The guy in the middle rack next to mine was hard-timing it, sleeping 15 to 18 hours. This was standard among tweakers who had gotten busted after a five- or six-day binge of no sleep.
July 5, 1990
News & Stories
Thirteen Reader authors on San Dieego at night
San Diego talk radio after dark
Night is when cold and flu gets the worst. Forget to take my Medication (stop doing that) sleep much as possible (trying trying, easier in the day Supply: corn beef — low Medication — 3 …
July 5, 1990
Jolar Adult Theater late at night
It’s an empty middle-of-the-week hump night, Wednesday, two-thirty a.m. The moon is full; the uncommonly illuminated sky is azure and clear, bright as it most often is a half-hour before sunup. University Avenue looks broader …
July 5, 1990
My plan: cross street, hide in bushes, run for help, head for nearest porch, scream
It’s twilight. Walking deeper than usual into my loop of a route (no backtracking!), past the point when I’ll let myself turn around. Now I’m pumped. Now the songs on the Walkman make my gait …
July 5, 1990
The passing of Hedgecock and Martinez removed trappings of power from Dobson’s
The crowd starts filling the stools at Dobson’s by five o’clock each evening, emerging from the law offices and banking halls to line the narrow space within the walls of the old Spreckels Theatre Building. …
July 5, 1990
La Especial on 25th and Imperial
It’s Sunday, 2 a.m. A dark balmy night. Imperial Avenue is quiet, almost deserted, but there’s action up ahead, across from the old welfare office on 25th Street — now fenced in and vacant. A …
July 5, 1990
Cab ride from La Jolla to downtown after midnight
In a La Jolla oceanfront hotel, an elderly anorexic alcoholic picked at tiny oysters bedded in spinach and told me the story of her life. Orphaned at 8, married at 18 — “Married well!” She …
July 5, 1990
Log of my mother's Alzheimer's
1:00 a.m. The dyslexic hour. Words on computer monitor start to run together. Squinting. Brain tired. Slumping. Sleep summons. The house has been quiet for hours. My favorite time of day, my “afternoon.” Quiet time. …
July 5, 1990
Night not much different from day when you're in San Diego Jail
To begin with, I slept badly at night and never in the day. But gradually my nights became better, and I managed to doze off in the daytime as well. In fact, during the last …
July 5, 1990
San Diego Zoo after sundown
The electric sodium lights hiss in the zoo’s parking lot. A winged beetle flops, buzzes feebly on the cement apron next to where I park the car. The 11 p.m. air is vaguely scented with …
July 5, 1990
You’ll see Crips, Bloods, and the Mickey Mouse Club driving around in circles
It is a humbling experience to return to the ghetto at night. To expect a few inconveniences on the way back to paradise has become a doleful routine for any denizen who resides in Southeast …
July 5, 1990
Eleanor Widmer finds a late-night restaurant where she can sing
I don’t know whether insomnia is programmed in the DNA, but my grandmother, my father, and I all had sleeping problems. From earliest childhood, say by the age of five, I would wake in the …
July 5, 1990
Jonathan Saville knows about night
Night? I know about Night. It was before I started to compare things, to measure things, to judge the world by reason. There the universe spoke a different language, the language of Night. I was …
July 5, 1990