Cover Stories
Seemingly everything has been called a “lost art.” Spelling, conversation, keeping a secret, note taking, listening, and even (why not?) hollering. One string of online text even refers to the lost art of blogging.What constitutes …
Old men with money decorate our world.
Odessa: it doesn’t sound like a particularly Russian word. Maybe Spanish, or Italian. Actually, it was named after Odysseus, the hero of Homer’s (if Homer existed) great epic poem, The Odyssey. Any word, when it …
Maybe it’s my age — the dark side of my sixties, an elder proto-baby boomer, those 78 million Americans born between 1946 and 1964. Maybe it’s because I’ve been tearing my hair filling out Medicare …
When Ira Clifton Copley of Aurora, Illinois, first saw San Diego on a trip with his ailing brother to the Hotel del Coronado in 1891, it was a dingy town on the southern fringe of …
The Back Gate The area around the Oceanside pier and boardwalk glistens, picture perfect: palm trees, silver sand, blue water, and crowds of people. It’s easy to see how this town got its name. But …
There didn’t seem to be anything wrong with the man sitting across from me. I had yet to detect a single flaw in his appearance, speech, or demeanor. His hair was black and wavy, his …
There’s no outfit so fantastically ridiculous as the too-tight, brazenly colored, and obnoxiously patterned ensemble for riding a long distance on a bicycle. It’s too much. Ostensibly the outfits are colored and patterned wildly to …
Near the lifeguard station in Ocean Beach, nine homeless people have gathered. One lies in the grass of Saratoga Park, legs crossed and hat tilted over his eyes. One stands nearby, smoking a cigarette. Two …
Fancy wimmen are okay, but there's nuttin' like the real thing: a nice warm adobada taco on a nice cold night beside a nice hot grill outside a friendly taco catering truck, with that marinated …
By half past nine, all of the pool tables at Bar Leucadian are taken, and fortysomething couples line the bar like birds on a wire. They are exposing an inordinate amount of cleavage and chest …
At the Mira Mesa Recreation Center, playing for my fifth-grade youth basketball team, I watched as my coach threw a chair onto the court in anger. On another occasion, the referee threw my coach out …
In Kearny Mesa, on a road called Opportunity, people in the Transportation Management Center watch over us. The operations room looks like a set from a film on NASA space travel. Designed like a theater, …
Salaries, stock options, corporate jets, limousines, interest-free loans, trust funds.
Matthew: The last time my father visited, I learned what seemed a remarkable thing: all three of his best friends in high school were Jewish. He grew up in Poughkeepsie, an hour from New York …
“My biggest fashion faux pas was wearing gauchos to work every day.”