http://www.sandiegoreader.com/users/photos/2013/oct/15/54861/ The gritty streets of Zona Norte provide clear boundaries when you enter and exit, you don't need street names. Prostitutes stand in dimly lit doorways and outside of bars, lining the sidewalks while whispering to potential customers strolling past. …

http://www.sandiegoreader.com/users/photos/2013/oct/05/54323/ The other side of the street feels more like a motel is supposed to feel, or a hotel, which is actually what this is for us, functionally. The other side of the street sports a swimming pool which is …

This could have been any day here in Baja, really, but it wasn’t. It was on a Friday night. My grandson was coming over, all 27 pounds of him. He’s the only beast that still scares the crap out of …

We have a dog now, this is such an American thing to do; to have a dog in the house, it reminds me of my youth. The dog is a puppy, some sort of a poodle, it is relatively smart …

It was nineteen hundred and ninety four, when dinosaurs apparently still roamed the planet Earth and my Spanish wasn't all that stellar, and I wandered into the Caliente Race and Sports book at well before eight in the morning. Slaking …

It starts slowly here in Baja. The sky, normally blue with an occasional puff of a cloud, fills with more clouds, and the wind comes up. People bundle up in their coats if they brought one, and continue walking to …

I met my love by the gas works wall Dreamed a dream by the old canal I Kissed my girl by the factory wall Dirty old town Dirty old town Ewen MacColl did not write Dirty Old Town in 1949 …

Junior High School was a zoo. I hated it. I remember gym class, it was the first time I met Todd Dice. Hi, Todd. Amazing we grew up and continue to live after that debacle. Remember the gym teacher’s a-hole-ish …

The rumor was that I wanted to kill my ex-wife, as I am certain that many in such a position stand accused. This was not true. My fantasies were much more complicated. Daydreams involved coming home to an empty house …

The days seemed simple a couple of weeks ago but they ground like shifting gears, with the morning gray casting an uncertain threat onto this Tijuana lifestyle and neighbors complaining like restless children at Sunday Mass. They are like restless …

"There it was. The unbearable thing was not the fear that the Great Spirit had forsaken man, nor even that in granting awareness of death, He had made man’s hope ridiculous, but that from the beginning He had made no …

The kids that roam this neighborhood are terrorists. Of course, we were all such terrorists when we were kids, at least to one degree or another. But here - in a place where I don't have a front yard or …

Call me Prometheus. That brilliant, hot, burning orb in the sky was trying to kill me one week ago, but this week there is a marine layer saving me from melting. So, I stole that fire and now cook with …

"A cynic is just a disgruntled idealist." ~ Ian Orteza, 2006 * * I was born in San Diego, California, in the United States of America in nineteen hundred and sixty-one. My father was in the Navy and we lived …