Here's something you might be interested in.
Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed
Big Screen — Movie commentary
Blurt — Music's inside track
Booze News — San Diego spirits
Classical Music — Immortal beauty
Classifieds — Free and easy
Cover Stories — Front-page features
Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes
Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts
Feast! — Food & drink reviews
Feature Stories — Local news & stories
Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore
From the Archives — Spotlight on the past
Golden Dreams — Talk of the town
The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it
Letters — Our inbox
Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites
Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans
Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists
Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news
News Ticker — News & politics
Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated
Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna
Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated
Poetry — The old and the new
Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers
Reading — The hunt for intellectuals
Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails
San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds
SD on the QT — Almost factual news
Sheep and Goats — Places of worship
Special Issues — The best of
Street Style — San Diego streets have style
Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves
Theater — On stage in San Diego this week
Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative
Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work
Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego
Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads
Your Week — Daily event picks
San Diego sidewalk sitters keep from shivering
Family Christmas letters, Charles Dickens, Mother Teresa's men, returned gifts at Horton Plaza, through Vietnamese eyes, C.S.Lewis, Dorothy Day, I leave my dad
Keith Harold Ruston at University Ave. near Vermont: "I have two blankets and I also have a coat."
How Do You Keep Warm at Night?
- If you think of the homeless at all — aside from how to avoid them or that daily mini-moral crisis as to whether to give them spare change or not — it may strike you that these people must have certain ingenious secrets as to how to keep warm on the streets at night. Yes, it is San Diego, not Buffalo, but it can get cold enough at night.
- By John Brizzolara, Jan. 9, 1997
A criticism implied in every gift
- I don’t remember Christmas. None in particular. There’s this Christmas thread, an irregular stream of pictograms (orange snowriding disk = delight) linked by an underlying Christmas smell (new plastic, pine trees, chocolate) and an overwhelming feeling of desolation and anxiety. Oh, and that godawful music. You can’t patronize a public building this month without itching to unload an Uzi.
- By Mary Lang, December 19, 1991
My guess is that these Christmas letters proliferated in the post-World War II decade,
Another year has passed and we are safe and sound
- Christmas letters. I don't know their history, who first wrote one, or where and why. I suspect they began to be written in the I Love Lucy Eisenhower years when all Americans, even though in fact they didn't seemed to be living in suburbia and eating tuna-fish casserole made with Campbell's cream of mushroom soup. And I suspect, too, that no matter how much fun some of us may make of these letters, we love to receive them. I do.
- By Judith Moore, Dec. 12, 1991
I'm determined to pull A Christmas Carol from my bookshelf again
- Poor Master Scrooge had a reason to be bitter. Remember that Thanksgiving I told you about when I was stuck at school? — four awful days in an empty dorm — I felt just like young Ebenezer, "alone again, when all the other boys had gone home for the jolly holidays...." But then, his sister comes to fetch him — here's where I start crying....
- By Sue Greenberg, Dec. 20, 1990
“We’ve got to build families, too, as well as houses."
Christmas day in Tijuana with Mother Teresa's priests
- Christmas morning. East of downtown Tijuana, along a swamp behind the Otay central bus station. An hour past first light. Roosters crow. Dogs bark. Rain, an inch of which fell last night, still falls, falls now into deep, churning mud. Two men, ankle deep in that mud, ragged clothes colored by mud, look up at the sky and then down. Shoulders bent, they go back to deepening the trench they hope will divert black water, sewage, sulfurous swamp, from their packing-box homes beside the crèche.
- By Abe Opincar, Judith Moore, Jan. 26, 1989
A caramel leather purse made by Gurka. "It’s a $250 bag. My husband got it and didn’t know better — I know another store where I can get it for 20 percent less. Twenty percent of $250, that’s serious money."
The day after Christmas in Horton Plaza: those unhappy with gifts returning them
- “Our new stepfather," said Miriam, whose arms were dragged down by Nordstrom shopping bags. “Our mother spends literally thousands on presents, maybe out of guilt over our childhood. I don’t know. I do know I’m willing to accept her gifts, whatever reason they’re offered. But Perry here," she laid her head on Perry’s shoulder, “this is his stuff we’re returning.
- By Abe Opincar, Judith Moore, Jan. 26, 1989
Tam Hoang and Batman
Sister Santa’s once-a-year smile
- I fell in love with America for the first time on a sweaty night in a Bangkok refugee center in March 1991. “In America people have meat with every meal,” my dad told me as we looked into the city skyline glittering with streetlights and blinking neon signs in the distance. I was transfixed. Braised meat, steaks, chops; meat on skewers, meat over rice, between bread.
- By Tam Hoang, Dec. 20, 2017
Does Christmas offend you?
- It's interesting that the place you decided to start was with the Jews, your father's friends, your own friend. Christmas has to start with the Jews, I guess, no matter where you start. It was Jews who were killed by Herod and Jews who were chased into Egypt by him, pregnant with the future, and Jews whose testimony later became the Christmas story.
- By Gideon Rappaport, Matthew Lickona, Dec. 20, 2007
This is Christmas – damn it! What happened?
- I’m sitting here looking at a photo taken shortly before Christmas 2008. It’s a very good photo: dramatic and sharply focused. It’s a December afternoon in downtown San Diego: trees dotting a vast swath of sun-washed, empty parking lot. In the foreground, walking away from the camera, is my 11-year-old son. His head is bowed, and it’s because of what is in his hands: a chilled bottle of water and a brown paper lunch bag.
- By Matthew Lickona, Thomas Reifer, Dec. 23, 2009
A Christmas story, wherein I leave my dad
- My boots clomp against the concrete of the garage, and a gravelly paste falls from the arches to mingle with the oil patch in the center of the floor. I light a cigarette, blow the first puff out into the frigid air, and let the burnt match fall to the floor. "Hey," my dad howls. "Don't drop those in here, throw them outside."
- By Ollie, December 22, 2005 11:53 p.m.
Books That Help You Survive Christmas
- On Christmas Day some among us sooner would read than rip at ribbons. We would prefer the voice of Jane Austen to that of shrill Aunt Tillie. Some among us, on 25 December, long only to laze in the old overstuffed armchair and chew on a cold turkey wing. We prefer to fly into a netherworld of printed pages. Below, you will find six titles that might help take you far beyond the cedar tree and its sparkle.
- By Judith Moore, Dec. 23, 2004
Praise for Dad, and not because of Christmas loot
- Christmastime is here, and to commemorate the Father's gift of His Son to the world, fathers everywhere are buying loot for their kids. Oh, what a generous God; oh, what a generous Dad. This is indeed a season of love. Unless Dad isn't around to buy presents or is trying to buy affection in absentia with extravagant gifts, or gives presents but not love, or a host of other things.
- By Matthew Lickona, Dec. 18, 1997
Here's something you might be interested in.
San Diego sidewalk sitters keep from shivering
Family Christmas letters, Charles Dickens, Mother Teresa's men, returned gifts at Horton Plaza, through Vietnamese eyes, C.S.Lewis, Dorothy Day, I leave my dad
San Diego sidewalk sitters keep from shivering
Family Christmas letters, Charles Dickens, Mother Teresa's men, returned gifts at Horton Plaza, through Vietnamese eyes, C.S.Lewis, Dorothy Day, I leave my dad
Keith Harold Ruston at University Ave. near Vermont: "I have two blankets and I also have a coat."
How Do You Keep Warm at Night?
- If you think of the homeless at all — aside from how to avoid them or that daily mini-moral crisis as to whether to give them spare change or not — it may strike you that these people must have certain ingenious secrets as to how to keep warm on the streets at night. Yes, it is San Diego, not Buffalo, but it can get cold enough at night.
- By John Brizzolara, Jan. 9, 1997
A criticism implied in every gift
- I don’t remember Christmas. None in particular. There’s this Christmas thread, an irregular stream of pictograms (orange snowriding disk = delight) linked by an underlying Christmas smell (new plastic, pine trees, chocolate) and an overwhelming feeling of desolation and anxiety. Oh, and that godawful music. You can’t patronize a public building this month without itching to unload an Uzi.
- By Mary Lang, December 19, 1991
My guess is that these Christmas letters proliferated in the post-World War II decade,
Another year has passed and we are safe and sound
- Christmas letters. I don't know their history, who first wrote one, or where and why. I suspect they began to be written in the I Love Lucy Eisenhower years when all Americans, even though in fact they didn't seemed to be living in suburbia and eating tuna-fish casserole made with Campbell's cream of mushroom soup. And I suspect, too, that no matter how much fun some of us may make of these letters, we love to receive them. I do.
- By Judith Moore, Dec. 12, 1991
I'm determined to pull A Christmas Carol from my bookshelf again
- Poor Master Scrooge had a reason to be bitter. Remember that Thanksgiving I told you about when I was stuck at school? — four awful days in an empty dorm — I felt just like young Ebenezer, "alone again, when all the other boys had gone home for the jolly holidays...." But then, his sister comes to fetch him — here's where I start crying....
- By Sue Greenberg, Dec. 20, 1990
“We’ve got to build families, too, as well as houses."
Christmas day in Tijuana with Mother Teresa's priests
- Christmas morning. East of downtown Tijuana, along a swamp behind the Otay central bus station. An hour past first light. Roosters crow. Dogs bark. Rain, an inch of which fell last night, still falls, falls now into deep, churning mud. Two men, ankle deep in that mud, ragged clothes colored by mud, look up at the sky and then down. Shoulders bent, they go back to deepening the trench they hope will divert black water, sewage, sulfurous swamp, from their packing-box homes beside the crèche.
- By Abe Opincar, Judith Moore, Jan. 26, 1989
A caramel leather purse made by Gurka. "It’s a $250 bag. My husband got it and didn’t know better — I know another store where I can get it for 20 percent less. Twenty percent of $250, that’s serious money."
The day after Christmas in Horton Plaza: those unhappy with gifts returning them
- “Our new stepfather," said Miriam, whose arms were dragged down by Nordstrom shopping bags. “Our mother spends literally thousands on presents, maybe out of guilt over our childhood. I don’t know. I do know I’m willing to accept her gifts, whatever reason they’re offered. But Perry here," she laid her head on Perry’s shoulder, “this is his stuff we’re returning.
- By Abe Opincar, Judith Moore, Jan. 26, 1989
Tam Hoang and Batman
Sister Santa’s once-a-year smile
- I fell in love with America for the first time on a sweaty night in a Bangkok refugee center in March 1991. “In America people have meat with every meal,” my dad told me as we looked into the city skyline glittering with streetlights and blinking neon signs in the distance. I was transfixed. Braised meat, steaks, chops; meat on skewers, meat over rice, between bread.
- By Tam Hoang, Dec. 20, 2017
Does Christmas offend you?
- It's interesting that the place you decided to start was with the Jews, your father's friends, your own friend. Christmas has to start with the Jews, I guess, no matter where you start. It was Jews who were killed by Herod and Jews who were chased into Egypt by him, pregnant with the future, and Jews whose testimony later became the Christmas story.
- By Gideon Rappaport, Matthew Lickona, Dec. 20, 2007
This is Christmas – damn it! What happened?
- I’m sitting here looking at a photo taken shortly before Christmas 2008. It’s a very good photo: dramatic and sharply focused. It’s a December afternoon in downtown San Diego: trees dotting a vast swath of sun-washed, empty parking lot. In the foreground, walking away from the camera, is my 11-year-old son. His head is bowed, and it’s because of what is in his hands: a chilled bottle of water and a brown paper lunch bag.
- By Matthew Lickona, Thomas Reifer, Dec. 23, 2009
A Christmas story, wherein I leave my dad
- My boots clomp against the concrete of the garage, and a gravelly paste falls from the arches to mingle with the oil patch in the center of the floor. I light a cigarette, blow the first puff out into the frigid air, and let the burnt match fall to the floor. "Hey," my dad howls. "Don't drop those in here, throw them outside."
- By Ollie, December 22, 2005 11:53 p.m.
Books That Help You Survive Christmas
- On Christmas Day some among us sooner would read than rip at ribbons. We would prefer the voice of Jane Austen to that of shrill Aunt Tillie. Some among us, on 25 December, long only to laze in the old overstuffed armchair and chew on a cold turkey wing. We prefer to fly into a netherworld of printed pages. Below, you will find six titles that might help take you far beyond the cedar tree and its sparkle.
- By Judith Moore, Dec. 23, 2004
Praise for Dad, and not because of Christmas loot
- Christmastime is here, and to commemorate the Father's gift of His Son to the world, fathers everywhere are buying loot for their kids. Oh, what a generous God; oh, what a generous Dad. This is indeed a season of love. Unless Dad isn't around to buy presents or is trying to buy affection in absentia with extravagant gifts, or gives presents but not love, or a host of other things.
- By Matthew Lickona, Dec. 18, 1997