Ah Quin pawned some jewelry. When he suffered general financial instability toward the end of his life, he also had to sell some of the dozen businesses in San Diego in which he was involved.
November 1, 2001
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Stories by Jeanne Schinto
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Immigrant secrets
Hard-core chess fiends love Saturdays
The club boasts “virtually all the strongest players in San Diego County,” says Saponara, “including one of the best players in the United States” — 41-year-old Cyrus Lakdawala. “But we have players at every other level..”
October 4, 2001
Fearless Below Market
“Whenever anyone who is doing a dig for a new project, like the ballpark, comes across pottery shards and arrowheads or any interesting piece of trash, it has to be examined."
August 30, 2001
Perfect Tiki
In Clairemont, Bevil spotted a tiki funeral home. “It’s across from the library, which also has a slight tiki feel.” Both the library and the Mission Bay Information Center qualify as “municipal tiki,” says Bevil.
July 5, 2001
San Diego's MOPA and its indefatigable Arthur Ollman
“I’m a scopophiliac, I guess,” says Arthur Ollman. “I love to look.” What the founding director of the Museum of Photographic Arts in Balboa Park loves to look at is photos. He claims his eyes …
May 3, 2001
Removal Remembrance
Estimates say the Cupeños never numbered over 1000. Today the Cupeños, combined with the Luiseños, on whose land the Cupeños were relocated, have a combined membership of under 900.
May 3, 2001
Critic of Inward City
“San Diego doesn’t have the faith in itself that a place like New York or San Francisco has,” he said. “It’s partly the result of history. San Diego turned in on itself when the railroad went to Los Angeles.”
April 26, 2001
George Lewis, 20th Century musician at UCSD
At the Point Loma Wastewater Treatment Plant, bathed in a strange orange light, George Lewis guides a reporter through a gallery of sludge pipes. Later this afternoon, Lewis — the composer, trombonist-improviser, computer musician, and …
April 19, 2001
Pio Pico's Disastrous Addiction
While he was governor, from 1845 to 1846, he sold or leased the missions. He needed the money to run things. He sold the mission at San Juan Capistrano to his brother-in-law for $750.
April 12, 2001
A Freeway Breaks Lemon Groves Heart
Many spared structures were damaged, Ofield says. Worse, from her point of view, the greatest upheaval occurred in the oldest and most historic part of tiny Lemon Grove. One house is a Tudor revival from the 1920s.
March 29, 2001
Come Back Alive
Fogel names San Diegan John J. Montgomery as the first American to fly a glider. “He was the first American to fly, period, here in San Diego, in 1883. But he isn’t famous because he was secretive about it.”
November 22, 2000
Chess at a Run: Orienteering Orientation
"When I was running, I would say [to running buddies], ‘Oh, look! A wild canary!’” Or he’d urge them to notice flowers in bloom. “And they’d say, ‘Shut up, Gookin, and run.’"
November 9, 2000
Secrets of the Dome-Dwellers
“They didn’t own parcels of land, but did have one pseudo property right — the acorn tree. Often, a tree would be owned by a family and passed down. Uncommon but not unknown were acorn wars.”
September 28, 2000
UCSD conductor and composer Rand Steiger has his San Diego debut
The tenor saxophone player is missing. While someone tries to call him on a cell phone, the horn players clear their throats and the other ensemble members make the familiar, cacophonous sounds of musical instruments …
August 10, 2000
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
The Last Tag Sale
I notice he has thrown away some color slides — family pictures. The bag breaks and they spill out. I don’t say anything, just pick them up off the driveway and put them in a …
June 15, 2000
Pioneer in Oceanside
Pessimists! Like the poor, they’re always with us. When people started to promote the notion of an Oceanside Museum of Art about five years ago, James Pahl, director of that museum today, recalls, “About half …
May 25, 2000
San Diego high-fidelity fanatics
“I took up car stereo seriously about a year ago. What’s required is good speakers and digital signal processing. I have a big subwoofer in the trunk. Oh, and you have to have a very quiet car.”
April 27, 2000
How to Grow Your Own Tiny Forest
“A natural bonsai is a tree that has grown in a very rugged environment and is naturally stunted.” Jackson collected some of his in Jacumba. California junipers; they are 500 or 600 years old.
April 27, 2000
Radical Whole-Wheat Architecture
The greatest number of Dryden houses are in North Park, between 28th Street and Pershing. Covington counts 18 of them in a four-block area. He lives in one on the comer of 28th and Myrtle.
March 30, 2000
Swiss-Cheese Desert
Lichens that grow in the desert are one of his recent photo subjects. They’re not a life form readily associated with badlands. But Smith has found them “in the shaded areas, often unnoticed.”
March 9, 2000
Three-D San Diego: The Closest Thing to Time Travel
I am sitting in a house overlooking the ocean in Solana Beach. The woman who lives here, video and computer artist Vibeke Sorensen, has just been complaining about the military helicopters that regularly fly into …
October 14, 1999
V.S. Ramachandran, UCSD scientist who can be read by a general audience
The photographer snaps open a small black umbrella, setting up his first shot. His subject is V.S. Ramachandran, M.D., Ph.D., the neuroscientist with an international reputation, who is in his UCSD office, at his desk …
July 15, 1999
Otay Watch Works and the famous Jessop clock downtown San Diego
Joseph Jessop had also considered New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa, after studying weather reports.. But some acreage in what is now Scripps Ranch had proved irresistible to him, even sight unseen.
May 6, 1999