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
Back to profile
Stories by Margot Sheehan
Tijuana through white eyes: the bus from Mexico City, where margaritas came from, the La Mesa prison
San Diego vs. L.A. – guess who wins?
Two Views of San DiegoI used to consider San Diego roads relatively sane, compared to L.A. Now the freeway is full of lunatics. Everyone’s trying to go faster than the next guy. People used to …
July 24, 2021
Best Reader stories from 1992
Notes from Underground San Diego's Free Press (later renamed the Street Journal) was defunct by the end of 1970; the San Diego Door came and went with the Nixon Presidency, 1968 to August 1974.The O.B. …
December 29, 2019
Sorrento Valley – what little there is
Lost roads of San Diego:Sorrento Rd., Smilax, Edelweis There was also once a Smilax Road in Sorrento Valley, one in a series of short roads named for local flora. It paralleled the railroad tracks on …
September 23, 2019
Other San Diego summers
Phoenix without apologies Traveler, consider our Phoenix. An hour away by air, this flat, posh suburb of Greater L.A. is your finest summer vacation bargain. For the price of a bad weekend in a tacky …
July 6, 2019
Lost Roads of San Diego: Truckee Road, Ward Road, Fillmore Avenue
Murphy Canyon was named for Jack Murphy. Not the 1960s sports columnist who led the fight for a new ballpark, but a pioneer rancher who acquired about a hundred acres of the San Diego Mission land grant.
April 8, 1993
Lost Roads of San Diego: California St., Douglas St., Sorrento Rd., Camp Callan AVe.
When UCSD first opened, US 101 had not yet been replaced by the long-promised Interstate 5. Although 101 sliced the campus in two, in its early days, UCSD was mostly confined to the Revelle College area,
March 4, 1993
Loss: what San Diegans left behind In 1992
Unlike 1984, when Ronald Reagan made it a point to finish his campaign at a giant rally in the parking lot of Fashion Valley, George Bush came to see the All-Star game and was booed by the locals.
December 23, 1992
San Diego once had three newspapers and one congressional district – ask Clinton McKinnon about it
“Fletcher didn’t know how to campaign. McKinnon — he’d go downtown to Horton Plaza, where all the buses stopped, and greet the people as they got off. Gave them cards and handshakes.”
November 12, 1992
Lost Roads of San Diego, part 1 – Allen’s Dairy Rd., Harsathy St., Anna Ave., Vultee St., Homeland Ave., Suicide Alley
You’re not supposed to use Bachman Road unless you’re an employee of the UCSD Medical Center. UCSD took over this right-of-way in the mid-’80s to have an access road to their parking garage on Pill Hill.
November 5, 1992
Loma Portal and Midway District during WWII - a walking tour
The project dwarfed all others, save one. Linda Vista was larger in terms of units (4845 as opposed to the 3500 in Frontier), but the Linda Vista houses had mostly been built as “permanents”
September 10, 1992
Ray Bradbury hoofs it down to Solana Beach
Goddamned eccentric geniuses. I should have known that Ray Bradbury doesn’t drive, that my question about how he’s getting down to Solana Beach on June 3 — " Duh, so, like, are you just driving …
May 28, 1992
The L.A. Times gets soused on its own margarita hoax
Syd finds Senor Herrera to be a charming old raconteur. Herrera even claims to have invented the margarita. This is a nice bit of local color, and Syd does a story about it for the Baja Times.
May 21, 1992
Gore Vidal – the man who kept secrets
What fun! Gore Vidal is coming to speak at UCSD on April 16, and I get „ . to write about his talk, which seems to be entitled “America First? America Last? America at Last?” …
April 16, 1992
Reader writers pour out Christmas stories of divorce, jail, forced intimacy
A criticism implied in every gift I don’t remember Christmas. None in particular. There’s this Christmas thread, an irregular stream of pictograms (orange snowriding disk = delight) linked by an underlying Christmas smell (new plastic, …
December 19, 1991
County assessor J.H. Johnson auctioned the San Diego Zoo in 1932
Ever since James Hervey Johnson’s death in 1988, press coverage has focused entirely on the endless lawsuits over his $17 million estate. One would never know from these news stories that once upon a time, …
November 27, 1991
San Diego's ferret underground
The fish and game department wants to save us from our pets.
August 8, 1991
On the noir side of town: Chee-Chee Club, county courthouse, Little Vietnam, Pt. Loma Bayside Trail
Stretching east of 30th Street, the Mid-City mesa has for decades been a Gasoline Alley wasteland of car washes, card parlors, dinky pink bungalows: low-rent neighborhoods whose obscurity is secured by distance from freeway off-ramps.
June 27, 1991