Feature Stories
Both Scott Carhart and Helen Flaster are undoubtedly animal people. Their family pets number 26: seven dogs, seven cats, three horses, two goats, two tortoises, two turtles, two birds, a miniature horse, and a few …
I arrived in San Diego on the 4th of July, 1979, on a Greyhound bus I had boarded in Louisville Kentucky after two previous bus changes out of Port Authority. I was 27 years old, …
“Everybody in the hotel read The Little Dog Laughed, everybody; a story to make you die holding the page and it wasn’t about a dog, either; a clever story, screaming poetry…Mrs. Hargraves read it and …
MISS VICTORIA’S IN LOVE On Friday, June 13, 1856, Maurice Franklin invited Victoria Jacobs to join him for a picnic. Even though 17-year-old Victoria suffered a severe toothache, she was thrilled to have “the pleasure …
LIBERTY: SCENES FROM SAN DIEGO’S SHORE-LEAVE HISTORY DANA TOURS SAN DIEGO “A sailor’s liberty is for a day,” writes Richard Henry Dana in Two Years Before the Mast, “yet while it lasts it is perfect,” …
It seemed as if everyone who worked at our local hospital knew Jake. A self-proclaimed “recovered hater of doctors,” he became a fixture, volunteering in the emergency room. The wisecracking 86-year-old’s wrinkled face, slumped shoulders, …
By now, huge portions of San Diego’s literate and book-buying public know that Chuck Valverde, owner of Wahrenbrock’s Book House on Broadway, downtown, died on Saturday, August 23, from respiratory illness and complications at the …
AMERICAN ICARUS: LINCOLN BEACHEY LOOPS THE LOOP (Part Three) “Aviators are not born like poets,” said Lincoln Beachey, who claimed that anyone could fly a plane but that he, and only he, was the natural-born …
AMERICAN ICARUS: BEACHEY COMES TO SAN DIEGO (Part Two) “Death was always my opponent,” said Lincoln Beachey at a celebration in his honor, “and I gave tremendous odds.” He spoke at the Olympic Club in …
On average, Lindbergh Field (also known as San Diego International Airport) performs 620 operations a day: 310 departures and 310 arrivals. All 620 of these operations are performed, whether planes are coming or going, over …
AMERICAN ICARUS: LINCOLN BEACHEY LOOPS THE LOOP (Part One) Lincoln Beachey was one of America's first superstars. By 1915, the daredevil stunt pilot had performed before more people than anyone in history. An estimated one …
"January 9, 2008, is a day that will live in infamy," says Terry Brickman, a beachgoer I talk to in early April about the day the beach booze ban went into effect. I am surprised …
I'm wearing a denim skirt that shows off my legs, the one part of my body I actually like. I'm doing my best to walk gracefully in the black wedged heels I bought last summer. …
THE AMERICAN INVASION: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF APOLINARIA LORENZANA (Part Six) On July 29, 1848, the USS Cyane navigated through the thick kelp outside Point Loma and entered San Diego Bay. The sloop of …
RAMPAGE: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF APOLINARIA LORENZANA (Part Five) Apolinaria Lorenzana lived for around 90 years. Born in Mexico City in the early 1790s, she died blind and indigent at Santa Barbara in 1884. …
In 1930, the San Diego yellow pages were as yellow as an egg yolk, the white pages listed the occupation of every customer, and the modern Woodmen of America met every Wednesday at Germania Hall. …