Last summer in August of 2017, my wife and I were sitting under an umbrella at Torrey Pines State Beach playing backgammon when I noticed a commotion in the water. Straight out from us were …
September 25, 2018
La Jolla Stories
Bodysurfs with dolphins at Torrey Pines
Robert Venturi's columns tucked behind La Jolla bungalow
The columns of the colonnade behind the bungalow are strangely out of place, with the words ‘Contemporary Art’ in red letters jumping out from the white woodwork. Is it a Jeff Koons piece? Well no, …
August 28, 2018
CPR at Marine St. beach
The following was an entry in a young people's writing contest by Charles Hasse, a 16-year-old from Mission Bay High School. The contest entries were published in the Dec. 13, 1984 Reader. I ran down …
August 20, 2018
Photos of stingrays and eating 'em
On the morning of August 7, Ravean Aaron took a photo of a pod of dolphins swim through “hundreds of” stingrays from the sky above Black’s Beach. “I recently received my pilot's license and have …
August 16, 2018
What was that smell near Scripps?
On Wednesday August 1, I caught a whiff of rotten eggs. Facilities workers at Scripps and Birch Aquarium checked gas lines to verify that it wasn’t methane. After about half an hour, Scripps employees spread …
August 7, 2018
Mayor Faulconer's short-term rental idea — pro and con
At the July 16 city council meeting, the usual sea of green (pro-vacation rental) and red (anti-vacation rental) t-shirts will be joined by blue representing Ocean Beach. The Ocean Beach town council has chartered a …
Coastal creatures captured
For the Snapshot Cal Coast, June 13-20, San Diego, a small contingent hit the beach at Scripps Coastal Reserve and another group scoured Sunset Cliffs on a bioblitz. Isabelle Kay of UC San Diego Natural …
July 9, 2018
Nakedly yourself at Black's Beach
For the record, I’m not a nudist. I feel too fat, am too vain; and in my mind, way too hairy. Besides, like most Americans, I’ve got a secret puritan lurking deep inside my liberal …
July 3, 2018
Angry PB residents don’t like mayor’s plan
A meeting turned testy Wednesday night as leaders of three different groups vied for the support of the Pacific Beach Planning Group on their concerns with and opposition to the new plan for short term …
June 29, 2018
Thank the waves
“Would love awesome anything but esp sushi,” read the text. L.A. friends had come to see Carlsbad’s Flower Fields and wanted to meet for dinner in La Jolla. I can rattle off a list of …
May 14, 2018
Yellowfin at the beach in Cabo
Dock Totals Apr 1 – Apr 7: 1,729 anglers aboard 73 boats out of San Diego landings this past week caught 58 bluefin tuna, 63 yellowtail, 5 calico bass, 18 sand bass, 6,363 rockfish, 259 …
April 9, 2018
An alternative to Children's Pool
The following comes from the DiveBums site. With all the issues around using Children's Pool, people sometimes use South Casa instead—the other possible entrance to the wonderful shallow, rock reefs off just outside the seawall …
April 2, 2018
Don't tell them you are a reporter
San Diego city officials confirmed that the city has suspended the creation of Maintenance Assessment Districts — but couldn’t find any documentation of that policy shift during the more than four weeks they searched after …
March 22, 2018
Scripps pedestrians in a hurry avoid the bridge
When a Scripps Institution of Oceanography affiliate was hit and injured while crossing La Jolla Shores Drive at Downwind Way in October 2017, staff, faculty, and students had been voicing the need for improvements to …
March 19, 2018
People here are crazy smart
Six years ago this month, Rough Draft Brewing opened as something like the 37th craft brewery in San Diego. Today there are over 150. "I didn't know that we would have 100 breweries open up …
March 15, 2018
Your new mansion has a disco with mirrored ceilings
Listing materials for the massive 14,000-square-foot estate at 2681 Idle Hour Lane, one of a small handful of cul-de-sacs tucked away west of the UC San Diego campus between the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and …
March 7, 2018
Highly acidic bird poop
The 39-foot-tall whale statue that greets visitors at Birch Aquarium just got a mini-makeover. Sea air, sun, chlorine, and “especially bird poop” have taken a toll on the bronze Legacy, a life-size breaching gray whale, …
February 28, 2018
Suspended Sierra Club's appointed leaders back SDSU
The ballot battle over the fate of the city-owned Mission Valley acreage formerly known as Qualcomm Stadium has been notched up again, this time by the San Diego chapter of the Sierra Club, which has …
February 27, 2018
Reason for alarm in SD crosswalks
As the number of pedestrians hit by cars on San Diego streets increases, so, too, will the number of lawsuits that the city will have to fight over dangerous roadways and inadequate crosswalks. According to …
February 22, 2018
Footnotes on assassination of Frank Bompensiero
At the age of 16, Frank "The Bump" Bompensiero moved to San Diego in 1921 and bootlegged liquor during Prohibition. He eventually became a prolific mafia hitman famous for his "Italian rope trick," where he …
February 10, 2018