Cover Stories
Corrugated tin sheets, rusted, dripped with paint, nipped into irregular rectangles, and fastened to each other in an unintentionally beautiful patchwork, stand as the long wall of a house. The residence across the alley from …
I've flown over the Salton Sea many times. From the air, it doesn't look real. The blue expanse and the green fields of the Coachella and Imperial Valleys that butt up against the sea's northern …
When I informed my best friend almost nine years ago that I was expecting a male child, she said, after a distinct pause, "I can't even imagine you with boys." I couldn't imagine it either, …
Well, I was born an original sinner I was born from original sin And if I had a dollar bill for everything I've done There'd be a mountain of money piled up to my chin. …
At 6 a.m., Ramon Salazar is readying to leave the vehicle yard of Spanky's Portable Services in Escondido. It's Monday, and Mondays are rough. "Man, I needed an hour more sleep." He yawns. He climbs …
"Well, you know, I, okay, let me see," Charles McPherson sounded more spirited than stumped. I'd just asked a saxophone legend — Charles McPherson! — what originally attracted him to the saxophone. That was like …
It's a beautiful Monday morning in mid-August, somewhere in the dusty hills of East County. Sun beams through the window of this small building, glinting off a smooth metal object cradled in Conrad Grayson's outstretched …
San Diegan Mike Davis, author of eight nonfiction books and Planet of Slums, the ninth, comes on the line, voice weak from recent pneumonia. We launch in. "You were educated...?" "I went to UCLA. I …
I was walking down the street one day, Prospect, in La Jolla, in the merry month of May, when I was taken by surprise: a woman calling after me, "Sir. Excuse me. Sir. Sir!" But …
Close up on the man at the helm of our ten-campus university system.
I've got this friend back in New York City, Suzi Winson, who flies regularly on the trapeze, and she's counseled me for years that I should take it up. "There's nothing like the trapeze," Winson …
"In the future," Andy Warhol predicted, "everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes." But for a few San Diego musicians, it seems that the future's arrived ahead of schedule and landed them halfway around the …
"I thought I had come into hell. Van Nuys was so hot. I mean, God. And at that time I was naughty: I smoked. And I thought, 'How can anybody have a cigarette in this …
A heartbreaking job among the innocent and challenged.
Contrary to popular belief, there is surf to be had off New York City. Just as one can purchase a bagel (or passable facsimile) in San Diego, one can ride a wave off Queens. It's …
He couldn't have been more than five feet tall. I guessed him to be around 50, taking into account that Asian men often look much younger than they are. The music began, a flattened sound …