'Never Mind the Dog, Beware of the Owner," reads the sign posted in a window near the front door of Nelson Buhler's home on Beagle Street in Kearny Mesa. The four-bedroom house is blue and …

When Miguel Cervantes was 14 years old, he told his mother he wanted to be a reporter. At that time in Tijuana, no college or university offered degrees or courses in journalism. "I'll have to …

It's 80 degrees outside and there is no breeze and a couple sit in a snug booth at Karen Krasne's Extraordinary Desserts on Fifth Avenue and with neither comment nor expression methodically eat several slices …

Ingrid Rimland sees herself as a "determined, hardworking German mother." The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) sees her as a "ferociously anti-Semitic pro-Nazi apologist" - a characterization Rimland dismisses with impatience. "I am not a hateful person," …

In 1972, for example, only 4 permits were issued statewide for killing mountain lions that posed a threat to humans or livestock. Compare that with 1994 when 328 permits were issued and 121 were killed.

'Mexican Hit Man Laughs, Forgives Before Execution," headlines read the morning after the State of Virginia killed 26-year-old Mario Benjamin Murphy. "It's a good day to die," he was reported as saying when strapped to …

At noon on Labor Day it was 97 degrees in Santee. On the radio they were talking of thunderstorms in that part of the county, and in a dusty industrial parking lot off Cuyamaca Road, …

During the next several days, the worms ate their way through my radishes, arugula, and beets. They munched happily — I watched them — on my sunflowers and on my moonflower vines. They ate the leaves in a clean, irregular fashion.

The maid had been referred to the Wilsons by Neil Morgan’s wife. The legality of her work status was still not known, said Davies. He said Wilson’s ex-wife Betty had handled all of the other details.

Last year I pulled bucketful after bucketful of radishes from the ground. I sat on the patio and scrubbed them clean. I ate a few, but most times I’d forget to bring them inside.

“Are you trying to guess how old I am? Look, I don’t like giving my age, not out of vanity, but because people like to pigeon-hole people by age. And I don't like being pigeon-holed.”

“GO TO THE TORTILLA SHOP ON the corner. You'll find a big, dark-skinned man who works there and looks like a wrestler, with many tattoos of the Virgin of Guadalupe on his arms. He knows …

"Most all Asian cultures eat bamboo shoots, and most all bamboo shoots are edible. The shoots of some varieties contain small quantities of cyanide, but that problem can be gotten around by cooking."

La Jolla needed liberals like a hole in the head. By then even Herb Klein was Ted’s good friend, Herb Klein of I’m-Nixon’s-pal fame. (“Hey!” you say, “isn’t Klein a Jew’s name?” Could be. But what’s in a name?)

“This used to be a beautiful place,” says Jonnie. “A family part of town. Nice people lived here. That all changed with the Vietnam War, 1975. People from war places started coming in, big-time.”

"OASIS AND PALACE," gushed Vogue in 1930. "A place where blossom and brilliance have been coaxed from sterile desert as though by super-human witchery. Lavish green gardens, dazzling white walls, and acres of red tile …

Our namesake lies due west of Corpus Christi, past flat miles of sorghum, wheat and cotton fields, and towns with shops smelling of blood that, for pennies per pounds, will butcher the deer you shot …

The power plant’s acting up again,” Matt Wagner sighs, white large bats, coal-black and squeaky, wheel far above his head in the €ark sky. From where he stands on His apartment’s small (balcony, Wagner can …

8-Year-Old Says Akiki Fondled Him; Also Claims Church Volunteer Stabbed Giraffe And Elephant — San Diego Union-Tribune, June 19,1993 The 10 children who testified against Akiki accused him of sexual abuse and kidnappings, of threatening …

Lorenzo Milam’s home sits at the edge of a deep canyon from where wild mustard floods up to his back yard. The mustard’s yellow edges up to willows, purple irises, to the red, pink, and …

Five years have passed since two fatal shotgun rounds were fired through the windshield of Hector Felix Miranda’s blue Ford LTD on a subdued residential street in Tijuana. As a caustic and popular columnist for …

My connection, as it were, called to inform me there might be a "slight problem" with delivery because she was going out of town. To a "Southwestern beach resort." For her family's annual eight-day pheasant …

Sturdy bearded, and dapper in a navy-blue jacket and taupe slacks, Jesus Blancornelas has come to this nondescript street on an overcast morning in the Paraiso district of Tijuana, a street lined with the pastel …

Unlike 1984, when Ronald Reagan made it a point to finish his campaign at a giant rally in the parking lot of Fashion Valley, George Bush came to see the All-Star game and was booed by the locals.

“Maybe you can help me out,” she asked. “Susan’s got interviews in San Francisco and L.A., but I’m having trouble getting her into the alternative press. Do you have any suggestions?”

Beth, 25 Church's Fried Chicken — ghetto franchise, they don’t keep very good books. KFC kept meticulous records. I worked Church’s chicken, noticed that there was no record-keeping system. Other employees told me to eat …

At the sensitive age of 13, I was given a role in a San Diego Junior Theater production of a musical version of Little Women, a role identified in the script and program as “Fat Boy.”

“Every home, even if only in a modest way, is a kind of museum,” muses Professor Witold Rybczynski in July’s issue of ever-relevant House Beautiful magazine. And nowhere is this truism truer than on the …

A criticism implied in every gift I don’t remember Christmas. None in particular. There’s this Christmas thread, an irregular stream of pictograms (orange snowriding disk = delight) linked by an underlying Christmas smell (new plastic, …

Mr. Van Winkle asked the Student Council Reps, to indicate to the classes that if they can convince him through sound logical arguments that they should ride skateboards to school that he will reconsider his position.

I know a written work whose scope and purpose are unsurpassed by any other in the English-speaking world. Moreover, I know of no other that can match its paradoxical ability to arouse, equally, both hope …

“The policemen who arrested me were not the ones who hit me. Of the ones who hit me, one of them was short, fair-skinned, wore a lot of gold, a lot of necklaces.

THE SICKBED I thought of him. Bald, mottled head — a weary planet come to rest against a pillow on the arm of the urine-soaked couch. The respirator beside him clicked. It sighed. He, sighing …

"I begin to see that this [U.S. involvement in Vietnam] was not cool, and I shared that with my father and we had a parting of the way. But not for long. He came around."

A few days earlier, says Brother David, a man living in Arenales “got killed on the other side,” in the U.S. The man was rumored to have supported his family by going across the border and robbing houses.

Outside Abercrombie and Fitch, a blond surfer — tanned Alex — waggled fur-lined boots a plaid Pendleton scarf, fur-lined leather gloves He snarled. “I don't feel the need to these in Southern California. They’re going back to the store.”

This past August, while San Diegans tanned and party delegates decided our nation's fate, a paper was delivered to 300 sweaty, sausage-chomping academics at the Second Polish-American Semiotics Colloquium held in Atlantic City. The paper, …

She doesn’t look her age. At 48, Carol Cook could easily pass for a woman ten years younger. She sits on the edge of the narrow wooden catwalk that runs the circumference of the Kensington …

"I learned about the Klan by being at a lot of the socials and meetings. But I think that the only thing that I really registered as a kid was the cross lightings."

Don’t flatter yourself. My life is not an open book. "You don’t learn this from no fuckin’ book. Don’t need no education for it,’’ says Jerome. You don’t. You really don’t. To us, the man …

“The first thing we have here by you at the desk in the pet cemetery office is the box of Kleenex,” says Velma Matthews. “That means, ‘We offer you our sympathy.’ The Kleenex is used …

Most of us walk around through our lives with our “selves” glued tight to our skin. No creases. No folds. No spots where it chafes or rubs spots raw to the bone. When we look …

At home my friend played flamenco guitar, a skill he had taught himself. Outside the apartment complex, Rome burned. I couldn’t tell him that. I mustn’t in any way intimate that the out-of-doors was a vexing place.

There are seventeen fraternities and eleven sororities officially recognized by San Diego State University. Although no “fraternity row” (street along which “houses” can be found) exists as such, most chapters are located within a one-mile radius from campus.

Zona Norte hasn’t changed. It is still the wild side. Desperate; sure of itself. Dark-skinned guys from the interior still come here for one last sinful evening before crossing to the other side.

Such are the conceits of first-world living — they follow you. A late-night call from San Diego slips through a satellite onto the shore of a beleaguered nation with the news of my psychiatrist’s death. …

Imperial Beach has been a long-time media favorite for contaminated water coverage, but now, ironically, the city has become headquarters for an environmentalist commune that calls itself Ecolibrium. Twenty-five of the group’s forty members (two …

Joseph Franklin Rutherford, president of the Jehovah’s Witnesses from 1916 to 1940, planned to see Kensington engulfed in flames one day. If his predictions held true, he foresaw himself standing in the third-story watchtower of …

Two years ago Oceanside Blade-Tribune publisher Tom Missett filed suit against the City of Oceanside for refusing to release police documents regarding the closed investigation of student/teacher indiscretions at Oceanside High. Superior Court Judge Larry …

Last week the Parents and Teachers Organization of the Rancho Santa Fe School in Rancho Santa Fe sent out questionnaires to parents of 250 students, asking the parents' blood types and asking if they would …