Downtown San Diego Stories
Dim Sum Kingdom 730 Broadway, Downtown 619-239-1782 Most places, there are steaks, and then there are breakfast steaks. Your typical breakfast steak's so thin it's translucent. But not at Mr. and Mrs. Lee's. The Lees …
“These cranes are pretty nice rigs,” he told me. “They handle nice. It’s kind of like a car. [Just like little cars], the smaller the crane, the whippier it is — the quicker around.”
"The people that come out of these places in the Gaslamp are pretty bad, but not as bad as people who come out of the local bars. Like in Imperial Beach.”
The Downtown Information Center, a service of the Centre City Development Corporation, occupies the ground-floor lobby at 225 Broadway. The center exhibits sketches and charts detailing the area's redevelopment. Its showpiece is a 200-square-foot model …
City Operations Building 1222 First Avenue, Downtown There is a tendency in modern buildings to look as though the concept models upon which they are based were constructed from Legos, a childlike blockiness and friendliness …
de'Medici 815 Fifth Avenue, Downtown (619) 702-7228 For the 20 years that Mario Valerio was the manager of Anthony's Star of the Sea Room, the fresh petrale sole was one of its most distinguished offerings. …
Athens Market 109 West F Street, Downtown (619) 234-1955 Say the words "lemon chicken" and diners think of the Chinese version, in which the breast of chicken is breaded, deep-fried, and doused with a lemon …
Landlord Jim's 1546 Broadway, Downtown (619) 233-9998 The bar's only sign is a blue neon outline of a glass with "Cocktails" written in pink across it. Eleven blocks east of the Gaslamp, this is Landlord …
4th & B 345 B Street, Downtown (619) 231-4343 Men don't like to be pampered. We like our wood unsanded, our underwear scratchy; we prefer barbers over hairdressers, and don't put those froufrou little pieces …
Eveoke Dance Theatre 644 Seventh Avenue, Downtown (619) 238-1153 Call them dance/theater or text/movement/music pieces: each is distinctly Eveoke: plural voices and signs, charged with energy and whirling motion, committed to social action. Artistic director …
Spreckels Theatre 121 Broadway, Downtown (619) 235-9500 There's no finer place to enjoy a show than the balcony seats perched five stories above the Spreckels Theatre stage. Built in 1912, the Spreckels Theatre was in …
Top of the Hyatt One Market Place, Downtown (619) 232-1234 "The highest waterfront bar on the West Coast," Harbor Drive's 40th-floor cocktail lounge -- commonly known as "Top of the Hyatt" -- offers floor-to-ceiling panoramic …
Wetdream Monthly Cruise Parties 1050 North Harbor Drive, Downtown (619) 331-4262 When you board this late-night (11:00 p.m.2:00 a.m.) harbor cruise you'll notice three different decks: on the main floor and out on the deck, …
Urban Outfitters 665 Fifth Avenue, Downtown (619) 231-0102 www.urbn.com Indestructible wind-up alarm clocks, portable blow-up furniture, and housewares are described as an "eclectic mish mash of modern meets India," by merchandise manager Angelo Wilimek. Imagine …
Pontiac Seratto's Shoe Shine 138 Broadway, Downtown "There's nobody within a five-mile radius who stays in business competing with me," says Pontiac Seratto, at his stand in front of a barbershop downtown, "because I give …
The Computerized Cobbler 13 Horton Plaza, Downtown (619) 231-3736 The shop sits on the exterior of Horton Plaza, fronting First Avenue at F Street. Businessmen on lunch breaks come in with the day's paper and …
California Electric Automobile Company1055 G Street, Downtown (619) 232-0595 "After we're done, you can zip by the gas station and laugh. You'll never be dependent on them again." Of course, he's not alone in his …
Art-Te Company 945 Broadway, Downtown (619) 232-7231 It says something that the major music stores are stocking some major Mexican and Latin American music stars. But Robert Highsmith, the bilingual walking encyclopedia of Art-Te, says …
FAO Schwarz 514 Horton Plaza, Downtown (619) 702-7500 The remote-control sailboat ($119.99) can be launched and operated in almost any pool or lake. A working fire engine model ($79) measures 32 inches long and comes …
Wahrenbrock's Book House 726 Broadway, Downtown (619) 232-0132 The musty smell, the economical buzz of the fluorescent lights, the industrial brown carpeting, the cozy-bordering-on-cramped spaces, struggling to remain free of books. Books in stacks, books …
Gourmet Delicatessen in the Westgate 1055 Second Avenue, Downtown (619) 557-3698 Place reeks of gentility. Your feet sink into deep pink carpets, chandeliers clank above you, you sit on gold-braided chairs at tables covered by …
The Snack Galley, Greyhound Depot, open 24 hours 120 West Broadway, Downtown (619) 234-4522 Dead is not the word for downtown San Diego in that 90 minutes, 3:30 to 5:00 a.m. So it's 4:00 in …
Greg's Corner County Administration Building, Fourth floor, 1600 Pacific Highway, Downtown (619) 233-9605 Everything is politically correct (muted mustard colors, rattan walls) and you're surrounded by rumple-suited buck-passers. But the view is great and the …
Chef's Table in Sally's Kitchen Sally's Restaurant, Hyatt Regency Hotel, One Market Place, Downtown (619) 687-6080 Dining at Sally's private kitchen has little to do with Norman Rockwell paintings and less with homespun American food. …
Octopus Garden 314 Fifth Avenue, Downtown (619) 233-1653 For those food adventurers in restless search for the new and the stimulating, Octopus Garden, a Japanese and Continental restaurant, is just the ticket. The accomplished chef, …
Napa Valley Grille 502 Horton Plaza, Downtown (619) 238-5440 Napa Valley Grille has its own wine bar, two outdoor patios, a private dining room, and a large central dining room. Restaurants come and go in …
Pantoja Park Between Kettner and State on G Street Lunch Hour, Monday through Thursday This game has been going on for over nine years. The players come and go, but the game goes on. The …
For years, Mel Shapiro, a retired accountant who spends much of his time as a watchdog of the goings-on at San Diego's city hall, suspected that the city council was not being straight about what …
A client once remarked to Margarita Alvarez that all of San Diego's fruit and vegetable vendors would eventually move to the edge of downtown. That prediction, made in the 1970s, surprised Alvarez, the assistant board …
Here’s the idea: You get a bunch of writers together and you take them someplace cool, someplace evocative — the Santa Fe Depot, say — and you tell them, “Go ahead, write something.” This could …
“House of Blues is not coming to the building bounded by Fifth and Sixth and Broadway,” says a well-connected source. “I understand they have walked away from the Woolworth’s building.” It was announced in the …
Frank Klaiger, owner of a bar on Sixth Avenue, accused Ada Maxwell of stealing $65. Klaiger went to Ada’s home at Fourth and island, and fired through a window. J. “Bull" Conrad, raced outside and punched Klaiger.
When a new cast of characters auditions next week for the Centre City Development Corp., it aims to revive San Diego's longest-running empty stage. The Balboa Theatre, a national historic landmark in downtown San Diego, …
Perhaps San Diego’s two screwdrivers, the Hyatt and One America — harbingers of shapes to come — are tools for its future. With luck, Emerald Plaza may serve as a New Age talisman against overbuilding and outrageous flash.
When Charles Harrington Elster contemplates the task of building a new library in downtown San Diego, the Greek myth of Sisyphus comes to mind. For his crimes of murder, gossip, and greed, Sisyphus was condemned …
This is exactly the room I’ve been afraid of all my life. A place where I have landed in middle age. Somehow I have failed, this time thoroughly. I find myself on a hard mattress …
As a biology student at the University of Colorado, Ken Rowland imagined becoming the next Jacques Cousteau, but a bout of seasickness on the way to Santa Catalina Island moored his career to land. Rowland …
During the 1930s, the black community began to have clearly defined borders. Blacks mostly resided in the area from 30th Street to 32nd Street, between Woolman (now Oceanview) Avenue and Logan Avenue.
Matt: Would you do a favor for all us bike riders and make a list of the steepest streets in San Diego? -- A. Rider, San Diego Dear Matthew Alice: What are the steepest street …
On one side are two multi-millionaires; five national cable and broadcast conglomerates; a well-entrenched, monopoly daily newspaper and its army of compliant reporters; the mayor and city council and their taxpayer-paid staff; an ex-mayor tainted …
Hillcrest dentist David Kennedy recently posed the following question to several friends with whom he was dining: What would you do if you knew that a toxic substance was going to be added to San …
“If you have an office building, 1 story, 30 stories, or 80 stories, the owner wants to look forward to a profit. One way, if the economy is good in that market area — you can raise the rents.”
On the second floor is a character I recognize. I’ve seen this individual bicycling around town, along Pacific Coast Highway, and in Ocean Beach. Today this person is reading an instructional book on Mandarin Chinese.
"The universe is a bar," Buck says between swigs of beer, in one of those lines that led the late poet William Stafford to observe, "Everyone wanders into poetry sometimes." If Buck hadn’t just told …
When UCSD first opened, US 101 had not yet been replaced by the long-promised Interstate 5. Although 101 sliced the campus in two, in its early days, UCSD was mostly confined to the Revelle College area,
Welton Jones: “Let me finish. If you say one more goddamn word to me, I’m going to hang up! You just keep your mouth shut and your ears open and you might learn something.”
As I’m preparing to get out of the car, a woman in a blue Isuzu pulls up. I try to ignore her. “Are you leaving?” she asks plaintively. “No,” I reply, smugly. “Just got here.”
Horton Plaza floats in the downtown landscape: disconcerting, surreal, a dream painted some forty-nine colors. Open almost two years, the $140 million, six-and-a-half-block shopping center-entertainment complex houses four major department stores, 150 specialty shops, eateries, …
The Coast is for the “working class,” as a co-owner of the hotel, Lee Howard Jr., likes to say. Others compare it to fly paper. Still others say it merely provides a stopping off for misfits.
Once a week Cathy Elkin has the unlikely task of educating 500 new sailors about the dangers of their first liberty. The Navy calls it “Liberty Lecture,” and Elkin, who is director of public affairs …
Suppose, for a moment, that you had a lot of money — oh, not exactly cash, but valuable property. More money, that is, than you would ever need. Suppose, too, that for most of your …
“We love the view. Particularly over fogbanks, you get subtle violets, rose, and gray tinged with blue. Concentrated on the water as this city is, it’s one of the great sunset cities of the world.”