Poway – why the rodeo still does well It’s rodeo time: seven seconds of hell on an angry bull. That’s what many San Diegans picture when they think of Poway. But times have changed in …
August 13, 2023
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Stories by John Brizzolara (RIP)
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No more honky-tonks in Poway
Tomato people say that tomatoes have 'no legs'
San Diego's best tomato breeds: Better Boys, Early Girls, Yellow Taxis The ripe round red tomato sitting on the kitchen table is alive and busy. While we are asking, “How shall I eat it?” the …
August 7, 2023
Getting AIDS – one of 3401 cases diagnosed in San Diego
Ex-biker, would-be Trappist, soldier of fortune, San Diego powerlifter comes down with AIDS Is that you?’ the burly black social worker asked me. pointing to a 13-digit code handwritten on a page in a huge …
August 5, 2023
They make I-15 wider at Miramar Way
Like your road widened, Mister? In the pre-dawn gloaming, the roadbuilding machines are just black shapes lined up beside the southbound lanes of Interstate 15. From the overpass at Miramar Way, only the light from …
July 31, 2023
Guillermo Gomez-Pena gets McArthur award
Just who does he think he is? Two San Diegans won MacArthurs in 1991, Gomez-Pena and UCSD philosopher and neuroscientist Patricia Smith Churchland, and the San Diego Union-Tribune’s initial announcement of the prizes was straightforward …
September 3, 2022
A Hollywood Theater dancer from the 40s
A wonderful life in burlesque “She told me, ‘Go over to the theater, knock on the theater door, and ask them if they need any chorus girls.’ The chorus producer came and questioned me, ‘Can …
August 29, 2022
The sordid Rosarito trailer park
Brief Eden We didn’t see too much of the man in trailer number eight, who was supposed to be a Federale, except for the times when he would step out onto his wooden deck and …
August 15, 2022
Castrated San Diegans
Life as a castrated man There was one psychological change that can be attributed solely to his new shortage of testosterone. He lost his interest in sex. It wasn’t dramatic, says Tom. Rather, he simply …
August 6, 2022
VA Hospital patients tell how they were wounded
Temple of the wounded "The Marines had nothing to do with Agent Orange directly. It’s possible that some Marine groups were out on patrol or in the field, and a spray plane might have flown …
August 1, 2022
Imperial Beach horses ride on the sand
You're always the cowboy “I took riding lessons the way some people play golf. I was the only one in my family. I started doing weekend trips. I’ve led pack trips in the Sierras for …
July 25, 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
Van Dam murder divides Sabre Springs, Westerfield's jail inmates
Good Life in Sabre Springs “I think Brenda is amazing. She’s so strong. I asked her, ‘How do you get out of bed?’ She told me, ‘I do it for my boys because they don’t …
January 31, 2022
El Cajon Olaf Weighorst forgeries, Reader author's parents killed
Bushwhacked We look at a Wieghorst painting called Spring Rain, a dark, impressionistic work, one of about a dozen Wieghorsts on the walls. Thackeray can remember when Wieghorst painted it. “It was raining cats and …
January 22, 2022
Fallbrook school bus driver, firemen at 32nd and Lincoln
Stop Food Fights, Clean up after Motion Sickness When Renee drives the pink route, she wears a white visor and shorts that make her seem calmly athletic, like the directress of a tennis camp. Twenty-four …
January 3, 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
Hotel San Diego's gay owner Vince Miranda, the Midway comes to town
Old Haunt “They tore down the original hotel and put the facade in crates. Then they tore down another building and put that façade in crates. Then they built a new building, stuck the old …
January 1, 2022
Santee's Creation Museum, the nuns behind Mercy Hospital
A Little Bit East of Eden There are also sharp disputes about Noah's Ark within the Creationist movement. Some years ago, in the ICR museum, I helped John Morris, their principal ark investigator, look for …
December 26, 2021
San Diego Hell's Angels, truck kills bicyclist near Pringle and Kettner
Where the Bikes Are I noticed one guy playing pool using a broom as a cue. He looked as if he might have been an extra in a movie with a title like Chainsaw Rapists …
December 12, 2021
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
San Diego actors' worst stories, he guards Volcan Mountain, community college adjunct
Break a Leg In 1993, Hal Holbrook was performing King Lear in the title role. Tom Hall, a San Diego actor, likes to tell the story. Hal came on too soon and started a completely …
October 24, 2021
John Brizzolara looking forward and backward
John Brizzolara wrote for the Reader from 1989 to 2013, including a weekly column, TGIF. John died in his sleep at Father Joe’s Villages on October 11, 2016. He was 65. John Brizzolara’s Last Column …
October 10, 2021
Truth about TJ taxis, cut-throat upholstery competition
I am my own queen "Once, a guy, a drunk guy took my taxi from downtown. He wanted to go to this particular colonia, this neighborhood. It was raining, I remember. When I got there, …
October 4, 2021
Dahmer's Diner, Nico, Deadheads, Paul Williams
Eating people is the ultimate control You won’t find Dahmer’s Diner on the bill at the Cannibal Bar in Mission Beach. In fact, DD has been banned from all but two venues in town, SOMA …
September 19, 2021
Army-Navy Academy, wine experts behind doors, castrated man's life
An unhampered look at Carlsbad's Army Navy Academy "Unlike the upper-school cadets, these boys will break down and cry, a lot. They don’t want other boys to see ’em cry, ’cause it’s not macho. But …
August 29, 2021
Where to park downtown San Diego, loiterers at the library, high-rise top floors
Adult Orphans A Wednesday afternoon, hot. Half the stools at the State Hotel Deli are taken. Talk is quiet, desultory. Mama Sofia perches on her stool near the cash register, her daughter — mending again …
August 23, 2021
Tijuana through white eyes: the bus from Mexico City, where margaritas came from, the La Mesa prison
Destination Tijuana “Don’t let them tell me the bus is new. Of course, we always get there on time; it’s just on the way there are, well, complications. It’s in the nature of the route. …
August 15, 2021
Kate Sessions' tree man, C. Arnholt Smith's repairman
Beneath the Bunya Bunya They lived on the ranch [Scripps Ranch] for six years. He supervised teams of men in planting thousands of eucalyptuses, all together about forty percent of those that were set out …
August 8, 2021
Sky diving above Otay Mesa, roller blading at Civic Center garage
Just Flop The camaraderie among skateboarders goes beyond advanced skaters tolerating beginners and into the realm of solidarity. “Totally,” he said, “because there’s an us-against-the-world feeling. It’s the last kind of rebel-spirited outlaw activity that …
July 31, 2021
El Centro gangs, Holtville High football, 115 in the afternoon at Calipatria prison
Out Here in the Middle of Nowhere “Before, gangs were racially segregated, so you had the Mexicans, the blacks, the Aryan Brotherhood, and so on. Now, the Bloods and all are recruiting across the racial …
July 19, 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
San Diego's highest paid carpenter, smartest plumber, most moral washing machine repairman
He Crawled 700 Miles On His Hands and Knees There’s a rare affliction called the 38-Year-Old Burned-Out-Carpenter Disease. You wake up one morning and your body is crippled, your wife has left you, you’re broke, …
May 17, 2021
Night on University Ave., Olive St. above Switzer Canyon, Rob Quigley's vision for Little Italy
University Avenue Nocturne “We try to cruise by the hot spots where there has been trouble. Bars or restaurants, businesses, what have you. For example. Shooters bar on 30th Street in North Park has had …
March 20, 2021
Inside gay killer Andrew Cunanan: Bishop's School, older friends, Gay Pride parade
Schoolboy charm A 1988 graduate thought she recalled Cunanan going up to one of her male friends, grabbing one of his pectorals, and saying something like, "Oooh, very nice. You've been working out. Give me …
March 13, 2021
Chargers loot city money, QB Stan Humphries gets another concussion, Chargers players 20-30 years later
How Alex Spanos Made Off with the Police Building Fund “Yeah, that’s right, they’re going to steal the money for Alex’s Chargers training field from the cops’ pueblo land fund. A big chunk of their …
March 6, 2021
San Diego's tugboat and truck drivers, El Cajon shopping cart retrievers, gutsy stuntmen
Push Comes to Shove: Life on San Diego's Few and Mighty Tugboats “We’d come out here at low tide, bring the working hands out to the job, they’d work off the boat. We moved the …
February 21, 2021
New home ownership, my life as fat boy, Christmas in Tijuana, at Horton Plaza
What on Earth am I Settling For? I let the front yard go and worked on building a fence in back. I got so angry digging postholes in the rain one afternoon that I had …
February 6, 2021
What chefs themselves eat, San Diego homeless remember their moms, roadside graves, will we be together forever?
Sweat Cuisine "Let's say you have a banquet. Chicken Kiev and vegetables and potatoes, 600 people. An hour before the banquet starts, you find out it's down to 500. You've got 100 leftover half-cooked chickens, …
January 10, 2021
Reader author goes into rehab, what they read in front of the Hotel Del, Dad looked like Robert Taylor
“What happened to your shorts?” Let me tell you about my leave of absence. Like you're dying to know. One letter poured in. It was hard to tell exactly what the writer was trying to …
December 5, 2020
Cedar Fire survivors, La Jolla liberal settles for Clairemont, looking back at Mission Hills
Angel in the Rubble Four years after the Cedar Fire. On October 25, 2003, I go outside to touch base with the night sky and feel the air before retiring to bed. Tonight feels different. …
November 8, 2020
Not your average street person, not your average refugee, a bicyclist dies, cross-border kidnapping
Street neighbor in the East Village Kazakhstan national can’t get her daughter back Yes, I was on the street, but I was home-schooling my daughter. By John Brizzolara, July 26, 2013 | Read full article …
October 3, 2020