Picture Story
I arrived before the North Park Music Fest was scheduled to begin on Saturday, June 6. I was early, but the North Park Garage was already all filled up, so …
On Friday May 1 (AKA May Day, which celebrates the return of spring), there were a number of locations promoted by Rise Up San Diego for May Day protests across …
An estimated 40,000 people were marching throughout San Diego over the last weekend in March, with protestors carrying signs expressing multiple outrages directed at Donald Trump, his administration, and his …
On the last Saturday of February, the 28th, the weekly Action For Iran demonstration transformed into to a celebration of United States military action. Since January, demonstrators have been showing …
Picture Story
I took the trolley to AnimeFest 2026, taking place on Saturday, February 14 - Valentine's Day - at UCSD's Price Center in La Jolla. At the Old Town trolley station, there were two people in costume, so I asked …
Only a few hundred people are estimated to have attended the most recent Action For Iran rally against Iran's government amid its most recent violent crackdowns on protestors in that country. Once again, demonstrators demanded …
Flyers billed the January 24 afternoon rally in Clairemont as Action For Iran - In Solidarity With the Fallen Heroes Of Iran. For several consecutive weeks, demonstrators have been showing opposition to repression in Iran. Well over a thousand …
"The San Diego Iranian community plans to hold another demonstration," according to advance notices about the January 17 Stand For Iran protest demonstration in Clairemont. I found out about it through one of the groups …
Throughout the end of the week and weekend, protesters rallied downtown against ICE and the Trump administration, with several hundred people carrying signs and chanting. Protests were also held around the city in Mira Mesa, …
An estimated two hundred people attended the No War on Venezuela/Stop the Bombings protest on Saturday, January 3, many of them joining chants of “No War on Venezuela!” and demanding peace. I found out about …
Anime 619, a fan convention aimed at anime fans, happened November 22-23 at the San Diego Convention Center. It competed directly with San Diego Anime Con, which took place November 21-23 at the Handlery Hotel in Mission Valley. The …
Presented by Silk Road Productions, the creators and producers of Fangaea Con and AnimeLand, San Diego Anime Con took place November 21-23 at the Handlery Hotel in Mission Valley. Councilmember Stephen Whitburn of San Diego District …
On Monday morning (December 12), Scott Basile was set up with an unusual camera to take photos of the pier in Ocean Beach. “I was just about to pour another plate and get it rolling …
John Stewart Harbison, c. 1870s. The Pennsylvania beekeeper brought his first shipment of bees to California in 1857. He settled near Sacramento and had such success that many others tried their hand at honey production. …
Christmas card by J.M.F. Haase, 1929. “Joseph Malta Frederick Haase joined the Navy in 1911 and was chief photographer at North Island Naval Air Station for much of his career in the 1920s and 1930s,” …
Froebel “Fro” Brigham, namesake of the Fro Brigham Preservation Band, 1981. In the 1950s, Brigham booked the Creole Palace in downtown San Diego. Billie Holiday, Count Basie, and Duke Ellington may have performed paying gigs …
Author Max Miller (left) and Colonel Gregory “Pappy” Boyington, a Marine fighter ace who shot down 26 planes. In this 1952 photo, Miller prepares for the annual La Jolla Rough Water Swim with what appears …
Robert Golden and family, 1953. The son of local construction magnate Morley H. Golden, Robert took over as company president in 1956. Though Robert Golden’s 1991 Union obit emphasized his philanthropic endeavors and love of …
Anthropologists study ancient skeletal remains found at La Jolla Cove, 1960. No indexed information pertaining to this discovery is available at the downtown library, but prehistoric bones have been found “in the Cliffs at La …
John G. Capron, c. 1870. When he died in 1914 at age 86, Capron’s obituaries credited him as “the last of the four men who had most to do with building the San Diego area …
Floyd Smith and Larry Gordon, 1963. The duo started Gordon and Smith Surfboards four years earlier. A local surfboard shaper, who did fiberglass work for Gordon and Smith in the ’70s, says for each fin …
Beer garden at City Brewery, circa 1870s. In 1868, the same year Austrian brew-master Christian Doblier established San Diego’s first brewery in Spring Valley (Chollas Valley Brewery), City Brewery opened on the northwest corner of …
William H. Carlson in 1893, newly elected as San Diego’s youngest mayor at age 28. He’s credited with luring the Navy to town, raising money for the jetty at the mouth of San Diego Bay, …
Allen Glick, 1979. In the ’70s, Glick had a real estate office in San Diego near Banker’s Hill. Around the same time (according to Wikipedia), Glick “was the front man for the syndicate-controlled Stardust Casino …
Members of the Goodwin clan, Fourth of July, 1923. That’s Charles holding up his straw hat. He had a clothes-cleaning and dyeing business on 16th Street, downtown. Among his children were two boys...one named Odie, …
In 1963, District 5 county supervisor candidate Al Hogan posed with peanuts. Walnuts, celery, and carnations have all had their high-production years in San Diego County, but peanuts… In 1878, a Captain Porter “made a …
Eldon Carl, “Fastest Gun in the West” and a San Diego County sheriff’s deputy. A 1964 Union article noted that “he has three times won the championship contest in quick-draw combat shooting...one of six combat …
Spreckels Theatre, c. 1915. Signage also advertises “Vaudeville Hippodrome.” Clarence Alan McGrew’s 1922 book City of San Diego and San Diego County mentioned, “In 1915 the Hippodrome vaudeville started to appear at the Spreckels Theatre,” …
Bing Crosby (left, in the white jacket and straw hat) at the Del Mar Racetrack’s setting of a memorial stone, 1936. (The track opened the following year.) To the right of the hoist chain, the …
Senator George McGovern (left of center), 1972. He swung through town that year in his presidential campaign against Richard “Dick” Nixon. A Democrat and WWII combat veteran, McGovern’s election would have amounted to a referendum …
Excavation of the Spreckels Theatre building at 121 Broadway, c. 1908. Sugar millionaire John D. Spreckels is said to have had it constructed to coincide with the Panama Canal’s opening. (San Diego vied to be …
Dogs’ Beach in Ocean Beach, 1974. The city council got tough on dogs that year. In two weeks’ time, 232 citations were issued to owners, “the toughest crackdown on stray dogs in county history,” according …
Jacob Bergman, 1876. In 1937, the Tribune noted that “friends affectionately called him ‘Dutch’…. [He] held the reins in 1858 on the first westbound Butterfield coach to cross the first western desert span of the …
Gail Jones at the downtown Woolworth’s store, 1972. Jones and a friend, waitresses at the store’s café, were in the dressing room changing their clothes when management locked up at 6 p.m. and went home …
Beth Bennett, manager of local Department of Motor Vehicles, 1965. She began working at the DMV in 1946. Bennett left San Diego in 1961, when Governor Pat Brown made her deputy director of the state …
Protest at UCSD, 1966. That’s Lowell Bergman onstage (with sunglasses). A student of philosopher and social critic Herbert Marcuse, Bergman went on to become a producer on 60 Minutes (where his exposé on the tobacco …
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 …
Home of the first Methodist church in San Diego, c. 1890. Located on the northeast corner of Fourth Avenue and Broadway, the church was first a wooden structure built in 1870 on land donated by …
Abandoned bicycles in police possession, 1960. That year, the police began a drive to get owners to license their bikes — to “thwart thefts,” according to our local daily. “Owners of unlicensed bicycles may be …
Jay Curia and his surfboard trailer, 1963. A 1963 editorial in our local daily stated, “Our tired shanks are a little too flabby to allow us the privilege of taking up surfing.... Now is the …
In August of 1961, a homicide detective (left) brought in a suspect to face murder charges after a woman's body was found in the Mission Bay Channel. A newspaper editorial in 1961 noted that the …
Before the Charger Girls, the team and fans had Chargettes. Here they are in 1961. According to a posting on glorifythepast.com, in 1970, "A lot of Bolts were caught up in an NFL drug scandal, …
Tamzon Feeney outside the Box Office nightclub, 1965. According to our local daily, she and "a band of teenagers have attempted what may be the city's first statue veiling. The 17-foot fiberglass-and-steel statue of a …
Four years ago, usgennet.org issued a report on the cemetery located in Nestor off Saturn Boulevard, near Coronado Avenue. The report indicated that the 20 found gravestones were "unmarked," "broken," "toppled," "disintegrating," "buried," and "vandalized."The …
Mayor Frank Curran (left) and detective William Gore display guns to be dumped at sea, 1968. The mayor had instituted a voluntary gun turn-in program modeled after San Francisco's. SDPD chief O.J. Roed, meanwhile, stated …
Phil Bateman holds a yardstick up to his bumper to show off the clearance of his low-rider, 1959. The previous year, San Diego hosted its first Custom and Hot Rod Show in Balboa Park. About …
Corky Carroll at the 1966 World Surfing Championship contest in O.B. (Australia's Nat Young won.) In recognition of the contest, the mayor proclaimed it "World Surfing Week," and the city council forked over $1495 for …
Shnops and Sheriff Don Amos at Lucky Waller Park in National City, 1974. San Diego County sheriffs have employed dogs for 40 years. The San Diego Police Department's K-9 unit -- the largest in the …
Local martial arts class, 1971. Karate schools multiplied in the 1970s, but in the mid '60s the discipline began getting attention from our local daily. In 1965, it was noted that 11 martial artists wore …
Actress Lita Milan, in a phone booth on Harbor Drive and Market Street, 1958. An aide to Dominican general Rafael Trujillo Jr. seems to be offering counsel. Our local paper learned that Milan fled the …
Crewman and dog of Rafael Trujillo Jr. (son of the Dominican Republic dictator), 1958. When his yacht docked in San Diego, news-gatherers and about 5000 people swarmed the waterfront. Most-desired glimpses included the "dapper," "handsome," …