How Do You Keep Warm at Night? If you think of the homeless at all — aside from how to avoid them or that daily mini-moral crisis as to whether to give them spare change …
December 16, 2023
Born in Chicago on December 11, 1950, Brizzolara was a writer since childhood. At age 29, he sold his first two short stories to Weird Tales. His writing appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, Amazing Stories, Whispers, Weirdbook, and Twilight Zone Magazine. His short fiction has been translated to German, Russian, and Japanese.
In 1987 he published his first novel, Wirecutter, followed by the science-fiction novel Empire's Horizon in 1989. Thunder Moon, a sequel to Wirecutter, soon followed. In 1997 he won the National Conference Media Award for Journalism for a San Diego Magazine story on hate crimes. He reviewed numerous books for the Union-Tribune and the Los Angeles Times. He also wrote for the Chicago Reader, Pages, and San Diego Home Garden & Lifestyle. Brizzolara wrote for the Reader from 1989 to 2013, including a weekly column, TGIF.
John died in his sleep at Father Joe’s Villages on October 11, 2016. He was 65. Brizzolara wrote about his struggles with alcoholism and other ailments to which he succumbed.
Samples of his notable essays can be found in our From the Archives series. Other notable stories include:
Sadness and Strange Endings (Judith Moore interviews Brizzolara)
Set a Needle on My Heart and Play Those Songs of Love and Pain (author's record collection)
Flesh of My Flesh (unending romance of fatherhood)
My Belly (author's aging body)
Articles by John Brizzolara (RIP)
San Diego sidewalk sitters keep from shivering
Downtown San Diego's homeless dream of Thanksgiving away from sidewalks
Homeless plans for Thanksgiving On a warm autumn afternoon, a homeless man lies against a wall on First Avenue just south of Ash Street. He's sharing a bottle of cheap vodka with an older homeless …
November 18, 2023
Pressure to build in mountains near San Marcos
San Marcos in crosshairs of GrowthzillaBack then, the mammoth housing development was called Merriam Mountains. It's now called Newland Sierra, but the opposition's pitchforks are jabbing at the same worries: density, traffic, wildfire evacuations, water, …
October 23, 2023
Alleys are San Diego's last frontier
A tour of San Diego alleysJack Whalen hands me a beer. “I’m king of this alley,” Whalen says, then points west. “Down there, the king of that next alley is Tom Sweet. He’s 97.” Whalen …
October 16, 2023
Stick figures of men and a tall sailing ship – close to the Mexican border
Pictographs of Cabrillo's San Salvador east of Jacumba"There’s some petroglyphs over in Pinto Canyon," Frank said as he passed me on the trail. Frank Johnson, a handsome 75-year-old man, with flowing white hair and a superb …
October 15, 2023
Border Angels strew water bottles for migrants
Border angelsI wanted to learn about a group called Border Angels that, among other things, sets out water in the desert areas of the 66-mile San Diego sector. Usually, gallon bottles of water are placed …
October 7, 2023
David Ross – knew San Diego homeless intimately
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 …
October 2, 2023
Tom Deméré takes us to Mission Valley of 50 million years ago
More or less sudden mountainsThe rocks in and around San Diego have composed amazing, fiery stories for a very long time. An ancient ocean once covered this county; volcanoes used to spew here; and more …
October 1, 2023
30 tugs do the pulling in San Diego Bay
Tugboats of San Diego Bay“We got a call from a friend with the Navy on a Saturday morning before Easter, and he said, ‘How fast can you get to Camp Pendleton?’ We said we could …
September 11, 2023