Golden Dreams
In 1988, my parents were on their way to become sworn American citizens in Hartford Connecticut when they were surprised by an unexpected throng. Long haired and tie-dye clad, they crowded around the Civic Center, …
Caw! Caw! Talk about a dawn chorus! Six in the am. Half a dozen crows swoop and holler above the little patio in back. They keep it up for half an hour before I finally …
Tyler Barry points his two metal rods towards the earth in front of him. He’s not exactly looking at what he’s doing: his eyes are closed, as though he’s listening for something. Then he starts …
I just got off the phone with John Edward, the self-described psychic medium who came to prominence around 20 years ago on the television programs Crossing Over and Cross Country, through his appearances with Larry …
My buddy Kevin and I see her just about every time we head for what until recently we called our polar bear ocean swims. Because every day, she’d come swooping around the wide curves of …
“I’m really just a rock and roll girl,” says Teresa Gunn. “But this has made me a poet of the streets.” “This” is Gunn’s program of arts for young mothers at the margins of San …
I could have interviewed Dr. Arsalan Azam about lots of different things. I could have asked for stories from his nearly 10 years of working in emergency medicine: delivering babies, assessing the schizophrenic and the …
I wasn’t paying much attention to anything except this dog, Teo. Milton Cadiz, his owner, was explaining to me what had happened. I knew it was something bad, because the little guy had only two …
“Crackles and pops?” says Greg Hildebrand. “They’re the most valuable part of vinyl recordings. They give them individuality.” Hildebrand owns one of the better-known havens of hard-to-find LPs in the county, Cow Records in OB, …
The mushroom: a symbol of ecological renewal, of alternative medicine, of psychedelic exploration. I see them everywhere these days: on clothing and murals and stickers, in cultivation kits that I can buy at my kids’ …
In the middle of February, the Reader got word regarding an upcoming rally at Teralta Park in City Heights. Kwame from the San Diego branch of the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) wanted to …
Travis Jackson has been here before. Good times and bad. And he still has faith in the sport fishing business. Proof? He’s refitting a 62-foot boat, Patriot, to take passengers down to places like Cabo …
“Me?” says Robert Alfonso. “I am a half-breed.” He says it just as a matter of fact. No apology, no irony. A statement about his life as an “Indo-Dutch” child. We’re sitting at his new …
It is nine in the morning on a Wednesday, and within the confines of Balboa Park’s Japanese Friendship Garden, a few bonsai enthusiasts are moving quietly among the birds and the dew, tending to their …
“OMG,” says my friend Erik. He’s calling me from McP’s Irish pub on Coronado’s Orange Avenue. “Get your butt down here right now. A beer god has descended!” He clicks off and I go on …
It’s the cold night of January 28. Outside the Mexican consulate in Little Italy, a bunch of journalists, maybe half of them American, half of them Mexican, gather for a vigil. We’re paying tribute to …