“You can never come back from Dog Beach without having a laugh. Once I saw a little dog running by with a life jacket on. There’s always somebody jumping in the sand, chasing their tail, taking a swim.”

I turned Johnny’s shirts into little squares and sorted 57 socks while Jay Leno told jokes and Kevin Eubanks laughed. When Jack and I went up to bed after midnight, we each carried an overflowing laundry basket.

He goes by both. Whether “Buddy,” the two-syllable synonym for pal, or the more mature-sounding “Bud,” the single-syllable term for what is young and unfinished, both fit. Bud McElroy, at 39, seems easygoing and uncomplicated. …

Coming soon to a vandalized scenic overlook or trailside destination: public art of ambiguous intent and questionable legality. Art scaled to the exact dimensions of missing historical plaques and interpretive markers. Art with a cynical, …

When La Jolla architect Jeffrey Shorn met with San Diego Gas & Electric Co., officials in downtown's East Village in early 1997 to discuss becoming a consultant, he was impressed by the utility's decades-old offices, …

When Karin Winner, the top editor of the San Diego Union-Tribune, issued a memorandum in September discouraging newsroom employees from attending media parties because she said the events compromised the U-T's integrity, bullshit detectors went …

Back in September 1996, the city attorney's office announced formation of a "Public Integrity Unit" to clean up local government. "The Public Integrity Unit will serve a valuable function, and not only in handling election …

Dear Matthew Alice: I recently got my fax machine (as you can see) and the instruction manual says that under penalty of law that a phone number and identification title be at the top of …

Dear Matt: I work in a highrise downtown and on some of the windows there are these Ts on the outside of the glass. I look out the window to a nearby high rise, and …

Dear M.A.: Whenever I watch a wild-animal documentary such as those on KPBS or the Discovery Channel, I'm appalled at the huge size and awkwardness of the radio collars they snap around the animals' necks …