If San Diego had an official drink, it would almost certainly be a beer. Something hoppy. (How is there not an America’s Finest Brewery in town yet?) Which leaves San Diego cocktails free to represent …

Whenever I visited Jerusalem I always entered the Aqsa Mosque, beside which stood a small mosque which the Franks had converted into a church. When I used to enter the Asqa Mosque…the Templars would evacuate …

Horace: Ode I.25 How infrequent now the insistent tap Of bold young fingers at your well-latched sash. No sleepless nights for you: the door that once Rocked loose and lively on an easy hinge Clings …

“You’re killin’ me,” says Brian Witkin, founder of Pacific Records, about the news that the venue that gave him his break in the music business was ending live shows. “I met my wife when we …

Later this summer, longtime North Park coffee roaster Caffé Calabria will launch its first offsite expansion in 15 years, opening a satellite coffee bar in a ground-floor storefront at the 1 Columbia Place high-rise in …

Chargers special counsel Mark Fabiani, who has been deftly fielding the brickbats of mayor Kevin Faulconer’s stadium task force while launching more than a few of his own in the battle over keeping the team …

If you don’t know of the Violent Femmes, you surely know “Blister in the Sun,” so popular I once heard a frat-boy chug-a-lug singalong with it at my college — which doesn’t have frat boys. …

The Self-Taught Genius exhibit at the Mingei, artifacts from their conversation with the world

When Patricia Morrison and Alfred Drake began rehearsing Cole Porter’s latest effort, they weren’t impressed. “We were using just a piano,” she recalled. “It was so disjointed we didn’t think we had a hit.” Then …

There’s this band called Chappo, and the opening 16 bars of their song “5-0” are a call to action for the generation of us who grew up in the midst of the first wave of …

Since Carol Rider is the lead singer and guitarist of local Americana rock quartet Girl in the Middle, you might assume the name is referring to her. You’d be wrong. “The name is a concept …

Title tells all in David Thorpe’s highly personal and frequently hilarious digital confessional, Do I Sound Gay?, opening July 24 at Landmark’s Ken Cinema. To flame-down one’s voice or proudly reclaim the sibilant “s”? — …

I learned that Frank was the first reporter at the scene of that horrific PSA plane crash in 1978, the one I grew up hearing about. He won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting. How had I not known that?

As much as I love the new Central Library and kinda go “Wow!” every time the bus or trolley I’m in rolls under its beautiful dome, I’ve never gone inside. And the reason is just …

Loveland Dam, also known as Sweetwater Falls Dam, is a thin arch design of concrete built in 1945. Loveland Reservoir is one of the two manmade lakes made by dams along the Sweetwater River. It …

Just six years ago, Reader legend Ollie laid out an Old Fashioned recipe that, stripped of its existential and romantic trappings, involved dissolving a sugar cube in a splash of water, adding two dashes of …

I first met Mark Broadfoot back when we were Scouts in middle school, and ever since then I’ve known him to be fond of sharing. The first time it caught my attention was on a …

“We were around when there was lots of acid rock and we filled a niche that was being ignored,” says singer Paul Cowsill of his 1960s pop group the Cowsills. “Bob Dylan told Rolling Stone …

Progressive rock, the complex, jazzy instrumental music that flourished with King Crimson and Return to Forever didn’t weather as well as other genres from the ’70s and ’80s. “I think those bands got hit with …

“Every cocktail has a story,” says Jose Palma. And the man ought to know. He’s been creating, serving, and keeping up with cocktails for 26 years. And always here at the Hotel Del, where patrons …

In my 20s, whiskey sounded like an old-person’s drink — a sophisticated liquid imbibed mostly by men in suits who took it in the form of a two-finger pour in a short and wide glass …

Mr. Hipster: My sister complains to me constantly of nebulous ailments, but she never actually gets a satisfying diagnosis for anything. I grow weary of her hypochondria, since she doesn’t trust most doctors, and so …

Of all the cocktails featured in this issue, the Margarita is the one with the closest ties to San Diego. Specifically, the frozen kind; the alcoholic version of the Slurpee. In 1947, Albert Hernandez, a …

Post Title: The Joy of Aging Post Date: June 4, 2014 Yesterday I got an email message from my newly retired brother Jim. He attached a photo of my niece setting a school record in …

Gin has always been a drink of dubious repute.

Ten years ago, most of the housing on the boardwalk in Mission Beach was old apartment complexes filled with college students. When the locals took a bike ride on the boardwalk we would stop along …

It’s five o’clock somewhere. Or so day-drinkers like to say, usually while ordering a stiff pour of bourbon. Prohibition may have failed, but the lasting legacy of the temperance movement is this notion that hitting …

For five months in 2014, Lincoln High School student Alexis Guzman didn’t have to walk the three miles from his parents’ National City apartment to school. More importantly, he didn’t have to walk the three …

Reducing Contagion On behalf of the San Diego County Suicide Prevention Council, we are writing in response to your June 18 article, “Coronado Bridge to Eternity” (City Lights). We encourage you to review and use …

Lately, mixologists have been advancing a trend that favors the unadulterated flavor of a liquor over its peripheral ingredients. It’s called “spirit-forward,” and it’s redefining the way we experience cocktails. But what if our taste …

“The way I approach cocktails is like sailing the most difficult route, because I know how to navigate the waters, and I take pleasure in turbulent seas,” says Cervantes Magaña, beverage consultant with Medicine Show …

It’s a big month for art at San Diego’s Lindbergh Field, which over the years has spent millions on a controversial collection of creative adornments to distract travelers from long lines, prying TSA agents, and …

The yellowtail bite has pretty much shut down at the Coronados though the boats are finding them in numbers offshore on kelps along with some decent dorado. The yellowfin tuna are charging into San Diego …