“There’s a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will.” — Hamlet, Act 5, Scene 2When a man reaches a certain age, he’s liable to have favorite Simpsons jokes. One of mine comes …

“Legalize it, don’t criticize it,” went the old Peter Tosh song. It sounds so simple — until you remember that “legalize” means bringing in the law, and the law is never simple. For the law, …

On September 19, piano rocker Ben Folds brought his Paper Airplane Request Tour to the Epstein Family Amphitheater on the UCSD campus. The hook: write your request, sail it onto the stage, and if Folds …

Thanks for noticingLost Abbey finds a new wayAnderson’s apogeesAntique modernHeavenly hall undergroundMounting MadraParent-friendly playgroundThe van man canPeaceful, eaze-y feeling

This summer, a friend gave me a copy of Daniel Gross and Tyler Cowan’s book Talent (maybe he thought it would help). He also suggested I listen to Cowan’s podcast, Conversations with Tyler. I started …

The lights of a thousand electronic slot machines flash and glow in the cavernous entrance hall of Harrah’s Resort Southern California in Valley Center. The games have names like Buffalo Gold, Treasure Ball, and Dragon …

“I don’t often notice my surroundings, but I like wood,” says my daughter as we take a seat at the bar inside Part Time Lover. “It makes it feel like a place where people actually …

A walk on the (whole) beachA San Diego summer, with all the time in the world, brings up one challenge I’ve tried before and failed to complete: walking our entire 70-mile stretch of Pacific Ocean …

How Do You Keep Warm at Night? 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 …

Homeless plans for Thanksgiving On a warm autumn afternoon, a homeless man lies against a wall on First Avenue just south of Ash Street. He's sharing a bottle of cheap vodka with an older homeless …

A tour of San Diego alleysJack Whalen hands me a beer. “I’m king of this alley,” Whalen says, then points west. “Down there, the king of that next alley is Tom Sweet. He’s 97.” Whalen …

Last month, a friend visited with his family from out of town, and as thanks for my hospitality, he bought ingredients for my favorite cocktail these days: a Vieux Carre. There are variations out there, …

He loves the people no one wants"I'm used to voices downtown, of agony and pain and just dysfunction, and I had the window down a little so I could hear. I look and there's a …

More or less sudden mountainsThe rocks in and around San Diego have composed amazing, fiery stories for a very long time. An ancient ocean once covered this county; volcanoes used to spew here; and more …

The woman we never forgetBy Abe Opincar, Amy Gerstler, Barbarella Fokos, Deirdre Lickona, Ernie Grimm, Geoff Bouvier, Jeannette DeWyze, Jeff Smith, Jennifer Ball, Jim Morris, Laura McNeal, Mary Grimm, Matthew Lickona, Patrick Daugherty, RF Jurjevics, …

The tears came before we even made it down to The Shell to see Counting Crows on September 3. She didn’t expect them. But she hadn’t heard their hit “Round Here” in close to 30 …

29 Reader writers on their fathersBy Abe Opincar, Anne Albright, August Kleinzahler, Bill Manson, Deirdre Lickona, Duncan Shepherd, Eleanor Widmer, Ernie Grimm, Jangchup Phelgyal, Jeanne Schinto, Jeannette DeWyze, Jeff Smith, Jennifer Ball, Jim Eichel, John …

San Diego's least-remembered great man – U.S. Grant Jr. On a Sunday in September of 1929, 15 members of San Diego’s elite gathered to carry the coffin of an old friend. Among the pallbearers were …

The news that Robert Rundo had been extradited from Romania to the United States to face charges of conspiracy and inciting violence at several California political rallies back in 2017 reminded me of a recent …

Oakley Hll explains The Corpus of Joe Bailey In San Diego, Corpus of Joe Bailey also made a noteworthy entrance. The book was denounced from San Diego pulpits for being too sexy and provoked Mission …

A writer must take care in this, the golden age of branding. Mention any particular subject more than once, and you risk becoming That Guy, the one who writes about X. After that, should you …

A classified ad appeared in the February 3, 1977 edition of The San Diego Reader. It read, “Creative writers, artists, freaks with ideas for avant-garde journal wanted. Contact Cabaret Voltaire c/o Steve Hitchcock 626 Madeline …

Books do furnish a room “More Luxury Coming Soon!” promised the poster at Fashion Valley, by way of explaining and apologizing for the mall’s rough-and-tumble construction zone vibe. But inside Banana Republic, it had already …

I was frustrated. I hadn’t asked for a Tesla when I made the rental car reservation. I certainly hadn’t asked for a Tesla with the pre-set user name Papa Simp. (I move my seat back, …

San Diego's Antiochian Orthodox church surprises. He looks like a regular young guy — maybe late 20s or early 30s. Head shaved to mask a receding hairline, a black goatee to offset the baldness, the …

On May 11, the Federal Department of Health and Human Services will end the Covid public health emergency. But the bureaucratic behemoth is a slow-footed beast; John Q. Public knows the pandemic ended some time …

“People are very intrigued by seahorses,” says Leslee Matsushige, associate curator at Birch Aquarium. And intriguing fish — signs of whimsy in the relentlessly efficient natural world — are good PR for an institution hoping …

A conversation among the inscriptions scribbled amid the doodles on the ochre walls of the Georgian restaurant Pomegranate — layer upon layer, the ink fading like echoes, dim voices from the forgotten past. Remember QAnon …

Apostolic Prayer Temple, house of exaltation I came here, to the Apostolic Prayer Temple, a storefront in between a nightclub and a fish market in Encanto, to see the Rev. Tom Shaw in the Gospel …

Orchids and Onions — 20 years later The ’95 jury opened by dubbing 1976 Orchid-winner Rancho Bernardo “the ultimate suburb.” Nicoloff and Collins concurred, calling it “one of the few really successful and well-planned new …

Out there on the dance floor is a bit of paradise Almost everybody in East County knows about the place, but not nearly so many visit This is because the Renegade has a reputation. Rumors …

Happy Trumpsgiving Hunter P. Thompson: "Sure, everybody here agrees that Trump is a fascist hatemonger with no sense of respect or decency. That just means he’s just like the rest of us. Those protesters who …

Men's Summer Swimsuit Issue Nowadays, whenever I occasion to strip down to my swimwear, my own interior monologue pesters me, "Are you standing up straight? Is your stomach tucked in? Are there zits on your …

Class Struggle “We had a lot of cliques at my school. There were the drama kids, and we had a group we actually called the Clique. It was just the people that seemed to party …

Where Sweet Peace and Love Abidith During school vacations, Carl and I hopped the freight train that chugged through twice a week. It stopped in La Mesa to unload flatbeds of planks to the lumberyard. …

I Have Purchased a Grey Cardigan Sweater My wife and I fell in love over wine, bourbon, and cognac. We attended a college with a dry campus, and many evenings were spent sitting in my …

Janet, My Mother, and Me “We went out to Belmont, and Harry couldn’t stop picking winners. We went to the 21 Club for dinner, and we scalped tickets for a Broadway musical in the fourth …

The Door’s Open. Go In! Some beards, like Alan’s, are magnificent in their autonomy — they grow as they wish, untrimmed and untamed. “You shall not round the corners of your beard.” These beards grow …

Best Friend to Joshua Trees Is there anything to be done about the plight of the Joshua tree? While state and federal agencies dither over whether the imperiled desert dweller deserves endangered species protections, one …

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 …

Decent Life Led by the Ordinary Man I will never forget the time a monsignor from our church, favoring our simple household with a visit, stopped by and in the course of dinner, sat back, …

I noticed a convertible on the way into work today. Pretty good looking… especially for a Buick. Good grief, I’m admiring a Buick. Old, old, old. The kind of person who still says Good grief, …

I remember the first time I felt nervous about what I was eating. “Nervous,” as opposed to “apprehensive,” which describes how I felt the first time I ate ant eggs, corn smut, and rattlesnake at …

David Page’s initial interest in San Diego’s venerable El Indio Mexican restaurant was maybe not entirely visual, but he grants that “what interested me the most at the time — provided they could meet the …

Both sky and highway are washed in gold from the lowering sun as I sail along the 94 toward downtown, there to attend the Grand Re-opening of Rooftop Cinema at the Grand Hyatt. It’s a …

We get letters! A longtime Reader reader wrote in a couple weeks back to complain that “The Reader is now spinning Republican shit on your [our?] newly [duly?] elected governor Gavin Newsom… the man we …

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 …

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 …

Long Neck, Low Fat David Stepp waits for an ostrich craze A 220-pound bird has got about 85 pounds of meat. And the meat is red meat. Two of the muscle groups taste exactly like …

A moment: a cloudless Saturday afternoon, Balboa Park, just in front of Cabrillo Bridge, maybe 200 people — couples, families, friends — lounging on the grass in the spreading shade of the Moreton Bay fig …