A Soldier's Pay Bradley is an animated woman of 36, whose tousled long black hair and French accent give her an exotic cast. When I acknowledge her accent, she replies, “Yes, I’m sorry, I’m from ...
February 27, 2021
Journalist, critic, and memoirist, Thomas Larson is the author of three books: The Sanctuary of Illness: A Memoir of Heart Disease, The Saddest Music Ever Written: The Story of Samuel Barber's "Adagio for Strings," and The Memoir and the Memoirist: Reading and Writing Personal Narrative. He has been a staff writer for the San Diego Reader since 1999. He teaches in the MFA Program at Ashland University, Ashland, Ohio, where he also is the Book Reviews editor for River Teeth. He lectures on the craft of nonfiction writing, the memoir, music subjects, and his heart disease, and he facilitates writing workshops as well. His website is thomaslarson.com.
Articles by Thomas Larson
SEALs talk war atrocities, Rolling Stone embeds at Camp Pendleton
Will sand save San Diego North County's bluffs?
The Sand at Encinitas Jayme Timberlake — tide-watcher, restoration ecologist, avid surfer — light-foots it down Encinitas’s iconic Stone Steps. She’s barefoot, having kicked off her shoes and left them on the sand-dusted floor of ...
January 13, 2021
San Diego's shadiest characters: John Moores, David Malcolm, Dick Silberman
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 ...
January 4, 2021
San Diego's gay bathhouses, wild life of our foreign cabbies, best light in the city
Bathhouse Quagmire "I was in those San Francisco bathhouses in the late 1970s," says James Hartline, an HIV-positive Hillcrest man who is campaigning to get San Diego's three bathhouses shut down. "Those bathhouses were a ...
November 23, 2020
Border Angels, being Muslim in San Diego, what's a green card worth?
Border Angels "We know the kind of people we catch here. They're horrible people." The Border Patrol agent's tone was no more than blandly informative. It was 7:00 p.m. July 16, and we were at ...
November 14, 2020
Tijuana country club kidnapping, shootout near school, nostalgia for Jai Alai, casino, racetrack
Don't look now Abduction and murder at T.J.’s Camp Campestre Under normal circumstances, it would be difficult not to stare at ten men dressed in black who brandished submachine guns. Under normal circumstances, ten men ...
November 9, 2020
Local rocker Chris Squire troubles, intimate murder, abortionist Bertha Bugarin
He Should Have Known Better It had been another sleepless night for Chris Squire, pedaling around San Diego delivering drugs. When the sun rolled into the sky on August 14, 2006, he knew he was ...
November 2, 2020
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
What restaurant staffs eat, Eleanor Widmer, how far San Diego's food comes
What Insiders Eat Restaurant staff gab and gobble. Travis Murphy, also a cook, planned the staff’s daily dinner. At Nine-Ten, he said, the hardest part of arranging the staff meal, also called the “family meal,” ...
October 18, 2020