If San Diego had an official drink, it would almost certainly be a beer. Something hoppy. (How is there not an America’s Finest Brewery in town yet?) Which leaves San Diego cocktails free to represent …
July 15, 2015
News & Stories
San Diego Reader 2015 guide to craft cocktails
When I used to enter the Aqsa Mosque
Whenever I visited Jerusalem I always entered the Aqsa Mosque, beside which stood a small mosque which the Franks had converted into a church. When I used to enter the Asqa Mosque…the Templars would evacuate …
July 15, 2015
"Horace: Ode I.25" and "Atalanta and Hippomenes"
Horace: Ode I.25 How infrequent now the insistent tap Of bold young fingers at your well-latched sash. No sleepless nights for you: the door that once Rocked loose and lively on an easy hinge Clings …
July 15, 2015
Epicentre cuts the cord
“You’re killin’ me,” says Brian Witkin, founder of Pacific Records, about the news that the venue that gave him his break in the music business was ending live shows. “I met my wife when we …
July 15, 2015
No to Starbucks, yes to Calabria
Later this summer, longtime North Park coffee roaster Caffé Calabria will launch its first offsite expansion in 15 years, opening a satellite coffee bar in a ground-floor storefront at the 1 Columbia Place high-rise in …
July 15, 2015
Fabiani’s Cabrera money love
Chargers special counsel Mark Fabiani, who has been deftly fielding the brickbats of mayor Kevin Faulconer’s stadium task force while launching more than a few of his own in the battle over keeping the team …
July 15, 2015
Young Goodman Gano
If you don’t know of the Violent Femmes, you surely know “Blister in the Sun,” so popular I once heard a frat-boy chug-a-lug singalong with it at my college — which doesn’t have frat boys. …
July 15, 2015
Sparky, hectic, unmediated inventiveness on display
The Self-Taught Genius exhibit at the Mingei, artifacts from their conversation with the world
July 15, 2015
Kiss Me, Kate's brassy, unfettered swagger
When Patricia Morrison and Alfred Drake began rehearsing Cole Porter’s latest effort, they weren’t impressed. “We were using just a piano,” she recalled. “It was so disjointed we didn’t think we had a hit.” Then …
July 15, 2015
Chappo's call to action
There’s this band called Chappo, and the opening 16 bars of their song “5-0” are a call to action for the generation of us who grew up in the midst of the first wave of …
July 15, 2015
Girl in the Middle of Italy
Since Carol Rider is the lead singer and guitarist of local Americana rock quartet Girl in the Middle, you might assume the name is referring to her. You’d be wrong. “The name is a concept …
July 15, 2015
David Thorpe finds his voice with Do I Sound Gay?
Title tells all in David Thorpe’s highly personal and frequently hilarious digital confessional, Do I Sound Gay?, opening July 24 at Landmark’s Ken Cinema. To flame-down one’s voice or proudly reclaim the sibilant “s”? — …
July 15, 2015
Agewise
I learned that Frank was the first reporter at the scene of that horrific PSA plane crash in 1978, the one I grew up hearing about. He won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting. How had I not known that?
July 15, 2015
Peckish, bookish
As much as I love the new Central Library and kinda go “Wow!” every time the bus or trolley I’m in rolls under its beautiful dome, I’ve never gone inside. And the reason is just …
July 15, 2015
At the Loveland Dam, on the Sweetwater River
Loveland Dam, also known as Sweetwater Falls Dam, is a thin arch design of concrete built in 1945. Loveland Reservoir is one of the two manmade lakes made by dams along the Sweetwater River. It …
July 15, 2015
You’ll never get a drink made from this recipe in any bar, anywhere
Just six years ago, Reader legend Ollie laid out an Old Fashioned recipe that, stripped of its existential and romantic trappings, involved dissolving a sugar cube in a splash of water, adding two dashes of …
July 15, 2015
Goes great with Mexican food
I first met Mark Broadfoot back when we were Scouts in middle school, and ever since then I’ve known him to be fond of sharing. The first time it caught my attention was on a …
July 15, 2015
Rock-and-roll food CHON
Progressive rock, the complex, jazzy instrumental music that flourished with King Crimson and Return to Forever didn’t weather as well as other genres from the ’70s and ’80s. “I think those bands got hit with …
July 15, 2015
The original family band
“We were around when there was lots of acid rock and we filled a niche that was being ignored,” says singer Paul Cowsill of his 1960s pop group the Cowsills. “Bob Dylan told Rolling Stone …
July 15, 2015
Coronado’s crowned king of cocktails
“Every cocktail has a story,” says Jose Palma. And the man ought to know. He’s been creating, serving, and keeping up with cocktails for 26 years. And always here at the Hotel Del, where patrons …
July 15, 2015
The Diva’s rye humor
In my 20s, whiskey sounded like an old-person’s drink — a sophisticated liquid imbibed mostly by men in suits who took it in the form of a two-finger pour in a short and wide glass …
July 15, 2015
Doctors are the enemy
Mr. Hipster: My sister complains to me constantly of nebulous ailments, but she never actually gets a satisfying diagnosis for anything. I grow weary of her hypochondria, since she doesn’t trust most doctors, and so …
July 15, 2015
The alcoholic version of the Slurpee
Of all the cocktails featured in this issue, the Margarita is the one with the closest ties to San Diego. Specifically, the frozen kind; the alcoholic version of the Slurpee. In 1947, Albert Hernandez, a …
July 15, 2015
Ten reasons to be grateful after my hernia operation
Post Title: The Joy of Aging Post Date: June 4, 2014 Yesterday I got an email message from my newly retired brother Jim. He attached a photo of my niece setting a school record in …
July 15, 2015
How Airbnb is ruining Pacific Beach
Ten years ago, most of the housing on the boardwalk in Mission Beach was old apartment complexes filled with college students. When the locals took a bike ride on the boardwalk we would stop along …
July 15, 2015
Breakfast cocktails and brunch shots
It’s five o’clock somewhere. Or so day-drinkers like to say, usually while ordering a stiff pour of bourbon. Prohibition may have failed, but the lasting legacy of the temperance movement is this notion that hitting …
July 15, 2015
San Diego Metro transit reluctant to give bus passes to inner-city students
For five months in 2014, Lincoln High School student Alexis Guzman didn’t have to walk the three miles from his parents’ National City apartment to school. More importantly, he didn’t have to walk the three …
July 15, 2015
Editor's letters
Reducing Contagion On behalf of the San Diego County Suicide Prevention Council, we are writing in response to your June 18 article, “Coronado Bridge to Eternity” (City Lights). We encourage you to review and use …
July 15, 2015
Your inner child needs a cocktail
Lately, mixologists have been advancing a trend that favors the unadulterated flavor of a liquor over its peripheral ingredients. It’s called “spirit-forward,” and it’s redefining the way we experience cocktails. But what if our taste …
July 15, 2015
I want you to understand the spirit
“The way I approach cocktails is like sailing the most difficult route, because I know how to navigate the waters, and I take pleasure in turbulent seas,” says Cervantes Magaña, beverage consultant with Medicine Show …
July 15, 2015
$500,000 terminal art backstory
It’s a big month for art at San Diego’s Lindbergh Field, which over the years has spent millions on a controversial collection of creative adornments to distract travelers from long lines, prying TSA agents, and …
July 15, 2015
Big bluefin!
The yellowtail bite has pretty much shut down at the Coronados though the boats are finding them in numbers offshore on kelps along with some decent dorado. The yellowfin tuna are charging into San Diego …
July 15, 2015