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Stories by Don Bauder (RIP)

San Diego Union and San Diego Reader writer Don Bauder passes away

In 1960, I entered the journalism profession with a Master’s degree and an addiction to work in a field I already knew that I loved: writing and reporting. I had worked 40 hours a week …

June 24, 2024
Alleys are San Diego's last frontier

A tour of San Diego alleysJack Whalen hands me a beer. “I’m king of this alley,” Whalen says, then points west. “Down there, the king of that next alley is Tom Sweet. He’s 97.” Whalen …

October 16, 2023
David Ross – knew San Diego homeless intimately

He loves the people no one wants"I'm used to voices downtown, of agony and pain and just dysfunction, and I had the window down a little so I could hear. I look and there's a …

October 2, 2023
Tom Deméré takes us to Mission Valley of 50 million years ago

More or less sudden mountainsThe rocks in and around San Diego have composed amazing, fiery stories for a very long time. An ancient ocean once covered this county; volcanoes used to spew here; and more …

October 1, 2023
Old Otay Mesa

Otay before 50,000 homes In 1954 I sat on the school bus every day next to my best friend, Mark Robson. The ride home from Montgomery Elementary School in Otay was a straight shot east …

Rancho Santa Fe: elevator from the 12-car garage

Sequester yourself in the Secret Ranch Welcome to “The Secret Ranch,” a 12-acre estate with more than 12,400 square feet of living space under roof located in the exclusive Covenant of Rancho Santa Fe. “This …

Freeway ramp to shave Old Town and Presidio Park?

Destination Lindbergh; destruction Old Town "It would transform the way travelers use our airport, reduce traffic congestion around [Lindbergh Field] and take advantage of the airport’s close proximity to Interstate 5 by providing access right …

July 16, 2023
Cats, small dogs, and toddlers don’t last long in Borrego

Ten Reasons Why You’d Have to Be Crazy to Live in Borrego Springs To paraphrase what Gertrude Stein once said of Oakland, there is no there there — no people (population: about 3000), no movie …

How the Indians lost Warner Hot Springs

The removal of the Cupeños from Warner Springs Beginning on November 21, 1851, the Indians burned Warner’s buildings; stole his cattle, horses, and sheep; and killed nine Americans. The revolt was soon put down, Cupa …

February 13, 2023
Scripps Research subsidies in Florida, Nixon's Swiss bank account, Prebys family trouble

Over $1 million per subsidized job Then-Governor Jeb Bush seduced La Jolla’s Scripps Research Institute with almost $600 million in various kinds of incentives, both from the state and from Palm Beach County. The facility, …

October 10, 2022
Local Olaf Wieghorst fans get burned

Olaf Wieghorst trusted the wrong man Almeida got his start at George Thackeray’s gallery in the late ’50s. He and his wife Grace agreed to talk to me at their house in Ocean Beach, a …

July 16, 2022
San Diego roads that have disappeared, vanished movie palaces

The Lost Roads of San Diego In 1944, the land between Midway Drive and Sports Arena Boulevard (then Frontier Street) became combed with the short streets of a wartime housing project. After the war, transients …

December 6, 2021
Nathanael West, Jim Thompson, Max Miller

Janet, My Mother, and Me “We went out to Belmont, and Harry couldn’t stop picking winners. We went to the 21 Club for dinner, and we scalped tickets for a Broadway musical in the fourth …

November 20, 2021
Had his hand in: Padres, Westgate Hotel, Westgate Tuna, Yellow Cab, Kona Kai, Fashion Valley

When Dick Nixon Came to Town San Diego entrepreneur Arnholt Smith, one of Nixon’s earliest supporters, remembered a melancholy evening in the early ’60s when Nixon was holding a meeting and asked him to get …

February 28, 2021
Who stole your iPod, FM94's Mike Esparza, Hell's Angels, our Russian yacht, Seaworld sharks, why they leave San Diego

Roman Abramovich Yacht on San Diego’s Embarcadero Two helicopter pads, pool, spa, hot tub... It was borrowed by Madonna back in 2010 (according to Luxist.com), when she was filming her movie about the Duke of …

September 19, 2020
Juan Vargas loves lobbyists, the Dominelli fake-out, Pala tribe civil war, SDSU hates undergrads, UCSD wants blood south of I-8

Leavin' On a Jet Plane Tax dollars fund airport blitzkrieg. The stealth campaign that spends your money to buy your vote. CEO Thella Bowens proudly pointed to the poll's key finding: that public support for …

September 13, 2020
National City – still up and coming

National City – a Mayor Daley-type political machine To the south of San Diego, within range of the shadows cast by the Coronado Bridge, lies National City. Frequently described as the “backlot" of San Diego, …

Who stole your iPod, don't embarrass the Hell's Angels

Don't Embarrass the Hells Angels They will not tolerate someone pretending to be a member who is not really a member. By Eva Knott, July 25, 2012 Roman Abramovich Yacht on San Diego’s Embarcadero It …

May 23, 2020
Juan Vargas as cash magnet, J. David Dominelli as town sugar daddy

San Diego State's growing contempt for undergrads “We have pulled resources out of undergraduate education in order to build expensive, elite PhD programs that cater to very few students proportionately." By Joe Deegan, March 27, …

May 16, 2020
Kearny Mesa – not really a neighborhood

Giovanni's leaves cribbage fans homeless I used to come to Giovanni’s at the turn of the century when they were located at Balboa Avenue about a mile west from the I-805 freeway. I remember playing …

Best Reader stories from 2005

Salvation Mountain The Slabs are Slab City, three miles east of Niland, between the sultry Salton Sea and the Chocolate Mountains. Years ago the concrete slabs supported the barracks of Camp Dunlap, where General George …

February 15, 2020
Otay Mesa – so unsettled

Feds plan to make pond of Tijuana sewage Just how smelly are thirteen acres of raw sewage? Soon, very soon, we shall find out. Next Monday a federal agency is planning to start building an …

December 23, 2019
Rancho Santa Fe – the most luxury homes in California

San Diego Polo Club site developed by Heaven's Gate Exclusiveness breeds itself, so it’s little wonder that when the San Diego Polo Club in Rancho Santa Fe needed a Web page designed, they turned to …

Old Town – early and later stories

General store ledgers tell how people lived in Old Town Finding which store the ledger came from involved detective work. In 1864, there were only two general merchandise stores, one in Old Town, the other …

Borrego Springs– no there there

From Toro Peak to Fonts Point, barely Their plan was to start at Toro Peak, in the Santa Rosa Mountains just north of Borrego Springs, hike along the mountainous spine over Rabbit Peak and Villager …

Warner Springs – place of contention

The blackest of crimes committed against Warner Ranch Indians Lummis rode past sturdy, whitewashed adobe houses with thatched roofs. When he reached the center of the village, anxious eyes approached. The Cupeños were desperate for …

Don Bauder and the Reader

How Bauder came to write for the Reader: My wife and I had bought Colorado land in 1999, and hired a builder who constructed our home on 36 acres. It was ready in early 2003. …

February 16, 2019
Curmudgeon Don Bauder's view of debt

The federal deficit will be a staggering $1 trillion next year. Corporate debt is an astonishing $6.3 trillion. Globally, the derivatives market, which nearly killed us in 2008, could be $1 quadrillion. Speculation is rampant …

September 26, 2018
Farewell to a professional love

In 1960, I entered the journalism profession with a Master’s degree and an addiction to work in a field I already knew that I loved: writing and reporting. I had worked 40 hours a week …

September 17, 2018
S.D.’s household income rose five percent last year

Median San Diego household income jumped five percent to $76,662 last year, but the main reason is that more people per household were working, according to United States Census Bureau data revealed this morning (September …

September 14, 2018
Calif. insurance department hits NRA with cease and desist

The California Department of Insurance yesterday (September 11) issued a cease and desist order against the National Rifle Association (NRA). The association sponsors Carry Guard, which it describes as a “membership carry program” offering comprehensive …

September 13, 2018
Teens to flip Jack in the Box burgers gone

"If you want to work, there is no excuse for not getting into the job market now,” says Phil Blair, executive owner of Manpower San Diego. Blair, the local employment guru, is talking about the …

September 12, 2018
SD Opera’s Tito Capobianco dies

Tito Capobianco, the autocrat who brought San Diego Opera — and the late soprano Beverly Sills — to prominence, died September 8 at Lauderdale-by-the-Sea, Florida, to which he had retired in 2000. He was 87. …

September 10, 2018
San Diego’s poor pay 95% of family income for rent

At a time when the current Washington D.C. administration is proposing deep cuts in housing welfare, the staggering rent costs for low-income San Diegans merits focus. According to a Zillow release this week, low-income San …

September 7, 2018
If you want to get on the fast track...

There’s an old song, “Ya gotta be a football hero to get along with the beautiful girls.” The words are now being changed to “Ya gotta be a pro sports team owner to get your …

September 7, 2018
San Diego one of best places to raise family

San Diego comes in 24th out of 182 in the best cities in which to raise a family, according to a new report by WalletHub, which does statistical studies of United States places to work …

September 4, 2018
Chargers hater back

Joseph MacRae, who sponsored the flying of anti-Chargers/anti-Spanos banners over StubHub Center in Carson (L.A. County) last year when the Chargers were playing there, intends to repeat this year if he can raise the money. …

August 31, 2018
San Diego's biotechs soared, then came down to reality

Can scientific purity and entrepreneurial greed coexist? San Diego is an ideal testing ground for that question, because it is one of three biotech centers in the United States, and biotech companies, dominated by scientists, …

August 29, 2018
D’Souza book fifth on New York Timesbest seller list

Arch-conservative San Diegan Dinesh D’Souza is riding high these days: his new book, Death of a Nation, this week is number 5 on the New York Times hardcover best-seller list. The book posits that Republican …

August 27, 2018
350,000 grads, $7.5 billion of debt

The Oakland-based independent Institute for College Access and Success this month released a study showing that 350,000 two-year or four-year grads of for-profit colleges left school in 2012 with a collective $7.5 billion of debt. …

August 27, 2018
Larry Lucchino, switch hitter on ballpark subsidies

Remember when Larry Lucchino and John Moores said that a fat ballpark subsidy for a team owned by a mega-millionaire was a civic good — something akin to godliness and cleanliness? After getting San Diego …

August 20, 2018
Almost everyone in Solana Beach working

The county unemployment rate was 3.5 percent in July, down from a revised 3.7 percent in June and from 4.4 percent a year earlier, according to the California Employment Development Department. During the month, total …

August 17, 2018
Local home listing prices dropped 20 percent in June

Maybe some relief is coming for home buyers. San Diego County home price listings dropped 20 percent in June, according to Zillow.com. Among the 35 largest United States metro areas, the only larger drop was …

August 16, 2018
Chula Vista firm charged with cheating investors

A now-defunct Chula Vista firm, RMR Asset Management, and its head, Ralph Riccardi, used fraudulent schemes to deprive individual investors of municipal bonds, according to a suit filed Tuesday (August 14) in federal court. Individual, …

August 16, 2018
Chernobyl in San Onofre?

In March of this year, Southern California Edison, the major owner of the shuttered San Onofre nuclear plant, revealed that a shipment of canisters in which the company is burying nuclear waste near the ocean …

August 15, 2018
SD homebuilding still in the dumps

After the housing bubble burst in the 2008 period, the United States has been very slow to replenish the housing stock, or inventory. The partly explains the rise in home prices. San Diego County is …

August 14, 2018
Move over, Ivy League. West tops universities

The University of California at San Diego is the second best educational institution in the nation, according to a new ranking of universities and colleges by Money magazine. Among the factors going into the study …

August 14, 2018
City leaders don’t mention “convention center”

Local media are reporting this morning (August 9) that the initiative to raise the hotel tax to expand the convention center and purportedly fix the roads and help the homeless doesn’t have enough valid signatures …

Bridgepoint stock soars

On July 25, stock of San Diego-based, deeply-troubled Bridgepoint Education closed at $8.09. It had been as low as $5.31 in the past 52 weeks. Today (August 3), Bridgdepoint closed at $13.10 — a huge …

August 3, 2018
Longtime friends nabbed for insider trading

Story updated on August 21. Two Carlsbad residents, friends since childhood, were slapped this week for insider trading that arose after they attended a concert together. According to the Securities and Exchange Commission, in July …

August 3, 2018

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