San Diego River? “There is no San Diego River,” says Pete Cuthbert. “What you’re dangling your toes in is the Colorado River, the Sacramento River, the Feather River — but not the San Diego River.” …

• 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 …

Muslims from Iran, Iraq, Turkey, the Philippines, Pakistan, Somalia, Guyana, and Eritrea

"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 …

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 …

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 …

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. …

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 …

"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, …

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 …

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. …

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.

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 …

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 …

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.

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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...." …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

"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 …

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 …

'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 …

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 …

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. …

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 …

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 …

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, …

"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.' "

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 …

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 …

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 …

'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 …

'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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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, …

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. …

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 …