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The Warsaw connection Suddenly a man about his age stepped from the shadows, introduced himself as Stashik, and took from him the centuries-old Italian violin. At this point, John Ratajkowski might have stepped back an …
Soaked In swimsuits There's something incongruous about a national trend-setting taking place within the Elon building in downtown San Diego. It’s a faded hulk of a place built as a public works project during the …
Return flight There were men, several uniformed men, screaming, waving guns, ordering everyone to freeze. Somehow they had managed to sneak onto the airfield, then had leaped out and clambered up the entry ramp, weapons …
Show me a sign Arffmann works into the early-morning hours, cleaning the restaurant and preparing the Pearl for the coming day. “Imagine you were having some friends over for dinner,” he says, "and imagine the …
How San Diego lost its pueblo land Most of the 2000-odd acres proposed for sale in 1963 would go to Irvin Kahn’s University City Corporation. Kahn had holdings all over the city’s north, but they …
San Diego will never see another city councilman like Fred Schnaubelt “The interesting thing about being a [government] planner is that you have to be a socialist,” Schnaubelt continued mildly. Among his audience one could …
The teacher fails Rossi had us trooping off to the Academy Theater to see Alain Resnais’s La Guerre Est Finie, a pastiche of political correctness and sensuality. The commingling of radlib politics with grainy romance, …
American gothic horror By late October they had an apartment at Fortieth Street and Orange Avenue. Early one morning Garrett saw two men at the front door, one of whom was Marck Lambros III, a …
Herb Klein — the perfect man for Helen Copley Gerald Warren, unlike Neil Morgan, is not on the list of close friends Klein named in the preface to his book, and there has been much …
What is the sound of two bald women brushing their hair? The Los Angeles Zen Center had become the scene of heavy drinking and sexual permissiveness that had gotten out of hand, despite the fact …
The town that San Diego would like to forget “San Ysidro’s dead,’’ says an Hispanic banker whose branch is on San Ysidro Boulevard, within sniffing distance of a McDonald’s, a donut shop, the Main Attraction, …
Is there really such a thing as a Russian yuppie? “Then I watch most powerful country in world drain down, going from big hill at very high speed downhill. Americans are sometimes naive. They trust …
Twist and Shout There are a lot of reasons for reporters to take up public relations. The prospect of making more money is one. A good journeyman at the Union or the Tribune these days …
Reggae matriarch of San Diego vegetarians “We served Balinese food, like gado-gado. We were into Japanese cooking. We did a lot of tempura.” Near the cash register they sold herbs and — for a while …
Blue plate special "I’ve worked at Rudford’s since 1965. Twelve years altogether — I left three times. I used to get mad at something and I'd go back and quit. Some of the girls have …
Among the creatures I put the dog on the table. I felt inexplicably ill at ease with just the dog, myself, and Dr. Smith there; it was a rare moment shared by just the two …
Mystery of the Gypsy Song His one overriding desire is to find some shred of evidence that the Gypsy Song did in fact sink. “I just want to put that lady’s mind to rest,” he …
Happy Trumpsgiving Hunter P. Thompson: "Sure, everybody here agrees that Trump is a fascist hatemonger with no sense of respect or decency. That just means he’s just like the rest of us. Those protesters who …
Udo was gone Along Stuart Mesa Road near Cook Crossing and Vandergrift, he joined two other riders, Steven Scharf and John Edwards, both riding at the same pace. They chatted a bit, and as the …
San Diego starting to deal with its smog The natural broom sweeps the smog into the natural dustpan of Alpine. On days when the smog is particularly bad, you can drive east on Interstate 8 …