San Diego's 300 electronic bulletin boards Mank Larson, a San Diego writer, claims he'd be useless without a computer. "I bought this thing two years ago just for word processing. Now it's taken over my …
January 28, 2023
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Stories by Dave Zielinski
The very early days of computers in San Diego
Mysterious Spanish Village stabbing
Idyllic Spanish Village shaken by mystery stabbing “Then I heard male voices outside on the patio. I didn’t look up because I didn’t want to be noticed. The voices moved left to right. I never …
September 5, 2022
Nixon man ended up as Helen Copley's man
Herb Klein — the perfect man for Helen Copley Gerald Warren, unlike Neil Morgan, is not on the list of close friends Klein named in the preface to his book, and there has been much …
May 21, 2022
San Diego – city of shame, University Avenue, roommates from hell, writers write about moms
Roommates from Hell I walked outside to the storage door. I pushed on the door and opened it. I saw the rope around John’s neck and John’s face looking at me. I screamed and ran …
December 5, 2021
San Diego writers open up: Jeff Weinstein, John Brizzolara, Dave Zielinski
Hard-boiled local Brizzolara recalled an evening when, together with three other suspense writers, he was invited to Grounds for Murder, a San Diego mystery bookstore, to discuss his work. “There was some controversy about Wirecutter. …
November 1, 2021
Integration of Encanto, 125 freeway ruins Lemon Grove, Allied Gardens ambivalent about mansions
Everybody I Need to Know I Met in Kindergarten “My dad told me that blacks were moving in because they couldn’t go anywhere else,” Kenny recalls. “But he told me they were just like us.” …
July 4, 2021
Dave Zielinski and the Reader
Zielinski was a community college professor in the Imperial Valley who wrote for the Reader in the early 1990s. Editor's picks of stories Zielinski wrote for the Reader: Friends Forever Steve Esmedina had the biggest …
June 22, 2019
Reader writers tell funny stories about dead colleague, Steve Esmedina
Esmo’s phone manner was so hugger-mugger that I could be sitting four feet away and could not make out a single word. For all I could tell, he might have been laying fifty on a pony.
September 20, 2001
Friends Forever
Steve Esmedina had the biggest head I had ever seen on a human being. He also had the biggest heart — one that became more corroded over time, leaking pain and despair. The droll demeanor, …
September 20, 2001
We couldn't get enough of the Brothers Karamazov
Once upon a time, I was a non-hippie proto-post-punk semi-amniotic undergraduate at UCSD, floundering in the concrete-and-topsoil wastes of an almost brand-new Muir College—searching for a major, a mentor, or something magic (not to mention …
December 20, 1990
San Diego poets: LoVerne Brown, Lee Gerlach, Kamal Kapur, Al Zolynas
"I worked for the city engineering department for years, writing manuals and things — and when I got the first inkling of a poem, I’d come home and write down some ideas or the first few lines."
October 18, 1990
The truth about the cause of AIDS, according to J. F. Sandelien
"The following pages will ... reveal a shocking conspiracy of silence and cover-up..." This subversive notion — extracted from a locally self-published book, The Truth about the Cause of AIDS — showed up recently downtown. …
August 23, 1990
La Especial on 25th and Imperial
It’s Sunday, 2 a.m. A dark balmy night. Imperial Avenue is quiet, almost deserted, but there’s action up ahead, across from the old welfare office on 25th Street — now fenced in and vacant. A …
July 5, 1990
Jolar Adult Theater late at night
It’s an empty middle-of-the-week hump night, Wednesday, two-thirty a.m. The moon is full; the uncommonly illuminated sky is azure and clear, bright as it most often is a half-hour before sunup. University Avenue looks broader …
July 5, 1990
The Hitching Post Motel on El Cajon Boulevard
“This town’s not getting any smaller," Gordon sighs. “We’ve got too much urban sprawl.” Dorothy cuts in. “The main problem is too many foreigners coming here. We’re just too close to the border.”
May 10, 1990
Books: Sandra Dijkstra, what teachers read, play scripts, baseball, airplane books
I’m Talking Monster Books Amy had a title on this book. She called it Wind and Water. She was using the theme of the I Ching. I looked at these synopses of the stories, and …
April 26, 1990
What books San Diego teachers read
What books lie on teachers’ nightstands? This innocent question about reading habits and tastes has the power to befuddle, embarrass, or provoke impressive lists. Some teachers lament not having enough time or energy to turn …
April 26, 1990
San Diego's 300 electronic bulletin boards
Mank Larson, a San Diego writer, claims he'd be useless without a computer. "I bought this thing two years ago just for word processing. Now it's taken over my life.” Larson (who prefers not to …
March 1, 1990
A San Diego writer: how I wrote my first novel
The novel remained in a storage locker in Mission Valley, in the shadow of the Jack Schrade Bridge and mountains of gravel. My Cardiff saviors encouraged me to unearth the book, to find an agent.
October 19, 1989
Reader writers: the story I wanted to write... but didn't
Sandy and a girlfriend had gone into a liquor store, robbed the clerk, They locked the clerk in a walk-in cooler. Sandy started feeling bad about the guy. She went back and let him out.
October 5, 1989