Golden Dreams
Chris Ahrens and his Encinitas buddies had this crazy idea. “Let’s just give it away. Let’s go out to a crossroads one morning and give cash away to anyone who needs it. No strings! Like, …
A few weeks ago, I wrote about a sign that’s been cropping up around my neighborhood of late. A few days ago, I spotted a rejoinder. On the one hand, I tend to agree that …
In a Dickensian back room behind the tobacconists Racine & Laramie, in Old Town Plaza, Geoffrey Mogilner rifles through the contents of his high security safe. “It’s somewhere here. I would never put it on …
Kate McGrath can’t wait to get back to Paris, virus or no virus. “I live right around the corner from the Pompidou Center in a building that is partly 200 years old. I am at …
The back of Amethel Parel-Sewell’s business card for Light Chasers (a learning community of photographers) lists 22 elements of a photograph, from Composition and Color to Tones and Texture, with stops at Emotion, Light, and …
They look so glamorous: transparent geodesic domes with tables for six inside, ruby-winking wine glasses, plates of food, beautiful people laughing and dining. And these “igloos” have been billed as safe, but also warm, outside …
The USS Midway is open for business again. And down below in her bowels, lives are being lived and relived. “The only comparison with the Battle of Midway in 1942,” says this elderly gent sitting …
“I’ve seen it around,” says my neighbor Nick about the sign in his front yard, “and every time, I liked it, because it pretty much says what I believe. We’re all just human beings, and …
In The Simpsons: Season 7, Episode 3, “Home Sweet Homediddly-Dum-Doodily,” Homer and Marge lose custody of their children and have to attend a parenting class in order to get them back. At one point, the …
Just up from the shipwreck, the Shark Bait Mamas are counting down to the music they use to, uh, swim to. Dani Grady leans over and switches on a recorder. “1, 2, 3, 4, 5, …
“Property of the United States of America. Seized from the USSR Red Star Syndicate.” The solid wooden info plaque is screwed into the deck near the bow of the shipwreck. Thanks to last week’s storm, …
“We’d start off most days with rubber band fights. We were 12-year-old kids stuck in the bodies of 30-to-50-year-old men.” This is Terry Naughton, teacher, Olympic weightlifter, and Disney animator (think Hercules, drawing Hercules), and …
Greg Maness is throwing down his grape shears and selling his vineyard, just at a time when some are saying San Diego’s wine industry is taking off. “It’s a wonderful place,” says this owner of …
Artist Andres Serrano’s 1987 photograph Piss Christ served as my proper introduction to the meaning of free speech. Serrano, a Catholic, intended it to be a comment on the commercialization of Christian icons — the …
“At 6pm, the police came. They started to kick everyone off the beach. Do it every day. But one man got up and ran. He leaps around the police vehicle, then dives into the water …
I started writing for the Reader 25 years ago; Joseph Mitchell is one of the big reasons why I wanted to do so. The summer before my senior year of college, I visited Thidwick’s Books …