Out & About
If the Cryptkeeper opened a speakeasy, he’d lurch over to Cherry Bomb first to take notes. Wedged between a laundromat and a taco shop, the Banker’s Hill drinking dungeon sees black brick and red walls …
When in 1853 Admiral Perry and what the Japanese called his “black fleet” (the ships were painted black and their coal-stoked engines puffed black smoke) sailed into Yokohoma Harbor, he couldn’t have known he’d be …
Like caterpillars marching to their own drummers, the rock-ribbed mountain ridges of the Anza-Borrego Desert nose this way and that, eventually finding their roots in the sand-drowned valleys sloping downward into the Salton Basin. The …
Soda Bar opened in late 2008 at the former City Heights location of dubious dive Chasers. Set between a car lot and a Mexican herb shop on El Cajon Boulevard, the bar hosts local and …
One of the largest vernal pools in California (39 acres at maximum capacity) lies in a shallow depression atop near-flat Mesa de Colorado, in southwest Riverside County’s Santa Rosa Plateau Ecological Reserve. Small vernal pools …
The 1915–16 Panama-California Exposition site in Balboa Park is renowned among San Diegans for its incomparably beautiful Spanish-Moorish buildings, its gardens, and the graceful Cabrillo Bridge. That area is the primary destination of the walk …
Rick Lyon taught himself the piano playing to jazz records and drawing from his experience on the accordion. He’s played aboard ships in the Navy, overseas, and at many a bar, lodge, and party. Now …
When Henry Luce launched LIFE magazine in 1936, he was on a storytelling mission. He said he wanted to edit photographs “into a coherent story and harness the main stream of optical consciousness.” He wanted …
The recent purchase of a parcel of land on the east border of the Daley Ranch preserve in Escondido ensures that hikers can now visit boulder-dotted Stanley Peak, a summit that formerly lay just out …
The desolate ridge of Coyote Mountain rises like the dark, furrowed flank of an elephant over the sand-drowned Borrego and Clark valleys in the north part of Anza-Borrego Desert State Park. Scattered amid slabs of …
Established in 1979, the bar on the corner of 30th and Juniper went defunct for a decade in the ’90s and reopened as the Whistle Stop during the summer of 2001 in the heart of …
On the Upper Las Virgenes View Trail, you look down upon the emerald-green (currently, at least) upper drainage of Las Virgenes Creek, a tributary of Malibu Creek whose tentacles reach north into the Simi Hills. …
On its roughly 50-mile course from the mountain crest near Julian to the beach at Del Mar, the combined Santa Ysabel Creek/San Dieguito River courses through several steep and narrow canyons. The lowest of these, …
On December 8, 1854, Papa Pío IX established the dogma of the immaculate conception of Mary. Granted, the publication of a dogma is not very sexy, but for Colombians, the doctrine represents the kindling of …
Indianhead, a 3990-foot promontory perched along the north wall of Borrego Palm Canyon, juts dramatically from the desert floor near Borrego Springs and the Anza-Borrego Desert visitor center. There are several true mountain-climbing routes to …
Crystal-clear skies are visiting us again, as Santa Ana winds swoop down intermittently from the northeast, as cold winds blow from the north, or as high pressure invades the county and lingers here for a …