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Cyrus Lakdawala lets us inside chess player's brain
Serious Jew talks Christmas with serious Catholic, what Judith Moore meant to Reader writers, P.B. hard line on liquor, Jerry Schad shows me Carrizo Badlands, Sudanese Lost Boys in Coronado
Last year I was the youngest player in U.S. Championship
- "I played Nakamura. He was 18 years old at the time, at the 2005 U.S. Championship. His name is Hikaru Nakamura. And he's the top U.S. player right now." This is the top chess player in San Diego, international master (IM) Cyrus Lakdawala, 46. He's telling me about the strongest opponent he's ever faced. "This kid Nakamura's just a natural genius," Lakdawala says. "And I don't normally use that term."
- By Geoff Bouvier, May 31, 2007
Gideon Rappaport: "Christmas has to start with the Jews, I guess, no matter where you start."Does Christmas offend you?
- Christmas has to start with the Jews, I guess, no matter where you start. It was Jews who were killed by Herod and Jews who were chased into Egypt by him, pregnant with the future, and Jews whose testimony later became the Christmas story. But though in my childhood I would sometimes help neighbors decorate their Christmas trees with tinsel -- we would never have had one and never felt deprived: "That's what they do, not what we do."
- By Gideon Rappaport, Matthew Lickona, Dec. 20, 2007
Moore had been published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, the house that published Walker Percy and Flannery O'Connor, two of my literary idols.She hated adverbs
- By Abe Opincar, Barbarella Fokos, Deirdre Lickona, Dorothy Stewart, Ed Bedford, Ernie Grimm, Geoff Bouvier, Jennifer Ball, Jerry Miller, Joe Deegan, John Brizzolara, Justin Wolff, Ken Kuhlken, Laura McNeal, Mary Grimm, Matthew Lickona, Ollie , RF Jurjevics, Robert Kumpel, Stephen Dobyns, Sue Greenberg, Thomas Larson, Thomas Lux, Aug. 16, 2007
4th of July, Pacific BeachPacific Beach cracks down on beach boozers
- Pacific Beach. 2:00 p.m. I'm bar-hopping, and not one establishment I enter at midday is empty. Many are almost full. The people are predominantly white, under 30, and showing off a lot of tanned and tattooed skin. I see muscles, cleavage, midriffs, baseball caps on backwards, baggy shorts, tank tops, flip-flops, sunglasses, dyed hair, skirts and halter-tops, lots of makeup, lots of perfume, and lots and lots of cheap beers and shots.
- By Geoff Bouvier, July 19, 2007
View from Badlands OverlookThe nothing that is not there and the nothing that is
- The narrow opening of the mud cave was nothing but a slot in the rock, barely wide enough for my shoulders. If you didn't know it was there, you'd never know it was there.
- We're going into that?" I said.
- It was deep, and dark, and after five steps, you couldn't see a thing. I used my hands and shuffled at a turtle's pace.
- By Geoff Bouvier, March 15, 2007
Mamer AjakWe have to tell the story because we survived
- We're sitting in the comfy little living room of the guest quarters at the rear of the Mosers' Coronado property. This is where they live these days, in the cottage behind their house. You look out across the lawn to a grand main residence. "The Lost Boys live there now," says Jerry.
- By Bill Manson, Jan. 25, 2007