“There are more people in the service industry than anything else. Service jobs are always gonna be with us, whether it’s pumpin’ gas or shinin’ shoes or washin’ dishes, Hey, just take pride in it.”

Browse through toasters, blenders, and unnameable parts for God-knows-what, a dozen or more sizes and variations of vacuum-cleaner bags, clock radios, coffeemakers, water filters, vaporizers, humidifiers, computer manuals, an icecream maker, an Electro-Lux vacuum-cleaner cylinder.

Twenty-four hours later, it was official. The loose cannon full of secrets had safely - for the closeted, the monied, and the nervous - checked out of the equation.

"I was 25 years and 6 days old when the police threw me into a jail cell.... I was sentenced by a federal judge to 46 months in federal prison." Sean Legacy robbed a bank …

If you think of the homeless at all — aside from how to avoid them or that daily mini-moral crisis as to whether to give them spare change or not — it may strike you …

On the second floor is a character I recognize. I’ve seen this individual bicycling around town, along Pacific Coast Highway, and in Ocean Beach. Today this person is reading an instructional book on Mandarin Chinese.

The maid had been referred to the Wilsons by Neil Morgan’s wife. The legality of her work status was still not known, said Davies. He said Wilson’s ex-wife Betty had handled all of the other details.

“I’D JUST HAD SURGERY ON MY EAR. anesthetic had worn off, and the pain It was for ‘diver’s ear’ or ‘surfer’s ear,’ pills didn’t help. Ellen kept going on where they have to grind calcium …

Carle shows me into his office, which is windowless and paneled with fake pine, like a 1950s rumpus room. Its main feature is a grease-pencil board listing 14 arson fires since February, all in the …

“It was 10 or 11 in the morning when they found her in that canyon full of bamboo. I still don’t believe that nobody could know nothing, because of where they found her."

“This used to be a beautiful place,” says Jonnie. “A family part of town. Nice people lived here. That all changed with the Vietnam War, 1975. People from war places started coming in, big-time.”

They exchange names of famous skateboarders from San Diego: Doug Saladino, Steve Cathey, Henry Hester, Bob Skolberg, Greg Weaver. No one mentions Mark “Gator” Anthony, the famous San Diego skateboarder who murdered a girl in P.B. in 1990.

Unlike, say, rock-and-roll bands, classical musicians in a quartet are not required to exhibit personalities as they perform. A tuxedoed homogeneity and a serious sameness of expression will do nicely, thank you. If the performers …

Six-year-old Michael Nava is as bald and brown as an almond. He is covered from head to foot in sunscreen lotion. A towel is draped around his shoulders, his swim trunks are comically baggy and …

"Kevin is very romantic,” says Shelley, a 24-year-old beauty in childlike braids at the county courthouse as she fills out her application for a $49 marriage license. The look in her eyes as she glances …

When asked if Ray considers Hillcrest a dangerous area, he says, “It’s a bad area. A bad area. Hillcrest five years ago was a beautiful area to live in. Now...Hillcrest is going to the dogs.”

It didn't take him long to realize that being a good fire investigator required all his past construction skills along with the patience of Job. You could never rush a fire scene. He learned to …

In the year 2525, If man is still alive, If woman can survive, They may find.... —"In the Year 2525", Zager & Evans, 1969 They may find...what? What might America's Finest City be like in …

“I’ve got to cop to something right now,” Wambaugh interrupts himself earnestly, or mock earnestly. “I misspelled Hawthorn Street in Finnegan's Week. I put an E at the end of Hawthorn. I had to confess.”

In SOMA’s “Dungeon” at 555 Union, downtown, San Diego’s premier purveyors of anthropophagic rock flail away at half-strung electric guitars, drums, the walls, the crowd, each other, and their equipment at a volume reminiscent of …

“A lifetime of provocation!” Defense attorney Bradley Patton, facing the jury, throws his arms wide to indicate what he calls “the spectrum of the relationship.” It is the first week of June 1993. The final …

The house of death in Tijuana is the color of dusty bubble gum. Just off the Plaza Club de Leones, with its cathedral-like tower, where Revolucion curves away to the north, SEMEFO, the one-story coroner's …

OIL, WIRE, HEAVY DUTY HAND CLEANER, BLACK SPRAY PAINT, BATTERY ACID, HANDLE BARS, SISSY BARS, BABY APES, DRIVE SHAFTS, GAS TANKS, CLUTCH LEVERS, CARB SYNCS, COILS, BEARDS, TATTOOS, LEATHER JACKETS, LONG HAIR, NAKED WOMEN IN …

The tall man stopped running as soon as he had crossed the hot asphalt of Front Street, and skidded into the cool maw of the Greyhound Bus Tunnel. With an effort, he forced his lean …

August 13, 1992. The dead heart of San Diego’s dog days. Full moon, sunset, humidity, and wary egos. The sweat- and beer-damp Spirit Club on Morena Boulevard. Robin Henkel, at a front table, is wearing …

“When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when 1 got to be 21, I was astonished at how much …

"You’re thinkin’, ‘Uh-oh, this guy’s gonna start askin’ me any minute what the problem is, and if I don’t have the answer. I’m in trouble. I’m gonna look foolish.’ So you gotta withstand that kind of pressure.”

There were times during the White House years which were tough. The Secret Service caused all kinds of trouble in my life. There was a rift in the family, that was brought on by the Secret Service.

The recession that lingers over San Diego with more tenacity than El Nino’s storm clouds has another street-level manifestation that has P.B. residents thinking the “D” word. At the corners of Grand and Noyes, where …

I was rooming with Steve, a bartender. We had a two-bedroom in Mission Hills with a view of the airport. We had been in the place for about six weeks when I was diagnosed with lymph cancer.

The thing is fear. Not repulsion or pity or outrage or sorrow — though they are all there — but fear. Not exactly fear of the other poor bastards in the Christ Missionaries dorm who, …

Kaufmann describes an amphipod he has seen photographed that is nearly a foot long with mandibles sharp and powerful enough to sever a human finger. He is kidding, of course? “Not really. It was found off Fiji."

The patient's bald head was visible beneath a tangle of tubing monitored by Dr. John Ahlering, the anesthesiologist. He would be answering most of my questions in a quiet voice during the procedure.

James Lee Burke is one of those writers who has been quietly toiling in the vineyard (or cotton fields, he might say) for decades, producing first-class work that has remained invisible to the bookbuying public …

Julian is still the real thing. The town has a genuine turn-of-the-century feel, not contrived like San Diego’s Gaslamp Quarter. Still, it is poised on the brink of self-consciousness, a cute parody of itself.

When Frank Morris talks about going to the city — and he tries not to even think about it — it’s San Diego he is referring to, though it’s a two-hour drive to that city …

Maybe I should stick with Elvis, but there is something about the idea of sitting here as the sun goes down, drunk, listening to Elvis records that reminds me too much of a friend’s definition of clinical depression.

“Parkway Bowl is pretty cool. Good video games. The movies are old though. I saw Hunt for the Red October twice and Pretty Woman and Milo and Otis. Pretty Woman was kind of cool.”

Humor is a funny thing. What is the appeal, exactly, of standing before a room full of strangers, risking humiliation for the sake of “evoking an expulsion of air from the lungs” of your audience, …

Dolores Huerta: There’s a blacklist. Very definitely, if the foremen or contractors know a worker is union, they won’t hire him; or if they do and they find out, they’ll get rid of them.

The voice of Sue Delany on KGB-FM every weekday afternoon between 3:00 and 7:00 p.m. (the coveted afternoon drive slot) is one of the most distinctive on the airwaves in San Diego. Slightly hoarse and …

I knelt on what looked like a milk crate. Beneath my knees, in yellow letters against a black cardboard background, were painted the letters UMFA. I leaned against the pool table, dipping my head into …

“What I hate, what I’ve come to dread, even after five years of divorced parenting, is that feeling you get late Sunday afternoon, about five blocks from your ex-house, where your ex-wife lives with your …

It had been five years since I had toured the bars, discos, strip joints, and dollar-a-dance whore emporiums of Tijuana. I had been writing a novel back then, and I wanted to walk in the …

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.

“Ray Bradbury,” Brizzolara continued, “talking about detective fiction set in California, described it as ‘the literature of sadness and strange endings on the California coast.’ And this has always made sense to me.