San Diego has become an overbuilt theme park, a hollowed-out pleasure dome noisy with professional sports teams and the brouhaha of drug- and booze-fed street festivals generated for tourists, conventioneers, and high-tech moguls. Unemployment is …
North County's rural character hangs by a thread outside the rapidly urbanizing communities of Escondido and San Marcos. What better way is there to recapture the feel of that fast-disappearing atmosphere than on a bicycle? …
Buck Narrows is a musician with a cockeyed sense of calling. Armed with a guitar, a wah-wah pedal, and a brain a bit below his belt buckle, Narrows has set out to create a get-down …
The parrot cocked its head to the right and smiled like your favorite grandmother. Its eyes were black and deep and wide open with myopic kindliness. Cloaked in green, it perched in a cage on …
The Union-Tribune has been scooped once again in its coverage of Padres owner John Moores's attempts to expand his sports empire away from San Diego. Last month, the U-T waited three weeks to report, without …
Stardate 092199.1401 Oh Great All-knowing Guru: My significant other and I eat out twice a week. If we eat in a restaurant that serves bread or rolls, invariably they give us three or five or …
Matmail: Why is it there are never any Vietnamese names in the obituary column printed in the San Diego Union? -- Mort Schwartz, Clairemont According to the local Union of Pan Asian Communities, to find …
I have some rabbit stories. When I was little, nine or ten maybe, my grandfather was cutting a wild meadow with a Gravely walk-behind mower, a massive unit that cuts four-foot-wide paths through grass. My …
A Fine Example of Misdirection You are about to read a novel of crime in San Diego written 53 years ago. It has its origins in a radio show written out of the Pickwick Hotel …
Like crepuscular creatures emerging at dawn and dusk to seek their prey, photographers are drawn to Anza-Borrego's Font's Point vista early and late in the day, seeking warm, low-angle light. Font's Point overlooks a shockingly …
What do you do if you're a superior court judge and you want to be mayor of San Diego? You take an unpaid leave of absence and ask your friends for campaign money. On a …
Adela Navarro Bello wants to know what the Americans' problem is with her people. "What gives? Are they afraid of us? Do they fear that, little by little, we Mexicans are going to take back …
In the mid-1950s a high school kid from El Cajon named Frank Zappa read an article in Look magazine that said Sam Goody was so good at selling records, he could unload a copy of …
Dear Matthew Alice: I have a question about dogs. Why is it that sometimes all two dogs have to do is look at one another for there to be a fight, while at other times …
Matmail: If each person in the world were a drop of water, how large the swimming pool? If the water level is rising, how big the garden hose? Paint me a word picture. -- Doctrbones, …
When an e-mail reaches the computer of Dennis Mammana at the Reuben H. Fleet Science Center, a familiar voice interrupts the quiet of the astronomer’s second-floor office. The voice belongs to Bugs Bunny, who announces, …
Labor Day Monday, the last day of the unofficial "Summer of Raunch," Megan Reina, a 10th grader at Montgomery High School in the South Bay, saw The Blair Witch Project with 11th grader Susan MacKnight …
"Mike's father and mother took me in and fed and clothed and sheltered me when I was 16," Blevins wrote. “They provided me with the only family environment I have ever known in my life.”
Ex-city councilman Mike Schaefer is off and running again. The convicted wife-beater who was once sent to jail in Los Angeles for being a slumlord has traversed the country over the past decade, campaigning for …
How's this for a challenging climb of Palomar Mountain from bottom to top? Start at Oak Grove, along the east base of the mountain, and climb steadily up 7 miles of foot trail and fire …
Matmail: I was in St. Augustine, Florida, and saw a cement sphere designated as the start of the Old Spanish Trail. It also said that the trail ended in San Diego. Do you know where …
To: Matmail: When San Diego sewer lines break and spew their contents into the bay or ocean, how do they always know how much got discharged? Are there meters on all these pipes just in …
Dear Matthew Alice: Everyone knows about Hitler and the Third Reich. Was there a First Reich and a Second Reich? And what's a Reich anyway? -- Steve, the net Reichs, rails, gears, bases, rock from …
Matthew: The question about Eskimos' surroundings [September 9] being always the same brought from dim memory something pertinent. Years ago I read in several places that Eskimos have 20 or more words for snow, slight …
Matmail: What do you know about a fabled white deer that used to hang out in Balboa Park? -- Rick, the net I guess the white deer must be achieving fable status, because the details …
It's early Monday morning – lunes – in winter, just past six, on both sides of the border, and in a small house in Bonita, the family of 11-year-old Jovanna Venegas is up and about, …
"I’m going to teach you two maneuvers that were used by Eddie Richenbacher and the Red Baron in World War I and are still used today in F-18s. They’re called high and low yo-yos."
As a biology student at the University of Colorado, Ken Rowland imagined becoming the next Jacques Cousteau, but a bout of seasickness on the way to Santa Catalina Island moored his career to land. Rowland …
San Diego city councilwoman Christine Kehoe, who just missed knocking off Congressman Brian Bilbray last year, is off to a big fundraising lead in next year's race for the 76th District state assembly seat. As …
As daytime high temperatures in the desert sink from the 100s into the 90s during September, it becomes rationally conceivable to plan an overnight trip into Anza-Borrego's intriguing badlands. In fact, if you arrive in …
Dear Matman: A few weeks back, a friend of my sons' came into my back yard, and when my black lab came up, he said, "Ungawa!" à la Tarzan. My dog sat. Does this really …
Matt the Mystery Man: In Imperial County, not too far from NAS El Centro, is a "whirl tower" rising above the fields and dust. This tower has become a ghost of its former self over …
"If we get up that hill ahead and down the other side without being stopped, I'm happy," Jeff says. We are on the road to Playas de Tijuana, the stretch where the border fence acts …
'On Monday of this week in the San Diego Schools, at Pershing Middle School, where my daughter attends, I had to go and file a sexual harassment complaint against children who were harassing my daughter, …
Wyatt Earp couldn't. Texas Rangers couldn't. But Enrique Mercado can and does. He chases murderers and rapists and child molesters across international lines to wherever they're hiding out. In the past 12 years he's pursued …
Papers in Los Angeles and Orange County are full of news that Padres owner John Moores is scouting about for a new stadium in Anaheim. Not for the Padres, but for a National Football League …
Potrero Regional Park hides in a spacious, live-oak-covered corner of Potrero Valley, near the forgotten south-county hamlet of Potrero -- east of the Tecate turnoff and west of Campo. The twisting but scenic drive to …
“We had to cross two fences,” he tells me. “One we had to go under, and the other we had to climb over. It was dark and the fence was too high for me.”
I’d be up until three or four o’clock in the morning, when I first started reading Hemingway, jumping up, saying, ‘Mom, listen to this, isn’t this something, isn’t it unbelievable?’ I’d shake her, and she’d wake up.
Dear Matt: I was wondering where and who I can inquire about commercial soundtracks. For example, the nice jazz for the Infiniti car commercials or the beautiful operatic piece on the original Bellagio hotel commercial. …
Matthew, Guru of All Worth Knowing: I have a question that I'm sure most people in this sunny region are wondering themselves. Why do clowns scare the hell out of people? Any folklore or myths …
Matmail: What ever happened to ordinary, basic self-defense training? What to do when an assailant swings a fist at you, jumps on your back, grabs at your lapels. Is such training available for civilians anywhere …
Dear Mr. Alice: My friends and I were watching a boxing match the other night and we came to the collective realization that we are all at odds as to the source of that strange …