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Stories by Sue Garson

Successful Indian man loses family in Pan Am flight

Return flight There were men, several uniformed men, screaming, waving guns, ordering everyone to freeze. Somehow they had managed to sneak onto the airfield, then had leaped out and clambered up the entry ramp, weapons …

June 4, 2022
3000 hours later – SD Rep's Elephant Man

The town that San Diego would like to forget “San Ysidro’s dead,’’ says an Hispanic banker whose branch is on San Ysidro Boulevard, within sniffing distance of a McDonald’s, a donut shop, the Main Attraction, …

May 15, 2022
Cyclist killed by North County bus at Pendleton

Udo was gone Along Stuart Mesa Road near Cook Crossing and Vandergrift, he joined two other riders, Steven Scharf and John Edwards, both riding at the same pace. They chatted a bit, and as the …

April 25, 2022
San Diego's eccentric craftsmen

Arts and crafts and controversy "In the beginning, when the group was smaller and more homogeneous, it was possible to have a unanimous vote on a new member, but now, with the active membership numbering …

April 16, 2022
Windansea fun hog bails, Broderick marriage tragedy

The ultimate fun hog has bailed Windansea people say Seth became a local legend not due to his surfing skills, not like Van Artsdalen, but from the NOT WHEN THE SURF'S UP sign painted on …

March 26, 2022
San Diego night guards, coffin hucksters

Used car dealings When my septuagenarian mother (who knows nothing about automobiles) observed that the floor of the trunk was cracked, that the body had been repainted with two tones of non-matching red, that the …

March 14, 2022
Wahrenbrock's Book House, Chino's vegetables

A Long Shelf Life Valverde unburdens a perspiring white-haired man loaded from waist to double chin with titles about World War II. He says to Valverde, I'm just kinda reminiscing about my war.” Waiting in …

February 12, 2022
Santa Ysabel dairy land ebbs away, Jamul casino dreams

Moo Twilight Feed he buys directly from farmers in the Imperial Valley. Because he trucks it himself, it costs around $80 per ton for sudan grass, $100 for alfalfa. But with a herd of 200 …

January 16, 2022
San Diego Hell's Angels, truck kills bicyclist near Pringle and Kettner

Where the Bikes Are I noticed one guy playing pool using a broom as a cue. He looked as if he might have been an extra in a movie with a title like Chainsaw Rapists …

December 12, 2021
San Diego roads that have disappeared, vanished movie palaces

The Lost Roads of San Diego In 1944, the land between Midway Drive and Sports Arena Boulevard (then Frontier Street) became combed with the short streets of a wartime housing project. After the war, transients …

December 6, 2021
Pt. Loma's rich Portuguese, who would live on Mt. Soledad, OB's motorhome gypsies

Tunaville Times Crew members, nearly three-quarters of whom were Portuguese, addressed each other in the idioms of their native villages while they laid the huge black purse seine nets on the docks. Nautical designers and …

July 17, 2021
San Diego corporate giants: PSA, Sheraton Hotels, Jack-in-the-Box

Thought for Food Bob Peterson (husband to Mayor Maureen O’Connor) opened his first Jack-in-the-Box restaurant at 63rd Street and El Cajon Boulevard in 1951. Peterson had expanded his chain to include 350 units by the …

June 19, 2021
KKK's John Metzger up close, that Escondido sperm bank, ex-cop mercy-kills wife

White On White John put San Diego in the national news. During a taping of Geraldo Rivera’s talk show in New York, Metzger called Roy Innis, chairman of the Congress of Racial Equality, an “Uncle …

April 24, 2021
San Diego gun slingers, secret gardens, quilters, stamp collectors, chess fiends

Arms and the Men: Shooting for Happiness These were good men, overzealous to a fault, maybe, but not killers. Hell, Rudy is of Samoan descent. Wil is a liberal Communist activist actor. It was the …

March 22, 2021
Korean War survivors, Hotel Del expels Prince Edward, Spanish Civil War vets, escape from Vietnam, tortured by Japanese

The Forgotten War Conversations with men who never forgot I do not recall putting my foot on Korean soil for the first time. I only remember the cold rain, and running, and others running with …

September 20, 2020
Spanish civil war vets, harrowing escape from Vietnam, POWs of Japan, Prince of Wales tossed from Hotel Del Coronado

The Forgotten War I do not recall putting my foot on Korean soil for the first time. I only remember the cold rain, and running, and others running with me. By David Burge, June 20, …

May 24, 2020
Mission Beach – true character

Tiny Island Court has 31 short-timers Bayside Walk listed 121 rentals spread out between 15 blocks, with 50 rentals on just two blocks. Mission Boulevard listed 81 rentals on 17 blocks. It then dropped to …

Golden Hill – slowly gentrifying

19 townhomes at 32nd and C instead of park The largest undeveloped parcel in Golden Hill, once considered by the Greater Golden Hill Planning Committee as a top choice for a neighborhood park, is now …

Best Reader stories from 1989

Till death do us part For so long, she wanted so badly to talk about her relationship with Daniel Broderick. Betty Broderick wanted to tell the their divorce and the awful injustice she felt she …

December 21, 2019
Best Reader stories from 1985

The spirit of Steve Ponchetti It has forever been the custom of the Diegueño Indians to bury their dead twice: once at death, and then once again a year later. And so it was that …

December 7, 2019
More than one point of view on Thanksgiving

The ideal hipster Thanksgiving As I’ve pointed out before, no holiday lacks the potential for a hipster makeover. Thanksgiving is no exception. Not only is it nestled comfortably between epic Halloween costumes and ugly-Christmas-sweater parties, …

November 26, 2019
Best Reader stories from 1978

From Spanish rancho to hard-core Marines In 1942, the Ninth Marine Division marched in and took over what had been the Santa Margarita y Las Flores Ranch. The Second World War had begun and the …

November 10, 2019
Sue Garson and the Reader

How Garson came to write for the Reader: When I stumbled into a small piano bar in Bankers Hill called the Caliph, a steady stream of after-hours nocturnal characters drew me to them as they …

March 30, 2019
Stories hidden inside the San Diego Reader

Editor: The following feature stories appeared in the interior pages of the Reader in the 1970s and 1980s and have just been converted to digital form. Meditations while riding San Diego Transit “Yes, these people …

January 26, 2019
Reader writers: the story I wanted to write... but didn't

Sandy and a girlfriend had gone into a liquor store, robbed the clerk, They locked the clerk in a walk-in cooler. Sandy started feeling bad about the guy. She went back and let him out.

Brilliant St. Augustine and USD grad kills mother in Pacific Beach

The following audition material won a stand-up comic/philosopher a paid gig at the Green Peak Restaurant and Comedy Club in East Dorset, Vermont, last September: • Revelation! God is androgynous — but chauvinistic! • Here’s …

March 9, 1989
The vile and violent life of San Diego's street kids

She always sleeps with her clothes on. Today she wakes up in jeans, a Mickey Mouse sweatshirt that covers layers of T-shirts, three finger rings, and six earrings. She doesn’t remember ever having had a …

July 28, 1988
The Portuguese fishing families of Point Loma

San Diego’s tuna fleet then numbered 200 and accounted for eighty percent of the world’s catch. Nearly half the vessels were owned by Portuguese dynasties that had been living in Point Loma for several generations.

With the courtroom crowd watching the Cara Knott murder case

By the time the defense rested its case on February 8, the mood in the hallway had become more intimate. People exchanged business cards and passed out breath mints, and raffle tickets were sold for the Cara Knott Foundation

February 18, 1988
Welcome to the mentally ill on Elm Street

Last March 16, Marshall could no longer tolerate sharing a dingy nine-by-eleven-foot room with someone who talked nonstop about the CIA and who woke him intermittently during the night searching for bullet holes. “Living with …

August 6, 1987
The parking lot at Rosecrans, Taylor, and Pacific Highway is perfect for long-haul drivers

Hey, Foxy Jaws, where’s a flop stop? We be makin’ three tracks in the sand an' we gotta get offa the licorice stick.” When a dozen CBers tell Daddy Longlegs where to park, No Show’s …

July 2, 1987
The Big Kitchen crowd in Golden Hill

Among the famous and the celebrated who have turned up there are Pete Seeger. Quentin Crisp, Holly Near, David Ogden Stiers, and locals Russ T. Nailz and Larry Himmel.

May 8, 1986
Janice Patterson is looking for actors in San Diego

When Janice Patterson cruises San Diego boulevards dressed in her blue fox jacket, she notices faces. If she sees a face she likes, her bejeweled fingers signal the other driver to roll down a window. …

February 6, 1986
Windansea grommie Seth Johnson passes

This year there have been half a dozen wakes at Windansea, locals say, for guys who bailed before the big four-oh. More than a hundred mourners gathered at the one for Seth Johnson, on a …

August 15, 1985
Former San Diego councilman Mike Schaefer – and others – get something for nothing

How San Diegans get TVs, stereos, cameras, trips, and loads of other junk for practically nothing.

May 23, 1985
Dogpatch, U.S.A. – only about an hour's drive from downtown San Diego

“It became Dogpatch in 1956 or 1957. The owner at that time had about 400 poodles out in the back. It looked like a patch of dogs, so she changed the name from Canyon City Cafe to Dogpatch.”

April 11, 1985
The 200% Americanization of Aleksandr Gibalevich

It is September on an airless Sunday morning with the mercury registering a dripping ninety-eight degrees at eleven o’clock. Adams Avenue is virtually empty except for the few hundred patrons outside the Ken Cinema. The …

October 18, 1984
Why San Diegans have so much plastic surgery

Last May a former El Cajon elementary school teacher placed an ad In the Personals section of the San Diego Union that read: “Lipolysis. If you have had this done, please call me,” and she …

August 16, 1984
Sycuan Indians invite you for bingo to Harbison Canyon

There’s a tension in the bus as it draws nearer to California Gold. Linda takes the bus microphone and further stimulates the crowd. “Is everyone feelin’ lucky tonight?” she yells. “Yes!” they yell back.

June 7, 1984
Tales from the San Diego Zen Center

One of the early and sure signs of the Southern California transformation of Zen was that Joko and Yuin were no longer bald. Yuin was first to let her hair grow to the two-finger length …

March 22, 1984
The liveliest street in San Diego

People say that once you discover Ventura Place, you keep coming back. Some say it's because this street across from Belmont Park in Mission Beach has the most beautiful sunsets in the world. Others think …

December 22, 1983

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