Over the past year, novice investors learned the hard way that the stock market can be a tricky place to make money. Yet judging from their recent financial disclosure filings, San Diego County elected officials …
April 26, 2001
Thursday, April 26
How San Diego politicians invested this year
S.D. Cash Showered on L.A. Pols
For most San Diegans, the mayoral race of the year 2000 was right here at home, between Judge Dick Murphy and county supervisor Ron Roberts. More than $3 million was lavished on the campaign by …
April 26, 2001
Gelded age
Las Vegas developer Irwin Molasky won't be a player at this year's Kentucky Derby after all. Molasky built -- along with the late Cleveland-raised mobster Moe Dalitz and Barbara Walters's ex-husband Merv Adelson -- the …
April 26, 2001
Union Blue and Dixie Grey
While the revolver was in my grasp, the weapon was discharged, blowing out the end of the scabbard. Before I looked up, General Coon, sitting beside me, gasped, “You have killed me, Grovesteen; I am done for!”
April 26, 2001
Critic of Inward City
“San Diego doesn’t have the faith in itself that a place like New York or San Francisco has,” he said. “It’s partly the result of history. San Diego turned in on itself when the railroad went to Los Angeles.”
April 26, 2001
Long Waits, Big Fines
San Diegans who cross into Mexico by car are used to waiting an hour and a half to clear customs when coming north But local fishermen, whale watchers, and sailboaters who have traveled by boat …
April 26, 2001
Descend the V-shaped gorge of Tenaja Canyon in the Santa Ana Mountains, where water splashes and newts waddle.
As the gloom of a late afternoon descends upon the deep-cut, linear furrow of Tenaja Canyon, dozens of orange-bellied newts waddle determinedly uphill and across the trail, oblivious to my footfalls. The cute faces and …
April 26, 2001
Thursday, April 19
George Lewis, 20th Century musician at UCSD
At the Point Loma Wastewater Treatment Plant, bathed in a strange orange light, George Lewis guides a reporter through a gallery of sludge pipes. Later this afternoon, Lewis — the composer, trombonist-improviser, computer musician, and …
April 19, 2001
Our Students Don't Kill
'We currently have 20 kids here who've committed homicides. We get about one a month. In every case except one, it was an armed assault, usually a robbery, involving money, drugs, or both. The one …
April 19, 2001
Dirty business
The Federal Communications Commission is using an old censorship case involving San Diego's KGB, now owned by Texas-based Clear Channel Communications, as an example of how not to run a radio station. Last week, the …
April 19, 2001
Visit Palomar's Love Valley during the peak of its vernal splendor.
After a wet winter, the shallow ponds in Love Valley hold the shimmering, upside-down image of a classic California landscape: a weathered barn nestled at the far end of an Ireland-colored meadow, rounded foothills studded …
April 19, 2001
Thursday, April 12
Why did Valerie Stallings take the fall for Padres owner John Moores?
The grimy facts behind Valerie Stallings' guilty plea.
April 12, 2001
Environment of Mistrust
As I was completing my instructions to a diminutive 70-year-old Filipino gentleman with congestive heart failure, a knock at the door cut me short. “A patient is having a seizure.” Jo, a medical assistant with …
April 12, 2001
How many bathrooms are there in the White House?
Dear Matthew Alice: How many bathrooms are there in the White House? In second grade, somebody told me there were 365. -- Silviano, Harborside School, downtown Here's a tip. Don't look at that kid's test …
April 12, 2001
What is a lifeguard supposed to do when it sees a surfer get nailed by a great white shark?
Hey, Matt: If a lifeguard all of a sudden sees a surfer just get nailed by a great white, what is lifeguard protocol? Does he have to go try to save the guy, risking becoming …
April 12, 2001
What is the meaning/origin of the word "honcho?"
Matt: I've looked through Spanish dictionaries and I can't find the meaning of the word "honcho." What is the origin of the term? -- Jake, San Diego Hey, gringo, not all words that end in …
April 12, 2001
Is it really illegal to remove a shopping cart from a grocery store's parking lot?
Hey, Matt! Someone in our apartment complex is slowly amassing a collection (five so far) of shopping carts out front near the street. Yes, true, it's unsightly, but this person has no car and needs …
April 12, 2001
Pio Pico's Disastrous Addiction
While he was governor, from 1845 to 1846, he sold or leased the missions. He needed the money to run things. He sold the mission at San Juan Capistrano to his brother-in-law for $750.
April 12, 2001
Our bed is never made
“I thought, ‘I cannot drive Aldine [a windy, canyon-hugging road] every day. It’ll freak me out.’ We looked in Normal Heights, and there were times we’d go to open houses, and I’d get this really uneasy feeling.”
April 12, 2001
Roomful of Pain
One of San Diego's busiest emergency rooms is Kaiser Permanente in Grantville. At 7:30 on a Tuesday night, the parking lot is illuminated by an arcade of food vendors under bright neon signs. Inside, there …
April 12, 2001
Circle to the summit of Condor Peak in the San Gabriel Mountains, and return by way of Trail Canyon
The all-day, 14-mile-loop hike up to the viewful summit of Condor Peak and back by way of verdant Trail Canyon in the San Gabriel Mountains is well suited to properly conditioned hikers but punishingly difficult …
April 12, 2001
Thursday, April 5
Traffic Spares No One
“We’re doing really good compared to other cities. We still enjoy something here in San Diego. If you travel outside peak commute times, it’s pretty much free-flowing. You can’t go to L.A. and do that.”
April 5, 2001
The hidden donors for San Diego mayor Dick Murphy
John C. Funk, a Harvard-educated environmental law attorney with the law firm of Weston, Benshoof, Rochefort, Rubalcava MacCuish in Los Angeles, represents some of the biggest companies in California, including the ubiquitous Allied Waste, the …
April 5, 2001
Why is the alphabet in alphabetical order?
Mattster: Why is the alphabet in alphabetical order? -- A2Z, the net Hey, Matt: Something that has troubled me since childhood: Why is the letter w called "double U" when it is clearly a "double …
April 5, 2001
Why aren't there mile markers in California?
Hey, Matt: You suggested that people check their speedometers using highway mile markers. As a recent transplant from the Midwest, I am used to all of the interstates having mile markers. But here in California, …
April 5, 2001
Alejandra's Difficult Choice
'Let me explain it to you slowly, because my life is very complicated. When I was 15 years old, I went from my small town in Puebla to Tecate, where I crossed into the United …
April 5, 2001
Soft money on steroids
If Arizona senator John McCain's campaign-finance reform bill outlawing soft money becomes law, one big-spending San Diego diet-drug outfit may not be happy. Metabolife, founded by Michael Ellis and Michael Blevins, once convicted on charges …
April 5, 2001
Take a serene bike ride on Lakeside's El Monte Road, and get a glimpse of San Diego County's rural past.
If you're a bicyclist with an antipathy for steep hills but a love for rural scenery, you'll appreciate El Monte Road. Few rural roads in San Diego County can offer as long a stretch of …
April 5, 2001