Our man finds a network of others like him: the World Superhero Registry

The day before Easter, Saturday, April 11, the Solana Beach train station was crowded with people awaiting the northbound Amtrak Pacific Surfliner No. 769. A lot of baseball fans, most of them wearing Bosox T-shirts, …

Sunday Junk With regard to “Church on Sunday” (Cover Story, April 9), why devote so many pages to such religious nonsense? Haven’t you seen Bill Maher’s Religulous? Ted Rodosovich via phone Go Greek I have …

Sheriff Bill Kolender has thrown the race for his successor into a tizzy by deciding to resign on July 2, giving his support as expected to Undersheriff Bill Gore, an ex–FBI agent who enjoys the …

Ex–GOP state assemblyman George Plescia has filed a final accounting for his officeholder fund. During the first quarter of this year, he spent $17,200, the remaining cash, on settling some tabs from last year, including …

The Union-Tribune has reported that the American Boat Racing Association has dropped San Diego from its 2009 World Series of Powerboat Racing schedule for the first time in 40 years. But though it cited a …

One question that’s often posed in the Reader musician interview is “Favorite local performer?” The most frequently cited is Manuok (pronounced “man-you-okay”), aka Scottish-born Scott Mercado, who’s been name-checked over a dozen times — by …

In a lot of ways, it’s never been easier to be a musician. These days, with a handful of equipment and a smidgen of talent, you can create something on your laptop that sounds nearly …

You gain a sense of the desert rat in the lyrics of Calexico, a Tucson-based alt-rock band: “Four in the morning the sidewalk’s asleep/ Dogs on the porch, spiders on the leaf/ Shipwrecked by night, …

For some years now, whenever Rialto Pictures (it usually was) had selected a foreign film for theatrical reissue, I was given to wonder when they’d get around to Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Deuxième Souffle, known in …

Thirty Years AgoI’m not sure why the birds on the north island of the Coronados are making such a racket. They’re screaming so loudly, it seems like the noise should carry to Point Loma, 15 …

Outlaw country legend David Allan Coe could sell between 1000 and 2000 tickets if he were to play in San Diego. But, he won’t, says Sulo King, talent buyer for Brick by Brick. Two years …

A few days after playing Austin’s SXSW festival, members of the Soft Pack (formerly the Muslims) were driving to a gig in Philadelphia when a reporter from Rolling Stone magazine called and told them that …

Ever since the Kadan on 30th Street in University Heights started hosting Guitar Hero competitions in January 2007, the video game has been bringing out inner rockers in clubs and music shops all around town. …

In 2006, Arthur Levitt Jr., former head of the Securities and Exchange Commission, came under intense criticism in San Diego. At the time, Levitt was raking in $900 an hour as titular head of an …

Album: Within My Reach (2009)Artist: Folding Mr. LincolnLabel: self-releasedWhere available/price: CDBaby, $12.97; iTunes, $9.99; Amazon, 99 cents for single “Within My Reach”Songs: 1) It Happened Just the Other Day 2) Missing Her Pretty Green Eyes …

A chill clung to the air as the service began; it would be 11 minutes before the sun crested the hill to reveal the ranunculus and warm the 900 or so souls gathered in the …

‘Individual athletes contact me because they may be challenged within their sport, may get frustrated when losing a game and watching their play go downhill. They get upset at themselves — ‘I suck. I’m no …

“Remorse, emptiness, relief, disbelief, sadness, feeling older, morally diminished.” These are feelings expressed to me in an email from a friend and fellow writer about the death of his son-in-law. But they could as well …

Marc Blitzstein’s play The Cradle Will Rock had one of the most famous premieres in theater history. The Federal Theatre Project commissioned, then dumped, the piece, which the powers that be deemed too far left …

“Be nice or go away,” says the sign above the bar. Hmm...none too welcoming. But, hey, I’ll be nice, ’cause what a bar, and what a backboard! Huge, with baroque carving, big mirrors. Victorian, I …

Happiness is an ice-cold strawberry Bellini at Bite, made with the first berries of spring, and a $20 four-course dinner from a chef who can really cook. Bite is one of several good restaurants now …

Artist: Israel BissellSong: “Angel Wings” (from the CD Disillusioned Hero)Heard By: Bryan Whitman, North ParkI thought it had a good instrumental. I liked that they used a lot of wind instruments — they used more …

“They told me the freeway would sound like the ocean,” griped Patrick’s friend Jon just after buying his first house. “It doesn’t. It sounds like the freeway.” “A good solution might be our acoustical curtains,” …

What’s the big mystery? It’s my vagina, not the sphinx! — Miranda on Sex and the City We were at Target, a store Jane hits up an average of three times a week. While Jane …

I fit a couple of parties into one night. Both were at bars. Well, the first wasn’t really at a bar, per se. It was in the cantina of Fidel’s in Solana Beach. I was …

Matt: I drink a lot of water and Gatorade and stuff like that. My friend tells me I can die if I drink too much water. How is this possible? I thought water was good …

One would hope that the susceptibility to peer pressure dies off somewhere around 11th grade, and maybe it does for those a little more evolved than myself. But every once in a while, I’m so …

On May 14, 1976, Bay Area blues group the Elvin Bishop Band, with 25-year-old Johnny Vernazza on guitar, recorded their concert at downtown’s Civic Theatre. Two tracks recorded at the show were included on the …

Mike Hogan walks toward a small pile of treated sewage sludge, a moist, black, lumpy, faintly malodorous substance inside a newly expanded processing plant at Encina wastewater treatment facility in Carlsbad. “That’s what biosolids look …