Captain Billy Hunts a Human Martinez escaped in the brush. But his wounds— three buckshot near his right lung, two lower down — and the December cold forced him to the Gaskills’ house at 4:00 …
January 15, 2022
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Stories by Jeanne Schinto
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Luman Gaskill and the bloody gunfight at Campo, Americans invade Baja
Doubleday follows Luis Urrea to Tijuana, priggish Richard Henry Dana visits the presidio
A Living Cloud The next morning, I am greeted by my media escort, Penny. This is a fascinating new feature of my life — escorts. They pick you up, drive you around, provide snacks, meals, …
January 10, 2022
San Diego's best tomato breeds, Quail Gardens obsession with bamboo
Creepy Bamboo Language Most San Diegans, he explains, believe that the leafy, green and beige stuff that grows in their back yards, canyons, and along the San Diego River bed in Mission Valley is bamboo. …
January 9, 2022
Eccentric North Park bungalows, Mexican architecture everywhere in San Diego
Radical, Whole-Wheat Architecture He describes Dryden, who died in 1946, as “flamboyant, quixotic,” and “a personality who ranged from high to low.” He says, “He also describes this scene: “His family said he made and …
December 18, 2021
Digging up your San Diego family Who was Pio Pico? Life at the Presidio
How to Do Genealogical Research in SD “On July 1, 1769, soon after the arrival of Father Serra, burials began in consecrated ground on Presidio Hill.... Even though people began moving off Presidio Hill and …
November 22, 2021
Stingaree's red-light rules, early Horton Plaza, Lomaland
Murder in Mission Valley There was a history of immigrants to the area penning Indians up in reservations after throwing them off Mission lands. Indians tried to regain their lands, but they were often unable …
October 23, 2021
Subs off Imperial Beach, Yamamoto's killer, a kid in WWII San Diego
Lie Down in Darkness The submarine had been discovered by two San Diego State students who were financing their educations by salvaging objects. They had located S-37 about 300 yards off the coast and in …
September 20, 2021
All San Diegans now: Koreans on Convoy Street, Africans driving cabs, Saddam Hussein's bodyguard
Happy Endings on Convoy Street In all the years I lived in and visited Korea, almost always staying in some relative’s household, I went to countless parties. When they were outside the household, they were …
August 16, 2021
Dune buggies, the Marshal South hermit family, the human race at its worst
Are Off-Roaders Destroying Anza-Borrego? "A green-sticker dune buggy decides to drive in past the closure sign and fiddle around. There’s a camper back in there, and they have a verbal duel. The camper takes down …
July 25, 2021
Sherley Anne Williams' coolness toward outsiders, James Hubbell sees San Diego as forgotten city
Raised Not to Hope Too Hard Sherley Anne Williams built her career celebrating the ways black folks talked and acted. School-wise, street-smart, and quick-tongued, she reserved her deepest antipathy for those outside the African-American experience …
July 10, 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
Encinitas bolshevik beach bum, the demise of O.B. Spaceman, Bill Gookin
The Man Who Broke the Rules He worked for several months at a bakery injecting jelly into the jelly donuts. The job paid minimum wage, but it had great benefits: he could eat all the …
May 23, 2021
Been to Guatay, Buckman Springs, La Posta, Live Oak Springs, Boulevard, Bankhead Springs?
Dots on the Map Bankhead Springs is wholly owned by Helen, an 87-year-old woman who purchased it m 1939 with her husband Alvan. (The place is named after Senator John Hollis Bankhead of Arizona, who …
May 16, 2021
San Diego gun slingers, secret gardens, quilters, stamp collectors, chess fiends
Arms and the Men: Shooting for Happiness These were good men, overzealous to a fault, maybe, but not killers. Hell, Rudy is of Samoan descent. Wil is a liberal Communist activist actor. It was the …
March 22, 2021
Fires in Alpine, San Felipe Valley, Julian
Rustic Firetraps Imagine a wildfire driven by winds gusting at 80 miles per hour is racing toward your house east of Alpine. In the predawn darkness, you can see the red-orange glow of the inferno …
February 7, 2021
Oceanside Museum, Balboa Theater, bright eye of MOPA, scandal of MOCA
Pioneer in Oceanside “In San Diego, the most important piece of architecture is, of course, the Mission San Luis Rey. But I feel strongly that this [the Oceanside museum] is the next most important piece.” …
January 23, 2021
UCSD entertains species bending, the automated house, an app to find gun bearers
My Gender Is Bunny Cárdenas is spending more than 15 consecutive days living in Second Life. “My contract with myself was to be in Second Life for 365 hours [wearing the headset], except when I …
November 16, 2020
Trigger-happy David Medina, San Diegans on Death Row, computer hacker confab
Trigger Happy or Just Plain Happy? Who is David Medina? Dressed neatly in a white oxford cloth shirt with a blue pullover sweater, David Medina, a.k.a. “Happy,” pursed his lips and appeared to listen closely …
October 12, 2020
Orchid zealots, brave beekeepers, pit bulls not so bad, vicious seagulls, San Diego birds surveyed, a cactus will take a bullet
Hive Mentality Beekeeping runs in families. “The book said to call the fire department and tell them you’ll take swarms. That’s what I did. I got the swarms.” By Shari McCullough, Sept. 16, 2004 | …
September 27, 2020
Korean War survivors, Hotel Del expels Prince Edward, Spanish Civil War vets, escape from Vietnam, tortured by Japanese
The Forgotten War Conversations with men who never forgot I do not recall putting my foot on Korean soil for the first time. I only remember the cold rain, and running, and others running with …
September 20, 2020
Hacker in Mission Valley, gene warrior in La Jolla
She told me my arm was gone. We argued about that for five minutes. I mean, I could feel it. When I was in school, I was given two pieces of information about the brain …
August 16, 2020
Southeast Locals – a well-educated, violent San Diego gang
Trigger Happy or Just Plain Happy? Who is David Medina? Dressed neatly in a white oxford cloth shirt with a blue pullover sweater, David Medina, a.k.a. “Happy,” pursed his lips and appeared to listen closely …
June 27, 2020
Spanish civil war vets, harrowing escape from Vietnam, POWs of Japan, Prince of Wales tossed from Hotel Del Coronado
The Forgotten War I do not recall putting my foot on Korean soil for the first time. I only remember the cold rain, and running, and others running with me. By David Burge, June 20, …
May 24, 2020
Best Reader stories from 2003
The white mask On Saturday, September 6, 1958, Marilyn Monroe and the 175-person company of Some Like It Hot arrived at the Hotel del Coronado to begin location shots, after filming in Hollywood the previous …
February 8, 2020
Best Reader stories from 2002
He's sad for ships DeRosset doesn’t speak abstractly about his work. He’s a storyteller. “What’s really nice,” he told me before I’d had a chance to see the painting at the church, “is that I’ve …
February 2, 2020
Jeanne Schinto and the Reader
From 1998 to 2004, Schinto wrote feature stories for the Reader. Editor's picks of Schinto's stories: Auction of the Copley Library Someone paid $5313 for an Abigail Adams thank-you note. Another bidder spent $7500 for …
May 19, 2019
Bidders Check Out Copley’s Library
Bidders at the fourth and final auction of the now-defunct James S. Copley Library, held at Sotheby’s in New York City on May 20, did what they had done at the previous three sales. They …
June 29, 2011
David Copley jettisons Copley Library
Bidders at the auction of the now-dissolved James S. Copley Library, held at Sotheby’s in New York City on April 14, drove the price of a 75-word letter signed by one Button Gwinnett to a …
April 28, 2010
Dusty Mother
“Descriptions of her say her clothes were rarely pressed and always dusty. This was someone who wasn’t into ‘fussy doodles,’ as she called any kind of societal finery. She was a straight shooter, unimpressed with titles."
August 5, 2004
Students Compete to Make a Mess
"The students decided to have a Watermelon Drop.... And so I made it the last page of the final exam. And then in a fit of nonsense I proceeded to write an entire exam on watermelons.”
June 3, 2004
Computer outlaws at downtown San Diego's Bristol Hotel
Like many hackers, David Nakamura Hulton goes by more than one name. His other one, his handle, is h1kari. Some people say you shouldn’t ask a hacker what his handle means. Handles aren’t always meant …
June 19, 2003
Coronado Spawns Woggle-Bug
La Jolla also impressed Baum, and two of his non-Oz books are set there, The Sea Fairies and Sky Island. A third, The Scarecrow of Oz, is a hybrid. “It begins in La Jolla.
May 15, 2003
140-Mile Mistake: Railroad Museum's Living-History Presentation
Between the place where ground was broken for the line in 1906, near the foot of 28th Street, and the eastern terminus, in El Centro, there was never land more ill-suited for train tracks.
April 24, 2003
When aircraft carriers dock in Coronado
"The best thing we can do is to tell people to stay inside. They’re going to be better off there than if they tried to get out of Coronado.” This is especially true if it’s an airborne hazard.
April 10, 2003
Saddam Might Boost Sales
Antique Row is well-placed, between two historical destinations, Kensington and Mission Hills, and two others. North Park and South Park, starting to gentrify. “This furniture comes out of those homes and goes right back into them.”
March 20, 2003
San Diego veterans of World War II's Bataan Death March sue Mitsui, Mitsubishi
"I live a perfect life,” Lester Tenney told me. “I’ve been a very fortunate man.” We were sitting in the sunshine on his patio on Mount Soledad. Betty, his wife of over 40 years, had …
March 13, 2003
Cross-Country Paradise
“He was leading a funeral for one of the Indians on the reservation.. He was carrying the cross at the head of the procession, and as he was walking along, he dropped dead.”
January 23, 2003
San Diego painter Richard DeRosset is obsessed with the Titanic
Richard DeRosset was shipwrecked on the 21st of May 1977 while returning from a commercial fishing trip off the banks of San Nicolas Island. There was a stack fire on the Petrel that night. It …
December 19, 2002
How Do You Like Our Moonscape?
As we drove through the San Felipe Valley, Ann and Tom Keenan pointed out a lone house ringed with greenery on the blackened hillside. A small circle, saved. It's one of several hundred homes that …
October 17, 2002
La Jollan David Fogel invented Blondie – she can beat you at checkers
“It’s humbling to be beaten by Blondie,” says David Fogel, who many times has stayed up late to play checkers with her. I tell him I wouldn’t be humbled if Blondie beat me. I don’t …
May 23, 2002