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Your Week — Daily event picks
San Diego planners want dense housing near your bus stop
Are there or are there not more old people among us? I hear there really are more older Americans and many are living into serious old age. So how does it follow that we really need new bikeways everywhere, fleets of rental scooters, diminished on-street parking for cars and condo apartments without provision for any parking at all? Even if the condos are located "walking distance" to trolley systems and bus transit centers? Could "planners" be entirely disregarding population demographics and selling us impractical and irrelevant longer "walksheds in mobility zones" in the name of meeting the challenge of climate change?— November 2, 2022 5:30 p.m.
UCSD’s big downtown payoff
I have been away for ten days, and returned to see this classic Reader report on our city of players, movers and shakers who, undaunted by rules about transparency or any sense for the common good, keep on keeping on, doing their thing. What a town. What leaders. UCSD's go-go Chancellor Pradeep "High-Rise" Khosla finesses a costly real estate deal in East Village with rich offspring of local convicted white-collar criminals who are married to wealthy extended family members of a politically ambitious but thwarted ex-school superintendent. UCSD tenants in those East Village rentals will need to pay close attention to their surroundings when they are out and about, as they definitely won't be in bucolic La Jolla where Chancellor Khosla himself resides. Meanwhile, slickster Democrats Mayor Todd Gloria and County Supervisor Nathan Fletcher recently decided to spend tax dollars on "data gathering" among San Diego's burgeoning homeless who throng the streets of East Village and other neighborhoods across the urban core. Data-gathering? Really? Recent data show there are more homeless people here than ever before. How about a genuine plan to end homeless street-living, to provide homeless mental and physical healthcare and to require residence in whatever public housing can be devised and built? There are Democratic majorities at City Hall, on City Council, on the County Board of Supervisors, in the State Assembly and State Senate, in the Governor's seat and in the White House. What's the hold-up?— October 28, 2022 11:24 p.m.
UCSD’s prep school Covid testing doesn't pay the bills
Oh gosh, I like "agreed" but will have to look up those other fancy words.— October 6, 2022 2:01 p.m.
UCSD’s prep school Covid testing doesn't pay the bills
Matt Potter is on an endless one-man death-watch for signs of the demise of billionaire Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong's newspaper enterprises that include the Los Angeles Times and San Diego Union-Tribune. Maybe he should celebrate that these institutions continue, perhaps diminished but unbowed. Unlike the Reader, at least they still review movies.— October 5, 2022 8:41 p.m.
Cub reporter for L.A. Times gets Page One break with PSA crash story
You defend Smollar's odd style in telling a horrific story. We are aware that a fancy distancing term like "naif" is borrowed from the French and that "sot" is British slang for "inebriate." Also that chauvinism and sexism in 1978 newsrooms were alive and well, just as obliquely described -- not a "fact-free zone of unmoored speculation," as you suggest. It is ironic that today many more women work in journalism just as the newspaper business itself tweeters on the brink of extinction.— September 25, 2022 1:46 p.m.
Cub reporter for L.A. Times gets Page One break with PSA crash story
A blast from the past to read this firsthand narrative of then-LA Times reporter David Smollar about that unforgettable September morning crash of PSA Flight 182 into San Diego's Normal Heights neighborhood. I remember the Santa Ana and the day as if it were yesterday, but I never read graphic details like those presented here. I wonder if this story is the literary equivalent of those cell phone photos circulated after Kobe Bryant's helicopter crashed in a Los Angeles fogbank a few years ago. In contrast to SoCal native Smollar's brutal detailed recollection,, I am struck by his use of distancing British-ized language. He calls drunks "inebriates," elevators "lifts," himself "no naif," ridding himself of sweat, dust and traces of gore "a quick wash-up." And he describes the public humiliation of a woman reporter in favor of himself by their male editor-boss as an example of the "Darwinian aspects of newsroom culture and competition," rather than the too-common chauvinism and sexism of the time.— September 23, 2022 11:39 a.m.
Newsom signs DUI driver Ben Hueso's SDSU booze promotion bill
All things like the long-past date of Senator Ben Hueso's DUI considered, it doesn't seem fair to nail him for it in the first sentence of this story. But that said, it also doesn't seem right that Hueso is carrying legislation to permit alcohol advertising and promotional events at San Diego State gathering spots where many attendees will be students younger than the legal drinking age of 21. What will be next -- legal weed? And the bill passes? Truth be told, SDSU has a gross social culture of hearty partying that too often spills over into sadistic hazing of fraternity pledges, gang rapes of minor girls and incidents of murderous fighting. There's insufficient will to do better among six-figure salaried leaders at the school, its Foundation and among the many civic-minded SDSU grads living in greater San Diego.— September 20, 2022 6:38 p.m.
To dream in the dark: Scott Marks says, “That’s all, folks!”
Your predecessor offensively slammed Simone Signoret for growing old and losing her siren good looks when, late in her life, she played a starring role as "Madame Rosa" in the beautiful French film about an old Jewish woman who befriended a neighbor boy living in her impoverished Arab banlieue of Paris. It was the '70's, Scott, but it was still unforgivable wrong-headed condescending misogyny. For that, he gets a black spot. Cheers and thanks for not being like that.— September 1, 2022 1:55 p.m.
To dream in the dark: Scott Marks says, “That’s all, folks!”
I am not as philosophical, amusing or graceful as you are, Scott, on hearing this bad news. Scott Marks axed? There are so many more deserving candidates on the dwindling Reader roster! A great pity for those of us who faithfully read your column, learned so much about the art, history and technique of movie-making, enjoyed the strong reviews and, above all,, appreciated the mensch-generosity that saturated your work. I have to say here: long-winded pompous predecessor Duncan Shepherd never held a candle to your light. Many thanks for everything and best wishes to you!— August 26, 2022 5 p.m.
Todd Gloria picks Houstonian for Ash Street reset
Well, buried in the second section of today's Union-Tribune, we learn that San Diego's new COO Eric Dargan will earn $375,000 a year. I wish him well working with (or for) Todd Gloria, who hopes to expunge the record of his moving hearty approval of the Ash Street disaster when he was on City Council. Today, as Mayor Gloria, he hopes to put the expensive Ash Street liability in the rearview mirror as he touts another distracting shiny thing -- rebuilding City Hall and the Civic Center.— July 29, 2022 6:29 p.m.