Taz Taylor will drive trucks for rock
"I couldn’t imagine having a job where I’d have to be around other people constantly."
Jay Allen Sanford 7 p.m., Aug. 16
Golden Dreams
Comic-Con sideshows: the $6 million yacht, the preacher, the cigarette bummer
Why follow a fantasy?
Mark came to Comic-Con from Laguna aboard his friend’s 85-foot, $6 million yacht Motown, a sleek gray vessel tied up alongside the Embarcadero just south of the convention center. “I’ve been here every year for ...
Mideast woman and child get baby back ribs and ribeye steaks at Walmart
Immigrant exploitation
Walmart Neighborhood Market carries El Jimador reposado tequila for $15.97 a bottle, which is $4 cheaper than my local liquor store, which is why I went there on the night of July 7th. As I ...
I’m going to have to shoot you
La Mesa police Firearms Training Simulator
The La Mesa Police Department’s Citizens Academy is, in the words of training sergeant Kate Lynch, “a great way to share the unfortunate realities of the job without putting citizens in harm’s way. It helps ...
Who's the handball king of Chicano Park?
"I was born where the Virgin appeared to Juan Diego"
King David is holding court today, even after suffering the bites of at least nine King Cobras. The court is the one used for handball in Chicano Park; the King Cobras are malt liquors. His ...
Front to back... awesome
Debra found herself stranded in a mosh pit at the Casbah
The professional and personal collaboration that is Wrensilva audio began at a Supersuckers show at the Casbah. Debra Salyer didn’t know the band, and found herself stranded in a mosh pit during a cover of ...
When she starts dancing, I know it’s right
Wrensilva audio produces “the best console ever built”
Today, in its long sliver of a factory facing a North Park alley, Wrensilva audio produces, in the words of co-founder Scott Salyer, “the best console ever built” for playing music. “Nobody’s ever done anything ...
Got to get to the fashion first
I could imagine a star wearing them
Twenty-five-year-old Maurice DJ Ayodam is wearing a white tank top, a midnight-blue velour Adidas track suit, and a custom Breitling watch — custom because he took it to a jeweler and had the face ringed ...
We bring Hollywood to San Marcos
ComicCon's Adult Swim Funhouse can make money
When horror maestro William Castle parked ambulances outside theaters showing Macabre in 1958, it was a publicity stunt. Today, it would be called experiential marketing, and the operation might well be handled by Hadley Media ...
He crashed Ford F-150 through the Bancroft's wall as band was starting
And there's more —Tower Bar, The Jewel Box, Zombie Lounge, Tobacco Rhoda’s, Wong's
It happens. Rob Logic, owner of the Bancroft in Spring Valley, can rattle off a list, starting with the time in 1964 when James Nelson Spencer smashed his Pontiac Bonneville through the front door of ...
La Mesa's Green Mile
University between 70th and Baltimore
University Avenue is improving. Between 70th and Baltimore, La Mesa is “maximizing walkability and creating a unifying streetscape theme” by installing trees along the sidewalks, amending crosswalks, updating street lights, and most significantly, planting the ...
Random people with great weed
The Vault on La Mesa Blvd. — "This is my afterlife"
Jay’s daughter has osteosarcoma — “cancer of the bone. She had to have her leg amputated. It also tries to travel to your heart and lungs, and it’s ongoing. They actually prescribed cannabis for her ...
The Desert Oracle's Ken Layne
Protege of Country Dick Montana and Buddy Blue Seigal
In 1983, teenaged San Diegan Ken Layne had a revelation in Death Valley. “The teenage boys in my crowd would take whoever’s car that was working that weekend” — often, it was restaurateur Sam Chammas’s ...
Scampering caterpillars devour Anza Borrego's superbloom
Some sand verbena and desert sunflowers are hanging on.
By early April, the Anza-Borrego superbloom was all but over. Yellow puffs of blooming brittlebush still dotted the mountains on approach, and orange-petaled spindles still tipped the ocotillos’ tall tendrils, but the carpet of flowers ...
On the road again: Robus and Myra, Roger and Sissy
"You oughta see what happens when I do the Shrine Auditorium with 5000 black people in there."
Look at my eyes now Pastor Robus of God’s Real Church — abused child, former Hells Angel, prison rape victim, two-time mental patient, twice divorced, and successful businessman who left it behind when God appeared ...
San Diego booksellers succumb
Book ends
Amazon’s got everything, but some illusions must be kept alive.
