Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed
Big Screen — Movie commentary
Blurt — Music's inside track
Booze News — San Diego spirits
Classical Music — Immortal beauty
Classifieds — Free and easy
Close to Home — What it’s like on the street where you live
Cover Stories — Front-page features
Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes
Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts
Feast! — Food & drink reviews
Feature Stories — Local news & stories
Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore
From the Archives — Spotlight on the past
Golden Dreams — Talk of the town
The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it
Letters — Our inbox
Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites
Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans
Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists
Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news
News Ticker — News & politics
Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated
Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna
Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated
Poetry — The old and the new
Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers
Reading — The hunt for intellectuals
Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails
San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds
SD on the QT — Almost factual news
Sheep and Goats — Places of worship
Special Issues — The best of
Street Style — San Diego streets have style
Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves
Theater — On stage in San Diego this week
Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative
Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work
Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego
Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads
Your Week — Daily event picks
U-T's Washington Post whitewash
If the dust is now settled, Manchester didn't get exposed or accused of anything like we've seen lately. And the Post didn't necessarily scuttle his ambassadorial ambitions. Frankly, I long wondered how he avoided such claims or accusations, given his track record and nasty divorce.— February 18, 2018 3:40 p.m.
U-T's Washington Post whitewash
While I wouldn't say the U-T buried the Washington Post story in today's (Sunday, 2/18) edition, it didn't get the front page treatment of the first article yesterday. They printed it in the main news section on page A8 under the innocuous headline "Report details incidents of inappropriate behavior." Note that there was no mention of who it referred to. Then there was a small head shot of Dougie on the page. So, if you were at all curious about the unattributed behavior, you had to start reading it, or notice the small head shot. At least yesterday when it first showed up on the U-T website, the headline had something that might have tipped the reader to who it was about. "Trump's billionaire ambassador nominee had unsettling management style, women say" is the headline you can find on the website. But notice that nowhere in either headline is there any identification of either Manchester or the U-T. (It wasn't all that easy to find on the website either; the first article is front and center.) I wonder why the U-T even picked up the Washington Post story, and worked it over. In the old days, and when Doug owned the paper, it would likely have just ignored such a story.— February 18, 2018 1:40 p.m.
Clues in lawsuit lead to Clews the pornographer
When it came to Bahnee D, the DA, you nevah knew what went on. No DA has to explain the reasons for doing anything, or not doing it. If that makes you uncomfortable, join the club. So now we get to speculate just what kind of DA this veteran woman prosecutor will be. (BTW, she was the chief prosecutor of the three boys in the Crowe case, which resulted in two of the boys being legally exonerated. She can be really proud of that bit of injustice.) If you want to make any sense of most of this, good luck.— February 16, 2018 7:49 p.m.
Oh, say, can you play the better "Star Spangled Banner"?
He's right I'm sure. But this is the kind of detail that only a few true musicians would ever notice.— February 16, 2018 3:14 p.m.
College Area mini-dorm litigants win
Did anyone in the city attorney's office, or council staff, or mayor's staff even remember what happened in 1996? Institutional memories can be very short. Of course, the matter should have been extensively checked out prior to enacting the ordinance, and that should have been done by the city attorney. But, hey, this is the slobberin' city of SD, and it makes all sorts of stupid, uninformed moves constantly.— February 16, 2018 3:14 p.m.
Clues in lawsuit lead to Clews the pornographer
A 17+ year sentence in federal custody for a 54-year old is tantamount to a life sentence. Now if our new DA pursues these claims of sexual abuse and makes them stick, he's totally toast. But will Summer(land) pursue any charges? That is the question, and anyone who wonders about her abilities and priorities will find clues (pardon the pun) here. Let's all just wait and see what she does.— February 15, 2018 7:12 p.m.
Workforce Partnership embezzler gets 30 months
Thirty months? That sounds lenient, and where will he ever get the $456K to pay back? His scheme is now shut down, and he won't get away with something like that again (or so we can hope.) But has the door to such fraud been slammed shut? I doubt that controls to stop such rip-offs are really in place there or in many other federally funded welfare operations. This is one of the cases where, if he hadn't gotten greedy, he might have kept it going for years on a smaller scale. Some really smart people are doing just that sort of thing today, and nobody notices it.— February 15, 2018 5:13 p.m.
Border czar Alan Bersin sets up BorderWorks Group
This is probably just a last gasp attempt to cash in on his dubious credentials. Sell his "expertise" in trans-border affairs for many hundreds of dollars per hour as a consultant. He'd like to make any client believe he is also peddling influence across the border, but to anyone who followed his staggering, stumbling career, it's obvious he has no influence, and especially in Mexico. Those pols there would have him for lunch if he made any attempt to pull strings, and would enjoy the spectacle. The other two principals in the firm come across as a pair of lightweight Obamaites with nothing to claim but their closeness to the ex president, if they in fact had any.— February 14, 2018 8:20 p.m.
Good intentions behind paving of Scripps Trail
This is just typical in the city of SD. Neglect a street for decades until it is crumbling and needs a complete repaving job. Then decide that it doesn't have the priority for that kind of costly rework, and just do nothing. These people did "everything" to get the street taken care of, and did it for too long. But in SD, that happens all the time and everywhere. What these folks lacked was some real political juice. Some influence over their city councilman/woman could have had it done years before. How does one get that kind of clout? I really don't know, but it exists, and explains many, many things that either happen or don't happen in the slobberin' city. Connections, connections, connections that they didn't have. And so they suffer along with a busy, broken down street. I repeat, typical San Diego.— February 10, 2018 5:06 p.m.
Alpine High School still doesn't exist
One reason for all the resistance at the district could be the threat of unification in Alpine once the school is built. Something parallel to this went on in the Escondido High School District for a very long time. Valley Center, remote from Escondido, had been campaigning for its own high school, and various administrations and boards of EUHSD had promised them one, "when they had the money." Finally in the mid-1990's voters in the high school district passed a bond issue to refurbish the three existing high schools, provide a permanent campus for the continuation school, and build Valley Center High. And so it was, that using some property in Valley Center purchased many years before, the new VCHS opened in 1998. That new school represented the largest single application of bond funds, and yet "everyone" knew what would come next. The Valley Center district and the Pauma district (both k-8) agreed to combine and unify. It occurred almost immediately, and the fancy new high school was now run by the new unified district. That district decided to make its attendance area the same as the district boundaries and not allow inter-district transfers from the rest of the Escondido district. Bottom line: Escondido taxpayers taxed themselves to build the new VCHS, and couldn't use it. There was a negotiation between EUHSD and VCPUSD for some sort of financial adjustment, and the figure agreed to by both districts was a payment by the VC district to the Escondido district of $1 million. There are plenty of folks down in 'Dido today who are still livid at what happened. Yes, they got their schools refurbished and expanded and got the permanent continuation school built. And yes, the Valley Center taxpayers have to pay on the Escondido bonds until they are retired. But the whole deal looked very lopsided, and still does. Would the same thing happen in Alpine? I don't know about that. None of the feeder districts to GUHSD have unified within my memory, although there was an attempt in Lakeside fifteen or twenty years ago.— February 10, 2018 4:50 p.m.