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 …
August 27, 2022
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Stories by Patrick Daugherty (RIP)
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A cold eye on San Diego architects 20 years ago
San Diego's ostrich ranchers
Long-necked bonanza We had reached our first destination, about two miles due west of the San Diego Wild Animal Park, the semirural home of a pediatric dentist who’s been raising ostriches as a sideline for …
August 22, 2022
Realist art by David Baze
A little bit warped and kind of sexy "My clue was Caravaggio. He was thoroughly trounced for using Christ and religious figures in his paintings. He didn’t paint them in the clothing and rooms of …
August 21, 2022
World War II Tijuana
The Loud Adios I wrote a story about her, called it ‘The Blue Fox.” and decided not to give it to the singles’ magazine. The publisher probably would’ve turned it down. It wasn’t dirty enough …
August 20, 2022
La Jollan Andy Lakey's hyper real art
Hyper-real Artist Andy Lakey, you've seen him on TV. His original paintings can be found in collections including Ray Charles, President Carter, Lee Meriweather, Peter Jennings, the Vatican Art Collection, and museums throughout the world. …
August 7, 2022
San Diego cops were fierce
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
They serve San Diegans with legal demands
Leave! Banse turns off onto the University Avenue exit. “There’s nothing people out here have done that I didn’t do when I was young. I’m streetwise. I apply that knowledge. At 32nd and National I …
July 23, 2022
Balboa Park's Society for Creative Anachronism
We live in a pre-industrial world and we prefer it there “We feel much more comfortable in medieval clothes. Throw on your tunic, your cloak, and your sword, and you’re all set. You feel much …
June 25, 2022
Albert Arffmann grooms La Jolla's streets
Show me a sign Arffmann works into the early-morning hours, cleaning the restaurant and preparing the Pearl for the coming day. “Imagine you were having some friends over for dinner,” he says, "and imagine the …
May 30, 2022
Most inspiring teacher at Crawford High School
The teacher fails Rossi had us trooping off to the Academy Theater to see Alain Resnais’s La Guerre Est Finie, a pastiche of political correctness and sensuality. The commingling of radlib politics with grainy romance, …
May 23, 2022
Beautiful Sweetwater Valley, Herman Baca's National City
Valley Love The Lower Sweetwater Valley has served as a recreational and inspirational resource. One morning I looked up on the levee and saw a colorful line of kindergartners singing to the ducks in the …
February 19, 2022
Stuck on Russian ship in Ensenada, in Baja for the eclipse
Ship of Fools “She poured wine for all of us. I picked up a glass and raised it in a toast and said, ‘Nostrovia ... Gorbachev... Nostro-via.’ The place erupted. The damn first engineer comes …
November 28, 2021
The hated game warden, the essential weatherman
We’re the New Wardens "A gray fox is a small animal, so usually the trap breaks their leg bones, and the only thing holding them in the trap is the skin that gets pinched between …
November 7, 2021
He-man cooks dinner, fairness of O.J.Simpson trial
Just Relax and I'll Get Dinner I am stepping through the front door of Andronico’s, my countenance set to grim purpose. Andronico’s is a grocery store, the kind that doesn’t carry 1 variety of pear, …
August 22, 2021
Alexander Theroux's father and brothers, Amy Chu's mother, Matt Lickona's grandparents
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, …
August 21, 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
Poverty in the unemployment line and the trailer park, tricked by San Diego panhandlers
The Skin of Their Teeth Where are the best food bargains in downtown San Diego? Five-pound packages of nonfat milk powder can be purchased at the S and F store located at 15th and G …
June 13, 2021
9-11 reactions: San Diegans on street, counter-terror contractors, Black Muslims
In Case They Attack “I’ve been melancholy. It made me very sad. Deep-down sad. I realized immediately that our lives would never be the same again. “We’ve never had war on our shores. And I’ve …
May 24, 2021
Been to Guatay, Buckman Springs, La Posta, Live Oak Springs, Boulevard, Bankhead Springs?
Dots on the Map Bankhead Springs is wholly owned by Helen, an 87-year-old woman who purchased it m 1939 with her husband Alvan. (The place is named after Senator John Hollis Bankhead of Arizona, who …
May 16, 2021
Padres player scandals, city council caves to John Moores, farm manager Russ Nixon tells history
The Evil I Do Not Intend Dravecky raised some eyebrows that month when he appeared with Eric Show and Mark Thurmond at a John Birch Society booth at the Del Mar Fair. Back home in …
May 8, 2021
Honest stories from a Chula Vista OR nurse, riding in Central San Diego with paramedics
Nurse’s Log Eugene Johnson — by far the sickest person on this shift. We check his I.V., which has again infiltrated. Since even 11:00, his condition has deteriorated. He is barely breathing, and his blood …
March 28, 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
Angel dust on its way to San Diego, meth heads talk, Tijuana glue sniffers
Embalmed Angel Teer says that he started smoking sherm when he was 16. "I used it a lot. I used a lot of drugs, but the older you get, the less fun it gets. Smoking …
February 1, 2021
Not everyone likes Lance Armstrong, San Diego's version of Murderball, Barry Bonds
Tour De France, We Hardly Knew Ye Lance Armstrong has carried the Tour de France on his shoulders and brought it into the living rooms of meat-eating, red-blooded American sports consumers. Sadly, this is Armstrong's …
January 17, 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
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
Lakeside's 7-foot man, 1969's first MLB Padres, San Diego State football scandal
Lakeside's Big Man There are roughly six million boys between the ages of 16 and 18 living in the United States. There are approximately 26,400 high schools and close to that number of starting centers …
November 7, 2020
Hunt for petroglyphs in San Diego's desert, dope growers in Cuyamaca
Mommy, why are they shooting at us again? The Tijuana state of mind known as “the psychosis.” “I don’t take my kids to the park anymore on Sundays,” says Luís, a young Tijuana father of …
October 4, 2020
San Diego inside sports
Lakeside's Big Man There are roughly six million boys between the ages of 16 and 18 living in the United States. There are approximately 26,400 high schools and close to that number of starting centers …
August 1, 2020
Imperial Beach, town without pretense
Complete public sleeping ban Imperial Beach has banned camping or sleeping in public with an ordinance that reaches into every last corner, from pavement to median, "including but not limited to dirt or landscaped areas." …
July 6, 2020
Cave paintings of Juan Cabrillo ship, marijuana farmers of Cuyamaca
Mommy, why are they shooting at us again? “I don’t take my kids to the park anymore on Sundays,” says Luís, a young Tijuana father of three — eight- and six-year-old sons, and a five-year-old …
May 17, 2020
Best Reader stories from 2011
Dad was a bum Mike Elliott’s father disappeared when he was 13 years old. Not disappeared as in vanished mysteriously. Disappeared as in left and never came back. Some 27 years later, on a rainy …
March 7, 2020
Best Reader stories from 2001
How San Diegans reacted to 9-11 “Where were you when the World Trade Center was hit?” “At home.” “And you happened to have the TV on?” “No, my little sister called. She woke me up …
February 1, 2020
Best Reader stories from 1994
A little bit east of Eden When I was living in Los Angeles years ago, a door-to-door solicitor pitching San Diego vacations and tours showed me a brochure of local attractions. Included on the list …
January 5, 2020
Jacumba – the far edge of San Diego
A quiet street and an old hotel Jacumba is a kind of living ghost town out in southeast San Diego County, on the Mexican border, in what’s called, the Mountain Empire district. It has come …
September 2, 2019
Patrick Daugherty and the Reader
Patrick Daugherty was the author of the weekly Sporting Box column since 1995. He died April 20, 2016. He wrote for the Berkeley Monthly before the Reader. Editor's picks of Daugherty's Reader stories: The low-budget …
March 24, 2019
Hopping the last train for parts unknown
"Ran into Tin Cup at the Four Mile. He rode in on the Union Pacific a couple days ago.” I laugh, “He’s still train-hopping? The man is a champion.” I have an old Nevada friend …
March 22, 2017
A house in Torrey Pines State Reserve
Beds: 5 Baths: 9 Current Owner: David Batchelder Asking Price: $29,000,000 The bluff-top estate at 100 Stratford Court in Del Mar offers prospective buyers nearly 6000 square feet of living area in a just-completed “coastal …
March 15, 2017
Best of Sporting Box, 2005
Fresh Start I've stepped out of the darkened cave — or, more precisely, have exited the animal den known in another life as my living room, to stroll in fresh air and reconnect my chakra …
June 4, 2016