Cover Stories
The 2010 Restaurant Issue, covering dirt to plate: foods locally grown and raised in San Diego County, top restaurant picks, top chefs to watch, and new food trends.
The graffiti wraps the California Theatre in a ten-foot-tall necklace of yellow and black and silver, squished-together letters shaped like half-inflated airbags. The odd thing is whoever did it also surrounded it with a new …
The Tijuana cartel as we know it today has its roots in the Mexican states of Sinaloa on the southeast side of the Gulf of California and Jalisco in central Mexico. A former Mexican Judicial …
A VOICE BELLOWS THROUGH THE DOOR. “San Diego Sheriff’s Department, open up!” I wonder if cops learn how to do that in the academy. “It’s gonna be all right,” my mom says, feigning confidence as …
Over the phone, Maureen Slater sounds like a soccer mom. She uses words like “jammies” instead of pajamas and laughs at her own jokes (“I’m smarter than my husband, ha-ha-ha”), some of which aren’t really …
Wayne Bamford knew more secrets about Linda Vista than anyone. It was the spring of 2007, and Bamford was helping me dig into the community’s ongoing squabbles. Two years later, in early May, I wanted …
I can’t imagine leaving San Diego because Stellan Bengtsson is here. He is a former world champion of table tennis, the youngest ever at 18. Even the Chinese were scared of him. “You can’t wrestle …
“This is HIP-HOP. I don’t know what they told you, but this is called HIP-HOP!” DJ Artistic has me in a gentle headlock as he shouts this into my ear. He’s not being aggressive; he …
Janina Hardoy was 24 years old when last seen around the Oceanside Pier, quoting the Bible to homeless people; a couple of months later, in early 2005, she was reported missing from her rented Oceanside …
The only sign of life in Julian at 5:00 a.m. this April morning are men in white paper toques rolling out pie dough at the bright-lighted Julian Bakery. It’s a deep black morning when I …
Every May, after the tasseled hats have fallen to the ground and the graduation parties have died down, hundreds of thousands of new graduates enter the workforce. Or at least that’s the plan. Late last …
Reporting from the front lines, here. Before me, across Juniper: Them. North Parkians. If you didn't know they were The Other, you'd be fooled into thinking they're just like you.
“People who can’t draw are stunned by those who can.” — Scott Peterson, editor at the La Jolla–based comic imprint WildStorm. When Peterson said that, it struck me as being a pretty good explanation for …
Two years ago, Phil’s daughter Mary spent a month at a major San Diego nonprofit hospital, recovering from a near-fatal disease. Like one in four Californians, Mary was uninsured. The stay was billed at over …
I grew up in a religion that loved everything I would be taught to disdain in graduate school: America, authority, marriage, motherhood, and divine revelation. My father was a history-reading intellectual who treated me like …
81 pounds of wood and steel Valentine’s Day, 2010: Strolling through the outer edges of downtown before heading home for the evening. Passing Salvatore’s Cucina Italiana at the corner of Front and G and glancing …