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
DeMaio gets campaign fund payback
Let's go right to the French of it: the byzantine legerdemain described here boggles the mind. I'm sure neither GOP accountant April Boling nor flexible-ethics doyenne Stacey Fulhorst really understands what went on or who got what or whether any of it was legitimate. But hey, that's the way the game is played. Just today a former disgraced head of the gigantic CALPERS fund admitted to getting a $200,000 cash kickback delivered to a room in the Sacramento Hyatt. Good for DeMaio for not taking his money in cash in a shoebox.— July 11, 2014 2:53 p.m.
Ghosts of taxpayers past
Who wants to see ghosts in their Victorian-era bathroom? And a hotel with a 13th floor? Forget about The Citizen in Sacramento! The Hyatt is fine.— July 9, 2014 9:46 p.m.
Cops and jobbers
Chamber of Commerce president, ex-Mayor and former Police chief Jerry Sanders has only two more days to apply to become head the Citizens Review Board on Police Practices.— July 8, 2014 12:34 p.m.
Political mansion’s historic tale of woe
Miami is without a doubt the hottest, most humid, most garish, craziest city in the United States. Fortunately, ocean water is lapping at its edges -- including the docks and lawns of island estates of criminals, sports figures and assorted celebrities -- and the rising seas of climate change may obliterate the entire place. Here in buttoned-down San Diego, it just takes a modest campaign contribution of $4000 and the complicity of elected officials to do the job on a single historic home.— July 8, 2014 12:27 p.m.
SD's for-profit colleges devour GI Bill bucks
While the California community college system has much to offer young people with limited money -- including the opportunity to transfer to four-year state colleges or universities -- it does not treat its teaching cadres well. There is a heavy reliance on part-time teachers who receive no benefits and can virtually never qualify for full-time employment at a single campus. This common practice dilutes the community college experience for students and faculty alike and should be changed.— July 2, 2014 3:36 p.m.
SD's for-profit colleges devour GI Bill bucks
Caveat emptor. For-profit schools spend their bucks on promotion and lobbying, not on strong faculties or student advising. They do that business-model thing: equating education with jobs and income -- which is not higher education's purpose. And they do expensive things like sponsor San Diego Symphony Summer Pops to gain legitimacy. Most of the students who enroll at these places never finish, but they are still stuck with debt for loans incurred at enrollment. That's one reason these "schools" go after our all-volunteer ex-military folks: not only is G.I. Bill money waiting to be taken, the students are themselves young and vulnerable, with a high school diploma or equivalent, without mentors, tutors or life-experience other than in a theater of war. They are sitting ducks for exploitation by the for-profit so-called "university" which is selling nothing for something. The feds seem to have been unable to regulate these G.I. Bill-funded private enterprises or to gain much data on student graduation rates, post-graduate employment or the extent of students' debt. Unlike their faculties, lobbyists for these businesses masquerading as universities are well-compensated for fulltime work.— July 1, 2014 8:40 p.m.
SD's for-profit colleges devour GI Bill bucks
Get In Get Out and Compete: how do you say that in Latin? Maybe the Reader's publisher will tell us. A perfect motto for these rip-off schools.— July 1, 2014 7:48 p.m.
Maybe Potrero citizens sensed something
Privatizing the U.S. military was the brainchild of Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and it finally blew up when a contingent of Blackwater "security" people killed an innocent Iraqi family in their car at a Baghdad intersection. Oops. Read war reporter Jeremy Scahill's scathing book on Blackwater. Blackwater had an affinity for America's Finest City, all-military-all-the-time San Diego. Blackwater tried to set up shop in Potrero and was thwarted. They also tried to establish a secret base in East County, near or on some Indian land. Finally, before moving away and changing their name multiple times, our own ex-Mayor Jerry Sanders gave Blackwater a lease on a big warehouse in South Bay near the Border.— July 1, 2014 7:30 p.m.
In Memphis, Faulconer hails GOP machine’s victory
Who wouldn't be appalled by the local GOP Lincoln Club and its scary hardbitten enforcers like Bill Lynch and TeaParty County GOP chair Tony Kravaric? And how terrible for subscribers that the PUBLISHER OF THIS CITY'S DAILY NEWSPAPER FAILS TO DISCLOSE THAT HE HAS BEEN HEAVILY FINANCING THE POLITICAL FORTUNE of bland, blond, dutiful, water-carrying Kevin Faulconer for Mayor of this town. Meanwhile, Manchester's development man goes on the City Planning Commission and Faulconer's wife reaps financial windfalls from getting permits to close off downtown city streets for conventioneers' partying without paying any city fees. (See Reader video of same from last week where an intervening San Diego police officer gives grudging permission for reporter Matt Potter to continue to document Mrs. Faulconer's fenced-off downtown event from outside the barricade. The cop -- correctly if poignantly -- concedes that filming is okay, saying, "This is America.") At least somebody honors the rules of the game.— July 1, 2014 1:40 p.m.
Faulconer’s wife: master of cops and conventions
In the instance of Mrs. Faulconer, I think you, Visduh, have made good points about the political expediency of her maintaining another name and a low wifely profile. As for Mr.O'Sullivan above, what turnip truck did he just fall from? "There is a husband and wife working in their jobs which benefits (sic) all San Diego." Admittedly, Kevin and Spouse are not exactly like Kevin and Spouse in "House of Cards,"but still...there should be city fees charged for her lucrative enterprise.— June 29, 2014 9:56 p.m.