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 …

Roommates from Hell I walked outside to the storage door. I pushed on the door and opened it. I saw the rope around John’s neck and John’s face looking at me. I screamed and ran …

Back in 1897, Mayor Samuel Black of Columbus, Ohio, vowed to crack down on a new menace that appeared to be taking over his city’s streets: bicycles. He called reckless bicyclists “evil” and blasted “scorchers,” …

At the time of his disappearance six years ago, Skylar Gregory Peterson Tosic was employed by the county of San Diego as a caregiver for his mother’s fiancé, a popular Escondido musician known as Ukulele …

Notes from Underground Most of the paper's staff lived in the Door commune in a Victorian House on Albatross Street that rented for $295 a month. In late 1973 they were asked to move by …

Best Friend to Joshua TreesIs there anything to be done about the plight of the Joshua tree? While state and federal agencies dither over whether the imperiled desert dweller deserves endangered species protections, one local …

Dear Dick: The San Diego Union, Evening Tribune, and Nixon: A Romance in Letters Nixon to Copley: “The ride down and back in your spic-and-span new plane, the superb dinner which you hosted jointly with …

Illustration by Samuil Levich, iStock, GettyImagesWe’ve all heard about how home prices in San Diego have never been higher, and that demand is so great that homes for sale typically get multiple bids and wind …

The house at 2719 Chestnut Avenue in northeast Carlsbad sits on a tract of land once used for tomato farming. The tract is a neat, well-kept neighborhood that is home to a mix of young …

It’s just after noon on a Thursday at Escondido’s TJ Tacos. The place is surprisingly uncrowded, with only about six people in line for the taco stand’s signature adobada tacos, a spicy blend of marinated …

Photograph by Matthew SuárezKarina Martinez is 32 and a native of Oceanside. She was born and raised in the Los Arbolitos neighborhood, just west of where El Camino Real meets Mission Avenue. She has four …

The Man Who Broke the Rules He worked for several months at a bakery injecting jelly into the jelly donuts. The job paid minimum wage, but it had great benefits: he could eat all the …

The Deadly View from Sunset Cliffs “We used to average about a hundred calls a year,” he says, “but in 1986 it was down to sixty-nine, and in 1987, there were only forty-three.” These figures …

The Evil I Do Not Intend Dravecky raised some eyebrows that month when he appeared with Eric Show and Mark Thurmond at a John Birch Society booth at the Del Mar Fair. Back home in …

The Only Kid at Whitebread Central Who Listened to Danzig Many people have asked me why I’m not in school, and when I explain that I am on home study, they want to know why. …

Nicholas Friesen is a 38-year-old native San Diegan – he grew up in Southeast – who has been working in used record stores all his life. “I’ve got this 10,000-hour thing going for me,” he …

What Happened? A Pioneer Family's TragedyWhile Beatrice and Eric were talking about packing up and going home, the phone rang. It was Dan Bridge, his father’s old friend and a childhood friend of Walter Harper. …

When Dick Nixon Came to Town San Diego entrepreneur Arnholt Smith, one of Nixon’s earliest supporters, remembered a melancholy evening in the early ’60s when Nixon was holding a meeting and asked him to get …

It was a showdown like no other.The battle over whether aggressively to enforce the state’s ban on outdoor dining was the biggest brouhaha to hit Carlsbad in five years. Impassioned pleas and stern rebukes; speakers …

UCSD, Big Money, and the Ball Club When Gray Davis appointed Padres owner John Moores to the Board of Regents of the University of California, Dynes said, “I’m really looking forward to working with him…I’m …

The zoo I remember is the zoo that I miss.When I was a kid, my mom used to take me to the zoo every Saturday, after German school at the nearby Grace Lutheran church complex. …

It’s a sweltering Saturday in August, oven hot, and I should be at the beach. Instead, I’m waiting in line to be allowed into Beat Box Records, a cool little used record store on Logan …

Trump is a racist, his critics charge. He’s a clown. He’s a narcissist, a blowhard, an asshole. He’s despicable, deplorable, and so (as Hillary Clinton said four years ago) are his supporters. “I’d rather vote …

No talk of the economic fallout from the covid-19 pandemic is complete without a nod to the commercial real estate market. While residential real estate commands record prices, thanks to a shortage of supply, the …

This is a story about chickens and the ordinary people, like me, who raise them in their backyards. It’s a story that is centered around trendy buzzwords such as “sustainable living” and “urban farming” – …

Pros and cons of berms – shelter for homeless, backwash for surfers The sand berms are up in Ocean Beach. For some it signals the beginning of winter when kids can be seen boarding down …

The restaurant business, as Bette Davis once said about growing old, ain’t no place for sissies. The hours are long; the profit margins, razor-thin. Customers are notoriously fickle, and a few bad Yelp reviews can …

It’s the last outpost of agriculture in coastal North County, plainly visible from the freeway. A vast field of green just east of Interstate 5 and north of Cannon Road in the heart of Carlsbad, …

Bushy beasts, a heavenly meal, a giant lemon, a brutal murder, and so much more. Join us for a road trip to see some of San Diego’s more unusual sights.Roadside attractions have been an integral …

Author Marty Rubin once observed, “Parks and playgrounds are the soul of a city.” A century before him, famed 19th century horticulturalist Andrew Jackson Downing similarly sang the praises of these urban spots of green …

Jessica is pretty, petite, and young — 5’2” and slim, according to her profile on the dating app. Golden bangs cascade across her forehead, and in her profile picture her sweet, silly smile is reminiscent …

It’s a Friday night in (pre-pandemic) south Oceanside. An eclectic crew has come out for the monthly “In the Round” showcase, a night “dedicated to songs, the songwriters, and their stories.”PlaceMoose Lodge Oceanside2017 South Coast …

Bird Rock is the Jan Brady of coastal San Diego. To the south capers playful, silly Pacific Beach. To the north stands La Jolla, elegant and proper. And though Bird Rock is officially one of …

The A Mart convenience store is located at the El Cajon Transit Center, a bustling terminal for trains and buses located at 250 South Marshall Avenue on the west side of El Cajon Valley, where …

If Clairemont is San Diego’s first bedroom community, then Kearny Mesa, all 4400 acres of it, could be described as its utility room. Bounded by Interstate 805 to the west, Interstate 15 to the east, …

Continued from last week’s issue… Michael Flinner — condemned to die on March 29, 2004. Flinner, a landscaper from Alpine, was sentenced to death for killing his 18-year-old fiancée in 2000 to collect insurance money. …

When the California Supreme Court overturned the death sentence of convicted double murderer Jeffrey Young last July, the number of San Diegans on death row went down by one, to 37.MaryValery / iStock / Getty …

Postcards From Western Civilization Some years ago at Christmastime, when I was a teller at a bank downtown, I came to know Wayne Boyer, who was then an apprentice bum. I met him in the …

Esmo’s phone manner was so hugger-mugger that I could be sitting four feet away and could not make out a single word. For all I could tell, he might have been laying fifty on a pony.

Blubbo, oh Blubbo, where do I begin? You’re dead, gone, laid out rotting in a casket somewhere in the ground; and if that’s just your body, your corpse, your shell, God, I hope so, because, …

Has Jacor, the megamillion-dollar radio holding company that owns or controls ten San Diego stations, including KSDO, KGB, and KOGO, broken antitrust laws in its haste to gobble up the local radio market? Jacor confirms …

Had it not been for his wife, Harry Mathis says he never would have known about ESPN's plans to use La Jolla Shores Drive for a high-speed X Games skating demonstration - plans that were …

John Coleman says he can pinpoint the day Rodger Hedgecock turned from being a vocal supporter of the referendum drive to put stadium expansion on the ballot to an ardent critic of those efforts. It …

Construction crews are again hard at work at David Copley's corner of La Jolla, where three years ago they added what the San Diego Union-Tribune at the time called "a many splendored wing" that more …

Next month it will be Qualcomm Stadium, but ten years, five years, maybe even one year down the road, San Diego sports fans could be trooping down to watch the Chargers play at the Bud …

Susan Viola Klat, until recently a night-shift nurse at UCSD Medical Center in Hillcrest, is now sitting in a Washington, D.C. jail. Three weeks ago she was convicted of making threats against William Rehnquist, chief …

Three months after he cohosted a "birthday party" fundraiser for City Councilwoman Valerie Stallings's 1998 reelection campaign, veteran San Diego concert promoter Bill Silva has been given what critics are calling a sweetheart deal to …

Ticketmaster's legal problems may have disappeared from the headlines, but they are far from over. The country's biggest sports and entertainment ticket broker is once again facing an antitrust action in court, this one brought …

San Diego may soon be home to a notorious New England killer. On a hot summer day in July 1985, in the northwest Vermont farming town of St. Albans, a man named Monica Pollard plunged …

The Hamels are ready to call it quits. After 30 years of running their sportswear and bike rental emporium at the foot of Ventura Place in Mission Beach, brothers Dan and Ray Hamel want to …