Midway District Stories

Midway District Stories

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Stalled car backs up traffic in Midway District

Gets bumped to safety by SDPD

At around 10:30 a.m. on Tuesday, May 7, a Toyota sedan ran out of gas and stalled along Sports Arena Boulevard., near the corner of Midway Drive. As traffic backed up in the Midway District, ...

Vets’ shelter to remain open in Midway District until July

Mayor Filner appropriates funds from budget surplus

On Tuesday, April 22, the San Diego City Council voted to keep open the homeless veterans’ tent shelter at 2801 Sports Arena Boulevard. The shelter, a 150-bed facility for homeless vets that usually operates from ...

RV residents chased from Sports Arena parking lots

Unwelcome at beach and inland

As authorities in beach areas and on Shelter Island have been cracking down on prolonged parking of motor-homes, some of those RV residents have migrated to the Sports Arena area’s parking lots. However, businesses — ...

Another water pipe break in Midway District

No businesses flooded

On Saturday morning, February 9, a broken water main flooded streets in the Midway District. An aged pipe burst and made for a messy and congested effort to access the Rosecrans Street freeway entrances between ...

Midway District’s Heritage Inn explosion unrelated to meth

Burn victims were processing pot

What was first thought to be a meth-lab explosion at the Heritage Inn in the Midway District on the morning of January 30 is now being reported as a different sort of drug-related disaster that ...

Mall cops chase off unwanted habitués of Glasshouse Square

Parking and begging problems alleviated

As recently as last summer, Glasshouse Square Shopping Center, located in the Midway District, was home turf to many shelter-challenged individuals. Many customers and patrons were turned off by the presence of vagrants who would ...

Palm Patrol gathers downed fronds in Midway District

Road hazard eliminated

What many locals refer to as the “Palm Patrol" was out in force on Thursday morning, December 27, scouring the streets of the Midway District and Ocean Beach for palm fronds that litter the streets ...

Two water-pipe breaks in two days in Midway District

Early morning and Sunday traffic lessen impact

The weekend before Christmas 2012 was not kind to water pipes (or traffic) in the Midway District. Two incidents of burst pipes and localized flooding occurred: one along Sports Arena Blvd on Saturday, December 22, ...

Bieber tickets lead to police action in Midway District?

Handcuffed woman asks for help

San Diego police descended on the Stonewoood Gardens apartments, located on the 3800 block of Midway Drive (where it intersects with Sports Arena Boulevard), early on the morning of Wednesday, December 19. Four police cars ...

Sprucing up the Arena — that's a wrap

Photographer Rick Gould’s ’70s concert photos were made into art for the interior of Sports Arena.

Storage Wars host Dave Hester spotted at Kobey’s Swap Meet

YUUP! he was fired, but unfairly, he says

One of my favorite TV shows is called Storage Wars, and I like to go down to Kobey's Swap Meet at the Valley View Casino Center (Sports Arena) to look for the collectibles I like ...

Midway shopping center’s spiky trees with soft name

Some people at the Vons shopping center at 3645 Midway Drive are puzzled by an odd-looking tree that is growing along the driveway behind Fantastic Sam's. Some mistakenly identified it as an avocado tree. This ...

Extreme Value Retailer to Open…Soon

A chain-link fence, lots of scaffolding, and a face-lift now separate would-be shoppers from the soon-to-open Point Loma Grocery Outlet in Midway Towne Center. "Point Loma Grocery Outlet is coming!” read a recent company Facebook ...

Stuck Truck in Midway District

An enormous moving truck was stuck in the Point Loma Villa condos’ driveway in the Midway District on Friday morning, November 9, at around 11:00 a.m. Heavily laden with household items, the T & R ...

Street Dip Stops Moving Van

U-Haul drama occurred on October 13 at around 10:00 a.m. as an Arizona-license-plated moving van got stuck in the street near the 4400 block of Mentone Street in the Midway District. The steeply inclined dip ...

Water Main Break in Midway District

Trying to find a parking spot in the Midway District's Loma Square strip mall is difficult even on a good day, with businesses such as Starbucks, Einstein's Bagels, and Jamba Juice occupying storefronts. But there ...

Bicyclist Run Over in Midway District

On September 7 at around noon, a man riding a bicycle was hit and run over by a delivery truck in the Dixieline Lumber driveway at 3250 Sports Arena Boulevard. Police responded by blocking off ...

Circus Protest on Sports Arena Boulevard

Protesters were back in the Midway District again, but they weren’t there to stand up for gay rights or the personal views of Chick-fil-A CEO Dan Cathy. This time protesters were upset about the Ringling ...

Car Crashes Inside Point Loma Laundromat

Several customers washing or drying their clothes at the Point Loma Coin Laundry were lucky to have avoided tragedy on August 11. A silver Kia slammed through the glass window at around 5 p.m. A ...

Embers Out, Las Olas Rolling to Midway District?

The long -shuttered Embers Grill, previously located at 3924 West Point Loma Boulevard in the Midway Towne Center, is being remodeled for a new tenant. While shopping in the area recently, I noticed construction activity. ...

No Kiss-In, Lots of Chicken at Restaurant Protest

The Midway District Chick-fil-A location had a long line of customers waiting to eat when I arrived for lunch at 11:00 a.m. on August 1. It took at least one hour to get inside to ...

Buy Chicken, Enjoy Kiss-In at Restaurant in Midway District

Chick-fil-A, the low-key fast food restaurant located at 3570 Sports Arena Boulevard, may get some undesired attention on Wednesday, August 1. Gay-marriage proponents, upset over the stance that Chick-fil-A CEO Dan T. Cathy took on ...

Suspect Stabs Then Goes to Rob Pills from Walgreens

A 34-year-old man was arrested at the Walgreens store located at 3005 Midway Drive early Saturday, May 5, after he allegedly stabbed another person in the head at a nearby apartment complex. The suspect also ...

Gas Pipeline Ruptured in Midway District

A gas leak snarled lunchtime traffic in the Midway District on May 1. As police and fire department personnel blocked the area off, safety officials ordered brief evacuations of the Sports Arena Home Depot store ...

Native Plants Create Wildlife Haven in Midway District

Signs of a native spring can be found in the vacant lot on the corner of Kenyon and Kemper streets in the Midway District. According to a sign posted at the site, the San Diego ...

Power Outage Looters Hit Walgreen’s in Midway District

During the September 8-9 power outage, the Walgreen's drugstore located at 3005 Midway Drive had their front door smashed in and an estimated $400 worth of cigarettes stolen. Pieces of broken glass littered the pavement ...

Natives In, Nonnatives Out of Famosa Slough

A project to remove nonnative trees and plants around the perimeter of Famosa Slough's eastern edge has been completed. Gone are the palm trees, eucalyptus, and other invasive plant species that threatened the biological integrity ...

Bicyclist Clipped near Famosa Slough

Bike riders are commonly seen riding along in the Midway District. For those residents without cars or who wish to not leave a carbon imprint, getting around the Midway business district is as simple as ...

Beat the Clock at Du-par's Restaurant & Bakery

Oh, man. That smell. That barbecue smell, reaching out and pulling you in by the nose. It’s coming from Phil’s BBQ, right past the sports arena. Even now — it’s early evening — streams of ...

Teen Driver Backs into Car, Killing Elderly Man

The traffic-related death of a 77-year-old man in the early hours of July 7 has caused much sadness among his acquaintances in the Midway District area. According to a story on Channel 10 news, police ...

Point Loma Shopping Center Loses Another Tenant

Loma Square Shopping Center is losing another tenant; in recent years, large spaces leased by Circuit City and a discount shoe store have gone vacant. The Everything a Deal clothing store at the intersection of ...

Punk Swap at the Shakedown

“I’m not gonna kick somebody out because they’re selling something other than punk,” says Josh Barnes, “but that’s kind of it,” he says about the Shakedown’s punk-record swap meets. “But punk,” he says, “covers a ...

Truck Blocks Traffic on Midway Drive

On May 5 at 6 p.m., traffic was blocked on Midway Drive when a truck carrying the front end of a large airplane fuselage turned south from Rosecrans and entered a government facility across the ...

Circus Clowns with Fire Axes at Sports Arena?

ABC promos for the new Matthew Perry sitcom Mr. Sunshine refer to his character as managing a “second-rate San Diego sports arena.” “They had a scout from the production company come down here around a ...

Magnet School Students Fly to China

Barnard Elementary School-located at 2930 Barnard Street in the Midway District recently returned from a trip to China. The Mandarin Chinese K-6 magnet school forged an official sister school alliance with the 65-year old Chongqing ...

San Diego Sports Arena Repaved, Renamed

With the exception of the brief time it flew the doomed iPayOne corporate banner, for more than four decades locals have known it as the Sports Arena. But after November 1, that changes when the ...

The Shake Down on Midway

“It’s everything we love,” says Shakedown Bar owner DeadTed. “Working in bars, building motorcycles, skateboarding, punk, rock and roll. It’s who we are.” City Heights native DeadTed began working on cars and choppers when he ...

And the Waterworks Began

At high noon on Sunday, August 1, a geyser of water sprayed from a pipe on the 4500 block of West Point Loma Boulevard — enough water so that cars in both lanes heading into ...

Left Turn for the Worse

On July 26 at approximately 5:30 p.m. on Midway Drive, half a block off West Point Loma Boulevard, a young woman in her early 30s driving an Acura struck a man in his 60s while ...

Cold!

On Wednesday, May 5 I went to the Subway Sandwich shop on Midway Drive. As soon as I entered the store, I knew something was wrong. There was no one working and a bag of ...

Too Much Conflict, Too Much Interest

On April 23, 2007, two San Diego investigators, Gerald Cook of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Dan Vile of the San Diego Police Department, turned in a criminal investigation of wrongdoing in a local ...

When a Mother Cries

At about 9:00 a.m. on December 31, at the corner of Midway Drive and West Point Loma Boulevard, a five-car wreck occurred that sent a mother and her nine-year old girl to the hospital, the ...

Explosion on Midway?

“Late Sunday night, I was sleeping in my car beside the liquor store when I heard a loud explosion,” said Steward Marshall, who moved to San Diego to attend college. “I was still kind of ...

Swank, Hip, Sophisticated

“We’re putting two and a half million dollars into the building,” says Ernie Hahn, general manager of the Sports Arena for the past 13 years. “It’s been a year since AEG Live became a majority-owner ...

Soft Cell

If you want to sell some of your plasma, a new Octapharma facility recently opened up behind the McDonald's on Midway Drive. If you can spend the time and pass the screening, you can earn ...

Café India’s Famous Potatoes

Recipe from Kirti Srivastava Honestly, I grew up in the restaurant. We’ve had it since I was little, when my parents came to San Diego from Uttar Pradesh to help my uncle. At the time, ...

Pitifully Doomed

San Diego mayor Jerry Sanders recently announced that the City has launched a new website at which people can make donations to support the fire-pit program. Despite a $259,500 donation, fire-pit funding has only been ...

Eat Here and Get Towed

Call it blind loyalty, if you like. For a place to tell me his story, Clark Waters chose the Denny’s restaurant at the corner of Pacific Highway and Hawthorn Street. Only days earlier, he had ...

Missin’ the Machines

Approximately two weeks ago, the stamp-vending machines were removed from the Midway post office. While frequently visiting this location, I’ve encountered many disappointed people (especially at night and on weekends) who cannot understand why. Many ...

Let’s Toast to Banning Booze

During District 2 councilmember Kevin Faulconer’s state of the district speech on April 27, he listed his accomplishments during the past three years. One of his proudest accomplishments so far has been banning alcohol from ...

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 ...

Field of Screens

The first drive-in theater I snuck into in San Diego was also the first one built here, the Midway, on the northwest corner of Mission Bay Drive and Sports Arena Boulevard. It was December 1979, ...