Harry Partch – San Diego's most famous musical rebel Each instrument looks more like a piece of sculpture, yet each is capable of producing the sounds inside of a normal musical sound. They are made …
June 24, 2023
Mark Orwoll, international editor for Travel+Leisure magazine, wrote for the Reader in the 1970s and 1980s.
Articles by Mark Orwoll
San Diego's experimental hobo
Amateur smugglers show up hourly at San Ysidro border crossing
There isn’t a tougher port to work at than San Ysidro There is a switchblade in that car — and a woman with a trembling left breast. The woman of the trembling breast and her …
January 8, 2023
Island Court roommates turn dog abusers
A sad Mission Beach dog story The old woman who owned the apartment building did not know enough to kick out her tenants in the summer, jack up the rent, and lease the apartments to …
October 2, 2022
They work on San Diego's smog
San Diego starting to deal with its smog The natural broom sweeps the smog into the natural dustpan of Alpine. On days when the smog is particularly bad, you can drive east on Interstate 8 …
April 24, 2022
Mercy Hospital's multi-dimensional shrink
Mercy Hospital fires shrink and it helps him “I said. ‘It seems to me that there are two ways we can go. One, we could try the medication (antidepressants) and we can sit and talk, …
April 23, 2022
San Diego night guards, coffin hucksters
Used car dealings When my septuagenarian mother (who knows nothing about automobiles) observed that the floor of the trunk was cracked, that the body had been repainted with two tones of non-matching red, that the …
March 14, 2022
San Diego corporate giants: PSA, Sheraton Hotels, Jack-in-the-Box
Thought for Food Bob Peterson (husband to Mayor Maureen O’Connor) opened his first Jack-in-the-Box restaurant at 63rd Street and El Cajon Boulevard in 1951. Peterson had expanded his chain to include 350 units by the …
June 19, 2021
Traffic lights on Market Street, baseball card nostalgia, Surfer Motel attacked
Why 24th and Market got no traffic light It is an intersection that only God could love. Market and Twenty-fourth streets: its sidewalks are stuck about with telephone poles, shadeless palms, and a few eugenias …
April 11, 2021
Best Reader stories from 1980
On the path of the old ones It’s now ten years, almost to the day, since an amateur archaeologist discovered what seemed to be extraordinarily old stone tools in a canyon above Mission Valley, and …
November 17, 2019