From the archives

South Bay gated community may not be safest place to avoid danger

Christmas seen by writers, Allah's women, ping pong star of Balboa Park, terrible skateboard accident, freeway close – maybe too close

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Eddy Tostado owned a bar in Ensenada called El Blue Martini Lounge, and a restaurant in Tijuana called Mariscos del Pacífico and two car dealerships in Chula Vista called Premiere I and Motorland Auto Sales.
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    • The Chula Vista kidnapping of Eddy Tostado by Arellano cartel

    • At 3:39 a.m. on January 7, 2007, Columbia Street was almost deserted. Little Italy had been plagued with car burglaries — “It got where you couldn’t drive too many of the streets down there without seeing broken glass in the morning,” said San Diego police officer Joel Schmid, so Schmid parked his patrol car and approached on foot when he noticed a pearl white Escalade stopped in the driveway of a condominium.
    • By Laura McNeal, April 7, 2010

  • Boris the two-month-old reindeer at the San Diego Zoo

    Reader writers on why Christmas is magic

  • By Dorian Hargrove, Elizabeth Salaam, Ernie Grimm, Jay Allen Sanford, Melissa Wiley, Ollie , Walter Mencken, Dec. 22, 2010

  • San Diego women who have converted to Islam

  • Over the phone, Maureen Slater sounds like a soccer mom. She uses words like “jammies” instead of pajamas and laughs at her own jokes (“I’m smarter than my husband, ha-ha-ha”), some of which aren’t really jokes (“but seriously, he’d tell you the same thing”). She lifts weights two or three times per week on a home gym set up on the patio of her Paradise Hills home.
  • By Elizabeth Salaam, Sept. 8, 2010
  • Branislava Vlasic with her coach Stellan Bengtsson

    Even the Chinese were scared of him

  • Since table tennis is not featured on any of the TV channels, most Americans don’t know and don’t care that one of the world’s greatest athletes is a coach in Balboa Park. In many parts of the world, he’s a legend. Players from Sweden, Denmark, and even Australia have come to San Diego only to see Stellan.
  • By Branislava Vlasic, Aug. 25, 2010
  • By seven o'clock every evening, I felt as if my brain were giving birth to an alien.

    Broken skull, broken heart

  • Only half of the six red vinyl booths were occupied. Five friends and I took the one at the far end of the narrow bar. It wasn’t much of a celebration, but it was the closest thing to a party I’d been to since I’d fallen from a skateboard and landed in a coma, awaking 19 days later with a piece of my skull missing, scars on my arms, and a plastic pipe in my throat.
  • By Dorian Hargrove, April 21, 2010
  • "It's not for most people."

  • These San Diegans live right next to I-5, I-15, the 94

  • “It’s not for most people; I wouldn’t recommend it.” I asked Johnny and a selection of other freeway-side dwellers around San Diego County: With all the choices available in “America’s Finest City” (and outskirts), why the hell did you move here?
  • By Moss Gropen, Feb. 24, 2010
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