After spending time performing with Cape May and the Swedish Models, local bassist Mark Wiskowski joined the Jones Revival in the late 2000s. The cover band plays all over town, but perhaps most often at …
December 27, 2017
News & Stories
New Year's Eve is a job
The Province of History by James Garfield
The world’s history is a divine poem, of which the history of every nation is a canto, and every man a word. Its strains have been pealing along down the centuries, and though there have …
December 27, 2017
Perpetual spin machine
San Diego mayor Kevin Faulconer, struggling to right his political boat after the departure of the Chargers and the downtown hepatitis outbreak, has acquired another member for his public relations team. Marketing consultant and graphic …
December 27, 2017
Spontaneous food on PB seawall
It’s smack on 4:44. “Yea. Yeah! Yea!” “Good jaa-ob!” “Hasta la mañana, baby! Woo-hoo!” The voices just keep on rising to a roar. The setting sun flares on the horizon, then glows angrily like a …
December 27, 2017
Brown-chicken brown-cow tunes had to go
Last we heard from Aaron Thompson he was playing about 100 dates a year in Stranger's Six. After over six years, Stranger's Six folded in 2009. Members Tommy Garcia and Evan Ehrich went on to …
December 27, 2017
All the Money in the World lacks vision
Even with Christopher Plummer’s superb job of bottom-of-the-ninth, out-of-the-park pinch-hitting, Ridley Scott’s All the Money in the World needed more than just a Kevin Spacey substitute to keep it from drifting off into the land …
December 27, 2017
Chinese bicycle torture
Another San Diego influence-peddler has entered the fray over the controversial case for so-called dockless bike rentals, picking up a Beijing-based client by the name of ofo (lower case intentional). The outfit is seeking “permission …
December 27, 2017
Cheesy-yet-earnest ’80s music became cool again
Dear Hipster: I was listening to 91X the other day and I heard “Everything Now,” by Arcade Fire, and I thought for a second there was some previously unreleased Duran Duran tune. In a way …
December 27, 2017
UCSD composer's opera a light amid the hate
“I’m very concerned about the future,” says composer and UCSD professor Anthony Davis, who has never shied away from controversial subjects. “That’s why it’s important for me to continue to write about political events because …
December 27, 2017
Best way to see Sandstone Canyon, Red Narrows, and Mud Palisades
Hike up to a spectacular red narrow gorge at the head of June Wash on the ridge of Whale Peak.
December 27, 2017
Triglycerides with your coffee?
At the end of September, a new coffee roaster opened shop in Imperial Beach. However, customers won’t find an espresso machine, pour-over gear, or even a drip coffeemaker. Trident Coffee specializes in one type of …
December 27, 2017
Dinettes reopen 40 years later
Before the Go-Go’s became famous, there was the Dinettes, San Diego’s first (and only) all-female new-wave band that was there right alongside San Diego’s first-generation punksters the Zeros, Dils, and Hitmakers. “We weren’t really punk, …
December 27, 2017
Be your best self in 2018
“Tomorrow is the first blank page of a 365-page book. Write a good one.” — Brad Paisley I’m ready to rock 2018, write a fabulous 365-page book. So ahead of the celebrations ringing in the …
December 27, 2017
San Diego's debt to Bob Filner
[Walter Mencken stands at a podium in the basement conference room of Cheetahs Gentlemen’s Club in Kearny Mesa and addresses his audience, a group of men reclining at table.] Good evening, gentlemen! Well, men, anyway. …
December 27, 2017
R.I.P. San Diego 2017
The grim reaper took its toll on the music world in a major way this year and San Diego was no exception. Here’s a look back at those we lost in 2017. ➢March 22, Bob …
December 27, 2017
Cringey and wincey go head to head
Dear Hipster: Why do people say “cringe-y” when they so clearly mean “wince-y”? One doesn’t cringe when one hears something awkward or embarrassing, one winces. One cringes when one is afraid. Am I missing something? …
December 27, 2017
The Croce vision
Alas, the public imprint from having notable parents. I’d resolved not to make mention of mother Ingrid, the famous restaurateur, nor Jim, the famous singer who died in his prime. But in the end, I …
December 27, 2017
City okays USD plans to build on three sides of widow’s home
The Spanish villa that Virginia LaGuardia and her husband built in the 1970s may soon be nestled against a massive parking garage, student housing, and an administrative building that the University of San Diego intends …
December 27, 2017
The gulls and white face coots have as much of an inner life as I
Looking West from Montecito, Late Afternoon Beneath hills of agave and eucalyptus, beneath the Spanish palms and walled estates, I look across the bird refuge to East Beach . . . mist in the channel …
December 27, 2017
Sempra’s marital conflicts
The deputy director of San Diego’s Purchasing and Contracting department has agreed to fork over a $3000 penalty to the city’s ethics commission for failing to disclose that his spouse works for San Diego Gas …
December 27, 2017
Fidel Castro and Che Guevara are not heroes
Chicanos go into Mexico and violate Mexican laws Re: “Who does Chicano Park belong to?” Neighborhood News. An embarrassment of Chicano park and the Anti-American sentiment: I feel sad for Chicanos and immigrants who participate …
December 27, 2017