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Stories by Geoff Bouvier

San Diego men look at selves in swimsuits

Men's Summer Swimsuit Issue Nowadays, whenever I occasion to strip down to my swimwear, my own interior monologue pesters me, "Are you standing up straight? Is your stomach tucked in? Are there zits on your …

March 27, 2022
San Diego – city of shame, University Avenue, roommates from hell, writers write about moms

Roommates from Hell I walked outside to the storage door. I pushed on the door and opened it. I saw the rope around John’s neck and John’s face looking at me. I screamed and ran …

December 5, 2021
Pt. Loma's rich Portuguese, who would live on Mt. Soledad, OB's motorhome gypsies

Tunaville Times Crew members, nearly three-quarters of whom were Portuguese, addressed each other in the idioms of their native villages while they laid the huge black purse seine nets on the docks. Nautical designers and …

July 17, 2021
San Diego by the alphabet, letters from Jim Jones victims, local criminals who lift weights

ABCs of SD 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 …

December 13, 2020
San Diego's gay bathhouses, wild life of our foreign cabbies, best light in the city

Bathhouse Quagmire "I was in those San Francisco bathhouses in the late 1970s," says James Hartline, an HIV-positive Hillcrest man who is campaigning to get San Diego's three bathhouses shut down. "Those bathhouses were a …

November 23, 2020
Race blending at San Diego beaches, who does best Afro hair, Mitchell family

It's Not a Race Thing... It's Style Jordan, 18, is black, and I saw him sporting swim trunks and sunglasses and hanging out on the beach with his white friend Alex, also 18. "There's pressure …

November 21, 2020
Lakeside's 7-foot man, 1969's first MLB Padres, San Diego State football scandal

Lakeside's Big Man There are roughly six million boys between the ages of 16 and 18 living in the United States. There are approximately 26,400 high schools and close to that number of starting centers …

November 7, 2020
Your mom has cancer, your love is in prison, the difficulty of twins

Mom's Cancer A comic exorcises Bryan Fies’s demons. If your mom were diagnosed with cancer, how would you deal with it? Comic creator Brian Fies decided to use sequential art to help cope and deal …

November 1, 2020
Internet love, the Mitchells' 30-year marriage, mom to an unusual child

How Bob and Amy and Chris and Samantha and Ted and Roy and Kurt and Becky Found Love on the World Wide Web Passion by the gigabyte. BOB | Age: 35 Q How did you …

October 26, 2020
How Otay changed, secret TJ gardens, Mission Valley's future

Otay Dreams Before 50,000 homes. In 1954 I sat on the school bus every day next to my best friend, Mark Robson. The ride home from Montgomery Elementary School in Otay was a straight shot …

October 24, 2020
Reader writers' music picks, San Diego's history of punk, singer bred in TJ's Zona Norte

Soundtrack: Reader writers tell what music they would take to a deserted island The Woes Of A Woman In Love — Barbarella; Notes Give Pathos to Clouds — Laura McNeal; Trouble Man — Dodie Bellamy; …

October 19, 2020
San Diego fishing life, dirty work, tools of the trade

Tools of the Trade The implements for bringing home the bacon. Have your friends and neighbors looked weighed down, put upon, or bent low to the ground lately? Perhaps they are! After all, many of …

October 17, 2020
Orchid zealots, brave beekeepers, pit bulls not so bad, vicious seagulls, San Diego birds surveyed, a cactus will take a bullet

Hive Mentality Beekeeping runs in families. “The book said to call the fire department and tell them you’ll take swarms. That’s what I did. I got the swarms.” By Shari McCullough, Sept. 16, 2004 | …

September 27, 2020
Most notable San Diego Reader stories of the early 21st Century

Bathhouse Quagmire "I was in those San Francisco bathhouses in the late 1970s," says James Hartline, an HIV-positive Hillcrest man who is campaigning to get San Diego's three bathhouses shut down. "Those bathhouses were a …

August 23, 2020
Ocean Beach – San Diego's last true neighborhood

Pros and cons of berms – shelter for homeless, backwash for surfers The sand berms are up in Ocean Beach. For some it signals the beginning of winter when kids can be seen boarding down …

San Diego inside sports

Lakeside's Big Man There are roughly six million boys between the ages of 16 and 18 living in the United States. There are approximately 26,400 high schools and close to that number of starting centers …

August 1, 2020
San Diego lovers and families

When Your Love is Locked Up During the two days that the jury deliberated, the rest of the world seemed on freeze-frame, and I spoke with no one besides Dee's mom. We spent the time …

July 25, 2020
San Diegans on love, marriage, and everything in between

How Bob and Amy and Chris and Samantha and Ted and Roy and Kurt and Becky Found Love on the World Wide Web BOB | Age: 35 Q Did she send you a photograph? A. …

July 18, 2020
Oceanside – eclecticism reigns

Homes at end of Oceanside Blvd. claim emergency The city never got approval,” says Mackin. “They just started doing it. These homeowners had carte blanche to put as much rip rap as they wanted on …

Building paradise in San Diego

Otay Dreams In 1954 I sat on the school bus every day next to my best friend, Mark Robson. The ride home from Montgomery Elementary School in Otay was a straight shot east on Main …

July 11, 2020
San Diego's punk music, goodbye to Lennon

Soundtrack: Notes gave pathos to clouds My father bought my first piano from the Briscoes in Sumter, South Carolina. We knew the Briscoes from church and because Brother Briscoe, as we called him, was in …

July 5, 2020
Waiter at La Jolla's Tapenade, toilet cleaner at Spanky's

Tools of the Trade Have your friends and neighbors looked weighed down, put upon, or bent low to the ground lately? Perhaps they are! After all, many of the people we see around us tote …

June 28, 2020
San Diego's mosquitos, ferrets, sea lions

Deadly Mosquitoes Breed in Our Urban Drool Of the 40 “sentinel chickens” used for early detection, 13 have converted to West Nile, including all 10 in Los Peñasquitos Lagoon, 2 in Oceanside, and 1 in …

May 30, 2020
Why San Diegans dress the way they do

Men's Summer Swimsuit Issue “Now, you ask me, the male physicality wasn't built for aesthetics. Those angles and edges, the purely functional proportions: men's bods are too utilitarian, at least for my taste. (I prefer …

April 26, 2020
Mission Beach – true character

Tiny Island Court has 31 short-timers Bayside Walk listed 121 rentals spread out between 15 blocks, with 50 rentals on just two blocks. Mission Boulevard listed 81 rentals on 17 blocks. It then dropped to …

Opposums, rats, pigeons, plus San Diego's geologist who hates roadside landscaping

Our Panther Our fair city does have one black jaguar resident, downtown, in Cat Canyon, near Sun Bear Forest, across from the Hunte Amphitheater, in the San Diego Zoo. He was born October 1992 at …

April 11, 2020
Best Reader stories from 2008

Tijuana is the first stop to suicide Faye Girsh, vice president of the Hemlock Society of San Diego, knows that Exit International has been publicizing the Mexico option for its members. “But we do not …

February 23, 2020
Best Reader stories from 2007

Does Christmas offend you? Christmas has to start with the Jews, I guess, no matter where you start. It was Jews who were killed by Herod and Jews who were chased into Egypt by him, …

February 22, 2020
Best Reader stories from 2005

Salvation Mountain The Slabs are Slab City, three miles east of Niland, between the sultry Salton Sea and the Chocolate Mountains. Years ago the concrete slabs supported the barracks of Camp Dunlap, where General George …

February 15, 2020
Best Reader stories from 2003

The white mask On Saturday, September 6, 1958, Marilyn Monroe and the 175-person company of Some Like It Hot arrived at the Hotel del Coronado to begin location shots, after filming in Hollywood the previous …

February 8, 2020
African American and in San Diego

Raised not to hope too hard Sherley Anne Williams was delighted when the New York Times listed her novel on its recommended reading list. The book had gone into a third printing, and her publisher …

January 20, 2020
Ramona – a lot of stories

Was Helen Hunt Jackson's Ramona real? During late winter and early spring of every year, a bit of confusion reigns up north in the town of Ramona. The folks at the chamber of commerce there …

Other San Diego summers

Phoenix without apologies Traveler, consider our Phoenix. An hour away by air, this flat, posh suburb of Greater L.A. is your finest summer vacation bargain. For the price of a bad weekend in a tacky …

July 6, 2019
Geoff Bouvier and the Reader

Geoff Bouvier's first book, Living Room, (Copper Canyon Press), was selected by Heather McHugh as the winner of the 2005 APR/Honickman Prize. His writings have appeared in American Poetry Review, Barrow Street, Boston Review, Denver …

May 12, 2019
So far in 2008, San Diego has 23 cases of human West Nile virus

A few days after an autumn picnic near Los Peñasquitos Lagoon, a local grade-schooler comes down with the flu. Fever, chills, headache, and he can’t bring himself to get out of bed. His mother worries, …

January 21, 2009
Downtown San Diego condos – kinda like roller coasters

One Who’s Out and Wants In A man walks into the lobby of a downtown sales office on Sixth Avenue and G Street on a Sunday morning, wheeling his young son in a stroller in …

The San Diego Symphony rebounds and swings.

It’s Friday morning, and a woman in casual clothes, with a viola case on her back, bicycles down Harbor Drive. She’s headed toward Embarcadero Park, behind the Convention Center, for a summer pops rehearsal of …

November 5, 2008
Illegal ways to avoid the San Ysidro border wait

They’re still building roads out on Otay Mesa, about three miles north of the international border. The hot tar takes longer to set in the incredible heat. The smell hangs thick over the brown hillsides …

Dating life of San Diego teenagers

According to a survey of 4600 teenagers (aged 12–17) conducted recently by Mediamark Research Inc., 89 percent of teens say they have been in dating relationships, 57 percent regularly date, and 33 percent have a …

September 3, 2008
21 major repairs Balboa Park needs

If the Pacific Ocean is San Diego’s swimming pool, Balboa Park is our backyard. When we want to get out of the house, Balboa Park is where we go, 11 million times per year. And …

July 30, 2008
Stop pushing development next to Cleveland National Forest

A lawsuit was filed in March of this year by five environmental groups — including the Center for Biological Diversity and the Sierra Club — stating that overarching land-management plans prepared by the U.S. Forest …

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