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Best Reader stories from 2019
Hillcrest, underwater photos, Lincoln High, book clubs, backcountry real estate, spying street lights, San Diego's bugs
Hillcrest: gayborhood or ghetto?
- “I was only in West Hollywood for four years and I came from the East Coast by way of Las Vegas,” he says. “To me, Hillcrest is just normal. At least people sleep here. Hillcrest is what West Hollywood was maybe 10 years ago. You can still see people you know. People are friendly. Hillcrest is really a community.”
- By Thom Senzee, Jan. 2, 2019
We were a low-cost alternative to MCI and Sprint
- I put on an act of being a half-witted and overeager job applicant. Clearly I overdid it, because only one shop took the bait. That was Williams-Sonoma, a tiny storefront hidden downstairs in one of the less desirable canyons of the mall. Near the dumpsters, in fact, down past Tony Roma’s. Today everyone knows Williams-Sonoma as a posh cookery chain where you can pay $300 for a coffee-maker. Back then, it was just breaking out of the catalog business, a junior partner to Pottery Barn. It didn’t rate a location on the main level of University Towne Center.
- By Meg Burns, Feb. 6, 2019
San Diego's street lights that spy
- Here in California’s second largest municipality, at least 3200 streetlights have been equipped with video and audio collection devices at public expense, turning the city into a stealthy laboratory for infrastructure-embedded intelligence collecting with devices regularly used by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and other security agencies. No notice was provided to residents or business owners where the devices have been installed and are now operating.
- By Matt Potter, Feb. 20, 2019
I realized that it was the little things in the ocean that were most captivating
- Swimming in San Diego Bay is a pathway to constant renewal. I always check under the buoys to track the growth of tunicates — sea squirts, sponges, and sea lettuce — through the seasons. In early summer off Stingray Point in Glorietta Bay, the marine growth is so thick it obscures the bottom of the yellow buoy. So one morning, I was surprised to see a bay blenny living belly-up and patrolling a sizeable clearing.
- By Neal Matthews, March 6, 2019
The unsolved case of La Mesa's Jamie Peters
- Nearly 31 years ago, Jamie Peters walked into his mother’s home in La Mesa and dropped off his house keys. It was a brief nighttime visit. He paused long enough to look around the familiar living room with a wistful gaze. He picked up and hugged his eight-year-old sister and congratulated his younger brother on his new car.
- By H.G. Reza, June 19, 2019
San Diego's weird backcountry real estate
- “A sensitive plant, a moth, an Indian artifact being found, these could all derail a project. The county will tell you, ‘Give us $50,000, and we’ll let you know what we think about it.’ You can get really involved in the project, and the county might still come back a year or two later and tell you no. People ask me about this all the time, and I have to keep finding polite ways to tell them not to waste their time.”
- By Dave Rice, Aug. 21, 2019
Lincoln High teacher sued for sex talk
- On October 15, 2018, Lincoln High School psychologist Freddy Moreno summoned Sara to his office. A teacher wanted him to find out what was traumatizing her “shy, sweet, and respectful” student. After a lengthy conversation Moreno made a breakthrough when Sara said, “I know I’m worth more than to sell myself.” But she wasn’t ready to say more.
- By Eric Bartl, Aug. 28, 2019
San Diego book clubs – what's the point?
- Perhaps it’s the idea of the book club book that we find unbearable. It brings to mind that women’s marketing motto, “Pink it and shrink it.” Pink it: have the books be about empowerment through self-care, or give it a depressing story arc with a redemptive lift at the end through the realization of some bland universalism.
- By Tam Hoang, Oct. 2, 2019
San Diego's changing bugs
- Even though the county is rich in spiders, especially in the coastal sage scrubland on bases Pendleton and Miramar, the trapdoor is “incredibly stressed.” Hedin says that with this spider, “we’re seeing evidence of either abundance, decline, or complete population extinction.”
- Thomas Larson, Nov. 20, 2019