Rusty with two surf contest winners, 1994. "What ruined the surf industry? It was neon."

A shirt for a surf hero

For the last 10 years Rusty Preisendorfer has been one of the surfing world's dominant figures. Not because he’s such a great surfer, but because he designs and builds the wave tools that have allowed the best surfers in the world to push the sport to today’s almost absurd levels.

By Steve Sorensen, Nov. 24, 1994 Read full article

Amazing baseboard stories

In 1970 homes and apartments were popping up on every parcel of undeveloped land from Bonita to Santee, and every one of those units received base. At the time there were about a dozen basemen in the county. “I remember back when we were doin’ Fletcher Hills and this Indian — lost both legs in Korea — useta scoot around on a skateboard and cut the base with a goddamned tomahawk!”

June 24, 1993 Read full article

Looking east down Mission Valley, 1951. Time moved slowly. No one seemed to be in a hurry. There was, after all, no place better to go.

Photography courtesy of San Diego Historical Society

How San Diego found its way into The Mortician's Apprentice

I left home, went to live in a fraternity house on La Mesa Boulevard. I was a fairly bright kid, but I flunked every other course I took at San Diego State, a tiny college back then of 3500 students. The old campus of lovely, Spanish-style, one-story buildings is still there, but it’s buried behind huge utilitarian structures that now house 30- to 40,000 students.

By Rick DeMarinis, Nov. 3, 1994 Read full article

Pollareno’s largest residential jobs were for two of San Diego’s best-known developers. Both built massive houses in Rancho Santa Fe and demanded the best.

Stucco worked well for the Mayas, built much of Rome, and covers San Diego

Turn-of-the-century San Diego architects Irving Gill, Richard Requa, Frank Mead, Hazel Waterman, Carleton Winslow, William Templeton Johnson, Lillian Rice, and many others embraced stucco for its ability to make a building a composed whole. The grayness of untinted, unpainted concrete was highly desirable,

By Peter Jensen, Dec. 1, 1994 Read full article

The filled-in canyon between University Avenue and old Douglas Street, still looks like a filled-in canyon. And the street still boasts its white wooden 1944-vintage road barriers. We are looking west-northwest.

Margot Sheehan

Lost Roads of San Diego: California St., Douglas St., Sorrento Rd., Camp Callan Ave.

In case you didn’t notice, we lost a historic downtown street just recently. Toward the end of 1992, most of the street signs for California Street came down. We shall not see them again. California Street, that slummy 19th-century drive on the west side of the railroad tracks, is gone for good, and the only reminders left us are stenciled notices from the Santa Fe Railway.

By Margot Sheehan, March 4, 1993 Read full article

Illustration of the author and his brother

Tamir Shefer

The Ginger Man led a San Diego artist down the road to self-destruction

“Cool,” I said, checking out the contents. It was full of paperbacks, mostly science fiction novels of indefinite vintage. Robert Heinlein, Frederick Pohl, books acquired over a period of decades. Olaf Stapleton’s Odd John, C.S. Lewis’s That Hideous Strength, old cult books from some long-forgotten college lit class. “Jesus, Rog, you’re shucking the books of your youth. Don’t you care about your past?”

By Robert Houghton, March 11, 1993 Read full article

Illustration by Peter Hannan

Hog luv

Motorcycle owners spend a proportionately greater time hanging around the repair shop than car owners do. Bike owners will oversee the work, maybe pace, shoot the breeze with the unappreciative mechanic, and inwardly wring their hands like someone visiting a close friend in the hospital with appendicitis.

By John Brizzolara, March 25, 1993 Read full article

Federal wiretap logs of Richard Silberman, Carlos Bustamante, Jerry Brown

DS says against my better judgment I talked to him [Bustamante] he's out making letters of intent with Mexico, Bustamante own most of the vacant land along the border. Roberto de la Madrid is the current runner for Bustamante. DS Japanese friends are running out on him.

April 8, 1993 Read full article

He had obviously seen us on the Mission Avenue on-ramp and had purchased the beer and vodka before picking us up.

Peter Hannan

Hitchhikers have a brush with sleaze at Aliso Creek

In the winter of 1980, Jimmy Howard moved from San Diego to Huntington Beach. We didn’t see much of each other until one April afternoon, when I answered a knock on the door to find Jimmy standing on my doorstep. He had a smile on his face and a skateboard in his hand, and he told me he had hitchhiked all the way from Huntington to rattle my stinking cage.

By P.N. Gwynne, June 17, 1993 Read full article