Poor, benighted Qualcomm Stadium. It's been around since 1967 and for its first three decades was one of the city's most popular landmarks. Winner of national architecture awards, the dual-use arena, owned jointly by the …
December 1, 2005
News & Stories
The secret Qualcomm Stadium e-mails
Drink, Drink, Drink!
Silly is you in a natural state, and serious is something you have to do until you can get silly again. -- Mike Myers "Don't do it," I warned. "Don't do what ?" "Don't play …
December 1, 2005
I Think I Smell a Rat!
Most musicians would feel honored to share a stage with Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore, but when GoGoGo Airheart performed with Moore and four other acts in New York on November 12... "Thurston Moore's set was …
December 1, 2005
Jilted Again
This month, Rolling Stone said My Morning Jacket's new CD Z is one of the best albums of the year. Before MMJ was signed to Dave Matthews's ATO label (distributed by RCA), the experimental country …
December 1, 2005
Monster Bass Player Lost
Oceanside police confirm that Joe Pontisso, 41, shot himself in the head while driving on College Boulevard November 19. Pontisso, a bassist in the Clay Colton Band, 427, and Triocity, played regularly at Carlsbad venues. …
December 1, 2005
THE Gary Wilson?
"You don't remember who I am, do you?" Gary Wilson asked me via e-mail. I'd been interviewing the indie-rock pioneer about his rediscovery since being name-checked in Beck's "Where It's At" ("Like my man Gary …
December 1, 2005
Sun Studio
All three Riboflavin CDs were recorded using only solar power. "When the lights started going off during the [2001] California power crisis, we decided that it was a rip-off," says Riboflavin drummer Mark Doyle. According …
December 1, 2005
A Pox on Cover Bands!
"The [city] planning department is rewriting the city plan right now," bassist Glen Fisher says, "and...I'm trying to make a lot of noise." Fisher, on Point Loma's Peninsula Community Planning Board, hopes to influence the …
December 1, 2005
Hey, Hey, Paula (See You in Court)
Local firm Pro-Stars filed a lawsuit on November 8 against Paula Abdul, alleging "breach of contract." The suit contends Abdul agreed to let the company exclusively represent the trademark for a jewelry line called "Innergy …
December 1, 2005
San Diego Finally Plugged In?
This is “a rich bitch, paint-the-ghetto-psychedelic kind of town.”
December 1, 2005
Calvary Chapel San Diego
"I was stoned when I accepted Christ," said Jared Lee, a volunteer at Calvary Chapel San Diego. "When my parents got divorced, I started getting into the drug scene. I would smoke an ounce of …
December 1, 2005
Mount Gower Open Space Preserve, outside Ramona, rises from the ashes of the Cedar Fire.
The 1574-acre Mount Gower Open Space Preserve was hard-hit by the Cedar Fire of October 2003. Today, after the extraordinarily wet 2004-05 rainfall year and after a first wave of precipitation in the current rainy …
December 1, 2005
Wine All You Want
Ed Moore's Third Corner started as a seafood restaurant across the street from his venerable Thee Bungalow, but for some reason, the neighborhood never warmed to it. After closing, Moore started storing wines there, and …
December 1, 2005
Kensington Business Balks at New City America
Eight years ago, the Adams Avenue Business Association received a $600,000 "urban forestry" grant from the State of California to mitigate the pollution that would result from Interstate 15 traffic. Kensington business property owners chose …
December 1, 2005
Pension Woes Legacy of GOP Convention
Pointing to his hometown's dismal experience, San Diegan Carl DeMaio is urging members of Congress to pass legislation imposing federal standards on government pension programs. Others hoot at such a notion: they note that federal …
December 1, 2005
Breaking Stories
Borderline business Word that San Diego mayor-elect Jerry Sanders and Tijuana mayor Jorge Hank Rhon are getting together to promote the cross-border economy has resurrected not-so-distant memories of ex-mayor Susan Golding and her onetime husband, …
December 1, 2005
Under The Big Top
I read a story in the paper recently that said Dennis Rodman, a creature from the last century, had signed with the Tijuana Dragons of the American Basketball Association. The ABA is a minor, minor …
December 1, 2005
Gravity, Tomatoes, And Pot Without Soil
'The disadvantage of selling hydroponics equipment is that everyone thinks that everyone buying this equipment is growing pot," says Bill Tall, owner of City Farmers Nursery. On Saturday, December 3, City Farmers Nursery is offering …
December 1, 2005
Love Letter To a Wine
“Champagne was said to prevent depression and typhoid.”
Harry IV
Movies reviewed this week: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, The Ice Harvest, and Rent
December 1, 2005
Fear of the outie
Heymatt: My sister is having a baby pretty soon and she's terrified that her child might have to go through life with an outie belly button. Is there anything she can do to make sure …
December 1, 2005
Death by mascara
M.A: No matter how tightly I close up my mascara, it always dries up before I use much of it. I suspect this is planned obsolescence. I've tried dribbling water into the little brush hole …
December 1, 2005
Snoozing ponies
Dear Matthew Alice: How come horses can sleep standing up? Why don�t they fall over? -- Kris, Central Elementary School Well, Kris, horses' legs are not built like yours and mine. The arrangement of bones …
December 1, 2005
Football Follies
I was invited to a tailgate party a few weeks ago in the parking lot of Qualcomm Stadium. Although the choice of tailgate food wouldn't have been mine -- sushi -- they had everything else …
December 1, 2005
De Kooning's Bicycle: Artists and Writers in the Hamptons
De Kooning's Bicycle: Artists and Writers in the Hamptons by Robert Long. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2005; $23; 240 pages. FROM THE DUST JACKET: Some of the 20th Century's most important artists and writers --- …
December 1, 2005
The Reader's Eye on Television
Of all the songs in the entire world that one can rattle out of an electric speaker, someone chose this. From the earliest recorded sound on wax cones of misguided notes upon spinning, leaden, glass …
December 1, 2005
Fogueira Kwan Zheng Dao in Texas
Floodwaters You wouldn't know about me unless you have read some exposition to get a sense of who I am, what I do, where I live -- that sort of thing. Problem is, I don't …
December 1, 2005
Christmas Decorating
The Kelly household owns an abundance of inherited holiday decorations. When hubby Patrick's parents downsized into their beachfront condo, the box marked "Holiday Cheer" was placed in our care. For the past ten years, on …
December 1, 2005