AIRPORT Drive the 5 from downtown and — boom! — just overhead, an aircraft with a bloated belly screams. Wheels down, tilting for landing, 50 yards between plane and road. Or how about having to …
July 7, 2005
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Stories by Geoff Bouvier
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San Diego: A is for airport, B is for border town, C is for Chargers
Reader writers honor Mom
"Careful, Ma; don't spill your soup," I warned. "First time you spill, that's it — you're going to the home.” Mom's reply was immediate. "I know. I've picked out what I want to take with me."
May 5, 2005
A New Definition of Shine
My mom has always understood: a mother's duty merely begins when she has children. Linda Bouvier took me to heart from the start — to museums when I was two, to symphonies at three -- …
May 5, 2005
Tom Deméré reads the Rose Canyon Fault, the Elsinore Fault, Julian Schist, Friars Road, Mission Gorge, Fossil Canyon
Rocks are for climbing, collecting, throwing, building. They're also full of information, if you can read a rock. Scientists who become fluent in rock — geologists — peruse these old, hard texts and interpret them. …
January 13, 2005
La Costa, Del Mar, Valley Center, Talmadge, Ramona, San Ysidro, Lemon Grove, City Heights, University City, Mission Beach, Julian, Carmel Valley, Scripps Ranch, East Lake, Linda Vista, Serra Mesa
Where I live, no major high-volume road cuts apart the 'hood. People can cross the street without becoming dead. The amoeba-shaped Balboa Park Municipal Golf Course and grid-busting canyons have made a rabbit warren of the streets.
December 30, 2004
Why does no one refer to Mission Beach as “M.B.”?
Mission Beach is one distinctive neighborhood. Of course there's the roller coaster, but I'm thinking of a completely different distinction. I mean that Mission Beach cuts quite the geographical figure. It is a true promontory, …
December 30, 2004
Stephen Traino of Candy Direct doesn't eat many sweets these days
"I was crossing the street in my old hometown of Fairport, New York, to get some candy," Stephen Traino admits, "and the next thing I knew, this car almost hit me because I wasn't even …
December 16, 2004
On the bus from Rosa's Cantina to home sweet Broadway and First
Why buses are better than planes, part one. Flying to El Paso, my plane (ironically, an Airbus) began emitting strange high-frequency blips and unexplainable static from various locations above the passengers' heads. After an air-mile …
December 9, 2004
San Diego restaurant food in late 19th and early 20th centuries
Food's as old as we are. It's impossible to tell whether people have shaped foodstuffs more or food's done more to shape people. The Irish and potatoes, Mexicans and corn, Asians and rice, Norwegians and …
November 24, 2004
Reader men's summer swimsuit Issue
HEY, LADIES! Let's hear it for men! Give a shout-out now to the body masculine! Here's to five o'clock shadows, Adam's apples, square jaws, and rough skin. To testosterone, to the Y chromosome, to the …
July 1, 2004
The sommeliers of San Diego
It's all pretty unusual, when you really think about it. First off, you've got this exclusive fruit (the grape) that grows only in special regions. And then, the whole time that it grows, it’s fussed …
June 3, 2004
Seceret lives of San Diego news anchors
Michael Tuck threads his bathroom tissue over the roll, “definitely over.” For Carol LeBeau’s last meal, she’d eat peanut butter and jelly on fluffy white bread. And Paul Bloom wouldn’t tell me how old he …
May 13, 2004
San Diego –life in towhead land
I’m allowed to write this article only because I’m a 7. I don’t mean that I’m a 7 the way Bo Derek was supposedly a 10. I mean that I’m a 7 on the Natural …
May 6, 2004
Amy Gerstler's Ghost Girl
There’s three dogs and a cat here, so there’s a zoo-like quality. On most days, Benjamin gets up earlier than I do because he has this farm-boy physiology and I don’t. I’m kind of a sleepaholic.
May 6, 2004
Waiters at Tapenade and George's at the Cover plus one from Broken Yolk
Dinner at Tapenade Restaurant is a memorable experience. The cordial ambience, the feel of that which is unmistakably French, and service like a brilliantly engineered heist: the help comes and takes you from your worries, …
March 11, 2004
Neighborhood: small towns of San Diego
I see Asian gang cars some nights, in a long caravan down the Mira Mesa Boulevard. They meet at In-N-Out Burger before heading off for illegal street races on Kearny Villa Road or in Sorrento Valley.
December 24, 2003
Ocean Beach
I’ll take the charming anachronism over the “in thing” any day. Just give me the Flat Earth Society, Elizabethan countesses surfing the Internet, and long-haired hippies on Wall Street. Grant me Kodachromes and unicorns, abaci …
December 24, 2003
Something Stinks In Bird Rock
Who said the words and the music were supposed to go together? Just when the sleepy situation of local business had begun to awaken in the Bird Rock area of La Jolla, the residents and …
December 4, 2003
Party's Over
Pacific Beach compresses roughly 10,000 people into its five square miles. It's a tight community, with many sober families and older residents living alongside a large contingent of college-age drinkers and partiers.
November 20, 2003
P.B. Rec Center – no coaches, no whistles, no uniforms
Listen. I’m a basketball extremist. Maybe it’s the rhythmic, elastic whump (ring)s, whump (ring)s — thuds resounding echoing overtones — leading me into reverie every time, the odd expectant tempos, down the block, passing my …
November 6, 2003
Best Bounces
There must be some discrepancy. Word on the street has it that bouncers come big and dumb, like unnecessary monsters set on ruining our nights out. "Bouncers only get those jobs because they're naturally violent …
October 23, 2003
Mystery Bug Hits Bay Jocks
Having a dip in Mission Bay is less difficult than wrestling ocean swells with the mighty Pacific: the pacified Mission Bay waters boast warmer temperatures, smaller waves, shallower beaches, and fewer rocks; and there are …
October 9, 2003
Dirty Water
Way back in English class they called it "situational irony." There in the tiny, tranquil breakers, almost waveless, pint-sized children frolicked. They scooped dark mud and tossed it, wrestled, and held each other's adolescent heads …
October 2, 2003
Second Only To the Cowboy
In San Diego, airport cabbies rest at the top of the public-transportation heap. Their fares are more regular — and generally larger — than those of mere city cabbies. Plus, the airport more or less …
September 4, 2003