“Don’t,” says my stepmother. “I wouldn’t do that, if I were you.” Her voice is tinny through the speakers of my cell phone. “Why not?” I ask. She pauses, considering. “The whole thing just sounds…dangerous,” …

Many of the more than 100 vendors at Rock Paper Scissors, a consignment store on Newport Avenue in Ocean Beach, have been clamoring for their money after the business stiffed them when it closed in …

Heartbroken Narcissist Nasreen Atassi should hope that her article “Searching for San Diego’s Sea Turtles…and a Job” (Cover Story, April 30) will not be read by anyone in San Diego County who is in a …

Is there a political method to the madness in last week’s pension-board shake-up by San Diego mayor Jerry Sanders? With the city council assenting, the mayor switched out three incumbent boardmembers with three new ones …

Is Republican mainstay and Chargers owner Alex Gus Spanos really making campaign contributions to liberal Democratic state attorney general Jerry Brown? That’s what it says on a campaign finance filing by Brown last week: a …

San Diego ranks high on the list of California jurisdictions where federal judges issued the most wiretaps last year, according to the recently released 2008 Wiretap Report by the Administrative Office of the United States …

Thirty Years AgoBy now the Navy’s environmental study on the proposed expansion of its Balboa Park hospital into Florida Canyon has met with much disapproval. The Navy hopes to obtain the property to build its …

Will an unruly punk show end live music at the Jumping Turtle? Sheriff’s deputy Sgt. Glenn Antonio said every patrol car assigned to San Marcos the night of Saturday, April 18, was called to the …

Industrial-arts programs were important to Bob Taylor and Greg Deering when they were growing up in San Diego. It was during woodshop classes they made their first instruments: Taylor made his first guitar in his …

“Every gig we’re surprised by someone who looks like a vocal outcast but who burns the mike,” says Pickford’s Party drummer Eric Ganci, whose band plays live behind amateur singers at Rock Out Karaoke. “We …

I judged a battle of the bands last Tuesday night at the Hard Rock Café, home to Mojo’s leathers and Madonna’s bulletproof bra. The event was the San Diego leg of the Ambassadors of Rock …

“Sugar,” by Josh Damigo and Rob Deez, was the most downloaded MP3 from SDReader.com during the month of April. Follows is an interview with the duo. Sounds as if you’ve got a Jack Johnson–meets-spoken-word style …

While most of the Anza-Borrego Desert swelters, the temperature hovers as much as 10 degrees Fahrenheit cooler at the “high desert” locale of Culp Valley, 3400 feet above sea level. Culp Valley is the only …

“Welcome home!” read the handpainted banner in the vestibule of the half-saucer church. Inside, homemade signs rose up on coat-hanger posts from the pews: “Where we love is home.” “Home is not a place, it …

In the sleek, two-story lobby of the Potiker Theater, a soldier saluted, quarter-turned to the east, shoveled imaginary dirt, quarter-turned to the south, peeled imaginary potatoes, turned west, lifted imaginary weights, turned back to where …

“Sometimes life is so good,” I sighed, sipping my dirt-cheap caipirinha. Sam and I watched the ferry pull into the Coronado pier, disgorging commuters marching landward in their varied gaits and garbs. A white-sailed catamaran …

Tucson is a place of dust and red squatty rocks and ancient cacti and retirees playing golf and a desert heat in the summer so intense that buying a tank of gas becomes a spiritual …

A couple of years ago, when the Shins were just getting ready to release their third album, Wincing the Night Away, lead Shin James Mercer told Pitchfork, “One thing I worry about is that Malcolm …

I was laid off in February 2009. Forty-five minutes into my shift, the district manager approaches me and says, “Can I see you in the office?” While en route to the office a customer stops …

Q: How would you describe what you do? A: “Curator and devotee of experimental, classical, electronic, and improvised music,” says Bonnie Wright. Since 1995, when she opened the doors to the Spruce Street Forum, Wright …

And so begins the summer of ’09: prequel, prequel. The first of these, opening Friday last, is X-Men Origins: Wolverine, entrusted to director Gavin Hood of little Tsotsi from South Africa. (How much say does …

Hey, Matt: So what’s with the funky lighting along the new 5/805 merge? They have cute red-and-white beanies, antennas, and really cool monkey trapezes. I’ve only seen this style of lights in one other place …

A man can stand a lot as long as he can stand himself. He can live without hope, without friends, without books, even without music, as long as he can listen to his own thoughts. …

Chad teaches at SDSU and lives in the Clairemont area. He threw a party for his 30th birthday about a month ago. I brought a few women with me. We stopped and bought some booze …

Recipe by Christopher Lee, consulting chef, Suite & Tender. The thing about food that people don’t realize is that we’re all involved with it — either consciously or subconsciously because you have to survive. I …

It’s not even Memorial Day and people are arguing over sand on the beach. But this isn’t just any sand. The argument is over new sand, or what its supporters prefer to call “beach renourishment.” …

Here’s Ben Rothman, 25, a graduate of UC San Diego in psychology, a waiter, a construction worker, and currently ranked number 2 in the USA and 29th in the world. Two weeks back Rothman won …