“I’m sorry, sir, I can’t give any information.” Speaking from his Coronado Cays home, Miguel Crespo sounds tired and shaken. His wife, Georgina, was kidnapped over a month ago.“All the family are concerned about this,” …

The sign on the gate tells you all about it. Annual plot fees, $10. Six months’ water charge, $6 per plot. Safe chemicals to use: beer for snails, wood shavings, mint-water soap, garlic-onion soap for …

In the dark Sopheap Cheam, ten, puts his foot through a body. A rotting, maggot-filled stomach, up to his calf. He yanks it out with a shudder. Grabs at the nearest leaves and starts frantically …

“Bike bells,” reads the sign in the trees. “Borrow a bell and return it at the end of your ride. Remember to warn horses and hikers as you approach.” Blue metal balls hang off the …

Oh man. Such a plenitude of art, such a dearth of people! I have come through a gate into a black-and-white-tiled garden of madly colored sculptures. This is “Queen Califia’s Magical Circle.”  It’s in Kit …

Is photography art? Here’s my theory: The painter starts with a blank canvas and daubs his version of reality onto it. The photographer starts off capturing reality ready-made, and then subtracts from it in a way …

Taken by a SharkState game wardens began hunting the beast by trailing cattle blood in the water, from their patrol boat, between Bird Rock and the Scripps Pier. They found no shark of the magnitude …

We’re at the end of the line, here at National City’s 24th Street station, where giant hopes came and went for San Diego, back in the late 1800s. This was where they were expecting the grand …

“It is very expensive to be a successful black author," says Tamela Julia Gordon.Her audience pays close attention when she speaks, and why not? She is a writer who cracked the publishing nut. No less …

“I’m certainly not optimistic,” says Ralph Keeling. Not optimistic? “That we’ll turn around tomorrow and say ‘This was all a bad dream.’ I’m not that kind of an optimist.”Keeling’s a climate scientist, but he’s not talking …

“Bees!” Kim jumps up and starts down towards the river flat. He’s flicking his face and neck. I hear them too. Man! Now they’re buzzing me. I feel the pinch of their little stingers. Neck, hands, mouth. …

Laika clacks up to me. He doesn’t actually lick my hand, but he wants to be friendly. Laika is a dog. Laika is also a robot.Tommy Sharkey, the guy with the controls, says Laika was named …

“‘Don’t anybody move!’”The year is 1970. The speaker is Alfred Scott McLaren, captain of the USS Queenfish, a nuclear submarine snaking along beneath the frozen surface of uncharted Siberian waters. The situation is that his …

“Ecotect.” That’s what they call Drew Hubbell. He’s a San Diego architect famous for his houses made of adobe, straw bale, or, uh, styrofoam concrete block. And in the aftermath of the recent LA fires, …

For Susy Botello, it started with 9/11. “The whole idea of making movies with iPhones began for me in 2001,” she says. ‘I was here at Grossmont College, studying media communications. On that morning, I …

“This whole thing evolved because of her beauty,” says Bill Garrison. “Louis B. Mayer called her ‘The most beautiful girl in the world.’” “She” was Hedy Lamarr, an Austrian immigrant who became a Hollywood star and …

A lot of my friends know that I prefer to catch the bus instead of driving a car. Slower? A little. Cheaper? Way. Provides more time to work on your interview questions ahead of time? …

Video:GOLDEN DREAMS: How to make a hit Christmas song“You’re just in time, buddy,” says Erik, “for Christmas 2025.” Shucks. I’ve come to Erik desperate to find out how to get my Christmas song recorded and …

Video:GOLDEN DREAMS: A different sort of Trumpian comeback?Once, Donald Trump had a dream for Baja California — well, at least for a cut from the sales that came from attaching his name to a dream …

You think you know people, and then you discover you don’t. Not by half.Diana and I are chatting over a glass of wine, reminiscing about childhood. “When I was seven,” I say, “I was chased …

Video:GOLDEN DREAMS: Biophilic design connects people to nature“We’re tucking our kids into the fridge at night,” says Bob Burnett. “It’s not right.” Indeed, while San Diegans are enjoying (or cursing) the summer heat, many Kiwis, …

Who knew that power boats would be the news at this year’s America’s Cup? The world’s oldest sporting competition — for sailboats, mind you — starts up again later this month in Barcelona, Spain. No …

Video:GOLDEN DREAMS: Igor the pelican is hungryA funny old bird is the pelicanHis beak can hold more than his belican. Food for a week he can hold in his beak, But I don’t know how the helican.That’s …

I’m at the bus stop. The one right outside the Bullpen bar in IB. Problem: last bus heading north to Coronado is gone. It’s after midnight. I’m broke. No way up the Silver Strand. And …

Could New Zealand ever be the happiest nation on earth for insects, mushrooms, plants, and animals — as well as people? I’m curious as to the answer, because down here in the less-populated South Island, …

Video:GOLDEN DREAMS: Steen Rasmussen is banking on biochar“Biochar!” says Steen out of the blue.“Say what?” says Erik.Steen Rasmussen and I are hooped over the bar at McP’s Irish Pub in Coronado with my friend Erik …

“I keep coming back,” says the elderly lady with the walker-wheeler, Lupita. “I’ve been coming here for forty years.”“That’s more than I can say,” says Israel. Izzy. He’s sitting at 90 degrees from Lupita in …

Video:GOLDEN DREAMS: Luke Fink, a drifter headed for homeI meet him at LAX, at one of those tables where you go to charge your iPhone. He’s watching video of cars hurling themselves around bends in …

His watery eyes are open, but they don’t blink. He’s spreadeagled on his cushion at the foot of Papa Joe’s stool, his nose and mouth splayed over his black and yellowish toenails.“It’s his last night,” …

Video:GOLDEN DREAMS: SD’s Fringe Festival includes award-winning New Zealand act The Only Bones ProjectWhen I hear Fringe Festival, I think of Scotland’s Edinburgh. Its Fringe Festival is as famous as its mainstream one, and it …

“It’s a very trending hobby right now,” says David Caywood-Hernandez. I have spotted him at a 901 bus stop, crocheting away at something pink and aquamarine and woolly. He’s poking a single hooked needle into …

This is scary. I’m here at the April 6th San Diego Writers Festival, a modest gathering that people are starting to take seriously: the organizers were able to promise “90 speakers at 40 events” all …

Video:Famed SEAL’s daughter makes a show out of her crazy hobbySome exotic goings-on at Danny’s Palm Bar on Orange Avenue in Coronado. A girl dances on the bar top, waving live flames about herself. Suddenly, …

Which building at UCSD is the more iconic: the ziggurated Geisel library or the Falling House? The question occurs as I emerge from the elevator on the library’s sixth floor, turn right and right again, …

“You’re on your own, dude,” says Tim. “I ain’t coming.”He says his gammy knee won’t handle the climb. Great: Now he tells me. On the other hand, we’re standing at the sign that has a …

These look like glory days for design in San Diego. Not only has the San Diego-Tijuana twin-city region been named the Design Capital of the World for 2024 — the first binational conurbation ever to …

It’s an odd feeling. I’m standing here at 12th and Imperial, waiting for my stretch limousine, aka the number 901 bus, when I spot these gentlemen. And gentlemen they are: they’re dressed in white shirts, …

Whew. Something has been made right in La Jolla. For the last decade, everybody I’ve spoken to has talked as if a little piece of this town’s soul had been ripped out. A piece that …

Video:GOLDEN DREAMS: Escondido doula gets a taste of celebritySometimes, you get reminders that Escondido is still a country town in some ways. Like today, this gal comes into one of the coolest coffee hangouts here, …

Video:GOLDEN DREAMS: Looking back at race relations in CoronadoWas Coronado San Diego’s most culturally diverse city, back in more racially divided days? The city’s historical society would like you to think so: it’s holding a …

Video:COVER: Why parrots, godwits, and bushtits are so good for San Diego“Get there by dusk,” says my friend Larry, “and prepare yourself for a whole lotta noise.”Photograph by Jim Brown, iStock / Getty ImagesSo here …

Video:GOLDEN DREAMS: Two Mary Beths break out, buy a truck camper, and hit the road.What are the odds? Two women sitting next to each other. Strangers. They introduce themselves.“Hi. I’m Mary Beth.”“Well actually, I’m Mary …

Hanna Daly is putting finishing touches on the larger-than-life dancing lady she has painted, freehand, on the alley-side wall of a dance studio in Coronado. It’s the kind of mural Daly can knock off on …

Tuna found in the desert? OK, fair enough: that’s tuna, as in the Spanish for prickly pear, the fruit of the nopal. Ken Factor and I have spotted an ancient cactus tree growing close to …

Talking of boy wonders: Shay Horay is known as Rubber Band Boy, or the Master of Rubberbandology, or The One-Man Rubber Band. He was my last interview before returning from Aotearoa-New Zealand (as it is …

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Robert Schumann, Edric Saphire? The kid is 17, a high school senior, and the Mainly Mozart organization commissioned him to write a work honoring Mozart. Tonight, he’s here at the Conrad Prebys …

“My job is to bring this unity of consciousness through a woman who has practiced for over 50 years daily, and how I have experienced my gradual awakening.” The woman Guru Rattana (it means “jewel”) …

San Ysidro – where it's cheaper for kids to live in a motelWe pass the Las Americas Outlet Mall, where upscale shoppers and Border Patrol agents coalesce. It’s here, across the street, that a completely …

It’s a sunny morning. Scot Walker and I are sipping coffee. He’s got one of those humor-ready faces that a pretty good life on the road gives you. He’s a roadie. And it’s been a …

Original Artists Work to Restore Chicano Park MuralsArmando Nuñez is touching up a skeleton. He and I are standing amid blue scaffolding beside the wall of an I-5 ramp to the San Diego–Coronado Bridge on …