Mission Valley Stories
A friend scored a pair of tickets to the Chargers’ final preseason game against Seattle. I don’t care much about preseason, but it would give me a chance to check out the Seahawks running back …
“A tiki party is different than a luau,” says Otto von Stroheim, publisher of Tiki News magazine. “Luaus have hula dancers and Hawaiian-style music and a roasted pig. At a tiki party there’s bongo music, …
Two opposing views regarding the ban on brew at San Diego's beaches inadvertently surfaced during the June 25th meeting of the Ocean Beach town council. When Officer David Surwilo, community liaison for the police department's …
Bounded by some 32 freeway lanes carrying a half million vehicles a day, and smack dab in San Diego County’s busiest commercial zone, the San Diego River greenway in Mission Valley offers a surprising bit …
Virginia Casey with chinchilla pelts at Graf’s Firs, Fashion Valley, 1972. In 1940, the daily paper interviewed a local retired druggist who was raising chinchillas. By 1951, 200 San Diegans reportedly had chinchilla farms. A …
"I don't know if you're a visitor," said the woman who approached me, "but I saw you taking pictures and I thought you might like to know the story of the crucifix at the front …
Last week, the Evangelical Philosophical Society held its annual conference (in conjunction with the Evangelical Theological Society) at the Town & Country Convention Center in Mission Valley. On Friday afternoon, a crowd gathered in the …
If you ever suffer insomnia, you might play the streaming video of a San Diego City Council meeting. While you're at it, check whether the minutes of the council meeting are accurate. The video of …
Thirty Years Ago The last remaining farm in Mission Valley has come to look almost invincible over the years. The farm is the one east-west commuters know so well, the one Interstate 8 bisects, east …
Shocked shoppers see a woman fall to her death from a parking structure at Parkway Plaza in El Cajon. Was she pushed? In Chollas View, a mother loses the second of her two sons to …
The band would play the stadium (which would be renamed Qualcomm) on October 7. A year earlier, Emotional Rescue topped the charts, but the Stones didn't tour because Mick Jagger and Keith Richards weren't getting …
"NEXT Church," read the painted sign running along one wall of the converted industrial space: poured concrete floors, concrete-block walls painted in muted red and yellow, a canopied stage in one corner, and a '60s-era …
On June 21, the first day of summer, San Diego First Assembly Women's Ministries held their first meeting of Hot Summer Nights ("Fun in the Son"). The walls in the spacious meeting room were tan, …
At the Belly Up Tavern I overheard some girls talking about a Memorial Day party. I asked them if I could go. Two of them looked at me as if I was crazy, but one …
Bali Thai Café just celebrated its first anniversary. That makes it an exception to the very short shelf life of most Indonesian restaurants in California, which typically open with bare-bones budgets and go under before …
Tiffany was turning 30 and hosting a party in the clubhouse of her Mission Valley apartment complex. I got there a few minutes after 7 p.m. as she was setting up, so I shot pool …
A wave of late afternoon light gushed through the great arched window at the head of First United Methodist as the congregation waited to begin Vespers on Ash Wednesday. It washed over the white-tiled high …
Denomination: nondenominational Address: Dave & Buster's, 2931 Camino Del Rio North, Mission Valley Founded locally: January 2004 Senior pastor: Chad Furlong Congregation size: 140 Staff size: two, plus two volunteers Sunday school enrollment: TK Annual …
I got a call from Susie in P.B. who was turning 28 and planning a holiday party. She requested toys be brought for the Toys for Tots program. I went out and bought a toy …
In early September the plan to build the Pacific Coast Office Building into Mission Valley's southern hillside sounded innocuous enough to community watchdog Randy Berkman. Then the building's developer, Robert Pollack, sent him a mid-October …
I was invited to a tailgate party a few weeks ago in the parking lot of Qualcomm Stadium. Although the choice of tailgate food wouldn't have been mine -- sushi -- they had everything else …
I went to a CD release party this summer for a group called Four Eyes. I had seen them play at Humphrey's, and they reminded me of the Beatles, Squeeze, and Elvis Costello. The party …
Over the past 50 years, Mission Valley, once home to dairy farms and truck gardens, has grown into one of the most developed and congested parts of the city. The commercial direction of the valley …
Never say never, but a hurricane like the one that hit New Orleans is unlikely to flood San Diego anytime soon. The San Diego River, however, is another story. After a rainstorm last winter, the …
In America, everybody is Irish one day a year. Planning for St. Patrick's Day, I headed for what I thought was a new Irish pub. Well, bother and begorrah, I was wrong on both counts. …