• Captain Charles Moore, UCSD alum, steps overboard. He disappears into the inky Pacific. It’s 2007, nighttime, 500 miles west of San Diego. He swims, about three, four feet beneath the surface, through the spooky …
September 10, 2008
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Stories by Bill Manson
Plastic bags block La Jolla kelp beds
How tough is it being Muslim in San Diego?
Muslims from Iran, Iraq, Turkey, the Philippines, Pakistan, Somalia, Guyana, and Eritrea
May 14, 2008
San Diego drought as seen from Descanso.
"It's catastrophic!" Duncan McFetridge flings his arms out. "Look, can't you see the change?" Several years ago, when I last came here to the Cleveland National Forest outside of Descanso, McFetridge's cabin nestled in a …
October 18, 2007
San Diego's non-Hispanic whites not creating enough babies
Our future began on Wednesday, February 5, 2003, when a UCLA doctor announced that for the first time since the late 1850s, Hispanic births accounted for more than half the births in California.The UCLA Center …
August 23, 2007
Classic San Diego: Whaling bar, Rancho Guajome, Mt. Woodson Castle, Big Kitchen
Most-Filmed Wild West Main Street Don't look yet. Turn off Woodside onto Maine and behold a li'l old Wild West street that'll knock your spurs off. It huddles beneath a perfect movie-set backdrop of towering …
Lost boys of Sudan safe in Coronado
The Ethiopian Army caught up with the boys at the Gilo River. "Most of us couldn't swim," says Isaac. "It was really very deep and swollen because of rains. The currents were very, very fast. …
January 25, 2007
Reader writers tell of great wedding moments and minor disasters
At Times It Was Like Shared Music, at Times Like a Skin Graft or Root Canal — Stephen Dobyns I do at a coffin sale — Dorothy Stewart A Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream Cake …
June 1, 2006
She Wouldn't Crawl on Her Belly for a Monk
"William, do you take this woman, Lita..." Ah, the Reverend Jones. It's 6:30, Saturday evening, August 21, 1982. I'm standing in front of 35 friends here in the old Authors' Lounge of the Oriental Hotel, …
June 1, 2006
Sandy Literacy
Katherine Jackson takes the toothbrush out of her mouth. "In an old house in Paris all covered in vines lived 12 little girls in two straight lines..." This is Jackson's way of telling me what …
June 23, 2005
Big in China
Noah Gabriel plays Paul McCartney's "Blackbird" at the Sunday market in San Diego's old Chinatown (at Third and J). A year and a half ago, he was a singing star in China...well, around Shanghai, anyway. …
June 2, 2005
La Costa, Del Mar, Valley Center, Talmadge, Ramona, San Ysidro, Lemon Grove, City Heights, University City, Mission Beach, Julian, Carmel Valley, Scripps Ranch, East Lake, Linda Vista, Serra Mesa
Where I live, no major high-volume road cuts apart the 'hood. People can cross the street without becoming dead. The amoeba-shaped Balboa Park Municipal Golf Course and grid-busting canyons have made a rabbit warren of the streets.
December 30, 2004
Don’t let Linda Vista fool you
Has Linda Vista lost its heart? The Yum Yum Donut Shop in the Vien-Dong supermarket center has become the place where old-time Linda Vistans turn up to chew the fat. "This shopping mall that used …
December 30, 2004
San Ysidro, America’s last gasp
Okay, okay, I know. San Ysidro. It's not a place, it's the blur just before you get to Mexico. It's humanity sluicing up and down through the World's Busiest Border. The tidal gate between the …
December 30, 2004
Neighborhood: small towns of San Diego
I see Asian gang cars some nights, in a long caravan down the Mira Mesa Boulevard. They meet at In-N-Out Burger before heading off for illegal street races on Kearny Villa Road or in Sorrento Valley.
December 24, 2003
On the edge in I.B.
IB? My friend Mark nailed it the other night. We had fallen into conversation outside Cow-A-Bunga, the ice cream and coffee place at the entrance to IB’s pier. It was getting dark. You could just …
December 24, 2003
29 Reader writers on their fathers
To commemorate Father's Day, this issue contains a collection of reflections from Reader writers about their fathers: The Last Tag Sale — Jeanne Schinto An Air of Exoticism — Duncan Shepherd Kinder Than I Would …
June 15, 2000
Don't Wait to Ask
Oh yeah. This sepia one is Dad, the 19-year-old skinny kid in the lieutenant’s uniform, with the canvas strips wrapped around his legs, huddling on the Turkish cliff in a trench, waiting for orders. Not …
June 15, 2000
Forty-Four Dollars and Some Schools
Silvia Labastida is nervous. Two thousand of Tijuana's poorest children surround her, cheering the mayor of Tijuana. For three months she has helped organize this day. She holds on to a young girl in a …
June 8, 2000
Militarizing the Border
Brian Bilbray has no doubts: It's time to send in the troops. All along the border. "We need to send a very clear message, almost in the tone of John Kennedy, when he said, 'We …
May 25, 2000
Battle of the Bodegas
The brown-robed monk leads the way down into the crypt. "In 1791 the Mission of Santo Tomás de Aquino was founded by Dominican friars, south of Ensenada. Along with the mission, they brought grape vines...." …
May 11, 2000
The Mouse that Roared
Is the Clinton administration developing a conscience on border pollution? When Energy Secretary Bill Richardson comes to San Diego May 11 to host the energy conference of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, he will be …
May 4, 2000
Battle of the Tongues
Lorena González doesn't want to use the "B" word. " 'Bilingual' has too much history attached to it," she says. "And besides, from what I've heard, you're very anti-second-language out on the West Coast. Especially …
April 27, 2000
We'd Like to Know More About Our Policemen
The man who decided to drug-test all the cops in Tijuana is satisfied. Marco Antonio González Arenas says the front-page color photos of police officers lining up at a table loaded with their urine samples …
April 20, 2000
Bonita's First Blood
When the kids get off the trolley at San Ysidro these spring evenings, you sense the bravado. With so much news about murders, cartels, allegations of government corruption, it's impossible to think about Tijuana the …
April 13, 2000
The Land Invaders
Don Manuel lives where the border fence ends, in the mountains east of Tijuana. He's heard about the murder of the police chief, about the execution of the lawyer who represented the man allegedly behind …
March 30, 2000
Legalize It!
As you'd expect of an architect, Héctor Osuna Jaime explains what he means by drawing on his paper napkin. Two football teams. "This is them. The narco-traffickers. They know everybody on their side is on …
March 23, 2000
Doors to open, doors to close
How much does the world care that 80 people have been murdered in Tijuana in the last two months? Not much, except when one is Tijuana's police chief, says Victor Clark Alfaro, director of Tijuana's …
March 9, 2000
Danger at Quick-Death Canyon
The Lariat is on the verge of sliding. You can feel it. Celso Rodríguez grinds to a halt. He gingerly eases the Ford truck back down the hill. At the bottom he gets out and …
March 2, 2000
Lessons from Cali
"My patient is Tijuana," says Dr. José Rubio Soto. "My hospital is city hall. These are the X-rays." He's peering at a computer screen filled with blobs. It's a map of the city. Tijuana looks …
February 24, 2000
Zero Tolerance in the Morning
Where does democracy thrive in Tijuana? Some say right here, in the Minaret Room of the Club Campestre. Of course, this is not really Tijuana. The Tijuana you know throbs and honks and grinds a …
February 17, 2000
Fox Populi
'Fox Fox Fox Fox FOX FOX FOX FOX!" You know who they're yelling about: he's the granite-jawed guy standing above everybody else in the hall. Vicente Fox Quesada. Over six feet tall -- and, some …
February 10, 2000
Tijuana Plans Respect
A funny thing happened at Tijuana's cultural center the other day. As dozens of kids, teens, and parents lined up near the giant dome for tickets to the highest-tech movie showing in Tijuana or San …
February 3, 2000
Electric Juice Master
Nobody expected anything big to be decided at last Tuesday's electric-power summit. The California Public Utilities Utilities Commision (PUC) had called for the roundtable at the Al Bahr Shrine Temple auditorium on Kearny Mesa Road. …
January 27, 2000
Names as Weapons
Are San Diego County Health Services failing to stop the spread of HIV? Dr. Cary Savitch thinks so. And it's not just San Diego. "You're looking at the biggest public-health blunder of our lifetime," he …
January 20, 2000
A Toxic Tour of Baja
Last Thursday, January 6, Victor Ontiveros arrived on Kettner Boulevard and disappeared into a two-story '60s-era building. When he came out, a couple of Macintosh computers in his arms, he was $3000 richer, with a …
January 13, 2000
On Tijuana TV, you see the news director
If you ask Vicente Calderón, San Diego TV news is mushy. "It tends to be extremely superficial," says the veteran Mexican television journalist. "You [in San Diego] feel you have to connect with the people, …
December 23, 1999
Behind Tijuana's Mixtec curtain
"Mixtec is an ancient language. It has a small vocabulary. So they have added things onto a root word to explain what they want to say. For example, 'bark' becomes 'the face of the tree.' "
November 4, 1999
USIA sponsors Zeta writer who attacks INS
Adela Navarro Bello wants to know what the Americans' problem is with her people. "What gives? Are they afraid of us? Do they fear that, little by little, we Mexicans are going to take back …
September 23, 1999
Enrique Mercado hunts criminals who flee to Baja
Wyatt Earp couldn't. Texas Rangers couldn't. But Enrique Mercado can and does. He chases murderers and rapists and child molesters across international lines to wherever they're hiding out. In the past 12 years he's pursued …
September 2, 1999
Victor Zamudio, stager of Chicano art shows, studied under Herbert Marcuse
When the time came for Victor Zamudio Taylor to be born, his mother, Guadalupe, deliberately crossed the border -- into Tijuana. She and her husband, Regino, were determined that their son should be born a …
August 19, 1999
Mexican mail is 24 times slower than pre-Christian Roman mail
'Hi gang! Having a wonderful time in Tijuana. Wish you were here. Write back soon." I address the postcard, a view of the Jai Alai Fronton Palace on Revolución to myself in San Diego. I …
August 12, 1999
Tijuana has largest percentage of cocaine users in Mexico
'It's the worst kind of bullshit!" says Eric E. Sterling. "Preposterous! Totally absurd." He's talking of claims the United Nations makes -- about the Tijuana drug cartel, among others -- in its 1999 Human Development …
August 5, 1999
José Santiago Healy will launch his newspaper, Frontera
Is José Santiago Healy Loera cut from the same cloth as his grandfather? In 1916, José Santiago Healy, son of Irish immigrants to Mexico, risked his life to truly report the Mexican Revolution. He survived …
July 22, 1999
'NAFTA will be a wonderful thing for improving the situation in Mexico."
Have two of San Diego's most prominent environmentalists sold out to NAFTA? Lori Saldaña, ex-chair of the San Diego/Imperial Sierra Club, and Diane Takvorian, Environmental Health Coalition executive director, have both accepted White House appointments …
July 15, 1999
El Heraldo, El Mexicano, El Sol de Tijuana El Cambio
There's a new paper coming to town. Not to San Diego, Tijuana. And Tijuana already has four regular dailies. Four times what its rich sister-city to the north can boast. As newspaper editors south of …
July 8, 1999
Neil G. Lombardo, mafia hit man, found in Crown Point
It was March 10, 1998. A Tuesday. Early afternoon. Jim Schield and some colleagues pulled up quietly outside a block of condos in the tongue of land that hangs down into Mission Bay with Ingraham …
June 24, 1999
Civitas International comes to fight corruption in Tijuana
Can Palermo, Sicily, help save Tijuana from its crime wave? The surprising answer is maybe, even though Palermo is known as the headquarters of the Sicilian Mafia. Tijuana teachers are learning that, as in Sicily, …
June 24, 1999
Sergio Sandoval Ruvalcaba of Bonita, close to Arrellanos, busted
Last week, a big marijuana bust in Chula Vista led to the arrest of ten suspects and the seizure of two tons of marijuana, estimated street value, $45 million. It made all the TV newscasts. …
June 17, 1999
Unsolved murders of Ernesto Dominguez, Tilda Phipps, David Stevens, Tsunao Saitoh
Birds chirrup in the canyon where Ernesto Dominguez's car exploded in flames. a month after someone shot the 21-year-old and rolled his Oldsmobile Cutlass over a 30-foot cliff on Otay Valley Road, a new meadow …
June 10, 1999
Vasomax erectile drug for sale in Tijuana, illegal in San Diego
'Yes, we have it," says Victor Ramírez of the Botica Sherr pharmacy at Third and Constitución. "It costs $10.09 per pill." He's talking about what some say will be Viagra's first real competition, a new-generation …
June 3, 1999