Doug Tracy, of The Centerfold Shop, in San Diego, says he picked up $8,000 this year for a top-quality copy.

I HAVE THE 1953 PLAYBOY magazine with Marilyn Monroe's famous nude centerfold. I purchased this copy new in the 1950s. What is its value today?

A.R. Evans Billings, Mont.

The price of your Playboy, which is the first issue, varies dramatically depending on the condition of your copy and whom you sell it to. Doug Tracy, of The Centerfold Shop, in San Diego, says he picked up $8,000 this year for a top-quality copy....

"Q&A" Kiplinger's Personal Finance Magazine October 1991

THIS WEEK, HE WAS IN SAN DIEGO. He had not been in San Diego since 1954, when he had covered the flight trials of the first jet fighter seaplane, the Sea Dart, in San Diego Bay. The city had changed greatly since then; it was no longer a sleepy Navy town. He had been booked into the stylish Hotel InterContinental, on the harbour, and from his tenth-story window could see the entire bay.... He drew the curtains on the bay and the glittering, Disneylandish conglomeration of shops and restaurants called Seaport Village....

A bright yellow cab awaited him in the parking lot. Hicks climbed into the back seat, neck hair still prickling. "Can you find a newsstand?" he asked the driver. "I need a paper, A good paper. Morning edition." "I know a place on Adams Avenue that sells the New York Times, but it's going to be yesterday's...."

Greg Bear The Forge of God 1987

"YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND. My life isn't like yours or Eddie's. It never was.

I don't need to see my name in the papers to know I'm real. I have an ordinary life. I manage a Kwik-Kopy in a strip center in the suburbs. I live day to day. I worry about the machines running out of toner. I have friends that I go out to eat with. Sometimes we go out to clubs and things and sometimes I meet a man and sometimes I let him come home with me. About half the time it turns out they're already married. They're always just about to leave their wives but they never do." "It sounds very sad." "It's NOT sad.

It's dull. There's worse things. I'd sure as hell rather be in good old boring San Diego right now...."

Lewis Shiner Deserted Cities of the Heart 1988

SEATED ON THE LONG LEATHER COUCH, he lighted a cigarette, looked wearily out into the moonlit night. He had always thought this was the most beautiful stretch of country in the world, this area of orange and avocado groves, of rolling black-green hills, of tile-roofed houses — all alike yet all different — stretching endlessly along the endless expanse of curving, white-sand beach. He had thought about retiring here some day and, though the idea was preposterous, he still thought about it. He could see himself and Carol on the patio

one of those incredibly gay houses. Barbecuing a steak perhaps, or sipping tall drinks while they stared out to sea. There would be a cool breeze blowing in, temperately cool and smelling of salt. And...

"Doc—" Carol murmured suddenly from the doorway.

He said, "Coming," and rejoined her in the seat. And she patted his hand and gave him a lingering smile.

"You know something, Doc?" she whispered. "This will be our first night together. Our first night together and alone."

"So it will!" Doc made his voice hearty. "It doesn't seem possible, does it?"

—"And- I'm not going to let anything spoil it either. Nothing!

We'll just pretend like we don't have a worry in the world tonight.

Just push everything out of our minds and have ourselves a nice long hot bath, and something to eat and — and... " 1

She squeezed his hand. Almost fiercely.

"Sandy-Egg-O!" bawled the conductor. "Next stop is San Diego!"...

Then [the cabdriver] saw Doc and Carol running down the street toward him — and, hey! look at that old gal run, would you? — and puzzled he stopped the cab and got out.

"Somethin' wrong, folks?

Somebody givin' you some trouble?"

"Yes," Doc told him. "I'll explain it while you're driving us into the city."

"Into Diego? But what about your grub? What..."

Doc jabbed a gun into his stomach, gave him a shove toward the cab. "Do you want to go on living? Do you? Then do what I tell you!"

The driver obeyed, but sullenly.

With the dragging deliberation of the very stubborn. As they reached the highway and turned toward town, he gave Doc a self-righteous glare.

"This won't get you nothin',

Mac," he said. "I don't know what you're after, but this won't get you a thing."

Doc looked at him, tight-lipped. In the back seat, Carol leaned forward anxiously. "Doc — I think he's right. There's probably an alert out for us already. Golie'll spill everything now. How far can we get in this circus wagon?"

Doc asked her curtly how far they would get without it. With an alert on the air, what chance did they have of grabbing another car? "The cops won't know what we're traveling in. Or whether we're traveling in anything. Maybe we can make it to the border before they find out."

"To the border! But what... "

"You'll never do it, Mac," the driver cut in doggedly. "The best thing you can do is give yourselves up. Now — oof!"

"Like it?" Doc gave him another prod with the gun. "Want some more?"

Teeth gritted, the man shook his head.

"All right, then," Doc said mildly. "Make a left here, and head straight up Mission Valley until I tell you to turn."

The cab swung left. They sped down the curving, cliff-shadowed road, and after a time Doc spoke over his shoulder to Carol. They couldn't get through the border gates, he said. That, obviously, would be impossible. But they might be able to slip across the line at some unguarded point.

"People do it all the time," he went on. "It's not the best bet in the world, and we'll still have problems if and when we get across, but..."

"You won't make it," the driver broke in, dogged again. "Not anywhere near the gates where you'll be tryin'. I know that border, mister, and I'm telling you..."

His sentence ended in a scream.

The cab swerved, and he turned pain-crazed eyes on Doc. "You t-try that again!" he gasped. "You do that again and see what happens!"

Doc promised that he wouldn't do it again. "Next time I'll shoot you. Now go right at this next turn.

We're hitting crosstown to the Tijuana highway."

The cab made the turn with an angry skidding of tires. They raced up the steep road into Mission Hills, then down the long arterial street which skirts San Diego's business district. The traffic began to thicken. There was the wail of a siren — fading eerily into the distance.

Above the windshield the blurred murmuring of the radio squawk box became a crisp voice:

"Cab Seventy-nine! Cab Seventy-nine! Come in, Seventy-nine..."

The driver was elaborately disinterested. Doc glanced at the identification plate on the instrument panel, and spoke to him sharply. "That's you. Answer it!"

"What d'you want me to say?"

"Tell her you've got a couple of people on a sightseeing tour. You'll be tied up for about an hour."

"Sightseeing tour?" The driver squirmed in the seat, leaned slightly over the wheel. "She won't never go for that, mister. She'll know I got a couple of crooks headin' for Tijuana."

"Wh-at?" Doc frowned. "How will she know?"

"She just will. She'll even know where we are right now. Just making the turnoff for National City."

Doc got it then. He linked the driver's seemingly senseless speech with the breathless silence of the squawk box. And savagely, his nerves worn raw, he smashed the gun barrel into the man's stubborn, doughish face.

He smashed it; he smashed it again. The driver groaned and flung

himself against the door of the car.

It shot open, and he went tumbling and bouncing into the street.

Jim Thompson The Getaway 1958

I BROUGHT THE FORD up to speed and headed west" on the" new four-lane. The land was open and undeveloped on either side — gently rolling hills of chaparral thicketed with scrub, clumped shrubbery, and huge boulders.

Five minutes later I was in Chula Vista, the municipality at San Diego's southern edge. Perhaps I might have lived here one day, after a suitable promotion. There had once been talk of my stepping into a project manager's slot, a thousand years ago.

After ten minutes of school zones and stoplights I was on Interstate 5 heading north. The tall, chunky buildings of downtown San Diego lay dead ahead, not looking much different than St. Louis or Denver or any other midsized burg. Only the complex freeway interchanges and nearness of the Pacific let me know I was in California.

Eric C. Higgs The Happy Man 1985

AT LAST ON DECEMBER 8 [1826], word from San Diego, brought by Captain William H. Cunningham of the ship Courier, a Bostonian who had been on the coast since the previous June. The Governor required Jedediah's presence in San Diego. The following morning, Jedediah set out on horseback with the captain, taking the black boy, Peter Ranne, as a servant and having, as Jedediah says, "a Soldier for a guide or guard (furnished by the Gov.)."

They reached San Diego at 2:00 p.m. on December 12. It had suited the Governor-General, Jose Maria Echeandia, to administer the affairs of the province from this sunbaked place rather than the old capital, Monterey; some said the climate was the attraction, others looked knowingly at a lady of the town. The presidio stood on the slopes of a barren hill, enclosed by high walls of dark, unburned brick. On one side of the square thus formed stood the accommodations built for the officers and their families; opposite were the chapel and storehouses. Directly in front of the gateway was the residence of the Comandante, which not only overlooked the square but afforded a magnificent view of the seacoast.

Dale Morgan Jedediah Smith and the Opening of the West 1953

SKORSKI, instead of planing for L.A., decided on San Diego, it had been a long time since he'd been to Caliente racetrack, and he had this thing worked out on the 5-10. he felt he could pick 5 for 6 without buying too many combos, he'd rather figure out a weight-distance-speed ratio play that seemed fairly sound, he remained fairly sober on the flight back, stayed one night in San Diego, then took a taxi to Tijuana, he switched taxis at the border and the Mexican cabby found him a good hotel in the center of town, he put his bag of rags in a closet in his room and then went out to check the town, it was about 6 p.m. and the pink sun seemed to soothe the poverty and anger of the town, poor shits, close enough to the U.S. to speak the language and know its corruption, but only able to drain away a little of the wealth, like a suckerfish attached to the belly of a shark.

Dan found a bar and had a tequila. Mexican music was on the juke. 4 or 5 men sat around nursing drinks by the hour, no women around, well, that was no problem in T. and the last thing he wanted right then was a woman, that pussy throbbing and pulsing at him. women always got in the way. they could kill a. man in 9,000 different ways, after he hit the 5-10, picked up his 50 or 60 grand, he'd get a little place along the coast, halfway between L.A. and Dago, and then buy an electric typer or get out the paintbrush, drink French wine and take long walks along the oceanfront each night, the difference between living well and living badly was only a matter of a little luck and Dan felt he had a little luck coming, the books, the balance books owed it to him...

He asked the bartender what day it was and the bartender said, "Thursday," so he had a couple of days, they didn't run until Saturday. Aleseo had to wait for the American crowds to suck over the border for their two days of madness after 5 days of hell. Tijuana took care of them. Tijuana took care of their money for them, but the Americans never knew how much the Mexicans hated them; the American money stupified them to fact, and they ran through TJ like they owned it, and every woman was a fuck and every cop was just some kind of character in a comic strip, but the Americans had forgotten that they'd won a few wars from Mexico, as Americans and Texans or whatever the hell else, to the Americans, that was just history in a book; to the Mexicans it was very real, it didn't feel well to be an American in a Mexican bar on a Thursday night, the Americans even ruined the bullfights; the Americans ruined everything.

Charles Bukowski "The Stupid Christs" from Tales of Ordinary Madness 1983

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