It’s an odd feeling. I’m standing here at 12th and Imperial, waiting for my stretch limousine, aka the number 901 bus, when I spot these gentlemen. And gentlemen they are: they’re dressed in white shirts, …

Whew. Something has been made right in La Jolla. For the last decade, everybody I’ve spoken to has talked as if a little piece of this town’s soul had been ripped out. A piece that …

Video:GOLDEN DREAMS: Escondido doula gets a taste of celebritySometimes, you get reminders that Escondido is still a country town in some ways. Like today, this gal comes into one of the coolest coffee hangouts here, …

Video:GOLDEN DREAMS: Looking back at race relations in CoronadoWas Coronado San Diego’s most culturally diverse city, back in more racially divided days? The city’s historical society would like you to think so: it’s holding a …

Video:COVER: Why parrots, godwits, and bushtits are so good for San Diego“Get there by dusk,” says my friend Larry, “and prepare yourself for a whole lotta noise.”Photograph by Jim Brown, iStock / Getty ImagesSo here …

Video:GOLDEN DREAMS: Two Mary Beths break out, buy a truck camper, and hit the road.What are the odds? Two women sitting next to each other. Strangers. They introduce themselves.“Hi. I’m Mary Beth.”“Well actually, I’m Mary …

Hanna Daly is putting finishing touches on the larger-than-life dancing lady she has painted, freehand, on the alley-side wall of a dance studio in Coronado. It’s the kind of mural Daly can knock off on …

Tuna found in the desert? OK, fair enough: that’s tuna, as in the Spanish for prickly pear, the fruit of the nopal. Ken Factor and I have spotted an ancient cactus tree growing close to …

Talking of boy wonders: Shay Horay is known as Rubber Band Boy, or the Master of Rubberbandology, or The One-Man Rubber Band. He was my last interview before returning from Aotearoa-New Zealand (as it is …

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Robert Schumann, Edric Saphire? The kid is 17, a high school senior, and the Mainly Mozart organization commissioned him to write a work honoring Mozart. Tonight, he’s here at the Conrad Prebys …

“My job is to bring this unity of consciousness through a woman who has practiced for over 50 years daily, and how I have experienced my gradual awakening.” The woman Guru Rattana (it means “jewel”) …

San Ysidro – where it's cheaper for kids to live in a motelWe pass the Las Americas Outlet Mall, where upscale shoppers and Border Patrol agents coalesce. It’s here, across the street, that a completely …

It’s a sunny morning. Scot Walker and I are sipping coffee. He’s got one of those humor-ready faces that a pretty good life on the road gives you. He’s a roadie. And it’s been a …

Original Artists Work to Restore Chicano Park MuralsArmando Nuñez is touching up a skeleton. He and I are standing amid blue scaffolding beside the wall of an I-5 ramp to the San Diego–Coronado Bridge on …

Last year I was the youngest player in U.S. Championship"I played Nakamura. He was 18 years old at the time, at the 2005 U.S. Championship. His name is Hikaru Nakamura. And he's the top U.S. …

He loves the people no one wants"I'm used to voices downtown, of agony and pain and just dysfunction, and I had the window down a little so I could hear. I look and there's a …

The murderous saga of Andrew CunananWhen Vulgar Favors, Maureen Orth's book about the murderous saga of Andrew Cunanan, hit the best-seller lists last month, a national audience was offered a sinister portrait of San Diego, …

La Jolla 1962 Dressed in long trousers and boat shoes and a white Lacoste tennis shirt, I accompanied Toby across Vista del Mar and Neptune Place to the Pump House and down concrete steps to …

Bridges of San Diego County I drive the roads of San Diego County with an agenda: You don’t know when you might spot another canyon dancer, a concrete Nureyev. I hike gorges and find them …

Ten Reasons Why You’d Have to Be Crazy to Live in Borrego Springs To paraphrase what Gertrude Stein once said of Oakland, there is no there there — no people (population: about 3000), no movie …

Linda Vista in conflict with itself Linda Vista is San Diego’s cucuy room. People drive past it on the way to somewhere. Sometimes they go there for a specific place like Skate World but don’t …

“McKinley Elementary’s library hadn’t been updated since 1970,” says interior designer Heather Vitti Pruett. “Fifty years!” Then, back in 2018, Pruett suddenly found herself in a position to do something about that, after she enrolled …

“It’s almost like an infant,” says Jonathan Bickoff. It’s a refreshingly simple take on one of the most tortured topics currently getting bandied about among La Jolla’s digi-pioneering crowd: AI. Artificial Intelligence: an evolution-leaping phenomenon …

“I live in the Maori world,” says Te Mairiki Williams. He says this because I have asked him about his moko, the tattoo that covers his face. I asked because this is not a usual …

It’s an odd feeling, meeting in a five-million-year-old crater halfway down the South Island of New Zealand, and then hearing a San Diego song blast in your ears. I’m in Lyttelton, a harbor in New …

Popped down (up?) to my once-upon-a-time homeland, New Zealand, after a lo-ong time away. To, uh, marry the beautiful Diane. We have been talking about it on and off for years. Finally feel mature enough, …

Take two Titan Krios microscopes, a whole lot of viruses, and a sharp scientist, and you have full-on war against immune-disease. I’m still in the thrall of this local research tank which is looking into …

Behind the Border Fire fire wall Behind the lines at the Border Fire, neighbors, volunteers, county animal-control crews, and Border Patrol agents are caring for the animals left behind during the fire's sudden spread. By …

Dr. Sonia Sharma makes no bones about it: when she’s studying immune diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, she concentrates on women, not men. She is also one of those vital, loquacious academics who actually likes …

“Watch your step,” says the girl. “Watch your…oh dear. You okay sir?” I brush off dust, drink, pride, and reply, “Yes of course.” And it’s true — except for the pride part. I’m with a …

Gregg Fajardo noticed the Bowie knife on the man’s hip as the man sat there in the Mira Mesa library. Fajardo is telling me this in Clayton’s Coffee Shop in Coronado. We both came in …

“I’m not super happy,” says the normally cheery astronaut Bill Shepherd. “It’s been 50 years, and we have not been back to the moon. We have three space shuttles that don’t fly any more, that …

“Are the DT’s finally setting in?” I mumble to my friend Carlos, “or did you see what I saw?” It’s this giant…pink…poodle, walking along the avenue. We’re frozen, mid-mug, unable to continue with our morning …

“Handfasting,” says Donna Lynn, “is an ancient way to get married.” My novia Diane and I are interested. We are engaged. We want to know if we can get married this way. “It is going …

Idyllic Spanish Village shaken by mystery stabbing “Then I heard male voices outside on the patio. I didn’t look up because I didn’t want to be noticed. The voices moved left to right. I never …

“All my tuxes are in Texas,” says this gent. He laughs a Texas-size laugh. I’m looking to rent a tux for myself. It’s not something I’ve done a lot. But there’s a lot to it. …

Ukraine? Bohdan Zukewycz has seen it all before. “My parents were slaves of the Nazi regime. What happened was, Hitler started cattle-car [transporting] people to work in his factories, so young German people could go …

Grief is like carbon monoxide At this point, this article is going to seem to go seriously astray, so I might as well come clean. My aim is not simply to write about hospice, though …

Orchids and Onions — 20 years later The ’95 jury opened by dubbing 1976 Orchid-winner Rancho Bernardo “the ultimate suburb.” Nicoloff and Collins concurred, calling it “one of the few really successful and well-planned new …

The Loud Adios I wrote a story about her, called it ‘The Blue Fox.” and decided not to give it to the singles’ magazine. The publisher probably would’ve turned it down. It wasn’t dirty enough …

Is it just me? Harken to KPBS: “Thank you for listening and supporting KPBS…” This is KPBS, member-supported radio, with assets of, what, $75 million? You do a double take. Say what? “Thank you for …

“Hey, Eduardo!” Pedro, 16, shouts out some joking conversation that’s way too fast for my halting Spanish. Luckily, he’s talking to his three pals and not me. The four of them, all 16-year-olds, have plopped …

Something happened last month when I went down to New Zealand. I fell in love. Again. It was Diane. I had known her in student days. She was bright, shy, that unexpected laugh, those unexpected …

I’m trying to write this aboard the #1 bus. Ha! Judder judder judder judder JUDDER! You have to wonder how these buses hold together. The road surface rides like a bulldozer had grooved the tarmac …

“I remember when Nestor [Judkins, friend, famous skateboarder, do-gooder] first called me and said the words ‘Let’s build a skateboard park in Pakistan.’ My first thoughts were, ‘Can we go there?’ I didn’t know much …

Waves crash on the edge of the Tasman Sea. Kapiti Island blocks a clean horizon that stretches to Australia. And the ghosts of 20,000 Camp Pendleton Marines who formed the “friendly invasion” of 1942 feel …

Two things you notice about Chris Dent: He’s albino, and he plays a Taylor guitar, straight from the Taylor factory in El Cajon, California. Chris happens to be onstage right now, here in Christchurch, New …

“We are sisters under the skin,” says George Andrews. I’m visiting my friend during a lightning visit to Auckland, New Zealand. George is a leading commentator on the politics of the Pacific. Here, he’s talking …

She’s wearing her red jacket. It flaps around her as she jerkily spins around and around. Makes her look as she must have when Roger first fell in love with her. He has a play …

American Bully Contest judge James Roman has his own conviction about why pit bulls have a stigma attached to them: it’s their owners’ fault. “The stigma around pit bulls is the owners,” he says. He …