The woman behind the Prophet Vegetarian restaurant, women body builders

Unplanned homeschooling, the WELL – an early computer bulletin board, San Diego's UFO believers, TJ patients sick with AIDS

Author

By Jeannette DeWyze, Neal Matthews (RIP), Judith Moore (RIP), Brae Canlen

Publish Date

May 8, 2022

Friends urged her to visit Transcendental Meditation initiator Beulah Smith in Coronado. (Robert Burroughs)

Reggae matriarch of San Diego vegetarians

“We served Balinese food, like gado-gado. We were into Japanese cooking. We did a lot of tempura.” Near the cash register they sold herbs and — for a while — shoes. “Yeah! We introduced Birkenstocks to San Diego. After a while it got too hard to stop and measure people, particularly when the restaurant was busy.”

By Jeannette DeWyze, May 21, 1981 Read full article

Karen Thompson:“If someone looks at me and says, ‘She’s not that cut up,’ well, maybe that person will feel encouraged to get in a competition.” (Robert Burroughs)

What's a nice girl like you flexing in a place like this?

One gets the impression that if they could, bodybuilders would shed not just their fat, but their skin as well.The women strive to reduce their body fat to only five to ten percent of their total weight, a layer of fat so thin that the lines of striated muscle and throbbing veins appears to “cut" patterns into the surface of the skin.

We backed into homeschooling

They presented Sean with the choice of dropping out; Sean decided to do so. Boston instructed the boy to bring home from the school his pencils, sharpeners, completed workbooks. ‘‘We told the school nothing!” He and his wife had figured that the worst that could happen would be for the authorities to insist upon Sean’s return.

By Jeannette DeWyze, Oct. 7, 1982 Read full article

The Weird conference is the banana peel on which WELL minds slip: "Pee Wee Herman Is My Spiritual Teacher," "Bulbhead Redux," "Effective Methods of Self-Mutilation," "Humans Lack a Breeding Season," "Weird Hobbies for Overcoming Ennui," Commies Choose Cocaine." (Jeremy Eaton)

Members of the Keyboard

Nash and I and some 3000 other people subscribe ($8 per month, $3 per hour) to The WELL, a four-year-old computer conferencing system. Such a system permits an individual to sit at a computer to which a modem is affixed, and with computer, modem, and telephone, dial a number and enter into typed conversation with other subscribers to that system.

By Judith Moore, March 1, 1990 Read full article

November 16, 1973. Two 11-year-old boys in Lemon Grove encountered a dark, disc-shaped object approximately 20 feet in diameter. (Peter Hannan)

Maybe what you saw was a UFO. On the other hand, maybe you're a liar.

Some Orion members (Herr included) have never seen a UFO. Others witnessed an inexplicable object in the sky one day. A year and a half ago, Herr formed the Orion group by combing the membership lists from three national UFO organizations. He found 63 people living in the San Diego area.

By Brae Canlen, Feb. 8, 1990 Read full article

Ernesto, a 36-year-old AIDS patient, who has been bedridden since November, looks much sicker now than Max did before he died. (Paul Stachelek)

Emilio will take care of them

His business has already suffered major declines since he started holding AIDS assistance meetings here in the mid-1980s, and then he nearly ended up going broke when he started using his upstairs room as a place to draw blood for HIV tests. "Customers weren't too excited seeing people carrying vials of blood downstairs."

By Neal Matthews, Feb. 1, 1990 Read full article