Fallbrook Stories

Fallbrook Stories

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San Diego backcountry folks double taxed for fire protection?

As San Diego County’s due date for paying the first installment of property taxes loomed on December 10, an additional $150 tax bill began arriving in property owners’ mailboxes. The new per-parcel tax, sent to ...

Olive Fruit Fly Takes Toll Statewide

Jim Engelke, owner of Fallbrook Olive Oil, bought an avocado grove in east Fallbrook eight years ago. With the North American Free Trade Agreement allowing the importation of avocados from south of the border and ...

Is a Fallbrook Business Improvement District Necessary?

With the intent of creating consistency for local businesses during a floundering economy, Vince Ross, president of the Fallbrook Revitalization Council, has commissioned a study to determine the viability of developing a business improvement district ...

Down, Down, Down for the Locos

The Vario Fallbrook Locos gang stabbed Kenneth Mose for being black and in their neighborhood.

Fallbrook’s Shrinking Avocado

Since the first avocado trees were planted in 1912, Fallbrook’s avocado industry’s been thriving. The Fallbrook Chamber of Commerce estimates annual sales near $26 million. However, due to water-access issues, the size of the average ...

Fallbrook Flower (and Cabbage) Show

On Saturday afternoon, April 28, 12-year-old Jenna Blevens attended the Fallbrook Flower Show with her 74-year-old grandmother Eva Raines. “It’s a tradition,” said Raines, who has brought her granddaughter to the event for the past ...

Nessy Burger Relocates

A North County icon disappeared for a short time on Saturday, April 7. Named after the Loch Ness Monster, Nessy Burger has been around since 1989, contained in a little roadside trailer on the west ...

Alleged Killer Michael David Robles Arraigned

A 43-year-old Fallbrook man was brought before a judge on November 30 and charged with strangling to death his ex-girlfriend on the eve of her birthday, November 23. Michael David Robles pleaded not guilty and ...

Fallbrook Man Guilty of Cutting Brake Cable

Forty-nine-year-old Leopaldo Lopez pleaded guilty to felony vandalism October 21 for reportedly cutting the emergency brake cable on a truck that was parked at the curb in front of a home in Fallbrook two weeks ...

Nothing but Berries

My last visit to Fallbrook Winery was in 2006; longtime restaurateur Ed Moore had invited me up to listen in on a blending session for the winery’s 2004 Merlot. But one blend led to another, ...

Fallbrook Man Catches Tasmanian Tiger by the Tail

Bill Warrren sounds as if he has seen too many Dos Equis' commercials when he says that he is the "most interesting man in San Diego...if not the world." Warren talks of Navassa, the Guano-filled ...

Wigged Out

Fallbrook sheriff's deputies have reason to believe they interrupted a robbery attempt on the morning of March 19. They responded to a radio call of a suspicious white female wearing a wig near the Fallbrook ...

Suspects Street-Cornered

A Fallbrook sheriff's deputy who encountered two people on a street corner discovered stolen items and burglary tools on March 16. Deputy Andrew Brumfield stopped to question Vanessa Paredez, 27, as she stood outside of ...

That’s What Friends Are For

A Fallbrook gang member will have to stand trial for stabbing his childhood friend, a San Diego superior-court judge ruled on January 27. Skyylr Hamilton, 18, is charged with attempted murder and a handful of ...

Fallbrook’s Mine — A Hit or the Pits?

A pristine wilderness area northeast of Fallbrook is at the center of a heated controversy, pitting local residents against a multibillion-dollar Fortune 1000 construction company. Five years ago Granite Construction announced its plan to develop ...

Fowl Play in Fallbrook

There are lots of local film festivals, but Fallbrook’s is my favorite. This year’s second annual started on Thursday, April 23, but it wasn’t until Saturday afternoon that my girlfriend and I made it. We ...

De Luz Bike Ride

The sinuously curving rural roads on the far (north) side of Fallbrook offer a significant challenge to bicycle riders. Thirty or 40 years ago, the brushy hills and wooded backcountry canyons between Fallbrook and Temecula ...

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 ...

Fallbrook, the Beautiful

“I believe that in the history of the Fallbrook Music Society you would find a group of people who moved here, who enjoyed music and arts, and thought, ‘Boy, it’s a pain to have to ...

Darth Vera

I went up to Fallbrook a while back for a Fallbrook Film Factory event called the Comic and Animation Filmfest. I had met Dean LeCrone at a previous party, and he had made a documentary ...

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 grill outside a friendly taco catering truck, with that marinated ...

Keep Market Street Initiative

Thirty Years Ago You've got a good weekly newspaper. One way to make it even better would be to fire that ignorant pseudo-intellectual, Duncan Shepherd. His movie reviews are totally worthless to the general public ...

Catch the cool evening breeze from a hilltop in Heller's Bend Preserve near Fallbrook.

Once rich in rural landscapes, the area between Fallbrook and Bonsall has experienced a lot of suburban growth -- everything from full-blown subdivisions to large-acreage lots with mini-mansions placed on them. Fallbrook remains the "avocado ...

Classic San Diego

Most-Filmed Wild West Main Street Don't look yet. Turn off Woodside onto Maine and behold a li'l old Wild West street that'll knock your spurs off. It huddles beneath a perfect movie-set backdrop of towering ...

Climb to a 1567-foot summit east of Fallbrook and enjoy an ocean-to-mountain panorama.

The dark west flank of Monserate Mountain rises abruptly alongside Interstate 15, its chaparral-coated surface relatively uncut by roads and graded residential lots. The Fallbrook Land Conservancy has established its largest preserve here, the 340-acre ...

A mini-climb of Rock Mountain near Fallbrook reveals a hidden, rural landscape.

After 18 years of effort by the Fallbrook Land Conservancy, nearly a dozen small- to medium-sized parcels of property around Fallbrook have been set aside as public open space and wildlife habitat. Just north of ...

On the Bench

'Isn't red table wine hot right now?'

Temecula Fruit

'I think as our vineyards mature, we'll buy less and less from out of the area.'

Mystery Label

'It's old-world style - very dry, a little bit of an earthy, peppery streak.'

Trace the remnants of an old railroad grade along the bank of North County's Santa Margarita River.

A wild and scenic section of the Santa Margarita River, a part of the last undammed major watercourse in San Diego County, is open to visitation by self-propelled explorers, courtesy of the Fallbrook Public Utilities ...

Creamy Flesh

"Approximately 20 percent of the [42,000] people in Fallbrook deal with avocados in some way," says Bob Leonard, executive director of Fallbrook's Chamber of Commerce. The commercial avocado industry in the United States was founded ...

Best of 2003: Best Blacksmith

Steve Dvorák, Iron Touch 1251 Alturas Road, Fallbrook 760-723-5273 Dvorák learned his trade in his native Czechoslovakia. He uses a real forge and pumps his own bellows. People come for fireplace grates, driveway gates and ...

Neighborhood: Small Towns of San Diego

FALLBROOK I often feel in downtown Fallbrook that I have walked through a door into the past, the door I have been looking for all my life. It happens at Jerry’s Barber Shop most often. ...

The Death of Judy Huscher

The body lies in a position of repose, a 12-year-old girl in pajamas, on her bed, in Fallbrook, California. Her blue eyes, though open, see nothing, and for ten more minutes, no one sees her. ...

Best of 2001: Best Animal Faucet Sculptor

Célou Bonnet c/o Artworks of Fallbrook Foundry 300 East Alvarado, Fallbrook 760-731-2732 or 760-731-5972 www.celoubonnet.com Célou Bonnet started creating this functional art almost accidentally when an advertising executive commissioned one for his new beach house. ...

Best of 2000: Best Hike In The Oaks

Fallbrook Less than 1 percent of San Diego County's land area is covered by native trees, and much of that tiny fraction consists of narrow strips of oak woodland tracing the narrow confines of various ...

Scout out the diminutive Los Jilgueros Preserve in Fallbrook.

Flanked by avocado orchards and brand-new suburban housing, the 43-acre Los Jilgueros Preserve (jilgueros means finches) stands as a quiet oasis of tranquillity in booming Fallbrook. Endowed with two good-sized ponds and patches of freshwater ...

A loop through Fallbrook and De Luz challenges bicyclists.

The sinuously curving rural roads on the far (north) side of Fallbrook offer a significant challenge to bicycle riders. Twenty-five years ago, the brushy hills and wooded backcountry canyons between Fallbrook and Temecula were sparsely ...

Trees of Life

The light in old avocado groves is dim, and when you look up, the highest leaves meet like interlocking panes of green glass. Branches and trunks form Gothic arches, a few limbs stretch out like ...