Frustrated with what they said was the city council's inattention to their desire for more park space and city services, and dissatisfied by proliferating potholes, subdivisions, and high-rise waterfront hotels, they launched a petition drive …
'September 12 of 1993, when I collapsed at the bowling alley, the Vista Entertainment Center, that was the starting point," Jeff Olsen says. What started on that day was a new life for Olsen, who …
He's been accused of pretty much everything that could destroy a religious leader: financial misdealing, heresy, lying, insubordination, sexual sin. Angry mobs have burnt chili and salt in a ritual effort to curse his name. …
Hundreds of small arts groups may soon have to give up their traditional monetary handouts from San Diego city hall under a plan secretly making the rounds of upper-level city management. The arts subsidies, including …
Matthew: A fine pal o' mine spending time here from New Zealand gets a newsletter from his yacht club in N.Z., postmarked in England, forwarded to Seattle, then here to San Diego. Aside from getting …
Sir Matt: We were slaying some word processing dragons round the office the other day when we made the following observation: Most high-tech electronic gizmos-- stereos, CD players, camcorders, etc.-- are tinted a Darth Vader-ish …
Hey, Matt: What's the meaning behind your name "Straight from the Hip?" -- El Nio, Chula Vista Well, we'd considered calling it "Straight to the Dense" but eventually changed our minds.
When Hoffman tells us it’s time to get into our wet suits I think —Did she also tell me I’d be getting into a wet suit? When I mention this, her response is, well, neutral.
The first thing Dino DeLuke does when I ask him about his heavy metal/alter-native hard rock band Sledd — after making sure that I know the band is in the studio recording a CD and …
John Abatecola, owner of Pizza Bella in Old Town, is proud of his pizza and quick to tell you about the time he won a three-way bake-off on a morning TV show for the "best …
Fat is plentiful. Fat is cheap. What's more, it's "energy dense," according to Dr. Richard Zinn, a professor of animal science at the 280-acre University of California at Davis Desert Research and Extension Center just …
The ad was a big mistake. It was meant as a call to overweight men and women willing to talk about what it means to be fat. Pot bellies, love handles, slow-spreading thighs — humdrum …
Watch out Palm Springs, here comes Michael Schaeffer. The 59-year-old ex-San Diego city councilman (1965-1971) with a long rap sheet as a slumlord and wife abuser, has just bailed into the desert community from Las …
At eight months, Fin has taken a turn for the mysterious. Who can know the ways of Fin in his babyness? Who can know the source of the straight-faced, emotionless screams that fly from his …
Ms. McDermott writes in Child of My Heart a horrible, grisly, bloody scene with a cat. The scene was so well-wrought in all its bloodiness and horror that I found myself looking away from the page.
Hi, Matthew When was the first time San Diego appeared on an official map? This summer in Europe I bought a late-1700s French print depicting the North American hemisphere. It is quite detailed, but sunny …
Matthew: What's going on with the prices shown on gas pumps? They're always in fractions-- $1.29 9/10. -- No Name, faxland For this we'll have to fuel up the time machine and motor back, back, …
Matthew Alice: Why don't the French-- or is it just their government-- like us Americans? Or is it just our government they don't like? Re: Several fugitive extraditions refused; murder, rape. Also prohibitions on use …
You have seen them, these Porsches — on highways, on city streets, in parking lots — and you have coveted. You have gazed at them as they passed you, stopped and walked around them when …
Can malaria be predicted by changes in ocean temperatures? Can you foretell a dengue fever epidemic by reading atmospheric pressures? Does hantavirus disease follow El Niño? Are climatologists the doctors of the future? The answer …
Before we get to the memorial held for writer Kathy Acker at the Spruce Street Forum in Hillcrest on Sunday, February 1, we need to go to Palestine or certain things won't make sense. Between …
With a recent court decision to lift campaign-contribution limits statewide, members of the San Diego City Council are busy raising big money from local special interests, according to recently filed campaign-disclosure statements. Byron Wear, who …
“When the tattoo is finally done, you wait for a minute for the pain to go down, then you yell. You blast up. You’re finished! You feel like you want to break everything around."
Randa’s blood pressure had risen again, and I needed to know why. An African-American police officer in her 40s and a single mother of three, Randa’s lips parted in a jovial smirk. “You really want …
In the fall of 1970, California caught fire. Between September 25 and October 3 that year, the U. S. Forest Service recorded 16 fires that consumed over 528,000 acres statewide. From Humboldt County in the …
Lying on my back under a window in a corner of my mother’s dining room, I wondered what the particles floating in the sunbeam above my face were. Insects? Germs? Angels? “Dust motes” I had …
Before Captain Henry James “Ninety Fathom” Johnston plunked down $16.25 for 65 acres of prime Mission Hills real estate in 1869, the area was a wasteland of weeds, scrub, and chaparral; a “hopeless tangle of …
Jody Gravett's American experience poses some pointed questions about national identity, about responsibility, about what a country does or does not owe the men who risk their lives in its service. But for the moment, …
School Board member Ron Ottinger doesn't want to be branded the "candidate who allowed them to bulldoze the park." In a dispute with the San Diego Unified School District that culminated in Normal Heights residents …
After a year of legal sparring, sex-club operator Thad Poppell's defamation suit against city Councilman Juan Vargas (D-8) is closer to trial. On January 6, a three-judge panel of the Fourth District Court of Appeal …