Ex-biker, would-be Trappist, soldier of fortune, San Diego powerlifter comes down with AIDS Is that you?’ the burly black social worker asked me. pointing to a 13-digit code handwritten on a page in a huge …
August 5, 2023
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Stories by Adam Parfrey (RIP)
Getting AIDS – one of 3401 cases diagnosed in San Diego
They make I-15 wider at Miramar Way
Like your road widened, Mister? In the pre-dawn gloaming, the roadbuilding machines are just black shapes lined up beside the southbound lanes of Interstate 15. From the overpass at Miramar Way, only the light from …
July 31, 2023
San Diegans on getting revenge
Revenge I used to work on a morning show for Magic 102, a former classic rock station here in San Diego. I usually got to work before the other DJs, and I’d spend a few …
August 14, 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
Local Olaf Wieghorst fans get burned
Olaf Wieghorst trusted the wrong man Almeida got his start at George Thackeray’s gallery in the late ’50s. He and his wife Grace agreed to talk to me at their house in Ocean Beach, a …
July 16, 2022
Christ's crucifixtion and other Easter stories
Blood of the Lamb "After they crucified Jesus, on the third day, he rose to Heaven. That's the Resurrection. We all go up to Heaven after the third day." Floyd visualizes Heaven as a beautiful …
June 18, 2022
San Diego vs. L.A. – guess who wins?
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 …
July 24, 2021
Jack Kemp and the fugitive, U.S. Grant's son, Seals ambivalent about Jesse Ventura
Kemp and the Fugitive Fotomat also gave Graham a political base. One of the first beneficiaries was Jack Kemp. On May 23, 1968, the San Diego Union reported that Kemp had “joined Fotomat Corp., La …
July 5, 2021
Best Reader stories from 1992
Notes from Underground San Diego's Free Press (later renamed the Street Journal) was defunct by the end of 1970; the San Diego Door came and went with the Nixon Presidency, 1968 to August 1974.The O.B. …
December 29, 2019
Best Reader stories from 1991
Satan chasers San Diego has many experts in the field of Satanism who say the county is a hotbed of Satanic activity. The hidden canyons of the back country, Ramona, Santee, Escondido, even Oceanside, are …
December 28, 2019
Holy Week in San Diego: our mish-mash of Christianity
Medical explanation of Christ's crucifixion and other Easter stories The severe scourging, with its intense pain and appreciable blood loss, most probably left Jesus in a preshock state. Moreover, hematidrosis had rendered his skin particularly …
April 15, 2019
God, Christ, Satan, or Con?
It is like baking a cake. I stir, I knead, I pound, I twist, I bake you. I drawn you in tears I scorch you in sobs. I make you a sweet and crisp, an …
January 20, 1994
Lt. Col. James “Bo” Gritz at Lakeside's Harvest Fellowship
On this chill evening, a mere fortnight before a Trilateralist named Clinton got the nod, American-built cars of substantial steel pull up in front of Lakeside’s Harvest Christian Fellowship. The bumper stickers say it all: …
April 8, 1993
Woman Carries Elvis Presley's Test Tube Tot
“God Made Me Do It,” She Says SPANISH EYES by Debra Wimer (From the Ginger Aldett Fan Club Newsletter; abridged by Adam Parfrey) The first thing I remember is crying over how tragically short Elvis …
February 4, 1993
Elvis appears in North County driveway
G is for generous always giving of herself. I is for ideal, she’s more perfect than anyone else. N is for newcomer, but a STAR she will be. G is for generous, her generous way …
February 4, 1993
Budd Boetticher ends up near Ramona
There are the little men. Then there is Budd Boetticher. I don't mean his size — he's a compact man with an easy smile and vaguely Mongol eyes that hint at a barbaric zest for …
September 17, 1992
Walter Keane: the saucer eye orphans have lost their father
Keane kids were the true pop art, much more a mass phenomenon than Warhol’s Brillo boxes or Lichtenstein’s exploded comics.
May 14, 1992
Russian brides — more than you imagined
It's a peculiar setup. Strangers write strangers, attempting a mating dance despite cultural barriers so fierce that very little is communicated beyond the desire to communicate. Take Ed Burden (name pseudonymous by request), airline pilot, …
February 13, 1992
Reader writers pour out Christmas stories of divorce, jail, forced intimacy
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, …
December 19, 1991
On the noir side of town: Chee-Chee Club, county courthouse, Little Vietnam, Pt. Loma Bayside Trail
Stretching east of 30th Street, the Mid-City mesa has for decades been a Gasoline Alley wasteland of car washes, card parlors, dinky pink bungalows: low-rent neighborhoods whose obscurity is secured by distance from freeway off-ramps.
June 27, 1991
The latter days of El Cajon's Unarius
Don’t forget, if you have negative feelings against me it is not me as a person because I am not an individual, I am the Infinite! — Uriel speaks, in Effort to Destroy the Unarius …
June 6, 1991