Growing, growing, gone (part of 1977 in review) Hahn's December announcement that Buffums and Montgomery Ward were interested in the downtown shopping center seemed, in the minds of many, to be closely linked to Hahn’s …
March 13, 2022
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Stories by Paul Krueger
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San Diego short takes from 1976 and 1977
1970s redevelopment of downtown San Diego, Helix Lake showdown
Suburbanizing San Diego's downtown Tom Hom says that his Gaslamp District will avoid the problems of a similar district in St. Louis that has now deteriorated because San Diego’s will be locally governed, where St.Louis’s …
February 26, 2022
Jack Kemp and the fugitive, U.S. Grant's son, Seals ambivalent about Jesse Ventura
Kemp and the Fugitive Fotomat also gave Graham a political base. One of the first beneficiaries was Jack Kemp. On May 23, 1968, the San Diego Union reported that Kemp had “joined Fotomat Corp., La …
July 5, 2021
Best Reader stories from 1977
A separate peace What was I (a Jew — and a nonobservant one at that) doing with such a piece? I’d never spoken to a nun in my life. All I remembered of them from …
November 9, 2019
Best Reader stories from 1975
I tell them my name is Ernie Klein, I'm 42 years old, and I'm unemployed It's the day after Thanksgiving and I'm standing in line at the unemployment office. I'm near the end of my …
November 2, 2019
Paul Krueger and the Reader
How Krueger came to the Reader: I had just graduated from UC Santa Cruz in 1975 with a bachelor's in U.S. history. I hadn’t taken any journalism classes in college but always liked to write, …
April 21, 2019
Stories hidden inside the San Diego Reader
Editor: The following feature stories appeared in the interior pages of the Reader in the 1970s and 1980s and have just been converted to digital form. Meditations while riding San Diego Transit “Yes, these people …
January 26, 2019
The most dangerous part of San Diego
One hundred thirty-five San Diegans were murdered in 1990. More than 100 of those deaths occurred south of Interstate 8 and were concentrated in the neighborhoods such as Barrio Logan, Southeast San Diego, City Heights, …
May 2, 1991
Peter Bohmer, Franz Schnaubelt, Mac Heald, Tiffany Chin, Dorothy Morefield, Brian Batey, Alex Drehsler, Robert Cox, Louis Wenzell, Clifford Graham, Dr. David Reuben
Heald’s surrender to Los Angeles police was delayed until he recovered from self-inflicted wrist slashes. Jim Holtzman told staffers if Heald was given probation instead of jail time, he would have the job of executive producer of the Channel 8 news.
March 7, 1991
Truman Capote's In Cold Blood showed me how good journalism can get
Newspapers - five of them each day — have consumed my reading hours for the past decade. That leaves little time for books, which often sit in stacks on my bedroom dresser, unopened, until they're …
December 20, 1990
Fight over Camp Pendleton's 28-mile Foothill Corridor
Camp Pendleton is Southern California's biggest and most valuable piece of undeveloped land - a 19,000-square-mile island of open space where bison and bobcats coexist with bazooka-carrying Marine Infantrymen. If the peace juggernaut ever pushes …
February 15, 1990
Mullet gone in Chula Vista
Its 39 acres of parks, 900 boat slips, excursion dock, and restaurants have made Chula Vista’s new J Street marina a bayfront paradise. But Mike Irey and Luigi Sanfilippo say the multimillion-dollar tidelands project has …
December 7, 1989
Reader writers: the story I wanted to write... but didn't
Sandy and a girlfriend had gone into a liquor store, robbed the clerk, They locked the clerk in a walk-in cooler. Sandy started feeling bad about the guy. She went back and let him out.
October 5, 1989
Broderick vs. Broderick – the divorce trial before the murder
The stakes in last week’s divorce trial were much higher. Betty Broderick is seeking more than $250,000 in annual alimony/child support payments from her husband, whom she has said earns upward of $1 million a year.
January 12, 1989
Hotel Del Coronado owner Leonard Friedman gives boats to Sail America
A decade of hustle and a $10 million investment may soon pay off for the local promoters of a seasick-proof ship. News stories about the “Small Waterplane, Twin Hilled” boats—Swath for short—are appearing more frequently, …
June 30, 1988
La Playa/Kellogg. piers ordered torn down
On the bayside shore of Point Loma, directly across from Shelter Island, is a secluded and very pretty beach named La Playa/Kellogg. The beach has four private piers owned by residents whose backyards extend almost …
June 2, 1988
Transvestite political figure Nicole Murray
When a February 4 Reader story revealed Nicole Murray's past arrests for male prostitution and told how he was advertising his services as a "transvestite counselor," Murray's 15-year reign as one of San Diego's most …
May 19, 1988
Artist paints mural for Hotel del Coronado; it disappears
Monette Kuplec and the Hotel del Coronado bring you, “The Case of the Covered-up Coverup.” In 1973 Keplec, a La Jolla artist, donated her services to a local charity auction. The successful bidder was the …
April 21, 1988
Robert Miles Parker, founder of SOHO, is pessimistic
Last month Robert Miles Parker learned that his pen-and-ink drawing of Belmont Park’s rickty roller coaster was the centerpiece of a slick publicity sheet promoting the controversial Belmont Park in Mission Beach. Parker, artist, writer, …
April 9, 1987
Lux Bookstore takes doors back off its peep shows
Rick Ford has seen the future of adult peep shows, and it's a box-office disaster. While Ford's competitors in the adult bookstore business were fighting a city ordinance that requires the removal of doors from …
April 2, 1987
Jack Orr, bad boy of San Diego politics
Jack Orr is San Diego’s most candid and outspoken political campaign consultant. The chain-smoking, coffee-gulping Orr doesn't win more elections than other local consultants, though he has had his share of successes. But his campaigns …
August 8, 1985
Tribune reporter Robert Blair Kaiser helps Joan Kroc make news
Newspaper reporter strive for intimacy with their sources; knowing people who make the news means you might be there to cover the story when it happens. Tribune reporter Robert Blair Kaiser has managed that, and …
June 20, 1985
On the L.A. Times San Diego County Edition
The Los Angeles Times has paid dearly to crack the San Diego newspaper market. Millions have been lavished on radio and billboard promotions of the paper's six-year-old "San Diego County Edition" and millions more spent …
December 13, 1984
Maureen O’Connor removed from Port Commission
Proponents of downtown’s budget breaking new convention center get a big boast January 1 when Maureen O’Connor is removed from the port commission at the expiration of her four-year term. O’Connor was unfailingly skeptical of …
December 6, 1984
Frazier Farms, Windmill Farms lose grip on specialty produce
Two years ago Frazier Farms and Windmill Farms had a tight grip on produce and natural food retailing in San Diego County. The two companies sold fresh fruits, vegetables, bulk grains, breads, vitamins and supplements, …
December 6, 1984
Not so subtle ways of keeping blacks out of nightclubs
Players of San Diego, the Mission Valley restaurant and discotheque, opened on May 30 to much fanfare and long lines of young people eager to gain entrance. In those first hectic days, the club gained …
July 26, 1984
Dunham Reilly wants eight-acre park for Coronado ferry landing
Dunham Reilly has little chance of saving one of Coronado’s last stretches of unobstructed bay shoreline and its view of downtown San Diego, A four-story, 198-unit condominium project is already under construction on this eleven-acre …
July 19, 1984
University City took prefixes 450. 457, and 458 from La Jolla
La Jollans sulked twenty years ago when Pacific Telephone altered their GLencourt 4 prefixes. To satisfy the Pac Tel computer’s appetite for numbers, GLencourt 4 — the symbol of residential affluence — became the sterile …
June 28, 1984
Chacon and Peace Supoort SD-LA "Bullet Train"
Their decision last week to endorse the controversial San Diego-to-Los Angeles “bullet train” should have been a difficult one for state Assemblymen Pete Chacon and Steve Peace. All their local legislative colleagues — Republicans and …
May 3, 1984
I.B. Mayor Brian Billbray Distances Himself from Log Cabin Club
When Imperial Beach Mayor Brian Bilbray ran for state assembly two years ago, he received an endorsement from the twenty-five member San Diego Log Cabin Club. This group of gay Republicans found Bilbray to be …
May 3, 1984
What to do when the Coronado bridge is paid off
The $44 million bond debt on the 14-year-old Coronado Bridge should be paid in full by late 1986. With the construction bonds retired, the 14 million drivers who annually cross the span should, in theory, …
January 12, 1984
OB's Strand stops X-rated fare
The city council, city attorney, state courts, and a group of dedicated residents keep trying to make it impossible for Vince Miranda to show X-rated films at his Strand theater in Ocean Beach, but Miranda …
November 10, 1983
Mission Bay overnight camping penalties upped
Vacationers and the homeless have long been spending their nights inside campers or recreational vehicles parked along Mission Bay’s shores. In doing so these civic freeloaders have been ignoring the well-placed signs that warn of …
August 18, 1983
Joe Nicholson: Seaport Village a Walt-Disney solution
Joe Nicholson is a designer who criticizes architects and their work. “Talking about architecture and not being an architect means I won’t lose any jobs,” he jokes. The forty-three-year-old Nicholson works from a cubbyhole office …
August 4, 1983
Mayor Callahan refuses to pay Hotel Del Coronado bill
They drive some very hard bargains in Coronado. Last year Coronado city officials and the management of the landmark Hotel de Coronado hit on a way to make money together. The hotel has wanted to …
March 3, 1983
Winter storms affect Sail Bay
Jane Walton admits that the problem of abandoned catamarans doesn’t rank high on San Diego’s list of major concerns. It’s really not a problem, as much as it is a bother and a mystery: why …
February 3, 1983
Adams Avenue Post, debuts
Another neighborhood newspaper has been launched, but this one won't live or die by the vagaries of the free market. The Adams Avenue Post, as the new publishing entry is called, has no competition in …
January 27, 1983
Helicopters court danger under Coronado bridge
It’s not illegal to fly a helicopter under the Coronado Bay Bridge, but the people at Caltrans, the state transportation department, may make it so. Bob Petree and JoeReynolds fly news helicopters for channel 39 …
October 28, 1982
O.B. coffeeshop wars between the Little Chef and Old Townhouse
Looking west from the corner of Newport Avenue and Cable Street in Ocean Beach, the hard angular marquee of the Strand Theater is the dominant landmark. The Strand has also been pilloried of late – …
August 26, 1982
William Kellogg defends his property in front of La Jolla Beach and Tennis Club
William C. Kellogg doesn’t tolerate uninvited guests at the La Jolla Beach and Tennis Club. As managing trustee of the Kellogg family estate, Kellogg oversees the 20-acre, oceanfront resort with ninety-seven rooms, a par-three golf …
August 12, 1982
Mission Beach's legendary Beachcomber shut
The Fox and the Weasel sipped beer on the patio of the Pennant bar last week and talked about the old days at the Beachcomber next door. They were reaching way back – to 1961, …
April 29, 1982