Photos“People are very intrigued by seahorses,” says Leslee Matsushige, associate curator at Birch Aquarium. And intriguing fish — signs of whimsy in the relentlessly efficient natural world — are good PR for an institution hoping ...
January 19, 2023
As an undergraduate at Thomas Aquinas College near Ojai, California, Matthew Lickona co-founded and ran The Hype, a college lit-mag printed on the school's copier and sold at a dollar a copy to pay off speeding tickets acquired while trying to make movie times in Los Angeles. This may or may not have helped him to land a job at the Reader upon graduation in 1995, but the paper did reprint some of his collegiate Easter Island-based cartoons, and later, his Mudflap Girls series. He has been at the paper ever since, in a variety of capacities: feature writer, wine columnist, church reviewer, restaurant critic, television columnist, editor at large, and now, film critic. Plus some other stuff under various pseudonyms.
He is the author of a couple of books (Swimming with Scapulars, Surfing with Mel), and his essays have appeared in places like The Awl, FirstThings.com, and Doublethink. In his spare time, he likes to write movie pitches and country songs.
Articles by Matthew Lickona
Sea Dragon eggs at Birch Aquarium!
Dim voices from the forgotten past at Georgian restaurant Pomegranate
A conversation among the inscriptions scribbled amid the doodles on the ochre walls of the Georgian restaurant Pomegranate — layer upon layer, the ink fading like echoes, dim voices from the forgotten past. Remember QAnon ...
January 19, 2023
Tom Shaw and heavenly transport on Imperial Avenue
Apostolic Prayer Temple, house of exaltation I came here, to the Apostolic Prayer Temple, a storefront in between a nightclub and a fish market in Encanto, to see the Rev. Tom Shaw in the Gospel ...
December 18, 2022
A cold eye on San Diego architects 20 years ago
Orchids and Onions — 20 years later The ’95 jury opened by dubbing 1976 Orchid-winner Rancho Bernardo “the ultimate suburb.” Nicoloff and Collins concurred, calling it “one of the few really successful and well-planned new ...
August 27, 2022
San Diego's love of country music
Out there on the dance floor is a bit of paradise Almost everybody in East County knows about the place, but not nearly so many visit This is because the Renegade has a reputation. Rumors ...
August 8, 2022
Happy Trumpsgiving
Happy Trumpsgiving Hunter P. Thompson: "Sure, everybody here agrees that Trump is a fascist hatemonger with no sense of respect or decency. That just means he’s just like the rest of us. Those protesters who ...
April 30, 2022
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
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