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Stories by Thomas K. Arnold

Blubbo's World

Steve Esmedina wrote his first story for the Reader in July 1973; his last story appeared in September 1994. He wrote about popular music and film, mostly in the late ’70s and early ’80s. Esmedina ...

You Can Buy All Ten of Our Stations in San Diego

Has Jacor, the megamillion-dollar radio holding company that owns or controls ten San Diego stations, including KSDO, KGB, and KOGO, broken antitrust laws in its haste to gobble up the local radio market? Jacor confirms ...

The Trouble with Harry

Had it not been for his wife, Harry Mathis says he never would have known about ESPN's plans to use La Jolla Shores Drive for a high-speed X Games skating demonstration - plans that were ...

Why Did They Fire John Coleman?

John Coleman says he can pinpoint the day Rodger Hedgecock turned from being a vocal supporter of the referendum drive to put stadium expansion on the ballot to an ardent critic of those efforts. It ...

The Growing Copley Mansion

Construction crews are again hard at work at David Copley's corner of La Jolla, where three years ago they added what the San Diego Union-Tribune at the time called "a many splendored wing" that more ...

Fine Print Sell-out

Next month it will be Qualcomm Stadium, but ten years, five years, maybe even one year down the road, San Diego sports fans could be trooping down to watch the Chargers play at the Bud ...

A Head of Steam

Susan Viola Klat, until recently a night-shift nurse at UCSD Medical Center in Hillcrest, is now sitting in a Washington, D.C. jail. Three weeks ago she was convicted of making threats against William Rehnquist, chief ...

We Try to Create a Healthy Business Climate

Three months after he cohosted a "birthday party" fundraiser for City Councilwoman Valerie Stallings's 1998 reelection campaign, veteran San Diego concert promoter Bill Silva has been given what critics are calling a sweetheart deal to ...

Did Ticketmaster Squeeze Ringling Brothers?

Ticketmaster's legal problems may have disappeared from the headlines, but they are far from over. The country's biggest sports and entertainment ticket broker is once again facing an antitrust action in court, this one brought ...

"This Is Just Like O.J."

San Diego may soon be home to a notorious New England killer. On a hot summer day in July 1985, in the northwest Vermont farming town of St. Albans, a man named Monica Pollard plunged ...

Sand Scraped, Boardwalk Cracked

The Hamels are ready to call it quits. After 30 years of running their sportswear and bike rental emporium at the foot of Ventura Place in Mission Beach, brothers Dan and Ray Hamel want to ...

Does Your Wife Need a Bikini?

The first week in December, KGTV Channel 10 station management announced that long-time news director Jeff Klotzman would be departing at the end of the month and the entire news operation would be placed under ...

Paperboy Wants His MTV

Last year, MTV rolled into town for a spring break taping session at Mission Beach, and the Union-Tribune opened the floodgates of hype, churning out column after column about how hip and harmless the event ...

Unfriendly to Fatties?

San Diego may have lost much of its aerospace industry, but that's nothing compared to the gaping hole El Cajon is about to face. Woman's World Shops - makers of extra-large clothing for the extra-big ...

America's Finest Sludge

That gooey stuff spread out all over Fiesta Island may look like dried sewage and smell like dried sewage, but to Susan Hamilton, deputy. director of San Diego's clean water program, it's a precious commodity. ...

Strike Three

It's been 11 years since the Padres were number 1 at anything, but new owner John Moores tops the list of professional baseball team owners who contributed money to federal candidates or a national party ...

Down, Down, Down She Goes

Helen Copley can’t be much of a happy camper these days. During the first half of the year, Copley’s flagship newspaper, the Union-Tribune, lost 3 percent of its average daily circulation, down to about 372,000; ...

Looking Into Outsiders

The street-level penetration of USA Today into the San Diego market, which began two years ago and now includes 2000 coin boxes countywide, has prompted a number of other out-of-town dailies to try similar tactics ...

One Veggie Combo To Go

From the time the Prophet International Vegetarian Restaurant opened in 1971 until just recently, the East San Diego eatery served as the mainstay of San Diego's health food crowd. Vegetarians and health food aficionados from ...

Belle's Toll

The late Mission Bay hotelier Bill Evans began making plans two years ago to add a second cruise boat to the one already plying the waters of Mission Bay between the two hotels he owns ...