“What do Ben Franklin and Kim Kardashian have in common with me?” asks Cristy Boisvert. “Psoriasis.” I’ve just met Cristy here, on Silver Strand beach, soaking up the morning sun in today’s cold wind. Behind …

Another lunchtime, another sandwich and coffee in the park. Horton Plaza, where the sunken space is now strewn with Parisian-style park tables and chairs. It feels oddly underemployed, even though lots of folks are out …

“You see this? This is how it should be,” says David Sanchez III. He’s leaning over and pointing to the exaggerated solid chrome wheel rim of a black 1956 Chevrolet Bel Air that’s sitting on …

“Watch out for rattlers,” says Will. Which is a problem, because my mycological friend Kim and I are down on our knees in the thick, soft, untrodden leaf loam they call oak duff. We’re looking …

“Paper charts need no batteries.” Ann Kinner, Captain, US Coast Guard, has put the little sign strategically among all the rolls of charts in her Seabreeze Book and Chart Store in Point Loma. It’s the …

Tipoff from my friend Ed: “Haute Kumeyaay Cuisine. Barona. Be there or be square.” “There” is at Barona’s Cultural Center. This Mexican pop-up chef, Gilberto Morales, who created his Baja-based Restaurante Nomada — Cocina Itinerante, …

Can we stop this already? I’m in a Japanese sushi eatery. The sushi chef - attractive girl – takes this live shrimp, throws his rear end into the fryer, brings it out red and cooked, …

By the time you read this, Quartyard II should be up and running. That’s what they promised. But I’ve been wandering past this replacement location at 13th and Market in East Village for months, chafing …

The other day, Cowboy Star, the very Texan steakhouse on 10th and Market, staged an interesting dinner: a nine-course meal built around Wagyu steak and saké. “We had seven different sakés to pair with the …

I admit it. I’ve got the bug. There’s something about wooden boats that makes me go all gurgly inside. But add in the word schooner, and I go twice as gurgly. Those yachts with their …

It has that weird feeling, like Dead Man Walking. We’re at the bar. Jimmy has got me my regular Arrogant Bastard. Tiger does a pretend growl. “That Arrogant Bastard.” Miguel the chef sits with his …

Has anybody seen the Birdman of East Village lately? Okay, that’s just what I call him. I met Victor Vasquez, 53, taking his three birds: Sydney, 30 years old, a medium sulphur-crested cockatoo from Papua …

OMG: I’m holding it in my hand. A hand-typed script movie people would kill for. I just ran across it in this rare and ancient bookshop and literati haven, in an alley off Carlsbad Village …

“Always have a job and a hustle.” That’s what Cheré’s mom told her. Cheré Amor Vassell has followed her mom’s advice. In her 13 years as a nurse, she has worked in Virginia, Japan, Florida, …

The Pass, the Under, the Wings, the Flop, the Hole, the Prep, the Stuff, and the Cinch. That’s all you’ve got to learn if you wanna tie a bow tie in front of other people …

It’s not what you expect to find next door to Father Joe’s, but right on the corner of 14th and Imperial you can now join the craze for indoor skydiving and then nosh on a …

Question: How come you can drink a glass of wine at some sidewalk cafés and not others? Scene One: You don’t even want to know when this is. But I was a student, in Wellington, …

There’s a lot of change in Barrio Logan. The building boom on César Chávez has brought several new places. For starters there’s Mariscos El Pulpo, a Mexican-style sports bar-eatery. Then there’s Malane’s place, MishMash, this …

It was 10:00 p.m., Wednesday, April 7, 1920. Britain's prince of Wales stood at the entrance to the Crown Room in the Hotel del Coronado. He had come for a dinner-dance in his honor. He …

Urban Adventures Beach Town Suburban Ocean & Bay Backcountry Mexico

I have a dog in this fight. Or, rather, I had a cat. Mr. Whiskers was my buddy for 12 years. He sat by my computer while I worked, came with me on walks under …

Get into the gourd Fallbrook Painting and carving gourds has to be the most fun gift-making hobby in, well, actually, 15,000 years. That’s how long our ancestors have been using and carving gourds. And we …

One thing you know: in Coronado, at SEAL hangouts such as Danny’s Palm Bar and McP’s Irish Pub, the talk has been all Robert O’Neill. Matt Bissonnette. Team Six. The Shooter. The Point Man. Zero …

What does Miko Peled think of what’s been happening in Gaza? “There’s only one way to describe what’s happening now. It’s a massacre. There is no way to justify it, to excuse it, to paint …

There aren't too many doctors on planet Earth who think like Joseph Abramowitz.

Everybody knows that Pasaje Rodriguez is shaping up to be the coolest passage in TJ. But who knew of the jewel right in its heart? Pasajes (passages) are the arcades that run from Revolución through …

It’s a Friday night. I’m heading into McP’s, the Coronado pub where Navy SEALs hang out. McP’s was recently in the news because Prince Harry turned up with his buddies while he was helicopter training …

What could we do with our waterfront, if we really put our thinking caps on?

"That’s my story!” whispers Dora Elena Cortés. The newspaper headline on the screen reads “Colosio, Víctima de un Complot.” It’s a tense scene in the movie Colosio — El Asesinato (Colosio — the Assassination). Somebody …

Armando Nuñez is touching up a skeleton. “That first day,” he says, “I brought a half-gallon can of green bathroom paint. Everybody brought whatever they had. That’s how it was. We didn’t plan. We just …

‘He’s gone back to Afghanistan,” says Khaled Waleh. “He left last week.” It’s a shock. I’d come looking for Zia Waleh, famous for his intimate Zia’s Afghan Café in North Park, closed now but much …

What’s it like to live in what passes for “the wilds" of San Diego County? Bill Manson finds out.

Midsummer. Japatul Valley, south of Alpine. Too hot to sleep indoors. Warren Storm-thunder snoozes in his hammock. He has slung it under trees down by a creek bottom near his isolated valley home. Then, around …

‘When I heard that Qaddafi was killed,” says Abdul, who’s from Lebanon and doesn’t want his real name used, “I had to laugh because not too long ago he was calling his people cowards, rats. …

"Look. Look! They took our money! Ten thousand dollars, from some. They came in with their shotguns raised. ‘Down on the ground!’ They cuffed me, hands behind my back, threw me on my face on …

The woman on the other end of the phone is in tears. “I was just praying to God when you called,” she says. “That He’ll help us with what happened to our daughter. We are …

Rarely has Coronado been so abuzz. In the early morning of July 13, a young naked woman hanged herself (or did she?) at the Spreckels mansion on Ocean Boulevard. Two days before, a six-year-old boy …

Suffering Suffragettes! Ashley Gardner stands inside the three-by-three-foot Women’s Hall of Fame mini-Greek temple and says three words to me as if they were Holy Scripture: “A hundred years.” She pauses. “Since 1911. That’s how …

Uh-oh. Beer Man looks up. He’s six-foot-five and garbed in his blue Superman tunic with a red cape, yellow briefs, a full mane of red hair and a beard. His expression says it all: Is …

The graffiti wraps the California Theatre in a ten-foot-tall necklace of yellow and black and silver, squished-together letters shaped like half-inflated airbags. The odd thing is whoever did it also surrounded it with a new …

Reporting from the front lines, here. Before me, across Juniper: Them. North Parkians. If you didn't know they were The Other, you'd be fooled into thinking they're just like you.

We put out the call, “Tell us your HOA horror stories,” and you came back in your millions. Okay, your dozens. Okay, nearly a dozen. The issue was courage. How could people report on the …

“Global warming?” says Steve Wampler. “Crap!” This is unexpected because Steve trained as an environmental engineer at UC Davis. But he’s serious. “There are 100,000 scientists out there who are saying it’s total crap too, …

Barrio Logan?” says Dave. “I tell you, soon there won’t be a Barrio Logan. It’ll be swallowed up by downtown.”Dave and Tennessee and I stand in the dark on National Avenue, by 16th Street, right where …

Roll 'em! Straight-to-camera, Guy Harinton yells, “Why can’t I kill one of them little fuckers?!” He’s frothing. Here, at the Embarcadero’s Coronado ferry landing, a foreign-student pedicab driver has just ridden off with a load …

Let’s say you’re a redhead. Duck, that is. Or a scaup. Or a falcon looking for rabbits. Or a coot, ruddy duck, bufflehead, or — more likely over Mission Bay these days — a seagull …

“I couldn’t believe it,” says the veteran San Diego lifeguard. “A kid shouted, ‘Hey, look!’ And I saw two of them with their parents, and I suddenly realized, oh my God. On a day like …

There are times, sometimes in the midst of otherwise polite conversation, when it comes out that I make my living writing for the Reader. The follow-up to this revelation is almost never “Oh, that’s right, …

French vermouth-Italian vermouth-Gin-Twist of lemon Mix French (dry white) vermouth and Italian (sweet red) vermouth into a cocktail glass, favoring the French. Add a shot of gin. Garnish with a twist of lemon. José Palma’s …

The Hell’s Angel takes me aside. It’s 10:00, Saturday night. A bunch of them stand around outside their headquarters by a row of angle-parked Harleys, here where Palm meets El Cajon Boulevard. ”Look, we’ve had …