You know that commercial where a man and a woman sit across the table from each other, engaged in what appears to be an intimate conversation, but the guy keeps sneaking looks at the football …

Bernardo Vasquez is the chair of Sweetwater Union High School District’s Proposition O Citizens’ Bond Oversight Committee. The all-volunteer committee with rotating membership has been attempting to keep track of the district’s 644 million proposition …

Title: 365 Thoughts, New and Old: An Autobiography Address: 365newthoughtsperyear.blogspot.com Author: Paul Dion, STL From: Linda Vista Blogging since: 2006 Post Title: Introduction to an Old Man’s Musings and Grousings Post Date: November 25, 2010 …

If you’re looking for the perfect redneck response to blue-blooded cocktail culture, look no further than the Swampwater’s edge at Bub’s Dive Bar. The sort of place that serves silos of canned beer in paper …

Keith Milgaten cofounded Vision of a Dying World with his brother Jackson while the two were growing up in Las Vegas. After the duo moved to San Diego in 2006 and hooked up with local …

On August 12, 1971, the San Diego Union printed an obituary: “Dr. Royal R. Rife, 83, an optics engineer who invented a high-power microscope, was buried yesterday at Mt. Hope Cemetery. Rife had worked on …

The broaching of the subject is inevitable: in any extended conversation, I’ll always find a way to sneak in a “Have you eaten anything good recently?” And, quite often, that little question bears fruit. A …

Richard Terfry is a Canadian hip-hop artist who has performed under half a dozen names over the past 20 years, but he’s best known as Buck 65. His earlier work was the kind of thing …

“This town is full of musical cancer survivors,” says singer/songwriter Laura Roppé, wishing blues belter Candye Kane a full recovery from her latest cancer diagnosis. Kane, whose first bout with pancreatic cancer began in early …

Petunia won’t give his real name when he calls from British Columbia, where he lives, which may be a self-protective habit grown of living on the streets and having busked his way across Canada and …

In Coronado, alternative transportation mostly means bikes, scooters, skateboards, legs. The options end at the bridge, where a link to San Diego is provided only for cars and motorcycles. Some say the bridge favors traffic …

It’s the word that stops me. A new word on the awning of this old place. “Cremalose.” Huh? This is the San Diego Hardware building. The 100-year-old curved-glass windows of what was once a Woolworth’s …

“It was pretty scanty,” says Ras Charles about the turnout at last year’s Tribute to the Reggae Legends show at the Sports Arena. “You could have played football in there.” Charles had a vendors’ booth …

Hey Matt: Every day, seven days a week, I get odd, distracting, disruptive phone calls that drive me to drink! No, not the ones from my ex. The phone rings, I answer with my usual …

The first era of 3-D gave us flying lances and tomahawks, but the thrill (like the fad) faded. The process was revived creatively by Werner Herzog’s Cave of Forgotten Dreams and Martin Scorsese’s Hugo. A …

Take the trail less traveled to the Cowles Mountain summit Directions from downtown San Diego: 15 miles. Allow 30 minutes’ driving time. (San Carlos, Mission Trails Regional Park) From I-8, exit north on College Ave. …

Dreams don’t care about time or space. They freely remix the known and unimaginable. In Culture Clash’s American Night: The Ballad of Juan José, a kaleidoscopic dream guides the title character on an official tour …

Art exhibitions serve an especially useful purpose if they revise our assumptions and rewrite established narratives, correcting for new information, shifting valuations, fresh polemical agendas, and the mysteries of shared taste. Without a foundational intellectual …

Traveling daredevils the Squidling Brothers are currently touring Europe before making their way to the Shakedown on Midway to court death with their entourage of rock-and-roll sideshow freaks. In anticipation of the preternatural pageant, Matterz …

My husband’s happy place is in his yard. Around this time of year, he spends hours deep in thought, cultivating his land, composting, relishing the odors of moist, tilled earth. He’s prepared a bed for …

And so, baseball. Padres pitchers and catchers report to Peoria on Sunday. Once again I have been suckered into a fantasy baseball league by quaffing one drink too many in the company of bad men. …

Your pocket is being picked in an alleged conspiracy between San Diego Gas & Electric and the California Public Utilities Commission, which is supposed to regulate utilities but actually mollycoddles them. This chicanery, spelled out …

The election isn’t until 2014, but Democratic governor Jerry Brown is already out raising money for his reelection campaign. Recent donors include beer-making giant Anheuser-Busch, with a $25,900 donation on January 28, and the California …

New Van Halen? Who Cares? Not so fast, sayers of nay... I think most folks who hit puberty any time in the past 40 years, who had even the briefest of brushes with hard rock, …

Am I the only one who can see them? All over my neighborhood are plastic bags filled with newspaper advertising. The circulars are everywhere. I live in Pacific Beach and first noticed them in December. …

Sempra Energy, beset by a leaking reactor at San Onofre and illegal bird-space penetrations in East County, among other troubles, has been currying favor among state officials in the firm’s traditional way, by providing them …

She leaves messages on my answering machine, asks for my help, tells me things I’d rather not know: her microwave clock is stuck on 12:00, the computer’s screwing up, there’s a book she can’t find, …

Philadelphia-based psychedelic-rock band Dr. Dog took the stage at Belly Up in support of its sixth studio album, Be the Void. The band hit with the sold-out crowd by kicking off the show with "Lonesome," …

A ’Nam Fantasy After reading your cover article “Citizen Pot Bust” (February 9), I don’t know who is more dangerous, the people in the forest growing marijuana or a bunch of military wannabes carrying loaded …