Special Issues: Best of the Reader
On May 11, the Federal Department of Health and Human Services will end the Covid public health emergency. But the bureaucratic behemoth is a slow-footed beast; John Q. Public knows the pandemic ended some time …
Lately, I’m getting the feeling that I came in at the end. —Tony Soprano, The Sopranos The Sopranos television series ended its remarkable run in 2007, right around the time when this final batch of …
These were the happy days. The salad days, as they say. —H.I. McDonnough, Raising Arizona I started working here in 1995, thanks in large part to features editor Judith Moore. She had arrived over a …
“Lifestyle and slice-of-life themes, often written in free-form styles that border on the bizarre.” In May of 1989, the Los Angeles Times published a profile of Jim Holman and his newspaper, the 17-year-old San Diego …
A half-century of San Diego stories from the Reader So much of identity is memory. There’s experience; maybe we chase it, maybe it just washes over us. But memory is what makes experience stick, what …
Kurt Castle, founder and creator of Castle’s Labs, creates products that help with all sorts of flora and fauna management. His Plant Magic is “an organic probiotic spray that promotes bigger, healthier, chemical and pesticide …
Having a custom guitar built just for you is every classical guitar player’s dream. As a performer and teacher for over 30 years, I have played (and owned) many fine guitars, but until I started …
When Sierra Hubbard posts up by the Surfhenge art installation at the IB Pier entrance in her red ‘68 Chevy Nova, folks take notice. The 60 tattoos adorning her 5’10” frame play a large part …
San Diego is a hiker’s dream. Head east of I-15 and the suburban veneer begins to flake off the landscape as the hills reveal their rugged roots. Travel farther out and the hills swell into …
Walled Mexican garden, undersea succulents Bottlecraft gives San Diego access to beers you never thought of Zad in Casa de Oro introduced me to quzi Specialty Produce really is special Post-Covid serendipity in East San …
As I loiter in the smoking section across the street from D.Z. Akin's, I am sometimes privy to the one-sided conversations, held by people (usually on their phones) who are talking to someone I can’t …
There’s no doubt you’ve seen their logo on delivery trucks. They might supply one of your favorite local restaurants. And if your drink is garnished with edible flowers, it probably came fresh from their fridge. …
As a longtime food writer, I’d love to pretend that I have tried all the great traditional dishes of the world. But as I eat my way around San Diego every year, I inevitably meet …
There was good beer in San Diego near the turn of the millennium, back when I was a newly legal drinker, just returned to San Diego from my years at college. But it took some …
The pillars of the San Diego Botanic Garden in Encinitas are science, conservation, and education, but the things that make it wonderful to me are passion, beauty, and curation. A recent visit on a 90° …
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a music writer isn’t going to get rich plying his trade, but at least he’ll get free stuff: albums, concert tickets, swag, perhaps even the occasional backstage pass. …