Downtown San Diego Stories
Mayor Jerry Sanders gave San Diego’s three new city council members a little taste of what they should expect during their first year on the council. The day after elections, while the final votes were …
Ever since the “strong mayor” form of governance was adopted Mayor Sanders has been hard to find at city council meetings. It’s been even harder for the average citizen to get his attention. On October …
Amid the 11 acres of “lush tropical” backdrop at Kona Kai Resort and Spa on Shelter Island, Mayor Jerry Sanders addressed the San Diego Taxpayer’s Association on the economic hardships the city of San Diego …
District 3 councilmember Toni Atkins issued a press release on October 7, asking for reconsideration of the Navy’s plan to redevelop the Navy Broadway Complex. The project puts 15 acres of waterfront property into the …
On Saturday, September 27th, a small crowd of civilians assembled inside Building 12 of the Navy Broadway Complex for the first of three public hearings on the redevelopment of the 15.5-acre site in between North …
Sunday evening. Light's fading. Wandering up Ash and Union, the echoey streets of the world above Broadway. You know, wrong side of the tracks. All the cool eateries are in the Gaslamp. Up here, especially …
Beer garden at City Brewery, circa 1870s. In 1868, the same year Austrian brew-master Christian Doblier established San Diego’s first brewery in Spring Valley (Chollas Valley Brewery), City Brewery opened on the northwest corner of …
Author: Rodney Akins Neighborhood: Downtown Age: 43 Occupation: Homeless After finally moving out of Colonia Libertad, Mexico, which is two blocks across the San Ysidro border crossing, I was homeless with about $50 in my …
Author name: Bryan Varela Neighborhood: Downtown Age: 35 Occupation: “Town drunk” I sit here on the corner of Broadway and Columbia, puffin’ a smoke and remembering the old broad. Carol, I think was her name. …
Is the proposal to build a 40-foot-high, 100-acre concrete deck over the Tenth Avenue Marine Terminal so far-fetched from an engineering and economic viewpoint that it is really a hoax? Is the envisioned project, which …
E.J. Wilson sings it like he really means it. “No one can take your happiness, long as you/ Do what you gotta do.” That’s exactly what he’s doing. What he has to do. Busking. We’re …
Girls just wanna have fun, and aging-boomer foodie girls especially wanna have fun at the table (as other options become scarcer). Tabule offers that kind of culinary gambol. (Not gamble — I didn’t taste anything …
9-year-old Lucas attends Comic-Con Popular Designer Jermaine Rogers talks about Comic-Con going Hollywood Hillary & Hanna are sisters at Comicon 2008 Grant Morrison from DC Comics talks about Comic-con going Hollywood. Deepak Chopra at Comicon …
Ahhh... Slurp, burp, slurp again. Pinky finger raised, of course. I clink my cawfee cup down in its saucer. Sitting like a captain of industry here at the corner of Ash and India. Behind yellow …
Two opposing views regarding the ban on brew at San Diego's beaches inadvertently surfaced during the June 25th meeting of the Ocean Beach town council. When Officer David Surwilo, community liaison for the police department's …
Baktiar has surely found the sweet spot. This is where folks wandering down Fourth start running out of steam. They can’t see anything ahead except the bricky Horton Grand Hotel. They hesitate and, most of …
Spreckels Theatre, c. 1915. Signage also advertises “Vaudeville Hippodrome.” Clarence Alan McGrew’s 1922 book City of San Diego and San Diego County mentioned, “In 1915 the Hippodrome vaudeville started to appear at the Spreckels Theatre,” …
Nearly every week, I pour myself a glass of Japanese fizzy-water (Nigori sake), take a deep breath, and call up some rank stranger — the chef of the restaurant I’m currently reviewing. Between the serious …
A good writer is not, per se, a good book critic. No more so than a good drunk is automatically a good bartender. — Jim Bishop There are two kinds of women: those who don’t …
Editor's note: As of 2010, this restaurant is closed. Love? This could be it. The question hits me mid-bite into my second-ever quesotaco. It’s a scrunch of crispy grilled cheese over little chunks of steak …
Hank had been on about this for the longest time. He’s a carpenter and wannabe carver, and he reckons the carving of the horses in the carousel at Seaport Village is the best. In the …
Over the door is the “dough” — the Chinese ideogram for the Tao (pronounced “doe”), meaning “the way” in general, and in Taoism, the way of the universe. (George Lucas calls it “The Force,” and …
Excavation of the Spreckels Theatre building at 121 Broadway, c. 1908. Sugar millionaire John D. Spreckels is said to have had it constructed to coincide with the Panama Canal’s opening. (San Diego vied to be …
Clock’s ticking toward midnight down here in the deepest Stingaree. I’m heading for Ciro’s, the pizzeria. Why? Because I’ve spent the last couple hours holding up the beautiful old (1885!) Tivoli bar, listening to a …
San Diego League of Women Voters, in partnership with the San Diego Reader present: Shipshape or MAYDAY ?!! WHAT WILL IT TAKE TO KEEP SAN DIEGO AFLOAT? If you want the facts, join us at …
Centre City Development Corporation, the City’s downtown redevelopment organization, has been correctly accused of many things. Arrogance. Bullying. Conflicts of interest. Excessive pay and perks for employees. Loose contract policies. Being in the pocket of …
There were a couple of video-release parties I hit downtown. The first was for a band called Crash Encore. It was a video-premiere party for their song “Stormy Weather” at the Buzz Clothing Warehouse on …
No, to answer everybody’s first question, the flashy new Gaslamp Nobu is no relation to our sweet and humble Solana Beach Nobu, owned by Nobu Tsushita. For better or worse, our Nobu-sur mer merely shares …
Gail Jones at the downtown Woolworth’s store, 1972. Jones and a friend, waitresses at the store’s café, were in the dressing room changing their clothes when management locked up at 6 p.m. and went home …
San Diego’s heralded Smart Corner is smarting — as in stinging. It’s a condominium/office building project, another of the City’s touted public/private sector ventures. What titillates city planners is that the trolley runs between a …
Could this be it? Cue music: “This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius…” I mean, if I was looking for a sign, this sign has to be it. “Organic to Go,” right here …
Back in July 2001, then–San Diego mayor Dick Murphy and the rest of the city council voted to give a cool $1 million of taxpayer money to a small nonprofit outfit called the San Diego …
Home of the first Methodist church in San Diego, c. 1890. Located on the northeast corner of Fourth Avenue and Broadway, the church was first a wooden structure built in 1870 on land donated by …
“The reason it’s a bloodier sport than boxing is that you’re allowed to use elbows and knees,” says Eric Del Fierro, chief operating officer for Total Combat Entertainment, a San Diego–based mixed martial arts event-production …
Guys asleep on the sidewalk. Guys shuffling past with walking sticks. Guys pushing shopping carts filled with their belongings. Guys rolling by in electric scooters with whiplash aerials and a faded Old Glory flicking at …
Sally’s has a long-standing reputation as one of San Diego’s most romantic destinations for lovers. It’s an outbuilding behind the Manchester Grand Hyatt at the edge of Seaport Village (so, fans of antique rock, you’ll …
This restaurant is closed. I suspect that all middle-class (and up) native San Diegans have dined at Rainwater’s on Kettner at least once — for a birthday, a graduation, an engagement, an anniversary. According to …
Artist: Calico Horse Song:"Awake in the Clouds" (from myspace.com/calicohorsemusic) Heard By: Charlie Herlevic, downtown I liked it very much; it's a very pretty song. It reminded me of a band called Quix*o*tic. It also reminded …
We are a frazzled, worried country after seven years of every important decision being decided wrong by that "deciderator" and the awful gray eminences whispering in his ears. So do I dare to interpret the …
If I could host a dinner for five "unforgettable" San Diegans from long ago, one guest would have to be Apolinaria Lorenzana. Called "La Beata" -- "the blessed one" -- she came to Alta California …
In probably every English-speaking big city in the world, there's a Hotel Pickwick -- a quaintly faux-Victorian (yet divey) one-star habitation, usually located near a major bus or train station. San Diego's Pickwick just passed …
"The secret police? What is this, California?"
Actress Lita Milan, in a phone booth on Harbor Drive and Market Street, 1958. An aide to Dominican general Rafael Trujillo Jr. seems to be offering counsel. Our local paper learned that Milan fled the …
"Jahja Ling's always in. And the mayor, he sits here, at table number two."
Thirty Years Ago You've got a good weekly newspaper. One way to make it even better would be to fire that ignorant pseudo-intellectual, Duncan Shepherd. His movie reviews are totally worthless to the general public …
I overheard a bartender at the Ould Sod talking about a party at Hotel Solamar downtown. I jotted the date on a napkin, and the following Monday, drove down to crash it. I knew there …
From the Evening-Tribune photo assignment sheet: "Get a shot or two of a policeman chatting informally with four or five students -- girls and boys, or all boys, whichever is easiest...idea is that cops and …
Imagine the food and trash that restaurants in San Diego's tony Gaslamp Quarter throw away every night. For more than 15 years, an alley on G Street between Fourth and Fifth avenues made things easier. …
The Minneapolis bridge collapse and New York City steam pipe explosion have engendered introspection: Is the nation neglecting infrastructure? But the city with one of the most gaping infrastructure deficits, San Diego, has a slogan: …
One day, he's a lauded real-estate visionary being handed the key to the city by Mayor Frank Curran. Then, he's battling city officials as they appropriate his downtown properties in the name of some barely …
Most of the Grateful Dead sang "Happy Birthday" to promoter Bill Graham that night; Jerry didn't because he had laryngitis. Though a local reviewer opened his article with, "It's not easy to forgive a group …
When the rumor hit about Britney Spears performing a surprise concert at the House of Blues in San Diego, tickets sold out quickly. Face-value tickets were $35 each, and there was no guarantee that it …