. One — run by a Jordanian — is located inside the post exchange complex while the other — a shop owned by an ...

The Swordsmen

This is being written amid days in a row of May Gray. It may be a safe bet that you are reading it in the early part of June Gloom. Possibly not, but it doesn’t ...

Letters

More Than Famous I have a comment on your May 29 issue of the Reader. For the ad on page 4 using the word “stars” and “famous,” I think it would be appropriate to say ...

There's Been an Accident. Jadean Didn't Make It.

March 6 started out pretty much like any other day. Work was busy. I got off a little late, went home, got in the shower, and when I got out, my son Marshal told me ...

Sunless Tans

‘I need a tan — now,” said Tara, flopping on my couch and gazing out at the cool, cloudy afternoon. “No, I need it yesterday. I just found out Jay will be at the wedding ...

Festivus

Thursday 5Los Angelino rock poet Dave Alvin and his Guilty Men will do a stretch at Belly Up tonight. The former Blaster brother is best known for his gritty barroom guit and storied lyrics. The ...

Collagen, Helium, and Butt Boozin'

Hey, Matthew: Before I have collagen injections in my lips, I have to know where they get the collagen. Is it human? Does it come from some animal? — Lip Sink, via email Cow lips. ...

Listen to Ruthey

Name: Ruthey Travis Age: 58 Lives In: Rancho Bernardo Surfing: Black’s Beach Pre-Surf Music: Sam Cooke Post-Surf Food: Scrambled eggs “I should have known better. It was a foolish mistake. I was just paddling out, ...

Tea High

Tea to the English is really a picnic indoors. — Alice Walker Mom had been exercising her pinkie for three days. She told me the exhaustive sets of pinkie-extensions were in preparation for her first ...

Rock On and On

You may not be familiar with guitarist Greg Douglass, but you’ve probably heard him play — he cowrote and played on the Steve Miller Band hit “Jungle Love” (1977), performed on Greg Kihn’s single “Jeopardy” ...

Uncle Ted's Victuals

When Ted Nugent appears at the House of Blues on June 10, his catering contract states, “Absolutely no takeout meals will be deemed acceptable, i.e. McDonald’s, Fish and Chips, Weinerworld, Chinese, etc.” His dressing room ...

Jagged Conversation

Caryl Churchill’s play A Number unfolds like a hall of slowly warping mirrors. The play opens with Salter, in his early 60s, talking to his 35-year-old son Bernard. Their conversation’s jagged. Each interrupts the other, ...

Pacific Beach Bible Church

The backlit wooden cross hanging on the wall above the stage was bare, but Christ crucified was a prominent feature of Sunday’s service at Pacific Beach Bible Church. I say prominent, not exclusive; the mentions ...

Stuff It

Thirty Years AgoIn a little under nine hours Eichberger takes a dead bird from a clear plastic bag, does things to it that would be unspeakable at the dinner table, and ends up with a ...

Les Sans Culottes

Please bear with me for a brief history lesson: In the French Revolution, the sans-culottes were a dangerous element of the Third Estate. They were poor, and they wore long work pants instead of the ...

Who Needs Ratings?

“Golf is a good walk spoiled,” growled Mark Twain, and in recent years, more and more Americans have been agreeing with him. The industry hopes that the U.S. Open, played June 9 through 15 at ...

Backbone Trail

The easternmost Backbone Trail, part of a “hikers highway in the making” through the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, skims across spacious Topanga State Park above Santa Monica and executes a final swan dive ...

Local Films, Local Responsibility

“Cottonwood Creek is the watershed in Encinitas that flows out into Moonlight Beach,” says Carris Rhodes, program assistant for the Cottonwood Creek Environmental Film Festival. “It used to be really smelly and dirty. Then [approximately ...

Scene Stir

“I moved to San Diego in the 1980s and intended to earn a living as a musician,” says author R.J. McDonnell, whose just-released Rock & Roll Homicide novel is set amidst the local music scene. ...

In the lobby

With election results now in hand, members of the city’s lobbying corps can adjust their strategies as needed. And despite the threatened economic recession and housing crash, there’s plenty of business, judging from recent disclosure ...

A Cool Elective You Can't Get Out Of

Eduardo Ochoa teaches social justice at Lincoln High School in Chollas View. Ochoa is also a coordinator for the Advancement Via Individual Determination program, or AVID, as everyone calls it, a high school elective designed ...

The Kid, Public Enemy, Sunset Boulevard

Scott PaulsonPit director of the Teeny-Tiny Pit Orchestra for Silent Films, UCSD’s ArtPower The finest screen adaptation of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is the 1920 silent. The Kino DVD has beautiful tinting effects that ...

Disrespected

Local hip-hop artist Young Mass says he “… can’t take this disrespect from none of them stick-up-the-ass Aftermath niggas.” He’s talking about onetime collaborators Dr. Dre and Dre’s studio staff at Aftermath Entertainment. “Karma swings ...

Who Charted?

Though overall music sales have been in a death spiral for several years, San Diego artists have been having their best year ever on Billboard’s Top 200 chart. But does it mean as much as ...