For some travelers, hope is the worst drug out there.

Although 16-year-old percussionist Johnny Steele is a committed jazz head, he actually caught the drum bug when his dad took him to his first concert at the age of eight to see the Canadian prog-rock …

Thanksgiving just passed and with it my favorite Thanksgiving-ish movies. Woody Allen’s Broadway Danny Rose is essentially a screwball comedy with mobsters, exquisitely filmed in black and white. Thanksgiving elements range from the ridiculous — …

The Rincon Band of Luiseño Indians has added a brewery component to its gambling interests. The sovereign tribe owns the Harrah's casino on its reservation near Valley Center, and on November 5th it opened a …

Ask for the Caribe Welcome at Miss B’s Coconut Club and the bartender will whip and dump a creamy white concoction into a young shaved coconut with Miss B’s logo burnt into the glistening white …

"Sorry about your leader.” “Thank you. But it’s been a long time. Thirty years since I left.” Raul’s from Cuba. I want to ask what he feels about Fidel. But conversation drifts. We happen to …

Jim Madaffer, who first linked up with second wife Robin a decade ago when he was a Republican member of the San Diego city council and she was a big-money city hall lobbyist, continues to …

A few weeks ago, a story appeared on The Big Screen about a “critic” who couldn’t manage to make it through a screening without texting. It was greeted with a tidal wave of sympathetic comments …

Membership: 200 Pastor: Dan Koeshall Age: 56 Born: Pipestone, MN Formation: Evangel University, Springfield, MO; Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena Years Ordained: 25 San Diego Reader: What’s your favorite subject on which to preach? Pastor Dan …

Josh Kmak says his commitment to making music both helped and hurt him through a very dark time. The multi-instrumentalist singer/songwriter sits in occasionally with the Schizophonics and has played with the New Kinetics. He …

Mary Frances Prevost (pronounced PRAY-vo), who describes herself on her website as "California's Top Criminal & DUI Attorney," has been suspended by the California Bar for the third time. She was suspended from law practice …

Dear DJ: Riddle me this, why must millennials or hipsters name their newborns Lorax, Fennel, Maverick, Jaxson, Skylar, etc? What happened to good ol’ Bob and Henry? You know, names of power. — Javier Zoquaipa …

Beds: 7 Baths: 10 Current Owners: Hugh III and Joy Bancroft List Price: $10,800,000 Marketing materials describe the Rancho Santa Fe estate at 6605 La Valle Plateada using the name Il Incanto, Italian for “the …

First-time writer-director Nicolas Pesce’s The Eyes of My Mother feels unnervingly like a Diane Arbus photo that’s been stretched into a film. Which is to say, it’s unnerving, a shadowy black-and-white (well, black-and-gray) image of …

“We started in 1979 in the garage, ended in 1982, reformed in 1992, disbanded in 1997, and reformed in 2002,” says Mike Sainz, aka Mike Spent of Carlsbad punk rockers Spent Idols. “Along the way, …

Established to protect the life forms found within it, the Torrey Pines State Natural Reserve became an official state park in 1956. Found within its borders is the Torrey pine (Pinus torreyana), the rarest pine …

Prayers frontman Rafa Reyes was one of many musicians among the thousands protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline near Bismarck, North Dakota. “I didn’t tell anybody. I just woke up the day after Thanksgiving and took …

Dear Hipster: I was wondering if hipster things that become cool and mainstream are not cool anymore. For example, I noticed that the hipsters here used to wear a scarf. I am not talking a …

Fiddle music played by four traveling Mennonites. Put it that way and you might think that the Steel Wheels would not be a band that could chart and get radio play after scoring accolades at …

“Toilet to tap” minimal in its impact, maximum in its cost.

Where the Feeling Deserts Us I wake somewhere on the outskirts of Portland. The crickets are singing. The train is refusing to breathe. Off in the distance a truck gears down on a service road …

Sidewalk critics of ex–Union-Tribune publisher Douglas Manchester’s under-construction Austin, Texas, high-rise hotel, called the Fairmont Austin, have expressed disappointment with its increasingly frugal appearance, including what photos show to be a five-story featureless wall at …

“The appetite grows with eating.” Many in the late 19th Century applied the French proverb to an insatiable urge to filibuster: to conquer foreign territories with private armies. If appetite grows, then Captain John H. …

Just Don’t Print ’em Okay, friends, it’s getting plain ugly. You’re printing letters from hate-trolls. Trump did not legitimize use of words like “jigaboo.” You just should not print letters from “name withheld.” That’s usually …