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
The pick-up scene that is Gaslamp
What you see off Tokyo, who eats grunion, PCT helpers, the zoo's bonobos, lost in a canyon, love and the suspension bridge, Balboa Park trees, unreal O.B., Bonita rebel, Border Angels
“This looks fake. I’m keeping this. You can either leave now or we’ll call the cops.”
It's 9:30 p.m., and San Diego's Gaslamp crackles with anticipation
- They’re all attractive young women dressed in Daisy Dukes and crop-tops or something similar. They dispense free-entry stamps to passersby in hope of getting a head start on becoming the “it” bar of the night. The storefronts are stacked with a series of hostesses greeting pedestrians in quick succession, giving the gauntlet-running pedestrian a sensation akin to celebrity.
- By Joseph Miravalle, July 19, 2017
Course of Crystal showing presumptive point of collision with FitzgeraldHow Navy culture may have caused the Fitzgerald disaster
- It is a big ocean. Until you’ve been far into it, it’s really hard to appreciate how big it is. Bringing a ship back from Japan to Hawaii, I once went ten days without seeing another ship, either by eye or radar. That’s a long time to be utterly alone in the world, especially if you’re moving in a straight line and at good speed. On the other hand, I think you’d be surprised at how crowded the ocean can get in certain places.
- By Kevin Eyer, July 12, 2017
Tunk says that after about five minutes of frying, "The bones become crispy."I'm in a rush. It's Ocean Beach. The grunion are running.
- It was only a few years ago when I added the ritual observation of this seasonal phenomenon to my panoply of pagan rituals. I had just established California residency as a maverick OBcean on Saratoga-at-Abbott. A fish biologist by training, I was thrilled to be able to visit the sea so easily.
- By Noah J.D. DesRosiers, July 5, 2017
Rick Rozands wanted to change his trail name, Grams. “I don’t need people to think I’m selling drugs out there.”Trail angels: From Campo to Canada on foot
- North Park, well before the sun is up, Texaspoo and Grams are waiting intently out in front of some small row houses. Texaspoo shows a four-day beard and wears running gear. Grams is rigged out in quick-dry greenish walking shorts, boots with fancy blue coverlets, and layers. Prescription glasses. Both are lean as greyhounds. Texaspoo polishes off a smoke, claims the Jeep’s front seat and immediately goes to texting.
- By Dave Good, June 14, 2017
Belle and big sister MaddieSan Diego Zoo's rare bonobos
- In late April of 1960, the San Diego Zoo’s curator of mammals, George Pournelle, traveled to one of the most inaccessible parts of the African rainforest on a collecting expedition. His goal was to acquire a female okapi or two. The Belgian government had given the zoo a male okapi a few years later, but to get a mate for “Bayaku” required Pournelle to travel to Leopoldville (now Kinshasa) in the Congo, then take a boat for more than 1000 miles up the Congo River.
- By Jeannette DeWyze, June 7, 2017
They should have turned back at Turning Rock, but Duguay and Cecil Knutson pressed on.Canyon of death
- Duguay did not know Cecil Knutson and neither had ties to the Los Coyotes Indian Reservation near Warner Springs in San Diego County. But each Orange County man ended up at the reservation and took a compact car on the same rocky, mountain trail that led to their misfortune.
- By H.G. Reza, April 26, 2017
I’m concerned that Jayde's sudden agreeability is, at heart, some manifestation of worry.Spruce Street suspension bridge brings out demented thoughts
- It’s early, the marine layer still a veneer over the city, when we park the car just shy of the suspension bridge. The day promises to be hot but, at this hour, the sun hasn’t gained full expression. It remains a suggestion of itself, arcing somewhere low and behind us. Jayde is dressed like an eight-year-old wholly unaccustomed to hiking. It’s my urban failing, and arrears are still owed to the campfire gods for Jayde’s lack of trailhead savvy.
- By Thom Hofman, Nov. 29, 2017
When I ask a passerby to give the Australian tea tree a name based on either Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings, he chooses “Gandalf.”The top ten trees of Balboa Park
- If the wind is blowing and the sun is shining, the dark green pine needles at the top will catch the light and sparkle. These evergreen trees are native to the Canary Islands of Spain and have a fissured red-brown bark that looks almost like puzzle pieces. They are huge and awe-inspiring.
- By Elizabeth Salaam, Nov. 22, 2017
Sunshine Company. The aesthetic is something like pop-art renditions of Jimmy Buffet imagery.Ocean Beach — seven blocks surrounded by reality
- Brandon Brodes offers praise for the area in the kind of language and metaphor one doesn’t often find outside the neighborhood. “People here aren’t attacking the moment, they’re living in it. They live in the moment, not in the pictures. It’s happiness, the place you want to be.”
- By Joe Miravalle, Sept. 6, 2017
Bonita Road Baptist Church. Redbeard apologized to the pastor afterward, saying that he did not mean to go against his authority.Redbeard ministers to the Sweetwater homeless jungle
- I once saw Redbeard riding his skateboard along Otay Lakes Road. It was close to midnight, there were only a few cars on the road, and the light from the streetlamps was dim. As he snaked his way down the slope, hands in his pocket, moving toward the Sweetwater Valley —where he sleeps against the wall of the Circle K, or holds his signs along the 805 exit for spare change or spreads the good news to the people of the jungle — I thought of a verse he once shared with me.
- By Jonah Valdez, Aug. 23, 2017
"Along one of our routes, 50 out of 53 gallons were slashed."Border Angels takes water out to Jacumba area for migrants
- A small crowd gathers in the courtyard outside the Border Angels headquarters located at the Sherman Heights Community Center on Island Avenue four blocks south of State Route 94 and five blocks east of Interstate 5. All 60 volunteer slots and ten wait-list spots were filled four days prior for today’s desert water drop. Filling spots was once difficult, but not since Donald Trump was elected.
- By Siobhan Braun, Aug. 16, 2017
Coach waved us off the field, and a pair of drab green military helicopters thudded down around midfield.Camp Pendleton: A hell of a place to grow up
- We were nearing the end of a late-afternoon soccer practice, trying to squeeze in a few more minutes of scrimmage time before the sun set when coach blew his whistle. The long, shrill tweet stopped the action and brought all of us dutiful 11-year-olds to silence, so we could hear a familiar pulsing sound approach.
- By Ian Anderson, Aug. 2, 2017
Here's something you might be interested in.
The pick-up scene that is Gaslamp
What you see off Tokyo, who eats grunion, PCT helpers, the zoo's bonobos, lost in a canyon, love and the suspension bridge, Balboa Park trees, unreal O.B., Bonita rebel, Border Angels
The pick-up scene that is Gaslamp
What you see off Tokyo, who eats grunion, PCT helpers, the zoo's bonobos, lost in a canyon, love and the suspension bridge, Balboa Park trees, unreal O.B., Bonita rebel, Border Angels
“This looks fake. I’m keeping this. You can either leave now or we’ll call the cops.”
It's 9:30 p.m., and San Diego's Gaslamp crackles with anticipation
- They’re all attractive young women dressed in Daisy Dukes and crop-tops or something similar. They dispense free-entry stamps to passersby in hope of getting a head start on becoming the “it” bar of the night. The storefronts are stacked with a series of hostesses greeting pedestrians in quick succession, giving the gauntlet-running pedestrian a sensation akin to celebrity.
- By Joseph Miravalle, July 19, 2017
- Course of Crystal showing presumptive point of collision with Fitzgerald
How Navy culture may have caused the Fitzgerald disaster
- It is a big ocean. Until you’ve been far into it, it’s really hard to appreciate how big it is. Bringing a ship back from Japan to Hawaii, I once went ten days without seeing another ship, either by eye or radar. That’s a long time to be utterly alone in the world, especially if you’re moving in a straight line and at good speed. On the other hand, I think you’d be surprised at how crowded the ocean can get in certain places.
- By Kevin Eyer, July 12, 2017
- Tunk says that after about five minutes of frying, "The bones become crispy."
I'm in a rush. It's Ocean Beach. The grunion are running.
- It was only a few years ago when I added the ritual observation of this seasonal phenomenon to my panoply of pagan rituals. I had just established California residency as a maverick OBcean on Saratoga-at-Abbott. A fish biologist by training, I was thrilled to be able to visit the sea so easily.
- By Noah J.D. DesRosiers, July 5, 2017
- Rick Rozands wanted to change his trail name, Grams. “I don’t need people to think I’m selling drugs out there.”
Trail angels: From Campo to Canada on foot
- North Park, well before the sun is up, Texaspoo and Grams are waiting intently out in front of some small row houses. Texaspoo shows a four-day beard and wears running gear. Grams is rigged out in quick-dry greenish walking shorts, boots with fancy blue coverlets, and layers. Prescription glasses. Both are lean as greyhounds. Texaspoo polishes off a smoke, claims the Jeep’s front seat and immediately goes to texting.
- By Dave Good, June 14, 2017
- Belle and big sister Maddie
San Diego Zoo's rare bonobos
- In late April of 1960, the San Diego Zoo’s curator of mammals, George Pournelle, traveled to one of the most inaccessible parts of the African rainforest on a collecting expedition. His goal was to acquire a female okapi or two. The Belgian government had given the zoo a male okapi a few years later, but to get a mate for “Bayaku” required Pournelle to travel to Leopoldville (now Kinshasa) in the Congo, then take a boat for more than 1000 miles up the Congo River.
- By Jeannette DeWyze, June 7, 2017
- They should have turned back at Turning Rock, but Duguay and Cecil Knutson pressed on.
Canyon of death
- Duguay did not know Cecil Knutson and neither had ties to the Los Coyotes Indian Reservation near Warner Springs in San Diego County. But each Orange County man ended up at the reservation and took a compact car on the same rocky, mountain trail that led to their misfortune.
- By H.G. Reza, April 26, 2017
- I’m concerned that Jayde's sudden agreeability is, at heart, some manifestation of worry.
Spruce Street suspension bridge brings out demented thoughts
- It’s early, the marine layer still a veneer over the city, when we park the car just shy of the suspension bridge. The day promises to be hot but, at this hour, the sun hasn’t gained full expression. It remains a suggestion of itself, arcing somewhere low and behind us. Jayde is dressed like an eight-year-old wholly unaccustomed to hiking. It’s my urban failing, and arrears are still owed to the campfire gods for Jayde’s lack of trailhead savvy.
- By Thom Hofman, Nov. 29, 2017
- When I ask a passerby to give the Australian tea tree a name based on either Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings, he chooses “Gandalf.”
The top ten trees of Balboa Park
- If the wind is blowing and the sun is shining, the dark green pine needles at the top will catch the light and sparkle. These evergreen trees are native to the Canary Islands of Spain and have a fissured red-brown bark that looks almost like puzzle pieces. They are huge and awe-inspiring.
- By Elizabeth Salaam, Nov. 22, 2017
- Sunshine Company. The aesthetic is something like pop-art renditions of Jimmy Buffet imagery.
Ocean Beach — seven blocks surrounded by reality
- Brandon Brodes offers praise for the area in the kind of language and metaphor one doesn’t often find outside the neighborhood. “People here aren’t attacking the moment, they’re living in it. They live in the moment, not in the pictures. It’s happiness, the place you want to be.”
- By Joe Miravalle, Sept. 6, 2017
- Bonita Road Baptist Church. Redbeard apologized to the pastor afterward, saying that he did not mean to go against his authority.
Redbeard ministers to the Sweetwater homeless jungle
- I once saw Redbeard riding his skateboard along Otay Lakes Road. It was close to midnight, there were only a few cars on the road, and the light from the streetlamps was dim. As he snaked his way down the slope, hands in his pocket, moving toward the Sweetwater Valley —where he sleeps against the wall of the Circle K, or holds his signs along the 805 exit for spare change or spreads the good news to the people of the jungle — I thought of a verse he once shared with me.
- By Jonah Valdez, Aug. 23, 2017
- "Along one of our routes, 50 out of 53 gallons were slashed."
Border Angels takes water out to Jacumba area for migrants
- A small crowd gathers in the courtyard outside the Border Angels headquarters located at the Sherman Heights Community Center on Island Avenue four blocks south of State Route 94 and five blocks east of Interstate 5. All 60 volunteer slots and ten wait-list spots were filled four days prior for today’s desert water drop. Filling spots was once difficult, but not since Donald Trump was elected.
- By Siobhan Braun, Aug. 16, 2017
- Coach waved us off the field, and a pair of drab green military helicopters thudded down around midfield.
Camp Pendleton: A hell of a place to grow up
- We were nearing the end of a late-afternoon soccer practice, trying to squeeze in a few more minutes of scrimmage time before the sun set when coach blew his whistle. The long, shrill tweet stopped the action and brought all of us dutiful 11-year-olds to silence, so we could hear a familiar pulsing sound approach.
- By Ian Anderson, Aug. 2, 2017