Every dive around San Diego yields discovery One of the oddest of these noises, an irregular bumping sound heard frequently in the rocks and ridges off the beaches from the La Jolla Caves south to …

Lester Bangs and me on Altamont the day the music died "We’re getting word that the free Rolling Stones concert planned for San Francisco is on,” the radio DJ said after spinning some platter. “The …

San Diego prostitutes after the Stingaree shut down When Guthrie joined the police force back in ’29, his superiors explained to him that sex was “nice and necessary” but needed to be kept quiet. “If …

Traffic spares no one “People say, ‘You got a real transportation problem on the 15.’ Well, it’s less a transportation problem than it is a land-use problem. A lot of the people, because they can’t …

India Street and Beyond: A history of the Italian Community of San Diego, 1850-1980 Pietro Lusardi came to San Diego with his brother, Francesco. They ran sheep on Mt. Palomar, then built a 3000-acre sheep …

Dots on the Map Bankhead Springs is wholly owned by Helen, an 87-year-old woman who purchased it m 1939 with her husband Alvan. (The place is named after Senator John Hollis Bankhead of Arizona, who …

Birth of the Beat Farmers “Somewhere along in there, Herrera became partners with Jim Pagni, who brought in a lot of concerts in those days, and the Palace changed its name to JJ’s. Glory ended …

Acorns in San Diego History The people roasted grasshoppers, yuccas, and ate abalone. But their number-one food source was the acorn, shaken from branches of Coast Live Oak trees. They poured hot water through baskets …

Eucalyptus It Is The eucalyptus tree and its history are not so different from the human influx into the area. Everywhere from El Cajon and La Jolla to Scripps Ranch and South Bay, up to …

Where a job with Time magazine led William Weber Johnson Ernest Hemingway was good company, but his drinking and hard living were difficult to keep up with. Argentinian president Juan Peron was either a tad …

Lester Bangs, El Cajon Kid These “great man” theorists see Lester as self-made and El Cajon actually was a hindrance. Those of us from El Cajon, especially those who knew him well, have a much …

Birth of the Beat Farmers Jerry Raney: “This guy from El Cajon High named Jack Chan knew how to play, we’d go out and get the Beatles songbooks and go through 'em and he’d teach …

Was Helen Hunt Jackson's Ramona real? During late winter and early spring of every year, a bit of confusion reigns up north in the town of Ramona. The folks at the chamber of commerce there …

Ku Klux Klan 's John Metzger talks of hate and tears "My father was in the Crusaders, a national organization that was pretty powerful in San Diego, which was part Christian Identity. It’s a church …

Roger Anderson grew up in El Cajon, was part of early San Diego rock scene, wrote for alternative weeklies, and served as art director for the Washington Post. He died in January, 2003 in Baltimore, …

The Zipper – near death at the Del Mar Fair The Zipper was a new wrinkle on the midway: this big, gleaming apparatus that looked like a gigantic fan belt, with body-hugging cages attached along …

"Shorty’d gotten on a freight tram in San Diego, headed for Chicago. Got locked in there and froze to death. They found his body later — he was wearing two pairs of pants, and his wrist was cut."

The branches grow so fast that they cut off views; the roots crack sidewalks, curbs, and roads; they steal water from nearby plants, drop litter on the ground, and exude an oil that kills other plants.

In summer of 1969, when the Rolling Stones announced that they were going to tour the United States, it was one of the biggest deals to come along in hippieland in a good long while.

Sandy and a girlfriend had gone into a liquor store, robbed the clerk, They locked the clerk in a walk-in cooler. Sandy started feeling bad about the guy. She went back and let him out.

Disappointingly, the movie shows no scenes of recognizable Lakeside streets or structures that I can compare with the town as I’ve known it during my lifetime. But it does show something more evocative: vistas of wild grass and brush…

Through the hard frozen streets we go at a regular canter; often I am upraised as high as the first story of a house; n*ver do I sink as low as the house doors. — …

My father’s death from cancer last June, at age 71, was a mercy not just because it freed him from the pain of his illness but because he was — always had been — a …

“Country Dick was a Glory fan during the old days, back when he was in high school. As a matter fact, he was student-body vice president at Grossmont High and hired us to play a dance there.”

The City of El Cajon bought from us (at an enforced discount) about two-thirds of our front yard and sent in heavy machinery to chop down the olive trees and grade away the lawn and the fence.

“I there was such a woman as Ramona, the odds are that she was married not here but in a little chapel on Conde Street. Father Yubach said he seemed to remember marrying a woman by that name.”

I moved to the Bay Area from El Cajon and the fifteen- or twenty-page letters we used to exchange dwindled down to a precious few and the next thing I know you had quit Creem.