San Diego Reader

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If I Did That Over There, They'd Cut My Hands Off

What’s it like, being Muslim in San Diego? The question arose for me earlier this year when I decided to hit Ocean Beach on maybe the worst night of the winter. It was Wednesday, the end ...

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Confessions of a Phony Navy Wife

Being in the Navy seems like the perfect time to be single. Sailors are young, many just out of high school. They’re always traveling the world. Reaching a foreign port is one of the craziest ...

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How UCSD Spent Over $500,000 on a Home Remodel That Never Happened

Perhaps the most prized piece of real estate throughout the University of California, San Diego, is the seven-acre site of University House, home to the UCSD chancellor. The rambling adobe home, with its row of ...

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No One’s Ever Told Me That I Look Like a Fish

“First of all,” says Dave Huie, “it should really be called the exotic fish hobby, not the tropical fish hobby.” Beneath his glasses, Huie’s face ... More Post a comment

We Could End Up Looking Like Phoenix

The two small Victorian homes on 20th Street in Sherman Heights that Louise Torio and her husband Steve Veach have restored are examples of how ... More Comments (15)

If There Are Families Here in San Diego, I'd Like to Find One

People Buy You Booze D. is dressed as if he is off to the ComicCon or a Clockwork Orange theme party: boots laced up to ... More Comments (2)

San Diego’s Secret Missile-Testing Sites

I never wanted to move to Scripps Ranch — not with its swarming real-estate agents and white-bread, attend-the-church-of-your-choice ethos, its compliant shrubs, its matrons in ... More Comments (16)

Chivalry Is Not Dead

Seemingly everything has been called a “lost art.” Spelling, conversation, keeping a secret, note taking, listening, and even (why not?) hollering. One string of online ... More Post a comment

The Rocket Pop Street Artist

I have not yet vandalized. I made wheat-paste posters. They’re not wheat-pasted anywhere, yet, but I made them. The pieces of paper sit in my ... More Comments (4)

Tie This Guy Up, Make Sure He Stays at SDSU

Odessa: it doesn’t sound like a particularly Russian word. Maybe Spanish, or Italian. Actually, it was named after Odysseus, the hero of Homer’s (if Homer ... More Comment (1)

So Long, Pals

Maybe it’s my age — the dark side of my sixties, an elder proto-baby boomer, those 78 million Americans born between 1946 and 1964. Maybe ... More Comments (3)

The Rise and Fall of the Copley Press

When Ira Clifton Copley of Aurora, Illinois, first saw San Diego on a trip with his ailing brother to the Hotel del Coronado in 1891, ... More Comments (8)

To Live and Die in Oceanside

The Back Gate The area around the Oceanside pier and boardwalk glistens, picture perfect: palm trees, silver sand, blue water, and crowds of people. It’s ... More Comments (13)

Wingwomen

There didn’t seem to be anything wrong with the man sitting across from me. I had yet to detect a single flaw in his appearance, ... More Comments (4)

Ollie's Big Bike Ride

There’s no outfit so fantastically ridiculous as the too-tight, brazenly colored, and obnoxiously patterned ensemble for riding a long distance on a bicycle. It’s too ... More Comments (14)

I'm as Big as a Vons

Near the lifeguard station in Ocean Beach, nine homeless people have gathered. One lies in the grass of Saratoga Park, legs crossed and hat tilted ... More Comments (4)

Tacos Are a Tiny Taste of Temptation

Fancy wimmen are okay, but there's nuttin' like the real thing: a nice warm adobada taco on a nice cold night beside a nice hot ... More Comments (7)

Rockin' Baby Boomers

By half past nine, all of the pool tables at Bar Leucadian are taken, and fortysomething couples line the bar like birds on a wire. ... More Post a comment

Soccer Moms Are the Absolute Worst

At the Mira Mesa Recreation Center, playing for my fifth-grade youth basketball team, I watched as my coach threw a chair onto the court in ... More Comment (1)

I Would Rather Be In Here Than Standing in the Fast Lane on the Freeway with Cars Coming at 80 Miles an Hour

In Kearny Mesa, on a road called Opportunity, people in the Transportation Management Center watch over us. The operations room looks like a set from ... More Post a comment

San Diego's Highest Paid Executives

San Diego is home to 35 rich executives, almost all white men, who receive millions in compensation for running our community's largest publicly traded companies. ... More Post a comment

Does Christmas Offend You?

Matthew: The last time my father visited, I learned what seemed a remarkable thing: all three of his best friends in high school were Jewish. ... More Post a comment

Tell me What You're Wearing

I stopped folks from Chula Vista to Del Mar, at the malls and on the street, to ask them about their clothes. Questions ranged from ... More Post a comment

Night is My Day

Though flanked by Jack in the Box and, farther up the street, a Denny's, the diner stands out as being a good after-party, post-drinking weekend ... More Post a comment

He Should Have Known Better

It had been another sleepless night for Chris Squire, pedaling around San Diego delivering drugs. When the sun rolled into the sky on August 14, ... More Post a comment

The Second Lives of San Diegans

As you read this, 40,000 people in the world are "in-world." This doesn't mean that these people have left our world, the real world. It ... More Post a comment

Why Tijuana?

Deep-Fried Quesadillas Everything was just out of reach as I lay on my left side in a bed at Tijuana's newest and most modern hospital. ... More Post a comment

We've Grown Up in Paradise

I don't envy the native San Diegan. Being born and raised in paradise must be difficult. How do you avoid becoming hopelessly spoiled? How do ... More Post a comment

A Yearlong Trip Down Crack Street

I was homeless exactly one year, from March 2001 to March 2002. I'd known it was coming, and I even sort of welcomed the impending ... More Post a comment

All That's Left

1982. Israel and Lebanon were at war. England and Argentina were at war. In Hollywood, the Red Hot Chili Peppers were formed. Navy beat Army ... More Post a comment

Perfect Drought

"It's catastrophic!" Duncan McFetridge flings his arms out. "Look, can't you see the change?" Several years ago, when I last came here to the Cleveland ... More Post a comment

Angel in the Rubble

On October 25, 2003, I go outside to touch base with the night sky and feel the air before retiring to bed. Tonight feels different. ... More Post a comment

Best San Diego Jams

Both shows at the San Diego Arena on Eighth and Harbor Drive (aka Glacier Garden skating rink) for Presley's first full-length California concerts were sold ... More Post a comment

Being Fat Sucks

Oprah calls it an "Aha! moment," as if a single occurrence, like waking up, can impel someone to change. A sinner is usually caught in ... More Post a comment

Jesus of Carmel Mountain Ranch

A note is taped to our front door. It says something about a community-standards violation and cites section 2B from the HOA policies handbook: All ... More Post a comment

La Jolla Liberal Learns Tolerance from Clairemont Republicans

Editor's note: More than 600 San Diegans submitted stories for the Reader "My Neighborhood" writing contest. Ocean Beach led all communities with over 20 entries. ... More Post a comment

Of Course You Qualify!

Mario is a recent immigrant from Mexico, and he's typical of homeowners facing foreclosure. He doesn't want me to use his surname; he's ashamed of ... More Post a comment

Do You Feel Safe At School?

On April 16, 2007, on the campus of Virginia Tech University in Blacksburg, Virginia, a sullen, troubled, twisted young man killed 32 people, injured 25 ... More Post a comment

Is Everybody Too Tired?

Our future began on Wednesday, February 5, 2003, when a UCLA doctor announced that for the first time since the late 1850s, Hispanic births accounted ... More Post a comment

She Hated Adverbs

My long conversation with Judith Moore about writing began in 1980. We first met at a monthly campus ministry shindig for the faculty of Central ... More Post a comment

Man Brings Lover Roses Then Shoots Her

Shocked shoppers see a woman fall to her death from a parking structure at Parkway Plaza in El Cajon. Was she pushed? In Chollas View, ... More Post a comment

The Sarcastic Killer

A boy 3 1/2 months old was the youngest homicide victim in San Diego County during the first half of 2007. The oldest was a ... More Post a comment

Plugged In

Now you'll be as plugged in and up to date as all those insiders scarfing up the invite to private KPRI listener parties, drinking free ... More Post a comment

Plenty of Booze

Pacific Beach. 2:00 p.m. A typical, sunny summer Saturday. The smell of spilled beer mingles with sea mist and wet wood. I'm bar-hopping, and not ... More Post a comment

The Answer Man

Yeah, it really has been 20 years -- 20 years of you Alicelanders bugging us with pointless questions; 20 years of Grandma Alice bugging us ... More Post a comment

Confessions of a Bootlegger

At first, Tracey thought I was an FBI agent. I'd been bidding on his eBay auctions for weeks, purchasing CD recordings of local concerts that ... More Post a comment

How to Paint a Portrait

The first time I chat with painter David Darrow on the telephone, I ask him how I might pose. I tell him that I like ... More Post a comment

Before It Was the Gaslamp

One day, he's a lauded real-estate visionary being handed the key to the city by Mayor Frank Curran. Then, he's battling city officials as they ... More Post a comment

Philosophy Majors Sit Around and Think About Things

Sentence one: Lois Lane believes that Superman can fly. Sentence two: Lois Lane believes that Clark Kent can fly. Sentence one is true. Sentence two ... More Post a comment

Faster Is Better

What do certain animals, computers, drivers, drummers, surfers, skaters, railways, and runners have in common? They all have a need. The need for speed. We ... More Post a comment

When You Play Chess, You Can't Hide Who You Are

"I played Nakamura. He was 18 years old at the time, at the 2005 U.S. Championship. His name is Hikaru Nakamura. And he's the top ... More Post a comment

The Fall of King Eucalyptus

On the morning after one of those record-breaking cold nights this past January, Mike Rasmusson checked on his charges. Rasmusson supervises the Kate O. Sessions ... More Post a comment

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