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
The Best Films of 2013
Scott, I was too chicken to see"Gravity," though I really like fabulist Alphonse Cuaron who bases whole movies on stories his grandma told him. As for "12 Years a Slave" -- well, when producer Brad Pitt showed up as an itinerant "good" white carpenter, I just had to laugh. I was interested in the true-story part but I needed a spoonful of sugar and an intermission to make it all go down. Otherwise, I seldom rent movies and never go to multiplexes anymore -- only Landmarks and Reading Clairemont and I even went once to the Media Arts Center last summer to see a bootleg film made in Cuba. There were two German movies last year that were really good -- one about WW II Nazi refugee kids and one about a woman doctor wanting to flee East Germany - and another strange, beautifully photographed Danish/Swedish? film called "The Hunt." And how about that Israeli documentary interviewing all those old Israeli CIA/Secret Service types? You have to fill in the blanks of titles I have forgotten, but there were probably others besides. I think people who like movies need to know from you about about these films and others like them. Super-idiosyncratic Esoterica from the Master once in a while is fine, but "Best Films of 2013?" That's a major disconnect. As I said, I am only one person, but I saw only one of the movies on your "best-ten" list and never even heard of the rest. And I actually really liked three movies from your perverse "worst-of" list. IMHO part of the reviewer's job is to reach regular-schlepper devotees as well as to influence the growing number of less-frequent movie-goers to leave their computers at home and get out into the dark of a non-Barcalounger movie theater to see worthy new films.— January 2, 2014 9:59 p.m.
The Best Films of 2013
Congratulations on running a list that had on it one film I'd heard of and went to see -- "Wolf of Wall Street." It was a tour de force. Otherwise, esoteric? Show-boating? Unhelpful? All of the above. Come ON, Scott, we need a little balance here.— January 2, 2014 4:17 p.m.
Out-of-town interests pour money into SD mayor's race
Once in a while we'd like to see the cumulative total$ to date being dumped into the mayoral race for each side. Just so we can keep track. Re the $30,000 new year contribution of Rod Dammeyer to GOP candidate Kevin Faulconer, Dammeyer is also the godfather behind another lobbying venture undermining public education, supporting charter schools and masquerading as parental "choice." San Diego voters who enjoy having right-wing people like Rancho Santa Fe resident and Lincoln Club manipulator Bill Lynch and conservative Del Mar businessman Rod Dammeyer call the shots at San Diego City Hall should definitely go for Kevin Faulconer for Mayor. He is their man -- bought fair and square, lock, stock and barrel.— January 2, 2014 12:32 p.m.
Two donations $50k or more for pro-Faulconer committee
What a coincidence: builders, developers and the Chamber on the same page -- following the lead of former top-cop and mayoral puppet Jerry Sanders who supports the puppet mayoral candidate Faulconer. The only surprises will be the amounts of cash dumped into this race. For a breath of fresh air from the status quo, voters can elect Councilman David Alvarez to City Hall.— January 1, 2014 4:07 p.m.
Moores's horse goes for European record $8.1 million
Everybody reading this needs to see Martin Scorsese's searing film, "Wolf of Wall Street," about just this sort of profiteering and skating at others' expense. An interesting distinction is made in the movie between kid-glove SEC civil investigations of financial fraud and harder-hitting FBI criminal prosecution of similar larcenous behavior.— January 1, 2014 3:55 p.m.
False source of $37,000 to Lincoln Club and GOP revealed
Stuck in the rough? I think that would describe the GOP mayoral candidate whose campaign is getting all this improperly declared moola.— December 31, 2013 2:33 p.m.
Double tracking it at SDSU
Well, at least we'll be able to inquire if our future councilmembers, mayors, supervisors. DAs, sheriffs, police chiefs and state legislators were SDSU honors students or just regular SDSU party animals.— December 28, 2013 9:06 p.m.
Citizens for Odor Nuisance Abatement sues city
Before taking up needlepoint, I made a list of the many good things accomplished over eight short months by Mayor Bob Filner. La Jolla Cove stench abatement was one of many problems solved by Mayor Filner in his time at City Hall. Closing Plaza de Panama to traffic and saving the Cabrillo bridge was another. Eliminating Big Brother red-light camera traps at intersections -- and incontestable $500 fines -- was another. The list goes on, but I will not be drawn into the past, even by you, Mr. Bauder. We know who was perfidious and who wasn't during the summer of 2013 and we will remember. That's enough.— December 28, 2013 8:44 p.m.
The ten worst films of 2013
READER readers alert: Scott M. is in far left field to place "Frances Ha," "Fruitvale Station" and "Blue is the Warmest Color" on his 2013 hate-list. The year was full of clinkers, no doubt, but these three thought-provoking, discomfiting, very current films were not among them, even if they were in some way imperfect. "Frances Ha" was an astoundingly contemporary story about an educated girl from Sacramento drifting/living in NYC. "Fruitvale Station" was a cautionary tale of racial injustice based on a true story about a hapless drifting black kid living in the cosmopolitan Bay Area. "Blue Is the Warmest Color" was an unusually frank, very French exploration of a provincial French high school girl's sexual exploration and drift into and out of lesbian love.— December 28, 2013 5:49 p.m.
Citizens for Odor Nuisance Abatement sues city
Holy smoke, no one wants to harass protected pinnipeds or any other living things, Psycho, though I see now that you are aptly named. The fact is that Mayor Filner took the initiative about solving this problem, found a remedy that actually worked, and City officials should have continued doing whatever he did to fix it after he left City Hall. Long-suffering La Valencia Hotel and George's Restaurant, plaintiffs in the suit, are on the frontline of the pervasive stench coming from the Cove's rocky cliffs and wafting uphill toward establishments along Prospect Street and even farther into the village of La Jolla. The smell is disgusting -- that's why it's called the "stench." There's no question it negatively affects many businesses as well as visitors and residents of La Jolla. I know for a fact that regular Cove walkers, runners and swimmers now avoid the area. It's been occurring most days for more than a year (documented in the local weekly paper.) The stench needs to be eliminated.— December 28, 2013 4:54 p.m.