Downtown San Diego Stories
At 2:00 p.m. on October 16, an impromptu protest and counterprotest took place on the corners of Park Boulevard and B Street, across from San Diego City College. Several congregants of a Kansas church had …
An accident involving a man in a wheelchair and two vehicles occurred on Tuesday afternoon, October 13, near the entrance to the central library. The man attempted to cross Tenth Avenue at E Street against …
More than two years after Congress approved funding for a new federal courthouse in downtown San Diego, the contract for the $295.7 million project was awarded to Hensel Phelps Construction of Irvine. On October 1, …
While San Diego’s homeless people wait for the City to provide winter shelter, they need, among other things, to go to the bathroom. And there are precious few places to do it. Anyone who meanders …
I’ve been called flaky. But hey, this is flaky. Who woulda thought? Eating a pastry-covered curry pie for breakfast in a converted condo in East Village? Here’s how it happened: I was wandering hopelessly around …
The U.S. Grant Hotel, completed in October 1910, is one of the city’s grandest old hotels. Its signature restaurant, the Grant Grill, is equally historic. For its first 90-some years, it was a clubby, old-fashioned …
The American Public Transportation Association (APTA) presented San Diego’s Metropolitan Transit System with the 2009 Outstanding Public Transportation System Achievement Award at its annual meeting on Tuesday, October 6, in Orlando, Florida. “The APTA Award …
Trekking in Nepal involved 25 grueling vegan days of rice, lentils, mustard greens, noodles, barley stew, and boiled potatoes (and one glorious night of smoky yak steak and real mashed potatoes from the best darned …
Hey, Mr. Sumption! Greetings from October 2009. You stamped this piece of sidewalk with your moniker a century ago, almost. “H.W. Sumption, October 1910.” And this huge tree. A Moreton Bay fig, the plaque says, …
On Wednesday, September 16, Stacey Fulhorst, executive director for the ethics commission, testified before San Diego's Open Government and Rules Committee and requested authority to issue subpoenas and to sanction officials that lie, mislead, and …
A man was robbed near a store close to the Greyhound station on West Broadway prior to 8:00 p.m. on Tuesday, September 15. The victim, a Chinese male who is not from the area, alleged …
My girlfriend told a coworker who was going out of town for two weeks that she’d watch her dog for her. As we were walking the woman’s yellow Lab through downtown streets, we noticed a …
San Diego police searched the Santa Fe train depot for a missing person on Friday night, September 11. They were looking for an Orange County woman who had been reported missing earlier that day. Police …
Looking to patch the cracks in California's state budget, legislators look to take funds from cities redevelopment agencies as temporary filler. Statewide, more than $1.3 billion will be transferred from redevelopment accounts to state government …
At approximately 2:20 p.m. on Tuesday, September 9, a police helicopter and several police cars searched for a suspect in an unknown crime in the area of Broadway and Ninth and Tenth avenues. Over the …
Roll 'em! Straight-to-camera, Guy Harinton yells, “Why can’t I kill one of them little fuckers?!” He’s frothing. Here, at the Embarcadero’s Coronado ferry landing, a foreign-student pedicab driver has just ridden off with a load …
“Know why this area’s called the ‘Stingaree’?” asks Mark. We’re at the bottom of Eighth, right where it meets Market, inside this Asian bistro I just happened on called J. Wok. Mark Richmond’s an artist. …
On September 8, the city council met to discuss forming a medical marijuana task force. The task force would be responsible for hashing out details on ways the City should administer the drug to patients. …
Labor Day weekend saw the San Diego Symphony's Summer Pops concert series' finale under the energetic baton of Matthew Garbutt. The line up contained well-known favorites (Tchaikovsky's Slavic March and 1812 Overture) along with rarely …
Hundreds of kids had their parents in tow for an acoustic concert by Ziggy Marley, who was supporting his new children's album Family Time. Without pausing to address the sold out crowd, Marley took the …
A man was struck and seriously injured by a tour bus on the corner of Pacific Highway and Harbor Drive late Friday afternoon. The victim, whose identity could not be confirmed, was crossing Pacific Highway …
As a heat wave ripped through Southern California on Friday, August 27, it became too much for one customer at the C Street Jack in the Box. At about 2 p.m., the man was waving …
Councilmember Marti Emerald continues to be a driving force behind pedicab regulation reform in the city. Ever since 60-year-old tourist Sharon Miller died as a result of getting thrown from a pedicab on July 4, …
Sunday, August 30th, at approximately 10 a.m., a man in an early model Geo driving eastbound on Market Street turned onto Fifth Avenue at a high rate of speed and lost control of his vehicle. …
“Hotel restaurant” used to be shorthand for “What’s that slop you’re eating?” — back in the era of moldy “colonial” inns and all-one-mold “family” chains (remember Howard Johnson’s Motor Inns?). But not now, and certainly …
I ran into Nick Simmons, the son of Kiss bassist Gene, at Comic-Con. I told him I caught the episode of his reality show on which he sang. I told him he had a good …
Less than ten days before the August 29 date for the enforcement of new pedicab regulations, some pedicab drivers are already catching the eye of law enforcement officers. Late Thursday night, August 20, just after …
As baseball fans headed toward Petco Park for the August 20th game, at about 6:30 p.m., a car abruptly stopped on the corner of Tenth Avenue and J Street to unload some passengers at the …
Emergency medical and fire crews were called to San Diego’s downtown nightclub On Broadway in the early hours of Saturday, August 15. According to witnesses at the venue, a fight broke out that left at …
At approximately 9:35 p.m. on Friday, August 7, two men were seen walking westbound on the 900 block of J Street when one of them fell unconscious to the sidewalk. Two security personnel from a …
Just before 3:00 p.m. on Sunday August 2, a man was seen sitting on the sidewalk, leaning up against a building on the 400 block of Tenth Avenue. He bled profusely from his left arm. …
Marlon Castle, 22, got in line for the entrance to the San Diego Convention Center after having stood in line for 20 minutes at the will-call window for his ticket. The ticket is worn around …
THE RAID. On September 10, 1909, city prosecutor Edgar Luce, chief of police Keno Wilson, and a detective named Smith crossed the Market Street “dead line” and took a stroll through the Stingaree, San Diego’s …
The Centre City Development Corp. is paying $10,160 to Heritage Architecture to create a “list of potential new uses, creative adaptive reuse design scenarios and provide cost-estimating services for the selected alternatives,” for rehabilitating the …
Last week, San Diego sheriff’s deputies and investigators arrested 38-year-old Ismael Sanchez Carrillo for attempted grand theft in front of the Hall of Justice at 330 West Broadway. During the past six weeks, jurors and …
On Saturday afternoon, July 25, San Diego Police helped quell an unruly crowd on the main floor of the San Diego Convention Center. During an appearance of the cast of FX channel's It’s Always Sunny …
THE MOST HATED MAN IN SAN DIEGO. From 1910 to 1912, Walter Bellon inspected San Diego’s waterfront, Chinatown, and the Stingaree district for the health department. If an owner failed to make basic improvements, the …
A man was arrested at approximately 12:50 p.m. on July 23 in front of the San Diego Convention Center. Witnesses indicated that the man -- in his 20s or early 30s, with black curly hair …
Strolling on the boardwalk through Seaport Village on the afternoon of July 15, I admired the shops along the footpath between the Midway and the convention center. Then, something on the ground in front of …
On February 15, 1898, the Monterey sailed into San Diego Bay. The ship had been at sea for more than a month. The next day around noon, half the crew got liberty and hurtled through …
On Sunday, July 5, at approximately 2:30 p.m., a sidewalk peddler was spotted on the southwest corner of Tenth Avenue and J Street hawking “ice cold water and Gatorade” to baseball fans walking around Petco …
I put sour cream in my coffee because I didn’t have any milk. I searched through my refrigerator for anything that could possibly be utilized as a splash of creamer. Salad dressing, mayonnaise, soy sauce, …
Visitors to downtown hotels are a piddling few. Residents of downtown condos are a piddling few. But that won’t stop the establishment from diddling taxpayers for more downtown development — a travesty because outlying parks, …
The Cribs. In 1887, a reporter for the San Diego Union grew a beard, wore threadbare duds, and stealth’d through San Diego’s red-light district. He was shocked to see drunks on every corner. Some clung …
The idea of building a new downtown library has been teetering on the brink of fiction and non-fiction for over a decade. But during recent months, dwindling fundraising efforts, a ballooning city deficit, increasing project …
Shortly after the Padres-Dodgers game on Friday, July 3, cars and fans filled the streets surrounding Petco Park. So, San Diego traffic controllers began to enforce the ban against San Diego pedicabs operating in the …
On Thursday, July 2, at the top of the ninth inning in a game between the Padres and Houston Astros, bees were seen buzzing around in the outfield. “The left fielder [Kyle Blanks] started waving …
San Diego County is putting the brakes on spur-of-the-moment marriages. Beginning Monday, July 6, marriage licenses and civil ceremonies will be offered by appointment only. “The walk-in marriage services are being discontinued due to budgetary …
San Diego city councilmember Carl DeMaio has some questions for the Port of San Diego before he’s ready to endorse the city’s convention center expansion. In a June 30 memo issued by his office, the …
Let’s take a walk through time. We’re at the southwest corner of Fifth and K, part of the Gaslamp Quarter. At night, lines form under bright lights at popular clubs and restaurants. Between 1875 and …
Just before 1:00 p.m on June 29, an altercation between two people at 746 Broadway (above the Church of Steel tattoo shop) resulted in police officers surrounding the building. Because a gun was involved, police …
At approximately 9.15 a.m. on Saturday, June 27, as an M.T.S. Blue Line trolley en route to Old Town arrived at the Civic Centre stop, commuters onboard were forced to evacuate the train as smoke …