The Hard Rock Hotel in San Diego’s Gaslamp Quarter wants to make you feel like a star. Adhered to the wall behind the front desk is a colorful photo looking out at a raucous crowd …
January 4, 2017
News & Stories
San Diego's porn studios
One of the funnest movies of the year was overlooked by audiences
Locke A man driving the same direction for two hours. There are no car chases or big set pieces just one person taking phone calls as he drives along the freeway. The setup sounds boring …
January 4, 2017
No comment on restaurant surcharges
Kevin Vasquez dines out a lot. He expects to pay tax and feels good about tipping. But the 6.9 percent surcharge a local restaurant added to his bill after January 1, well, that was hard …
January 4, 2017
Vinyl in the pink
Will Castro lives and dies by the pressing plants that make the vinyl releases for his local label La Escalera Records. Demand for vinyl keeps increasing. But turnaround time is getting worse. Castro says it …
January 4, 2017
O.B. graffiti queen not too Sharpie
In early October 2016, residents in Ocean Beach began complaining on Facebook about graffiti that started appearing everywhere around town. “Has anyone been noticing this 'Mama Bear' person tagging up the seawall and memorial benches …
January 4, 2017
Chargers leave, Chargers pay
With San Diego facing a torrent of red ink for years to come, city officials have been scrambling for extra cash to plug their ever-growing deficit holes. “Expenditures will outpace annual growth in revenues in …
January 4, 2017
Healthy happy hour in La Jolla
New year resolution time: gonna eat healthy. Gonna eat less. Gonna live on nuts and twigs. Or...eat Thai? ’Cause I keep seeing Thai cuisine on lists of the world’s healthiest diets. And especially my all-time …
January 4, 2017
The many sides of Ariel Levine
“We’re gonna do the album from start to finish,” Ariel Levine tells me by phone from his Middletown apartment. Levine is a singer/composer/guitarist transplant from New York. “I’ve lived here for five years now.” The …
January 4, 2017
San Diego’s priciest condo, a block west of Horton Plaza
Beds: 3 Baths: 3 Current Owner: Raskin Family List Price: $4,750,000 The region’s priciest condo, a 26th-floor corner unit in the Meridian building at 700 Front Street, promises prospective buyers “exclusive living style in the …
January 4, 2017
Life and death and statistics
There are many statistics in the big city, and the San Diego County medical examiner’s office is seemingly on top of them all. Notes the office’s annual report: “With San Diego County’s land area of …
January 4, 2017
Boresese
Silence isn’t golden. He may not be the hardest working man in show business — not with just one theatrical release every two years — but at 74, and with almost 60 features, shorts, and …
January 4, 2017
Beach volleyball — a San Diego thing
One gray winter morning in 1997, about this time of year, I was working on the old Federal Building in Balboa Park. We were beginning the demo for the new Hall of Champions project. As …
January 4, 2017
Dinner-party vegan means no harm
Dear Hipster: You hipsters and your crazy food predilections are killing me. I had my sister over for the holidays. She brought her new hipster boyfriend, who won’t eat corn, milk, and (obviously) gluten. If …
January 4, 2017
A city canyon with a great variety of native plants
Along with ease of access and walkability, a unique feature of 32nd Street Open Space is the breadth of variety of the most common chaparral plants found across the county, which include California sagebrush, laurel …
January 4, 2017
Mingus and poul fri among newest Tijuana residents
Cue the upright bass solo in G minor. Enter trombones. Enter drums. Enter saxophones. All in a long crescendo. “My solo in it is a deeply concentrated one,” said jazz man Charles Mingus about “Haitian …
January 4, 2017
Is “Zero Waste” making a stink at the Miramar landfill?
The smell of turkey wasn’t the only thing in the air Thanksgiving morning in Kim Bustos’s University City neighborhood. Bustos called the city at 7:30 a.m. to report a really bad smell coming out of …
January 4, 2017
Doctor of politics
Former San Diego mayoral, congressional, and supervisorial candidate Peter Navarro isn’t the only local making national news during the presidential transition. The University of California Irvine economics professor will serve as head of the newly …
January 4, 2017
An interesting time at Alpine Community Church
Alpine Community Church Membership: 110 (with 30–40 friends) Pastor: Thomas Truscott Age: 76 Born: Detroit, MI Formation: Simpson College, Indianola, IA; San Francisco Seminary (Presbyterian), San Anselmo, CA; McCormick Theological Seminary, Chicago, IL Years Ordained: …
January 4, 2017
A Hitchcock protégé + a kissing cousin to Gone Baby Gone
The Tall Man I love a convincing scare. Jessica Biel delivers as Julia in The Tall Man (Canada/France, 2012, Cold Rock Productions). Desperate conditions and small-town lore underscore an unknown menace snatching local children. The …
January 4, 2017
Macabre content
They Don’t Speak Spanish at All I would like to comment on this week’s article regarding people speaking Spanglish in the Tijuana area. I used to live in Mexico, and a lot of Americans on …
January 4, 2017