Stories | Cover Story
Ok, this is Tuesday, but where is everybody?
By Bill Manson, Published July 1, 2009
Let’s say you’re a redhead. Duck, that is. Or a scaup. Or a falcon looking for rabbits. Or a coot, ruddy duck, bufflehead, or — more likely over Mission Bay these days — a seagull or ...
If We Didn't Advertise We'd Go Broke Treating the Poor
By Thomas Larson, Published June 24, 2009
Many of us watched the Chargers’ season-ending run this past winter and, amid the cheers and groans, saw a 30-second TV ad starring LaDainian Tomlinson. Well-dressed and calm, he’s holding a postgame news conference. A ...
It’s Hard to Eat With a Paper Bag Over My Head
By Naomi Wise, Published June 17, 2009
I arrived in San Diego nine years ago, a well-spoiled food snob coming down (pun intended) from San Francisco like the culinary marshal sent in to clean up an untamed border town. Now, I find ...
You Can So Eat Well in San Diego
By Ambrose Martin, Published June 17, 2009
This is Ambrose Martin. Rich food makes me gassy. Juvenile? Sure. But it’s not like I ever intended it to see print. For the two ... More Comments (2)
My Delicious Ed-ucation
By Ed Bedford, Published June 17, 2009
When Judith Moore suggested that because my buddy Hank and I were eating mostly cheapo street food anyway, why not write about it, I thought, ... More Comment (1)
Please Don't Be a Weirdo
By Rosa Jurjevics, Published June 10, 2009
“Single mom seeks same to share my home,” Christine Bevilacqua’s Craigslist ad reads. “$700 includes all utilities, laundry, internet, [satellite] TV, master bedroom and bathroom. ... More Comments (2)
Stay Away From Pinto Canyon
By Robert Marcos, Published June 3, 2009
"There’s some petroglyphs over in Pinto Canyon," Frank said as he passed me on the trail. Frank Johnson, a handsome 75-year-old man, with flowing white ... More Comments (16)
You're standing right next to me but you're not there
By Bill Manson, Published May 27, 2009
“I couldn’t believe it,” says the veteran San Diego lifeguard. “A kid shouted, ‘Hey, look!’ And I saw two of them with their parents, and ... More Comments (4)
Bless this crew of visionaries, joy-bringers, and nutcakes!
By Thomas Lux, Published May 20, 2009
Before visiting San Diego’s Zirk Ubu, the last time I’d gone to the circus, I’d walked out with 50 pounds of elephant dung in a ... More Comments (5)
Who is the Union-Tribune's new owner?
By Matt Potter, Published May 13, 2009
Almost 60 years ago, Tom Joubran immigrated to the United States from the town of Nazareth, once part of Palestine, and began a new life ... More Comments (11)
The whole world sleeps on my couch
By Rosa Jurjevics, Published May 6, 2009
“Don’t,” says my stepmother. “I wouldn’t do that, if I were you.” Her voice is tinny through the speakers of my cell phone. “Why not?” ... More Comments (6)
Searching for San Diego's Sea Turtles and a Job
By Nasreen Atassi, Published April 29, 2009
I’ve been gone a long time. When I wake up in the morning and look out my window, the deep topaz sky over Carmel Valley ... More Comments (16)
Our Favorite Drinks and Where We Drink Them
Published April 22, 2009
There are times, sometimes in the midst of otherwise polite conversation, when it comes out that I make my living writing for the Reader. The ... More Comments (36)
San Diego's Superhero
By Ollie, Published April 15, 2009
A baby wails its first song in an unexceptional San Diego hospital. Doctors notice nothing special or unusual about the child. No clerics have wandered ... More Comments (9)
Church on Sunday?
By Matthew Lickona, Published April 8, 2009
He looks like a regular young guy — maybe late 20s or early 30s. Head shaved to mask a receding hairline, a black goatee to ... More Comments (46)
"Mommy, why are they shooting at us again?"
By James Iverson, Published April 1, 2009
Life in Tijuana goes on. The buses run, people go to work, kids go to school, traffic still jams the city’s arteries. But something has ... More Comments (26)
My Gender Is Bunny
By Ernie Grimm, Published March 25, 2009
I’m sitting on a leather couch in the middle of a darkened black-walled, black-ceilinged room talking to a man who, at taxpayer expense, takes hormones ... More Comments (63)
Borrowed music. Borrowed look. Borrowed fame.
By Jay Allen Sanford, Published March 18, 2009
In the 2001 film Rock Star, former rapper and underwear model Mark “Marky Mark” Wahlberg fronts a tribute band that pays sonic homage to his ... More Comments (22)
El Cajon
By Bill Manson, Published March 11, 2009
The Hell’s Angel takes me aside. It’s 10:00, Saturday night. A bunch of them stand around outside their headquarters by a row of angle-parked Harleys, ... More Comments (5)
Waste time. Save money. Ride the bus!
By Ollie, Published March 4, 2009
Here’s what you need to know before I begin this story. (A) I’d spent the week prior to all this camping out at an arts ... More Comments (7)
How much can you say in 7 letters?
By Josh Board, Published Feb. 25, 2009
In some countries, you aren’t allowed to personalize the license plates on your vehicle. Other countries changed that rule when they saw the revenue it ... More Comments (67)
Bertha Bugarin Heads to Jail
By Thomas Larson, Published Feb. 18, 2009
In October 2007, Michael Varga, a police officer assigned to the Chula Vista Police Department’s Special Investigations Unit, began interviewing women about the abortions they ... More Comments (5)
Please Let Me Sell Them Pest Control and Not Screw It Up
By Cami Adair, Published Feb. 11, 2009
Sometimes I feel as if we’re the bugs, a colony of cockroaches, and Suite C is our secret lair. Every morning, I exit the freeway ... More Comments (11)
They’ve Taken the Dive Out of Dive Bars
By Rosa Jurjevics, Published Feb. 4, 2009
“No matter what happens,” Chris Heaney declares with a grin, “no matter if the economy’s good or bad, you’ve got to drink.” He stands behind ... More Comments (13)
Hi. I used to live here. Can I come in?
By John Brizzolara, Published Jan. 28, 2009
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, Freud pointed out. He would never have said the same thing about a house. Certainly Carl Jung would ... More Comments (3)
Deadly Mosquitoes Breed in Our Urban Drool
By Geoff Bouvier, Published Jan. 21, 2009
A few days after an autumn picnic near Los Peñasquitos Lagoon, a local grade-schooler comes down with the flu. Fever, chills, headache, and he can’t ... More Comment (1)
Where Can I Get Some Peace and Quiet?
By Ollie, Published Jan. 14, 2009
My cell phone was apparently assembled at gunpoint by drunk Yugoslavians in the year 1984. The only way for it to receive any sort of ... More Comments (11)
Bouncers: 97% Nothing, 3% Hell and Terror
By Michael Hemmingson, Published Jan. 7, 2009
No Slashed Tires “It’s nothing like Road House, there’s no Patrick Swayzes,” says Ted Washington, who divides his time as a bouncer between Winstons in ... More Comments (9)
Why Local Radio Is No Longer Local
By Thomas Larson, Published Dec. 30, 2008
If San Diego has a voice, it may be the plummy bass of Chris Cantore. Until December 2007, the Brooklyn native was an audible fixture ... More Comments (35)
Gangbangers to College Students
By Barbara Davenport, Published Dec. 23, 2008
On a winter night in 2002, Christopher Yanov, the founder and sole staff member of Reality Changers, sat with a handful of eighth graders and ... More Post a comment
Would You Pay $750 for a Bike with No Brakes?
By Rosa Jurjevics, Published Dec. 17, 2008
The bike is brown. It’s light in my hands; I can lift it over my head, which I do, just to try it, and it’s ... More Comments (6)
Go Directly to Jail...and Die
By Thomas Larson, Published Dec. 10, 2008
Francisco Castaneda came to the United States from El Salvador during its civil war of the 1980s. Fleeing the violence, his mother crossed the U.S.-Mexico ... More Comments (9)
It's Getting Ugly Downtown
By Geoff Bouvier, Published Dec. 3, 2008
One Who’s Out and Wants In A man walks into the lobby of a downtown sales office on Sixth Avenue and G Street on a ... More Comments (19)
The Incredible Craig Venter
By Matt Potter, Published Nov. 25, 2008
Atop one of the last open bluffs in La Jolla, on the campus of UCSD, a tattered homemade swing hangs from a giant old eucalyptus ... More Comment (1)
Shopping at Weedmart
By Joseph O'Brien, Published Nov. 19, 2008
Colleen Daley lives on a sunburnt patch of overzoned Chula Vista real estate. She is besieged by the odiferous crosscurrents of wafting grease and the ... More Comments (5)
Hi, Connie. We’re ready for you.
By Elizabeth Marro, Published Nov. 12, 2008
Human Lab Rats I am stranded inside an MRI machine. My arms are pinned to my sides; my head is immobilized; my nose lies seven ... More Post a comment
$120 Is Music to Our Ears
By Geoff Bouvier, Published Nov. 5, 2008
It’s Friday morning, and a woman in casual clothes, with a viola case on her back, bicycles down Harbor Drive. She’s headed toward Embarcadero Park, ... More Post a comment
San Diego Treasure Hunters. We're Not As Nerdy As You Think.
By Moss Gropen, Published Oct. 29, 2008
It’s Monday, 5:00 a.m. at Mission Beach. Russ Gish and his son Lance have already been here an hour, sweeping the sand with a contraption ... More Post a comment
There Is No San Diego River
By Bill Manson, Published Oct. 22, 2008
San Diego River? “There is no San Diego River,” says Pete Cuthbert. “What you’re dangling your toes in is the Colorado River, the Sacramento River, ... More Comments (6)
Keep That Sign Moving
By John Brizzolara, Published Oct. 15, 2008
You’re standing on a street corner in San Diego. It is summer in, say, North Park: the corner of 30th and University. Actually, you’re a ... More Post a comment
Illegal Ways to Avoid the Border Wait
By Geoff Bouvier, Published Oct. 8, 2008
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 ... More Comments (5)
Artists Are the Worst People
By Matthew Lickona, Published Oct. 1, 2008
“He’s restored that villa to a fare-thee-well. That’s the trouble with Americans; all that money and no taste.” — Jonathan Trevanny, Ripley’s Game I: Acquisition ... More Comments (5)
I Never Inhale
By Moss Gropen, Published Sept. 24, 2008
Double-bladed, surgical steel guillotine cutter in hand, a fellow in a Hawaiian shirt slices off a little less than a quarter of an inch, and ... More Comment (1)
Foreign Tourists Invade
By Rosa Jurjevics, Published Sept. 17, 2008
Here in San Diego, the weather is excellent, the beaches some of the finest, and at least for the moment, the dollar is comparatively weak ... More Comments (3)
Plague of the Urban Tumbleweeds
By Bill Manson, Published Sept. 10, 2008
• Captain Charles Moore, UCSD alum, steps overboard. He disappears into the inky Pacific. It’s 2007, nighttime, 500 miles west of San Diego. He swims, ... More Comments (9)
They Think They’re in Love
By Geoff Bouvier, Published Sept. 3, 2008
According to a survey of 4600 teenagers (aged 12–17) conducted recently by Mediamark Research Inc., 89 percent of teens say they have been in dating ... More Comment (1)
Stay Awake for the Ten O'Clock Show
By Matthew Lickona, Published Aug. 27, 2008
“Theater matters because it’s the only place where one can find hope. Films are manufactured for us, but in the theater, the actors and the ... More Comment (1)
Suicide Tourism
By Ernie Grimm, Published Aug. 20, 2008
Tijuana has long attracted people seeking medicine and medical procedures unavailable or unaffordable in their home countries. They've been joined recently by people seeking the ... More Comments (2)
Large Loud Parties Coming Soon to Your Neighborhood
By Larry Harmon, Published Aug. 13, 2008
Zonna Pennell lives in the 3400 block of Keats Street in Point Loma, midway up the hill above Nimitz on a short segment of the ... More Comments (5)
Greetings from Tijuana
By Michael Hemmingson, Published Aug. 6, 2008
The End of the World A mile east of the Tijuana International Airport is an area police call El Fin del Mundo, the End of ... More Comments (42)
What's Wrong with Balboa Park?
By Geoff Bouvier, Published July 30, 2008
If the Pacific Ocean is San Diego’s swimming pool, Balboa Park is our backyard. When we want to get out of the house, Balboa Park ... More Post a comment
Way Too Many People Live Out Here
By Geoff Bouvier, Published July 23, 2008
A lawsuit was filed in March of this year by five environmental groups — including the Center for Biological Diversity and the Sierra Club — ... More Comments (9)
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