San Diego's best tomato breeds: Better Boys, Early Girls, Yellow Taxis The ripe round red tomato sitting on the kitchen table is alive and busy. While we are asking, “How shall I eat it?” the …
August 7, 2023
Kuhlken wrote feature stories for the Reader plus a column in the 2000s called Driven, interviewing car owners about their vehicles.
He was also the subject of a 2002 cover story by Judith Moore: "He Turns Out Hometown Heroes."Articles by Ken Kuhlken
Tomato people say that tomatoes have 'no legs'
My friend's letters from Vietnam and the aftermath
I Quit, Love Clifford The army assigned Cliff to an infantry company. After basic training at Fort Ord, he visited home before his journey to Vietnam. One of those days, on the drive to Ocean …
October 17, 2022
Author Richard Rodriguez crosses turnstiles into Tijuana
Taken together as one, Tijuana and San Diego form the most fascinating city in the New World My first trip across: the late 1950s. We were on our way to visit relatives in Ensenada. We …
September 11, 2022
Serious Christian gets through the Akiki trial
Inside Faith Chapel and through the Akiki trial I wanted to jump up and shout the truth, that several thousand people go to Faith Chapel, and lots of them might believe in literal demons, while …
September 4, 2022
Guillermo Gomez-Pena gets McArthur award
Just who does he think he is? Two San Diegans won MacArthurs in 1991, Gomez-Pena and UCSD philosopher and neuroscientist Patricia Smith Churchland, and the San Diego Union-Tribune’s initial announcement of the prizes was straightforward …
September 3, 2022
World War II Tijuana
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 …
August 20, 2022
TJ's child sales force
Life of a Tijuana street urchin Isabel sells her bouquets for two dollars each, and she gives half of what she makes to her mother. With the rest, “I buy myself something to eat, ” …
April 10, 2022
USD students look back at high school, the campus's Catholicism
Class Struggle “We had a lot of cliques at my school. There were the drama kids, and we had a group we actually called the Clique. It was just the people that seemed to party …
February 7, 2022
Personal history of La Mesa, the charm of Encanto
Where Sweet Peace and Love Abidith During school vacations, Carl and I hopped the freight train that chugged through twice a week. It stopped in La Mesa to unload flatbeds of planks to the lumberyard. …
February 5, 2022