The Reader has started this series of its best stories from the past 52 years — 2600 cover stories and some remarkable interior features — to help make up for the loss of its physical …
February 26, 2026
Articles by Robert Houghton
High school in El Cajon with Lester Bangs
My Arizona and Utah family, a daughter disabled since birth at Friendship House
A Fairy Godmother’s Art I can recall the way a certain blouse, puffy-sleeved and lace-collared, tugged at the pits of my arms the year I fell in love with Matt Denhalter. The same mistakes I …
October 30, 2021
Race in 19th century San Diego, Marilyn Monroe in Coronado, early drive-in theaters
None Darker Than Me Racial obsession in 19th-century San Diego People of color were beginning to move into Sherman Heights and Golden Hill. There were colored Civil War veterans who lived in Golden Hill — …
October 31, 2020
My El Cajon Valley High School days with Lester Bangs
He made the front page of the Daily Californian. The paper ran a large photograph of Lester sitting on a bus bench reading a newspaper, his pile of record albums, magazines, and books beside him.
July 13, 2000
The Ginger Man led a San Diego artist down the road to self-destruction
Back in Portland, he kept making frantic telephone calls, begging for his share of the family estate. When the will was closed, I called him to be sure he received his inheritance check, a hefty sum.
March 11, 1993