One tough cop "A homosexual murder, I remember that real clear. I was the first person there. They gave him an enema with Clorox, really fouled him up pretty good. Split his body open, his …
July 31, 2022
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Stories by Mary Lang
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San Diego cops were fierce
Christ's crucifixtion and other Easter stories
Blood of the Lamb "After they crucified Jesus, on the third day, he rose to Heaven. That's the Resurrection. We all go up to Heaven after the third day." Floyd visualizes Heaven as a beautiful …
June 18, 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
I was kennelboy at Coronado Veterinary Hospital
Among the creatures I put the dog on the table. I felt inexplicably ill at ease with just the dog, myself, and Dr. Smith there; it was a rare moment shared by just the two …
May 2, 2022
The first Afghan wave, San Diego's true Okies
The Silk Road Ends in San Diego “One of the Russians said, ‘Treat these [Russians] and kill these [Afghans].’ The other doctor said, 'How can I do that?’ The Russian said, 'Like this!’ and he …
February 6, 2022
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 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
Navy corpsman on the Mekong, black unrest on the Kitty Hawk, best Vietnam books
Escape! Then he emptied out the bag before us. Two small cans and some plastic sacks with lump sugar, salt, and sesame seeds fell to the ground. Glancing around, I could see that all my …
December 11, 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 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
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
KKK's John Metzger up close, that Escondido sperm bank, ex-cop mercy-kills wife
White On White John put San Diego in the national news. During a taping of Geraldo Rivera’s talk show in New York, Metzger called Roy Innis, chairman of the Congress of Racial Equality, an “Uncle …
April 24, 2021
Buddy of Hemingway, Peron surfaces in Balboa Park, confessions of pot smuggler
Where a job with Time magazine led William Weber Johnson Ernest Hemingway was good company, but his drinking and hard living were difficult to keep up with. Argentinian president Juan Peron was either a tad …
April 4, 2021
Raise your own eggs, a prince of a cat, intimate life with a duck
The chicken or the ego? Are chickens the proper enterprise for the modern family? Let’s get real about this right now. Chickens teach us about husbandry, domesticity, and death. The sole caveat to raising your …
December 19, 2020
Best Reader stories from 1991
Satan chasers San Diego has many experts in the field of Satanism who say the county is a hotbed of Satanic activity. The hidden canyons of the back country, Ramona, Santee, Escondido, even Oceanside, are …
December 28, 2019
Best Reader Christmas stories
Sister Santa’s once-a-year smile I fell in love with America for the first time on a sweaty night in a Bangkok refugee center in March 1991. “In America people have meat with every meal,” my …
December 24, 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
Mary Lang and the Reader
Lang wrote feature stories from the late 1980s through the late 1990s, including a social column called On the Town by Liz Lang. Editor's picks from stories Lang wrote for the Reader San Diego prostitutes …
May 11, 2019
Holy Week in San Diego: our mish-mash of Christianity
Medical explanation of Christ's crucifixion and other Easter stories The severe scourging, with its intense pain and appreciable blood loss, most probably left Jesus in a preshock state. Moreover, hematidrosis had rendered his skin particularly …
April 15, 2019
Pot smuggler's accident, Belmont Park, Willie Shoemaker, prostitution after Stingaree, truth serum, a family's letters
The Zipper – near death at the Del Mar Fair The Zipper was a new wrinkle on the midway: this big, gleaming apparatus that looked like a gigantic fan belt, with body-hugging cages attached along …
February 3, 2019
University Avenue: From Washington Street to La Mesa Boulevard
“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.”
February 23, 1995
San Diego's grave stonecutters
Remember that the dead now outnumber the living. There are 18,000 deaths in San Diego County each year. A single San Diego funeral home handles 15 corpses a month. Five of those bodies — former …
August 26, 1993
Diane Gailey helps birthparents find their children
“You definitely don't forget," Diane Galiley says. Tiny body clad in A sky-blue pajamas, she’s curled up in a “papasan” chair in the living room of her La Mesa apartment. Watery eyes, huge in her …
August 5, 1993
San Diego prostitutes after the Stingaree shut down
"Little lady,” the Chief [of Police] replied, ‘you’re going to find out that every town has got more than its share of Holy Joes — men and women who have nothing better to do than …
July 15, 1993
Somali refugees make their way in San Diego
There are other sizeable Somali communities in Seattle, Washington, D.C., Minnesota, South Dakota, New York, Boston, and Miami. “In Minnesota and South Dakota, usually it's young people,” she said. “Those communities came out of San Diego."
February 18, 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
Who answers San Diego's crisis lines
The telephone is hidden in a black box fixed to the north wall of a small building, island-side of the tollbooths. It’s easy to miss; the signs, posted at even intervals along the Coronado bridge, …
July 23, 1992
San Diego fat boy and bikini girl face Mission Beach sun
At the sensitive age of 13, I was given a role in a San Diego Junior Theater production of a musical version of Little Women, a role identified in the script and program as “Fat Boy.”
July 2, 1992
San Diego romance writers compare notes
Romance Writers of America, a national organization 3000 members strong, was formed, according to their literature, for published and aspiring writers with “a common interest: their love of romance and their desire to write what …
June 4, 1992
Edward would have been gorgeous if he had all his fur.
I find a cinnamon-colored strand of fur, black-banded, poking through the sleeve of my sweater. Another cat hair; I had hoped I’d gotten them all out of my life. They turn up now and then, …
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
So many demonic sightings in East San Diego County
Satan,” wrote Anton LaVey in The Satanic Bible, “has been the best friend the church has ever had, as he has kept it in business all these years.” Since the appearance in 1983 of Michelle …
December 5, 1991
Latter Day Saints in San Diego
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is now the fastest-growing religion, in the United States and worldwide. San Diego County, by no means a Mormon stronghold, is home to more than 52,000 …
October 31, 1991
Dr. Theodore Seuss Geisel died Tues. evening — now all the questions come out.
A generation learned to read with the Seuss I-Can-Read series. In my kindergarten, perhaps first grade, there was a prohibition against reading Dr. Seuss books aloud for reading tests. Too many kids knew them by heart.
October 3, 1991
Reader writers write about first day of school
Mr. Van Winkle asked the Student Council Reps, to indicate to the classes that if they can convince him through sound logical arguments that they should ride skateboards to school that he will reconsider his position.
September 12, 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
Books about Seabiscuit, and Man o' War, and Mustang Annie – I read them all
I admit this wincing: For a time I was one of those little girls who lives for horses. Since living was for me largely a matter of reading, the obsession took the form of reading …
December 20, 1990
San Diego Zoo after sundown
The electric sodium lights hiss in the zoo’s parking lot. A winged beetle flops, buzzes feebly on the cement apron next to where I park the car. The 11 p.m. air is vaguely scented with …
July 5, 1990
The Essenes--From the Dead Sea Scrolls to Tecate's Fat Farm
The incense-choked jumble of the recent Whole Life Expo: vegetarians and environmentalists and every shade of new-age devotee wandered endless rows of booths for radical cancer cures, aura-photography, and Delphi, the City of Dolphins. Few …
June 28, 1990
San Diego's Fertility Center and eugenics
"Maybe this is a real broad statement to make," Schneider continues, "but when I meet someone like you, for example, I have a pretty good idea you’re not waiting in the welfare lines when you leave here, right?”
December 7, 1989
Sailors meet two very exotic San Diego women
The sailor came here in 1974. San Diego was an exotic port. He felt strange and free. The attraction was aesthetic. There was no snow. (He was from Minnesota.) There were palm trees and beautiful …
November 22, 1989