From the Archives
Happy Endings on Convoy Street In all the years I lived in and visited Korea, almost always staying in some relative’s household, I went to countless parties. When they were outside the household, they were …
Destination Tijuana “Don’t let them tell me the bus is new. Of course, we always get there on time; it’s just on the way there are, well, complications. It’s in the nature of the route. …
I Wanted to Own Him Until He Opened His Mouth Six days later, on a morning when the air was light blue, the weasel left his kill on the driveway, a young opossum so dead …
Of Wave and Camera Shaun Tomson, Larry Bertlemann, Terry Fitzgerald. Gerry Lopez, and Donald Takayama are special because of their boundless optimism, a character trait he feels is infectious. “Good surfers are the most positive …
Beneath the Bunya Bunya They lived on the ranch [Scripps Ranch] for six years. He supervised teams of men in planting thousands of eucalyptuses, all together about forty percent of those that were set out …
Meltzer Family Christmas Beer Bust Carta Blanca's the best. I would stand behind Carta Blanca. It's the first one that's given me any sense of, you know, where I have conviction about it. Its taste …
I Need Time to Recuperate A snowstorm trapped the porter on the other side of a pass, and he couldn’t get back for three days. Quentin had matches and lit a fire. He had a …
God’s Dirt “It’s not for the faint-hearted. It’s pretty high-risk because they’re very, very, very, very perishable. When the flowers are bloomed, you have to pick ’em. And you have to sell ’em. Otherwise you …
Just Flop The camaraderie among skateboarders goes beyond advanced skaters tolerating beginners and into the realm of solidarity. “Totally,” he said, “because there’s an us-against-the-world feeling. It’s the last kind of rebel-spirited outlaw activity that …
Angel of the Apocalypse During that long, violent spring of 1968, leftist student leaders around the world began to quote Marcuse and claim his ideas as inspiration to their movements. By June worldwide media had …
Are Off-Roaders Destroying Anza-Borrego? "A green-sticker dune buggy decides to drive in past the closure sign and fiddle around. There’s a camper back in there, and they have a verbal duel. The camper takes down …
Two Views of San DiegoI used to consider San Diego roads relatively sane, compared to L.A. Now the freeway is full of lunatics. Everyone’s trying to go faster than the next guy. People used to …
Out Here in the Middle of Nowhere “Before, gangs were racially segregated, so you had the Mexicans, the blacks, the Aryan Brotherhood, and so on. Now, the Bloods and all are recruiting across the racial …
Ground Cover One of the Brazilian peppers, a 20-foot umbrella of lacy foliage, blocks an exit sign for Genesee Avenue. “Look at that sign. Kind of hard to see what it says, isn’t it? You’ve …
Tunaville Times Crew members, nearly three-quarters of whom were Portuguese, addressed each other in the idioms of their native villages while they laid the huge black purse seine nets on the docks. Nautical designers and …
Chinaberry Farm: Finding Home Half our belongings still packed in the barn, paths form a quotidian maze between stacked boxes. The house livable, anyway. A rat takes up residence in Cindy’s paintings stored in the …