Florence Chadwick in and out of the water Many years earlier, on her return to San Diego from a trip abroad, Chadwick had been greeted by city officials with considerably more pomp - a jubilant …
July 1, 2023
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Stories by Bob Dorn (RIP)
Florence Chadwick wants to lose 50 pounds
From the Pt. Loma Women's Club to the Spirit on Buenos
He brought punk rock to San Diego The patrons heading into the Spirit club shortly before nine on a recent Saturday night might have thought it peculiar that a large, paint-splattered wooden stepladder would be …
June 26, 2023
Hallucinogen provides key to rock art at La Rumorosa
Editor: The following feature stories appeared in the interior pages of the Reader in the 1970s and 1980s and have just been converted to digital form. The Kumeyaay rock art at Hakwin Hakwin is an …
October 1, 2022
Bataan Death March victim lives to tell story
Die free One of our corporals had fallen during the night crossing Samat and injured his hip some way, so we were helping him all the way back for six days. We had to put …
July 18, 2022
Devil's Peak – a mysterious Baja mountain
The Devil's Peak Other climbers, some of them my mentors, told me about a mysterious mountain in Baja California that had acquired a reputation much larger than its actual size. The mountain was barely over …
July 4, 2022
In the ashes of Kate Sessions' heart
Why the mother of Balboa Park is the mother of us all Sure, there’s a school and park named after her, and careless admirers credit her, rightly or not, with planting any large tree growing …
June 27, 2022
Lawyer Sam Spital has most TV ads
Spital's law: Advertise, settle the suit, go to the bank “There are some [attorneys] who are arrogant and think they're at a higher place in life," observes Spital. “They think they deserve to be more …
June 13, 2022
Sure, I'll take a violin from San Diego to Poland
The Warsaw connection Suddenly a man about his age stepped from the shadows, introduced himself as Stashik, and took from him the centuries-old Italian violin. At this point, John Ratajkowski might have stepped back an …
June 6, 2022
The city-owned land east of La Jolla disappears
How San Diego lost its pueblo land Most of the 2000-odd acres proposed for sale in 1963 would go to Irvin Kahn’s University City Corporation. Kahn had holdings all over the city’s north, but they …
May 29, 2022
Most inspiring teacher at Crawford High School
The teacher fails Rossi had us trooping off to the Academy Theater to see Alain Resnais’s La Guerre Est Finie, a pastiche of political correctness and sensuality. The commingling of radlib politics with grainy romance, …
May 23, 2022
San Diego reporters become PR agents
Twist and Shout There are a lot of reasons for reporters to take up public relations. The prospect of making more money is one. A good journeyman at the Union or the Tribune these days …
May 9, 2022
How San Diego lost the land east of La Jolla
How San Diego lost its pueblo land Five years after the two lone bidders won the La Jolla Shores acreage, General Atomic was able to pick up similarly desirable property on Torrey Pines Mesa for …
April 4, 2022
Gonzo Richard Meltzer digs into San Diego's Mayor Roger Hedgecock
The Unbearable Rightness of Being Roger Hedgecock “I was at Santa Barbara, a junior in college, and I got appointed as the head of all social programs. And we did Ray Charles, the Doors, we …
January 2, 2022
Stuck on Russian ship in Ensenada, in Baja for the eclipse
Ship of Fools “She poured wine for all of us. I picked up a glass and raised it in a toast and said, ‘Nostrovia ... Gorbachev... Nostro-via.’ The place erupted. The damn first engineer comes …
November 28, 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
Beat Farmers, Norteno, Psychotic Waltz, Altamont with Lester Bangs
Birth of the Beat Farmers “Somewhere along in there, Herrera became partners with Jim Pagni, who brought in a lot of concerts in those days, and the Palace changed its name to JJ’s. Glory ended …
May 3, 2021
Fletcher family pathos, how Sol Price founded Costco, mafioso Alan Glick
What Happened? A Pioneer Family's TragedyWhile Beatrice and Eric were talking about packing up and going home, the phone rang. It was Dan Bridge, his father’s old friend and a childhood friend of Walter Harper. …
March 21, 2021
Best Reader stories from 1982
What on earth am I settling for “Goddamnit,” said Jane one evening about six months ago when I answered the door of our apartment in Golden Hill and found her on the stoop, Jeanne sliding …
November 24, 2019
Best Reader stories from 1981
Postcards From Western Civilization Some years ago at Christmastime, when I was a teller at a bank downtown, I came to know Wayne Boyer, who was then an apprentice bum. I met him in the …
November 23, 2019
Stories hidden inside the San Diego Reader, part 2
Editor: The following feature stories appeared in the interior pages of the Reader in the 1970s and 1980s and have just been converted to digital form. My Triumph, my defeat Five years later I still …
January 27, 2019
Stories hidden inside the San Diego Reader
Editor: The following feature stories appeared in the interior pages of the Reader in the 1970s and 1980s and have just been converted to digital form. Meditations while riding San Diego Transit “Yes, these people …
January 26, 2019
San Diego characters you should have known
Bad blood in Barrio Logan Ducheny is most unpopular with those who run the government-funded agencies, people such as Rachel Ortiz, who directs the Barrio Station youth program; Jess Haro, chairman of the Chicano Federation; …
July 21, 2018
Union-Tribune hires cartoonist from Dartmouth Review
Twenty-seven-year-old Steve Kelley became chief editorial cartoonist for the San Diego Union in June of 1981. Since then Kelley has been named Headliner of the Year by the San Diego Press Club, has won honors …
February 27, 1986
Mike Aguirre on John Alessio, J. David, Jim Bates, Roger Hedgecock, and the Penthouse suit
Anderson named Van Deerlin, along with Teddy Kennedy, as two of a number of Capitol Hill figures who purchased drugs from a small network of pages and doorwatchers on the Hill. Van Deerlin denied the story.
April 19, 1984
From Poland to San Diego before Solidarity won
The violin wasn't much to look at. It sat in an old case Mirek had thrown almost casually onto a corner of the couch in John Ratajkowski's Carmel Valley home. A family heirloom, to be …
February 9, 1984
San Diego restaurants chafe under tyranny of ABC
A lot of people are whispering about Pete Case. A successful downtown restaurateur who is also active in politics predicts Case won’t last another year in his position as district administrator of the state’s Alcoholic …
September 22, 1983
I transformed my $1400 Triumph into a $4000 Triumph
If you were snowshoeing one crisp day late in November, 1980, through peaks 8000 to 9000 feet in the air just south of Lake Tahoe and heard a single car ruining the silence of that …
August 11, 1983
Jobs for Peace tries to picket Convair
You say you used to march for peace? Used to stand up for justice. Sit down in protest. Bet that was a long time ago, wasn’t it? “Who do you think you are, Communism?” The …
June 2, 1983
The sound of Diamanda Galás
With the lights out, what you first hear is a deep intake of breath amplified, a whooshing intake of air that is stored in silence for a second, maybe more, as if warning is being …
May 19, 1983
Navy investigators' tough on Coronado base drug busts
The pictures are faintly voyeuristic, and cinematic. They damn with their intimacy those caught in the 35mm frame, paint them in flat blacks and whites made all the flatter by the foreshortening of the long …
February 3, 1983
Toyota rolls in Baja 300 miles south of San Diego; we scramble to find a plane
“Word spread among the Americans [around the Pemex station] that there was an emergency and some fellow who identified himself as an orthopedic surgeon peered in the back of the van and attempted to assess Eddie’s condition.”
September 16, 1982
How San Diego lost its pueblo land
Out in the sprawling north of this city is a mesa that rises just south of La Jolla Village Drive, a mile or so west of Interstate 805. To get there you have to walk …
July 22, 1982
San Diego journalists slip right into PR
There used to be a time when public relations pretty much consisted of writing press releases and introducing newspaper reporters to people with fancy names. Old-time public relations people were flaks, you knew their editorial …
May 20, 1982
Mean Business: Sol Price and the FedMart story
Later that same year, having lost his fear of flying. Price crossed the Atlantic and landed in Karlsruhe, Germany, to discuss with Hugo Mann, retail marketing baron, one such way of going private.
April 1, 1982
The pawnbroker's life in San Diego
Every five or six minutes someone walks through Bob Smith's door on Fifth Avenue. Whether they're entering or exiting, they are most likely carrying gold, most likely a very small amount of it as they …
January 14, 1982
Jaquie Littlefield – Spreckels Building owner who fought the big boys
“You 'll never fit all this in. There’s just too much, isn’t there? It’s really a book •that would be timely, for women. And it’s going to be done. You know its title? A Town …
November 19, 1981
Harold Gee and the Party Paper
You have to wonder if Harold Gee isn’t spreading himself a bit thin trying to put out an occasional journal called the Party Paper on no capital with precious little publishing experience and no staff, …
October 8, 1981
“Rapper’s Delight” was considered “too black” by KGB Radio
Talking fast isn’t a matter of choice for AM jocks; it isn’t rock and roll chic in the way working at Tower Records while you’re wearing your Grateful Dead roadie shirt and acting bored is chic.
April 10, 1980
1979: San Diego's year in review
Rape of the Earth Medal of Dishonor The year's most infamous award goes to the voters of San Diego, a majority of whom agreed to exchange 39 acres of prime canyonland in Balboa Park for …
December 20, 1979
San Diego Evening Tribune writer Bob Dorn calls it quits.
When C. Arnholt Smith fell under federal indictment and lost his U.S. National Bank, the Union ran the story on its second-section page under a headline that merely said the bank was being sold.
September 27, 1979