Chris and his dialed-in, factory muscle car. There are still legal places to race in Southern California: the Pomona Fairgrounds in East L.A., Carlsbad Raceway, out in Palmdale, and in Glamis.

Arms and the Men: Shooting for Happiness

These were good men, overzealous to a fault, maybe, but not killers. Hell, Rudy is of Samoan descent. Wil is a liberal Communist activist actor. It was the guns that were making me nervous, the guns and the Anza-Borrego desert in dead silence, the broken beer bottles and the spent shell casings at our feet like seashells on a beach. Guns are what we suffered to get out here for. Guns are what could kill us.

By Michael Ahn, Jan. 28, 1988 | Read full article

“I’m reaching the point where I’m thinking, hey, I don’t have that much longer, and I want to have this particular rose before I go or before I have to quit gardening."

What We Love Chooses Us

“The people in San Diego will not believe that you can grow anything in El Cajon. We have a reputation for being the end of the world. This year’s garden was prompted by a remark made by our president, who is also a member of the San Diego group. He said they were going to put in a garden and beat the pants off of us. We have always won and they haven’t. We’re better.”

By Robert Gluck, June 2,1994 | Read full article

Sauls cuts quilting material. The cutting and hemming of tiny leaves and circles is painstaking work and is only the first stage of a quilt.

Feathered World

Quilting among guild members is often done before the television set, and Reggie also works with the TV on. His TV has a box below it that sends captions up the screen, white letters on black bands — no lip reading required. “I do most of my quilting in front of the tube but I manage to make most of my headway during commercials — when I’m not running to the bathroom.”

By Laura McNeal, April 20, 1995 | Read full article

Martin Luther King Jr. first-day cover signed by Rosa Parks. Companies mass produce such envelopes, but anyone can make one, and many enterprising individuals have taken to creating them in limited editions.

I Wasn't Lying When I Identified Myself as a Stamp Collector

Later that day, I walked into the San Diego County Philatelic Library, in a strip mall on Princess View Drive in Allied Gardens. The place is open to the public Monday and Thursday evenings and Saturday afternoons. As I entered, I thought for a moment that I had stumbled onto the set of an early Hitchcock movie. There was Oscar Homolka in one chamber with Peter Lorre in another offering to teach me Esperanto.

By David Lehman, July 24, 1997 | Read full article

The club boasts “virtually all the strongest players in San Diego County, including one of the best players in the United States” — 41-year-old Cyrus Lakdawala."

Hard-Core Chess Fiends Love Saturdays

There are also unemployed people, says Saponara — “in fact, quite a few.” And several people who, as he puts it, “have never found themselves” but are excellent chess players. As many as 90 members play in the weekly Wednesday-night tournament, which Saponara directs. A new weekly tournament, on Saturdays, has so far been attracting about 20 players, who, says Saponara, “tend to be more hard core.” Saponara says children aren’t uniformly encouraged to play with the adults.

By Jeanne Schinto, Oct. 4, 2001 | Read full article

Bruce Cameron: "The LGB service center— I used to work there—for the entire North American continent is right here in San Diego, which is a big plus if something does go wrong."

Out goes the TV…

A few weeks ago we got rid of our TV. The immediate post-video days weren’t as bad as we thought they would be. The kids saw that the television wasn’t on the shelf, so they found other things to do. They’ve been painting and drawing, memorizing animal and shape posters that hang on their bedroom walls, and riding their bikes around the yard a lot more. And yesterday, I went out and bought them their first model-train set.

By Ernie Grimm, Feb. 7, 2002 | Read full article

Mah Means Flax Plant, Jongg Means Sparrow

When I was young, monthly Monday mah-jongg night meant the good china, the big coffee urn, the carefully cut melon, and many desserts, including a pumpkin bundt cake with drooping dollops of cream-cheese frosting dotted with walnut halves. My wandering finger would be met with a quick potch in the tuchas (“Don’t touch that cake, Susie!”), so I’d wait till they were bamming and crakking in the living room before I pilfered my piece.

By Sue Greenberg, Jan 2, 2003 | Read full article

Dan Wallace, Hillary Morse. "The seedier room guarantees that there's no b.s. Most people in a room such as College Billiards are fairly savvy about the way things work with gambling and tournaments."

Rack em, Dan-O

"When I first went on the road," he says, "a guy named Roger 'The Rocket' Griffis, told me, 'Look, don't mess with the bars. Go to the big-time pool rooms. Walk right up to the house man and tell him flat out, ‘Hey, I'm looking for action, and I want to bet something good.’ He said, 'You'll avoid so much trouble that way. No drunks. No idiots. You're only playing the real pool players.’”

By Ernie Grimm, May 13, 2004 | Read full article

Everett Boyer, a twenty-four-year-old computer programmer, controls a character of some renown in San Diego, the powerful Elrond. (The character appears originally in Tolkien’s The Hobbit.)

Mind Game

Everett Boyer, a twenty-four-year-old computer programmer, controls a character of some renown in San Diego, the powerful Elrond. (The character appears originally in Tolkien’s The Hobbit.) This blond and sturdy elf has acquired so much magic and treasure that his very name raises mutterings of jealousy. There are those who would love to get that elf in their dungeon….. “The fear of death is ever present,” says the philosophical George Popa, a UCSD student.

By Joe Applegate, Feb. 2, 1978 | Read full article

John Cox, a fifty-one-year-old marine engineer who lived in Japan, now lives in El Cajon with his wife Taneko. “When I get up in the morning, I look at my go board, and every day I oil it. ”

John Chun

Do Not Pass Go

In San Diego most go players practice on Tuesday nights at the Balboa Club building at Sixth and Ivy. Here the Go Club meets, using the same room as the larger Chess Club. The weaker players, who take longer in their games, arrive around seven, and the dan-level players usually come an hour later. An exception is one-dan Joe Langdon, who, when he can get a ride from Ocean Beach, comes early to give the beginners a few pointers.

By Karl Keating, Feb. 8, 1979 | Read full article

In August of 1977 another mutant wondered how Seven Up and ice would make my car run and so dumped a whole bottle full into my car's gas tank.

Star Warts

Jan was S.T.A.R. San Diego’s founder and first president. Being a devout Christian, the high moral tone of Star Trek appealed to Jan. Jan, a recent San Diego State graduate in English, founded S.T.A.R. in her living room in the State College area one evening in 1973, moved it to San Diego State campus a year later when it got too large, and kept an iron-fisted control over the club for the next two years.

By Mark Fogg, Sept. 21, 1978 | Read full article

Lendon Best, Barbara Holt Jones.“San Diego Mensa used to have a reputation as a bunch of eggheads. Now we’re getting too much publicity on the frivolous activities."

If I Only Had a Brain

Standing between Dan and Mensa membership, are two tests, the Cattell intelligence test and the California Short-form Test of Mental Maturity. The Cattell leans heavily toward verbal problems such as: “Barbara’s brother Matthew has one more brother than he has sisters. How many more brothers than sisters does Barbara have?” The California Test of Mental Maturity relies more on standard verbal and mathematical skills,. A score indicating a 136 IQ on either will open Mensa doors.

By Ron Raposa and John Kowalczyk, June 7, 1979 | Read full article

“A glance at the Across words on the top of any answer to any crossword puzzle will reveal that at least one-third of the letters are vowels."

Lost in Spaces

Recently I picked up a stranger’s worked puzzle from the seat of an airplane. The sheet of newsprint, folded in quarters and creased, was smudged by contact with the heel of the hand at the puzzle margins. The puzzle had belonged to a man in a three-piece navy-blue pinstriped suit. As the plane lifted off, he had gripped a pencil and concentrated intently over five letters for “parks a boat’’ and four letters for “Soprano Gluck.”

By Judith Moore, May 31, 1984 | Read full article

Within the six months the games have been open, there have been changes in the quality of life of the tribe members. Says the Sycuan tribal chairwoman: “Unemployment has been erased, and everyone who wants to work has a job.”

By Bingo Possessed

She says that within the six months the games have been open, “unemployment has been erased, and everyone who wants to work has a job.” According to Sandoval, by next year the tribe will have repaid the management company for the building and will begin funneling profits into health clinics and improving the education of tribe members. “We’re a very small tribe, with less than ninety of us, including children. The next generation will reap the profits of bingo.”

By Sue Garson, June 7, 1984 | Read full article

Darcey, Chris’s girlfriend, shows up in her Duster. The El Camino boys want to go for a roll — a moving start — on the freeway. Chris is against this.

Saturday Night Is for Sleepers

Another police car enters the parking lot…. How safe can racing be when you’re going 85 or 90 miles per hour? He says he knows exactly how to keep muscle cars from racing. “We ticket ’em. Jack up their insurance rates three or four times. Let them run out of money. Most of these guys can’t afford the insurance anyway.” As he says this, the last car drives out of the lot, leaving it in total silence.

By Michael Ahn, April 6, 1989 | Read full article

“For a while we thought it was the Indian reservations cutting into our business. For a while they were getting 1500 people a night out there. Now I’ve heard their business is way off too. It’s gotta be the economy.”

David Diaz

The Only Honest Game in Town

The Ace’e Duce’e is one of the smallest card rooms in town. It’s a little cubbyhole tucked in between the Playhouse bar and the State Theater. There are card rooms up the street, like the California Room and the Lucky Lady, which feature a house dealer and a faster style of poker, but the Ace’e Duce’e, which has the smallest pots of any card room in town (usually between ten and fifty dollars), has found its own niche.

By Steve Sorensen, May 16, 1985 | Read full article