A better brewhouse for Pacific Beach
Ten years on, PB Ale House was due for an upgrade
Ian Anderson 4 p.m., April 19
Back When
Excerpts from Reader issues past.
Chinese land in Ensenada, get tossed out
Plus — sketchy trailer park, Mexican gamblers, TJ morgue, lucha libre, what Mexican maids really think
Brief Eden We didn’t see too much of the man in trailer number eight, who was supposed to be a Federale, except for the times when he would step out onto his wooden deck and ...
Colonia Rubi hides unusual artist
Plus tough drug rehab, TJ's Jews, gringos living on Baja beach, The Loud Adios, Mexican bull breeding
Baja's tough-love drug rehab “My best friend’s parents paid $10,000 to send him to a place in Arizona, which he went to for a month. He came back, and the next day he woke up ...
Secret San Diego arts
Art restoration, stonecutting, gourmet cooking, men's fashion, fireworks, and art realist David Baze
Balboa Park museums do surgery on masterpieces “At this point, I have removed the old discolored varnish and the old inpainting that no longer matched, but there is a residual varnish down within the interstices ...
Jobs more interesting than you thought
San Diego beekeepers, grape growers, ostrich raisers, hotline operators, apartment owners, and hotel union organizer
The cumulative hiss of thousands of wings In some years, when the desert flowers are blooming, Alan Mikolich takes his bees into the Borrego desert. But the heat can be a problem. He sets out ...
San Diegans at Heaven's door
Disabled and aging talk about pain and dying
What's wrong with Frank? Lita bursts into tears. Frankie’s her beloved eldest son by her first marriage. The one she dedicated to God the day he was bom, throwing all her marbles into her Roman ...
They're almost San Diego institutions
Army-Navy Academy, early Linda Vista, best burgers, Francophile kids, swap meets, SD fossils, opera, supermarkets
An unhampered look at Carlsbad's Army Navy Academy “If I ask ’em, Are you using drugs? they will admit it. Even without me ordering a test. Because they think my information’s better than it really ...
San Diego's jobs that attract tough questions
Burlesque, bank robber, maid, animal control
It started the Encinitas drug scene When I was 18, I robbed a gas station with a ski mask on, so I already had that under my belt. I went into another room and started ...
Hidden San Diego
Mystery writers Wade, Miller, Kuhlken, early homosex politics, Chicano MacArthur winner, Britannica in La Jolla, on board with Michael Reagan
A raw, wild, reckless San Diego In 1947 competitors would have included Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. If comparisons are to be made Wade and Miller’s crime novels are much more like Hammett’s in their ...
San Diegans who got religion
California Jews struggle, Mother Teresa and TJ, Faith Chapel, Eckankar, Yogananda, Bishop McKinney
California Jew returns to the source He began to read anything and everything he could about religion and religious experience, books by Hindus, Catholics, Jews, and Moslems, books of Western and non-Westem cosmology; books by ...
What counted as scandals in 1990s
Children's Hospital, the New River, Spanish Village, the Chargers ticket guarantee
Children's Hospital gave AIDS to hemophiliacs So even after talking with Hartman, I still cannot get a date for when my sons were first tested. The only thing that I have in concrete, from Steven’s ...
Lovers Lane
Baseball field proposal, meeting on Mira Mesa Bl., I Love You at Buffalo Joe’s, meeting the ex at E Street Alley, bowling at Palomar Lanes, poem at La Jolla Shores, and orange toe ring from Target
Some Women You Want to Hate Lt. Weinpel knew Ms. Smith was the girl for him. “From then on, it was just a matter of how am I going to finance the ring?” The lieutenant, ...
Reader stories from 1995
Drums, cholas, hospice care, Eckankar, French school, gangs, Michael Reagan, Bishop McKinney, Orchids and Onions
Orchids and Onions — 20 years later “You could actually turn off Highway 80 at various points and go to the farms. Mission Valley Center was the one thing that changed the whole character of ...
Southern neighbors — Tijuana culture and history
Mexican Revolution next door, architecture, slang, poets, books about TJ
TeeJay — Back To The Way It Used To Be At Cali-Max, T-bone steaks were selling for 90 cents a pound, compared to American prices of about $1.88. Filet mignon, when bought uncut, costs around ...
Most popular Reader stories of 2017
Porn and Jehovah's Witnesses top the headlines
San Diego's Porn Studios Fourteen women, ranging in age from 18 through 22, including one still in high school, may have felt like stars when they walked into the Hard Rock Hotel and the Kimptbn's ...
Stories from winter and spring, 1997
Beekeeping quirks, life as castrated man, Army-Navy Academy without blinders, serious wine drinkers, the dissection of paintings at Balboa Park
San Diego beekeepers know all the flowering plants One time, Mikolich says, he got a call from a friend, a commercial beekeeper whose helper had driven a truckload of hives off a road and then ...
What Matthew Alice found interesting in San Diego
Swiss army knife HQ, Reader T-shirts, the real Saint Diego, Torrey Pines coal mining, tallest building, why so few sea shells
Why locals mis-pronounce Garnet P.B.’s OGs (original gentry) pronounced the name as it should be, like the jewel, “GARnet.” Because they witnessed the name-change, they recognized that the street was part of a series of ...
Tip of My Tongue — deep food stories
Grape leaves, roasting hens, tortillas, pork, avocados, epazote
No Mexican food without epazote When I finish cutting back my epazote, I can’t get the smell off my hands. It reminds me of a friend who, while living in rural Mexico, once purged herself ...
Reader stories from summer of '97
Chargers ticket guarantee, cheerleaders, TJ Jews, the Renegade rednecks, San Diego fireworks oddities, apartment owners sound off
Bruce Henderson— stadium prophet "Every time they raise ticket prices it gives them more and more money to do what? To buy what they hope is a better and better team. The council will have ...
Southern neighbors — business and politics of Tijuana
Baseball south of border, Caliente racetrack and the infamous Hank family, Baby Rock, Bob's Big Boy, early risers at Club Campestre, TJ Cultural Center
The Sport with No Clock Mexican baseball, like the Mexican economy, is just a half-step ahead of the creditors. The precipitous decline of the peso against the dollar has virtually destroyed the league’s ability to ...
Turn-of-the-century websites — still kicking
Prison penpals, ghost towns, rabbit nuts, Ayn Rand, duct tape, Padres, Russian subs for sale, Lescaux caves, Esperanto, urinals, Hunter Thompson, Russian brides, Ridout Plastics
San Diego's spiritualists battle local scientists San Diego is a logical venue for disputes over the paranormal: it is home to alternative lifestylers and first-rate science and research institutions. The landscape of the region also ...
