The young Hungarian conductor was sure the great George Szell wouldn’t bother to come, but he invited Szell to one of his Amsterdam concerts anyway. The year was 1959, George Szell was conductor with the …
December 6, 1979
Back to profile
Stories by Neal Matthews (RIP)
< Newer stories
Older stories >
San Diego Symphony board blames its conductor for small crowds
OMBAC: For Big Kids Only
Starting in 1959, the tournament was played farther down at South Mission Beach, at the end of San Gabriel Court, which runs out to the Beachcomber Bar on Mission Boulevard, now OMBAC’s unofficial clubhouse.
November 1, 1979
Tales of old Burlingame
Very few neighborhoods can claim to have a song written about them. San Diego's Burlingame is one of those few, and even though the song is, well, corny, it evokes a distinctive feeling, one that …
October 4, 1979
The genesis of San Diego's head shops
Vic McCully’s head shop Synthetic Trips has sat in its ramshackle contentment at University and Euclid for eleven years, squeezed between a bar (currently called the Dynamite Den) and a closet-size diner. It is the …
September 6, 1979
The night I gave a ride to a Frozen Chosin vet
A visitor came to town a few weeks back and, as will many, he put up in a local hotel. It is called the Shaw Hotel and it leans up next to God’s House, the …
June 28, 1979
San Diego's Evening Tribune struggles for readership
The San Diego Evening Tribune is not averse to hollering at its audience. Its “green sheet” street edition shouts about something perilous in the world nearly every day. But the Tribune really hits stride when …
March 15, 1979
What San Diego trashmen think about their work
The dust billowing up from the unpaved alley broke the morning sunlight into shafts which knifed down from the lips of the corrugated roofs after the garbage truck roared by. Willie Carter, who’d just maneuvered …
January 18, 1979
The part of San Diego government in the black
It’s easy to see why the United Port District’s headquarters building is called The Rock. From the corner of Pacific Highway and Sassafras Street, it looms mutely, ominously. One might say it overlooks Lindbergh Field, …
December 14, 1978
From Spanish rancho to hard-core Marines
Rifle fire rises up out of the ravines. Diesel engines scream from the mesas. Artillery rounds slam into the hills with chest-pounding thuds. Over nearly every square inch of Camp Pendleton the Marines march, drive, …
November 16, 1978
Why San Diego's women's bank didn't work
The Women’s Bank is a rusted-out dream. “And the shame of it is I suppose some men say ‘ha ha, I told you so,’ ” laments a former member of the bank’s board of directors. …
September 28, 1978
San Diego pound can't get employees to kill dogs with a needle
Dr. Alice DeGroot. chief veterinarian at the Animal Care and Education Center in Rancho Santa Fe, speaks in a hushed, almost monosyllabic tone. “It’s a very sad thing. The worst place a puppy can come …
June 29, 1978
Why they make jokes about taxidermists
"A good friend of mine got an Eagle Scout award,” says Paul Eichberger, as he pulls a Red Head duck’s neck inside out to get at the skull. “The scoutmaster took him by the shoulders …
June 8, 1978
The story behind Tijuana's plastic statues
Sunday night. Dusk. The San Ysidro border crossing car lines moving like slow, methodical worms whose rubber feet advance one at a time, undulating. From where I'm standing, behind the arched emigration office — Mexico’s …
April 27, 1978
San Diego's Bottom Scratchers – grandfathers of scuba diving, fathers of skin diving
He and Potts were able to go deeper and stay longer. The forty-pound halibut and fifty-pound white sea bass and three hundred-pound jewfish languishing off Casa Cove began to look accessible to them.
March 30, 1978
Buying liquor and wine in Tijuana
The first Mexico stories I ever heard were as a result of being dispatched to San Diego to undergo the trials and errors of bootcamp. In the first few days, even before they slipped us …
February 9, 1978