This happens at the Adams Avenue Street Fair. I’m walking past a storefront with its door and windows wide open. And twanging from inside, the sounds of a guy torturously plucking out the notes of …

It’s a Friday night at Nate’s Garden Grill. The Drought Tolerant Bluegrass Band is singing their down home version of “The House of the Rising Sun.” Bill Tall comes across from the City Farmers Nursery …

“What was that?” says my friend Mary. She’s looking up. A golden bird with huge wings cruises over us. It finally settles in a Jeffrey Pine tree down in the gully. “Chicken Hawk? Red Tail?” …

Getting aboard is an act of recklessness in itself. The bouncy gangplank is not attached to anything. You edge your way over like a tightrope walker. Men and women crisscross with paint brushes, drills, mysterious …

It’s the night before La Vuelta, on Logan Avenue. Jesse Amaro is up a ladder finishing a mural, a kind of permanent poster for the Barrio Logan festival built around low rider culture. Amaro has …

I spot two shining rivulets coursing down my friend Mary’s cheeks. Tears? She’s listening intently to the lanky Episcopalian pastor, Colin Mathewson. “Today,” the reverend says, “we welcome Constantin among us.” There’s a silence. I …

Phuoc Nguyen, a guy I was standing next to on Fifth Avenue watching the street’s Comic-Con crowds last month, might turn out to be a caped hero himself. He’s a cyber crime-fighter. “You could say …

“I worked out that in Europe we would need $300 a day for 126 days,” says Gabi Robledo. She was 16 at the time, the planner of the family. “That meant we had to save …

Where was the heart of Comic-Con 2019? Out on Fifth Avenue, where the glorious amateurs play. “I am Colonel Richard Ferrel of Her Majesty’s Coldstream Guards at your service, suh!” says this guy dressed in …

“I don’t know who I am,” says Gene Miller. “I feel like that saying: red on the outside, white on the inside.” Right now, it’s 100 degrees on the outside. We have just come from …

Roberts Ranch Opens its Gates to Hikers Thanks to the crusading efforts of Descanso cabinet-maker Duncan McFetridge, affectionately known by some as the "Robin Hood of Cleveland Forest," two inholdings (islands of private property inside …

“I was there,” says James Rowles. He’s just seen the teaser for this week’s movie release, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, called “Quentin Tarantino’s love letter to 1960s LA.” “It shows the address, the …

Friar Donaldo Rosete Garcia stands by the old brick arch that frames California’s first pepper tree. “I shall miss this place,” he says, “I came here to learn English. Now I must return to Jalisco.” …

Okay, I was eavesdropping. I could hear this prominent realtor, Aileen Oya, complaining to a friend about State Senate Bill 329, which would stop landlords rejecting prospective tenants solely because they are Section 8 or …

“‘It was a Thursday morning in January of 1911, I was 13 at the time, and that particular morning I was floating around in my rowboat looking for ghost shrimp in the Spanish Bight.’” This …

Kristin Beck saw them coming. Twenty of them. “Navy SEALs. Leather jackets. Motorcycles. I knew what this was going to be about. ‘If you don’t leave, we’re going to beat the shit out of you.’” …

Azam Ahmed, the New York Times bureau chief for Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean, was in town recently, after traveling the entire US-Mexico border, from Brownsville/Matamoros to San Diego/Tijuana. He talked about how it …

“I want to start my own network.” Melvin Parker reckons it was these words that won him a scholarship to study broadcasting. But that turned out to be just the beginning of a two-decade struggle …

It seems like a set-piece charity event. Wounded veterans playing wheelchair basketball against a team of Coronado City employees, and another crew from Loews’ Coronado Hotel staff. The mayor has turned up, the ex-mayor has …

You can hear him long before you see him, the low honking sounds, a block away. This is Sunday night, Avenida Revolución, TJ, crowded. Jonathan Antonio Martínez Machain sits cross-legged on the sidewalk with a …

It’s an odd feeling, driving along State Route 76, to come across this ghost settlement, a few miles west of the Pala Mission. “Be careful of snakes,” my friend Kim shouts, “and people!” I’ve persuaded …

The little boy was hanging in a pear tree, with a rope around his chest, crying. The rest of his family had ropes around their necks. They were dead. The rebel Gani Beg came down …

Right next to the harpists’ colony, you spot an odd sight. At first, among the trees, it looks like an RV park. But then you realize: there’s no RV in here. It’s all houses. Lilliputian …

I’m halfway up Mount Laguna, walking off the Sunrise Highway into a little house on the edge of the forest. Through the gate, up redwood steps, through another gate. An elderly lady appears at the …

Pablo Cantua picks up the phone. “Hey man: Want to play Antarctica? I can get you the gig.” “Antarctica? Haven’t heard of that bar.” “No man. Not a bar, the continent.” And so began the …

My friend Joe and I are standing at the edge of the water on Coronado’s Central Beach. He’s a surfer. I’m a body surfer. “So do waves come in batches?” I ask him. “Can you …

Dave Franta lives your California dream. He surfs pretty-much full time. He can, because after 29 years as a firefighter, he has retired. He’s 59, looks 39, and doesn’t seem to have a worry in …

It’s a shivery night here in Barrio Logan. I’ve just come across these kids huddling with Anishka Lee-Skorepa in an empty lot often used for markets and performances. A small crowd waits on the sidewalk. …

Steve Wampler became famous when he somehow scaled El Capitan in Yosemite even though he uses a wheelchair. On Friday September 17, 2010, with help from a support team, he became the first person with …

As much as we’d like to think so, sometimes you hear things you’d rather not. Got a bit of a shock at the Campo Santo the other day. I was walking through San Diego’s second …

Jamie Sorenson knows suicides. She’s written a book on it, Why You Tried to Kill Yourself. And in the Navy, she’s counseled thousands. But when it comes to advising Coronado bridge suicide-prevention groups, she’s surprisingly …

This is my friend Ronda’s idea. “Come on down! Sneaky Tiki Ukulele night! Fast Times! Clairemont Drive. Bring your uke!” Except in the end, flu hits her and she isn’t going to be plucking no …

Victor Vasquez holds his head in his hands. His white parakeet Ginger sits on his shoulder. Coocooberry, his 25-year-old red-lored green Amazon parrot, sits atop his cage, looking at Vasquez, unblinking, silent. “It’s really painful,” …

The monk cuts across the courtyard to where we’re staring up at Wat Lao Buddharam, here on 44th Street in Chollas View. “Can I help you?” Soon he is inviting us to come look inside. …

“Just let it go, let it flow, kind of like life,” says Tony Trowbridge. He’s painting a watercolor of what he sees right here on Orange Avenue in Coronado. Quick, deft, light movements, mixed with …

"I want Scott Peters' job." So says Lucas Cannon. “I know I can do it better. I have been training all my life for this.” But wait. Cannon is a barman here at a South …

Can music be a cure? Letitia Rogers says yes, in the right circumstances. “In my personal life, music was a great way to get to know people,” she says. She’s a San Diego-based Hollywood movie …

I’m like everybody else on the street. We’re bending over, craning our necks to see inside. It’s like a rusty version of every getaway car you ever saw in movies such as Bonnie and Clyde. …

“Let me show you something,” says Gary Harper. It’s around nine on a Thursday night. We’re both taking a moment out on the sidewalk away from the music at Border X in Barrio Logan. I …

Rosie Gutierrez is 33, looks 23, and is not easily dissuaded. She’s a trainee nurse, wife, mother, works in a restaurant to pay the bills, and, oh, by the way, believes that the earth is …

Michael Schmid has decided to end his life. I first met Michael at the Café Madrid in Coronado. First thing you notice are his electric-blue eyes. The next is his soft voice, which makes you …

I spot him walking his bike along the avenue, downtown Coronado, Sunday morning. Blue and white Hawaiian shirt, jeans, spikey gray hair, Beach Cruiser bike, heading for a coffee at Café 1134. I’d asked to …

“The Hondurans aren’t bad, but their effect is ba-ad,” says Jorge. He’s driving me in his taxi from downtown Tijuana to the caravan’s rained-out encampment. “Now, I wait two hours for a job. It used …

You don’t have to do anything this holiday season. Despite what the song says, you don’t have to deck the halls, join the chorus, or don any sort of gay apparel. You don’t have to …

Half past 10, Sunday night. Coronado. Just happen to walk into this parking lot outside an eatery called “Nado Republic.” Two men are standing in the lot’s shadows. One has black eye-liner and black polish …

The young man in his sampot chong kraben picks up a red traffic cone and uses it as a loudspeaker. “Let’s go!” He’s launching the parade around the temple grounds, kicking off Loi Krathong, the …

“Longevity!” says Mr. Evans. “That’s the thing. Longevity: I come in here, and it’s familiar, welcoming, comfortable, like home. Like $2 beers on Thirsty Thursday. Still. Price unchanged! And Loni? Don’t get her mad. She’s …

“Donald Sheckler always told me, ‘If you find schist, there’s gold somewhere nearby.’” Jim looks at the piece of schist rock he’s just kicked out of the dirt here, halfway up Mine Canyon. It’s a …

Drums, giants, and Mother GooseStargazing in Anza-Borrego652 Palm Canyon DriveBorrego SpringsWinter FunIllustration by Ted SkirvanThis year, Anza-Borrego Desert State Park was officially designated an International Dark Sky Community, thanks to years of concerted effort to …

“Here,” says Hugo Castro. “Put it under the branches, in shade, but where they can see it.” A gecko darts out. I lean over. I’m expected to dash off a little note on the bottle …