Mary Lang

Wrote feature stories from the late 1980s through the late 1990s, including a social column called On the Town by Liz Lang.

Articles by Mary Lang

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Best Reader stories from 1991

Bicycle deaths, Madame Schumann-Heink, Marshall South, Karen Wilkening, paving of I-15, Helen and David Copley, Luis Urrea's Tijuana

Satan chasers San Diego has many experts in the field of Satanism who say the county is a hotbed of Satanic activity. The hidden canyons of the back country, Ramona, Santee, Escondido, even Oceanside, are ...

Best Reader Christmas stories

The Vietnamese refugee, the serious Jew, the homeless, the disaffected, Charles Dickens, other Christmas books, the poor in Tijuana, Horton Plaza shoppers, Christmas letter writing

Sister Santa’s once-a-year smile I fell in love with America for the first time on a sweaty night in a Bangkok refugee center in March 1991. “In America people have meat with every meal,” my ...

Other San Diego summers

Phoenix, fat boy and bikini girl, fireworks, Black's Beach, metal finders, male swimsuits

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 ...

Mary Lang and the Reader

Prostitutes, Somalis, romance writers, Satanists, Mormons, Hoover High, San Diego traffic

Lang wrote feature stories from the late 1980s through the late 1990s, including a social column called On the Town by Liz Lang. Editor's picks from stories Lang wrote for the Reader San Diego prostitutes ...

Holy Week in San Diego: our mish-mash of Christianity

Medical look at Christ's crucifixion, City Rescue Mission, Carmelite nuns, Dorman Owens, Mother Teresa, Antiochian Orthodox

Medical explanation of Christ's crucifixion and other Easter stories The severe scourging, with its intense pain and appreciable blood loss, most probably left Jesus in a preshock state. Moreover, hematidrosis had rendered his skin particularly ...

Pot smuggler's accident, Belmont Park, Willie Shoemaker, prostitution after Stingaree, truth serum, a family's letters

Stories hidden in the back pages of the Reader

The Zipper – near death at the Del Mar Fair The Zipper was a new wrinkle on the midway: this big, gleaming apparatus that looked like a gigantic fan belt, with body-hugging cages attached along ...

University Avenue: From Washington Street to La Mesa Boulevard

“This used to be a beautiful place,” says Jonnie. “A family part of town. Nice people lived here. That all changed with the Vietnam War, 1975. People from war places started coming in, big-time.”

San Diego's grave stonecutters

Remember you must die, and someone has to carve your epitaph

Remember that the dead now outnumber the living. There are 18,000 deaths in San Diego County each year. A single San Diego funeral home handles 15 corpses a month. Five of those bodies — former ...

Diane Gailey helps birthparents find their children

There are people who just want to know the facts

“You definitely don't forget," Diane Galiley says. Tiny body clad in A sky-blue pajamas, she’s curled up in a “papasan” chair in the living room of her La Mesa apartment. Watery eyes, huge in her ...

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