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District Three Doppelgangers

The Hillcrest Town Council held a community forum on September 9, with District Three candidates Stephen Whitburn and Todd Gloria fielding questions from members of the community. The two candidates attempted to distinguish themselves and ...

Grace San Diego

“You are here,” reads the tagline below “Grace” on the banners and bulletin covers for Grace San Diego. Undoubtedly, more than one layer of meaning is intended here — layer two may be something like, ...

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 ...

Back When

Thirty Years Ago Dole is related to pineapples, though he's supposed to have the personality of a radish. Ford is a dependable, unexciting four-door. Somewhere maybe there's a vacuum cleaner or a pipe joint called ...

It's Beautiful

'You taste it, you like it, you can take it home for retail price.'

Stephanie Who?

I went to a CD release party this summer for a group called Four Eyes. I had seen them play at Humphrey's, and they reminded me of the Beatles, Squeeze, and Elvis Costello. The party ...

Concrete Comeback

WE REALLY HAVE, from a pedestrian's point of view, two kinds of places in San Diego," said Stephan Vance of the San Diego Association of Governments. "There's the older urban core that was built around ...

Best of 2003: Best Topiary Garden

Carmelite Monastery 5158 Hawley Boulevard, Normal Heights Enrique Arroyo, the gardener at the Carmelite Monastery, was allowed to create topiary animals on the convent grounds. Arroyo's walrus, snail, armadillo, owl, and tortoise can be seen ...

Best of 2003: Best Place To Get High When You're Dying

Stir It Up Cannabis Coffee House 4683 33rd Street, Normal Heights 619-521-0337 Dying is never pleasant, but it doesn't have to be boring. Stir It Up Cannabis Coffee House provides terminally ill patients with a ...

Best of 2003: Best Community Planning Meeting

Normal Heights Community Association Planning Committee Meetings 4649 Hawley Boulevard, Normal Heights 619-584-1608 If you're community-minded and want to learn how true obsessives fight City Hall, don't miss the monthly meetings of this community-planning committee. ...

Best of 2003: Best Place To Start A Comedy Career

Comedy Co-Dependents 4716 32nd Street, Normal Heights 619-280-5177 Want to break into comedy? Start right here. Whoopi Goldberg did, working with Arlene before she started her own "Co-dependency" troupe in 1994. Just call ahead and ...

Best of 2003: Best Rare Records Source

Folk Art Rare Records 3611 Adams Avenue, Normal Heights 619-282-7833 The jazz vocals, reggae, Brazilian guitar, western swing, pop, gospel, and bluegrass draw clients from all over the world. The shop's proprietor, Lou Curtiss (father ...

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. ...

Nowhere Zone: The Rise, Fall, and Rise of Normal Heights

“I’d lie awake at night and think, ‘I am in hell.’ I’d get up in the morning and think, ‘I am in hell.’ At one point we had heavy trucks making 200 to 300 trips ...

Best of 2001: Best Big Omelet

Antique Row Café 3002 Adams Avenue, Normal Heights 619-303-7601 or 619-282-9750 The menu calls them "Three-Egg Omeletes," but it's hard to believe. The chicken that laid three eggs large enough to compose these monsters would ...

Best of 2001: Best Place For A Late-Night Hookah

The Cairo Café 3569 Adams Avenue, Normal Heights 619-255-3095 www.cairocafe.org We mean the Middle Eastern hubble-bubble water pipe, of course. The Cairo Café is a little place with outside garden seating serving a few coffees ...

Best of 2001: Best Children's Bookstore

The Prince and the Pauper 3201 Adams Avenue, Normal Heights 619-283-4380 or 800-454-3726 www.oldkidsbooks.com People remember the books they read as kids: Little Golden Books, Dick and Jane, Mercer Mayer, Maurice Sendak, Uncle Wiggly, Huck ...

Best of 2001: Best Place To Rent Cameras And Darkroom Materials

Ken Petsch at Camera Exposure 2703 Adams Avenue, Normal Heights 619-640-5300 At Ken Petsch's place you can rent super-ultra telephoto lenses or hot-shot cameras by the day. So you can try out a couple of ...

Best of 2001: Best Place To Buy A Handmade Girl's Dress

Charles Alterations, Tailoring & Dry Cleaning 3435 Adams Avenue, Normal Heights 619-283-1574 As children's fashions look more adult, finding a special-occasion dress for your little girl is becoming more difficult. The big chains seem bent ...

Best of 2001: Best Funeral Joint, If You Don't Want To Pay An Arm And A Leg

Mayer Mortuary 2859 Adams Avenue, Normal Heights 619-281-7055 It's extraordinary for one reason: it's independent. This, in a time when the funeral chains are eating up small independents all over. Corporations like the Houston-based Service ...

Best of 2000: Best Dry Cleaner

Glen Cleaners 3190 Adams Avenue, Normal Heights (619) 282-0241 Spot removal and enlightenment. All cleaning and pressing is done on the premises. They don't mash jacket lapels into a knife edge, they gently roll them. ...

Best of 2000: Best Antiquing

Antique Row Adams Avenue Normal Heights/University Heights Memories of the Row: A magnificent Craftsman gumwood built-in sidebar, torn out when a house was torn down, full of doors and drawers, beveled glass and blond-wood presence. ...

Best of 2000: Best Vegetarian Restaurant

Jyoti Bihanga 3351 Adams Avenue, Normal Heights (619) 282-4116 The eastern Indian influence is low-key in this plainly decorated Normal Heights eatery, where meat is murder and tofu is the ingredient of choice in many ...

Best of 2000: Best Restaurant For Dancing On Tables

The Russia House Restaurant 3200 Adams Avenue, Normal Heights (619) 584-6279 The new owners say things have calmed down since they took over from Marko, the wild, intellectual Georgian who loved folks getting up on ...

Best of 2000: Best Place For Rose Juice And Lebanese Food

Phoenicia 3381 Adams Avenue, Normal Heights (619) 282-4120 Rose water was the Coca-Cola of the Ancient World. It tastes pink and cool -- and like the smell of roses. People sold it in the summer ...

Thou Shalt Not Plow Under

School Board member Ron Ottinger doesn't want to be branded the "candidate who allowed them to bulldoze the park." In a dispute with the San Diego Unified School District that culminated in Normal Heights residents ...