• Stephen Facciola's edible worldHe and Caplan started to swap names, to compare notes on big players in the exotic fruits and vegetables community. (“I’m sure you’re acquainted with Paul Thomas in …
September 2, 2023
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Stories by Abe Opincar
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San Diego's rare fruit and vegetable growers
The San Diego look, according to painters
What distinguishes San Diego landscape to paintersIn Coronado one day, after lunch with a friend, he went into a CD shop while his friend waited outside on a bench. When Crooks came out, he noticed …
August 27, 2023
Tomato people say that tomatoes have 'no legs'
San Diego's best tomato breeds: Better Boys, Early Girls, Yellow Taxis The ripe round red tomato sitting on the kitchen table is alive and busy. While we are asking, “How shall I eat it?” the …
August 7, 2023
La Jolla plumber flew narcotics for contras
I ran drugs for Uncle Sam . Fifty-two-year old Robert “Tosh” Plumlee, who has lived in the San Diego area off and on since 1976, has decided to come forward with the details of his …
July 29, 2023
Dead dolphin off La Jolla Cove
Every dive around San Diego yields discovery One of the oddest of these noises, an irregular bumping sound heard frequently in the rocks and ridges off the beaches from the La Jolla Caves south to …
July 23, 2023
Cinema insights from Kensington Video owners
Movie lover's paradise Meanwhile, Blockbuster and Hollywood Video have shuttered their local outlets. Owner and buyer Guy Hanford understands why. “When you went into a Blockbuster or Hollywood to rent a film, you never engaged …
July 2, 2023
Young victims of police torture in Tijuana
Torture in TJ "They apprehended me of work and handcuffed me They took me in on old grey van with, I think, blue license plates—maybe I didn't see them well. the inside of the van …
April 8, 2023
Coinshooters at Pacific Beach are just part of it
San Diego's intrepid metal finders The faint sound through the earphones is like the buzz of a mosquito on the other side of the room when you're trying to sleep. It nags at your attention, …
February 11, 2023
Peutz Valley – the fire did not kill our spirit
Alpine's Secret Valley Here we could raise animals and grow a garden, learn the old arts of canning, butchering, milking, and cheese-making. The '70s provided this back-earth movement, and our few neighbors, like my family, …
January 30, 2023
Author Richard Rodriguez crosses turnstiles into Tijuana
Taken together as one, Tijuana and San Diego form the most fascinating city in the New World My first trip across: the late 1950s. We were on our way to visit relatives in Ensenada. We …
September 11, 2022
Serious Christian gets through the Akiki trial
Inside Faith Chapel and through the Akiki trial I wanted to jump up and shout the truth, that several thousand people go to Faith Chapel, and lots of them might believe in literal demons, while …
September 4, 2022
San Diego's hospice users
Grief is like carbon monoxide At this point, this article is going to seem to go seriously astray, so I might as well come clean. My aim is not simply to write about hospice, though …
August 28, 2022
World War II Tijuana
The Loud Adios I wrote a story about her, called it ‘The Blue Fox.” and decided not to give it to the singles’ magazine. The publisher probably would’ve turned it down. It wasn’t dirty enough …
August 20, 2022
Hotels at night
You want the night staff Do all these people pass through in the night, millions of little desperate atoms on their way to conventions, underground bingo palaces, or whores' bedrooms? The only person who sees …
August 13, 2022
They serve San Diegans with legal demands
Leave! Banse turns off onto the University Avenue exit. “There’s nothing people out here have done that I didn’t do when I was young. I’m streetwise. I apply that knowledge. At 32nd and National I …
July 23, 2022
Promising USD grad kills mom in Pacific Beach
The blood upon his hands “It was a dull, outdated play, but when Mark walked on stage, it came alive. He filled the theater with his presence.” Ehrenfreund congratulated Mark on his performance and continued …
July 3, 2022
Cyclist killed by North County bus at Pendleton
Udo was gone Along Stuart Mesa Road near Cook Crossing and Vandergrift, he joined two other riders, Steven Scharf and John Edwards, both riding at the same pace. They chatted a bit, and as the …
April 25, 2022
TJ's child sales force
Life of a Tijuana street urchin Isabel sells her bouquets for two dollars each, and she gives half of what she makes to her mother. With the rest, “I buy myself something to eat, ” …
April 10, 2022
San Diego's silverware nuts
Look! you've got a naked man on your fork! The drug and antique worlds share a vocabulary. Both worlds thrive on human “have to have it” weakness. Certainly, as it is with junkies, I always …
April 9, 2022
Windansea fun hog bails, Broderick marriage tragedy
The ultimate fun hog has bailed Windansea people say Seth became a local legend not due to his surfing skills, not like Van Artsdalen, but from the NOT WHEN THE SURF'S UP sign painted on …
March 26, 2022
USD students look back at high school, the campus's Catholicism
Class Struggle “We had a lot of cliques at my school. There were the drama kids, and we had a group we actually called the Clique. It was just the people that seemed to party …
February 7, 2022
Judith Moore feels her daughters' pain, Reader writer marries Cynthis Heimel
Lines of Love, Lines of Pain We lived by the hospital. I heard sirens every day. When both girls were with me in the house, I felt a smug assurance when I heard the sirens …
January 30, 2022
Doubleday follows Luis Urrea to Tijuana, priggish Richard Henry Dana visits the presidio
A Living Cloud The next morning, I am greeted by my media escort, Penny. This is a fascinating new feature of my life — escorts. They pick you up, drive you around, provide snacks, meals, …
January 10, 2022
San Diego's best tomato breeds, Quail Gardens obsession with bamboo
Creepy Bamboo Language Most San Diegans, he explains, believe that the leafy, green and beige stuff that grows in their back yards, canyons, and along the San Diego River bed in Mission Valley is bamboo. …
January 9, 2022
Clint McKinnon – San Diego's early Democrat; Gloria Penner – KPBS voice of the mundane
Mac “The Communists in San Diego had a little cell that was trying to take over the Journal. A general called me up one day; ‘Do you realize you have three Communists in your editorial …
December 27, 2021
San Diego – city of shame, University Avenue, roommates from hell, writers write about moms
Roommates from Hell I walked outside to the storage door. I pushed on the door and opened it. I saw the rope around John’s neck and John’s face looking at me. I screamed and ran …
December 5, 2021
Luis Urrea daydreams of San Diego, Oklahoma girl spends summers on Bonair Street
Homeboy on the RangeAfter school, 1965: Spring. Wearing my idiotic St. Jude’s Academy uniform. My bright red sweater calling vatos and homeboys from miles around to come kick my ass. I had a crew cut …
December 4, 2021
Starring roles in the Copley Union-Tribune: James, Helen, Michael, David
I’m Morgan, He’s Cronkite Scholars, particularly Vjaceslav Vsevolodovic Ivanov, director of the Section on Structural Typology of the Institute of Slavic and Balkan Walter Leland Cronkite Studies at the Soviet Academy of Sciences in St. …
October 31, 2021
My Arizona and Utah family, a daughter disabled since birth at Friendship House
A Fairy Godmother’s Art I can recall the way a certain blouse, puffy-sleeved and lace-collared, tugged at the pits of my arms the year I fell in love with Matt Denhalter. The same mistakes I …
October 30, 2021
San Diego actors' worst stories, he guards Volcan Mountain, community college adjunct
Break a Leg In 1993, Hal Holbrook was performing King Lear in the title role. Tom Hall, a San Diego actor, likes to tell the story. Hal came on too soon and started a completely …
October 24, 2021
Sole survivor of fishing accident, the bitch of being 5'5", tried Morningstar for my schizophrenia
Nightmare of the New Hope A little cry of relief burst from him, lost in the shriek of the wind. His hands scrambled, searching for the inflate cord. The sea bounced him. Spray lashed the …
October 2, 2021
Caliente racetrack, Jorge Hank and his Tijuana zoo, Mexican baseball
Porno King Tied to T.J. Hot Spot Reached by phone on May 14 at his residence in Rosarito (he also owns and rents a gated luxury condo in Tijuana, directly behind the American consulate building), …
September 6, 2021
Where to park downtown San Diego, loiterers at the library, high-rise top floors
Adult Orphans A Wednesday afternoon, hot. Half the stools at the State Hotel Deli are taken. Talk is quiet, desultory. Mama Sofia perches on her stool near the cash register, her daughter — mending again …
August 23, 2021
All San Diegans now: Koreans on Convoy Street, Africans driving cabs, Saddam Hussein's bodyguard
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 …
August 16, 2021
Tijuana through white eyes: the bus from Mexico City, where margaritas came from, the La Mesa prison
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. …
August 15, 2021
Sherley Anne Williams' coolness toward outsiders, James Hubbell sees San Diego as forgotten city
Raised Not to Hope Too Hard Sherley Anne Williams built her career celebrating the ways black folks talked and acted. School-wise, street-smart, and quick-tongued, she reserved her deepest antipathy for those outside the African-American experience …
July 10, 2021
Mountain lions move toward San Diego suburbs, Borrego's wild horses are not mustangs
Return of the Mountain Lion In October 1983, a lion killed a domestic goat at a ranch near Julian; in November 1983, a dead lion cub was found on the road near Santa Ysabel. In …
June 12, 2021
Moon flowers, a romantic Ocean Beach garden, the Monterey cypress
The Lesson the Moonflower Teaches He showed her that everything he’d planted had grown: the cosmos, the tomatoes, the chamomile, the mint, the marigolds, the nasturtiums, the baby’s breath, the basil, the oregano, the anise, …
June 6, 2021
KKK's John Metzger up close, that Escondido sperm bank, ex-cop mercy-kills wife
White On White John put San Diego in the national news. During a taping of Geraldo Rivera’s talk show in New York, Metzger called Roy Innis, chairman of the Congress of Racial Equality, an “Uncle …
April 24, 2021
Night on University Ave., Olive St. above Switzer Canyon, Rob Quigley's vision for Little Italy
University Avenue Nocturne “We try to cruise by the hot spots where there has been trouble. Bars or restaurants, businesses, what have you. For example. Shooters bar on 30th Street in North Park has had …
March 20, 2021
New home ownership, my life as fat boy, Christmas in Tijuana, at Horton Plaza
What on Earth am I Settling For? I let the front yard go and worked on building a fence in back. I got so angry digging postholes in the rain one afternoon that I had …
February 6, 2021