No drive-through in my drivewayThe fast-food vendor that owns Kentucky Fried Chicken, Pizza Hut, and Taco Bell is concocting a new recipe for San Diego's Golden Hill community. Tricon Global Restaurants Inc. proposes to rebuild …
October 8, 2023
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Stories by Richard Louv
Golden Hill nixes Kentucky Fried Chicken
Chula Vista drive-in church strangely intimate
The latest Christian worship fad – in National City In one pickup truck, a teenager has his arm stretched across the seat back. The boy's hand is fondling his girlfriend’s hair, but the girl is …
June 12, 2023
Deep look at Mayor Pete Wilson's aides
All the mayor's men White, 35, has been with Wilson longer than any of the mayor's advisors, and has made it a personal policy not to get within writing distance of reporters. He ducked back …
May 20, 2023
1977 Reader guide to record stores, overnight bike rights
Record stores Chameleon, Swap-a-Tape, Monty Rockers, Blue Meanie, Arcade, Scratching the Surface, Flipside, Folk Arts Overnight bike rides San Clemente, Lake Elsinore, Julian, Borrego, Tecate Miniature golf La Mesa, Kearny Mesa, Escondido, Del Mar, Pacific …
September 24, 2022
How San Diego lost the land east of La Jolla
How San Diego lost its pueblo land Five years after the two lone bidders won the La Jolla Shores acreage, General Atomic was able to pick up similarly desirable property on Torrey Pines Mesa for …
April 4, 2022
San Diego short takes from 1976 and 1977
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
Runaways at The Bridge and Project Oz
Runaway “I ran out the back door and had to climb over the neighbors’ barbed wire fence—they have it to keep dogs out. I cut up my legs and tore the halter dress I was …
March 7, 2022
National City drive-in church, San Diego folk music in the 1960s
Gimme that drive-in religion “One of the greatest things is you get more offerings than you do in regular church. When that usher walks up to the car, everybody puts something in the cup. It’s …
March 5, 2022
Golden Hill – slowly gentrifying
19 townhomes at 32nd and C instead of park The largest undeveloped parcel in Golden Hill, once considered by the Greater Golden Hill Planning Committee as a top choice for a neighborhood park, is now …
February 17, 2020
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
Richard Louv and the Reader
Louv wrote feature stories for the Reader in the 1970s before becoming a regular writer for the San Diego Union. Editor's picks of stories Louv wrote for the Reader:. Where the bad boys are Just …
October 12, 2019
Long-time Democrat takes on Pete Wilson
"One of the secrets of a successful campaign is to know where the hell you’re going,” says the candidate, fumbling with a folded piece of paper on which one of his workers has written cryptic …
August 30, 1979
Babbitts flock to San Diego – Norman Vincent Peale, Robert Schuller, Paul Harvey, Dwight Chapin, W. Clement Stone
Overflowing with ten thousand Red Carpet real estate salesmen and women, Amway home-products distributors, lawyers, scores of would-be millionaires. Arena was a great caldron of brimming with clean-cut, close-shaved positive thinkers. On stage was W. …
February 16, 1978
Psychics at the El Cortez – numerologists, clairvoyants, yogis, and Rosicrucians,
People are walking around with little pyramids on their heads. It is disconcerting. Reverend Douglas Sobel leans toward me and tries to figure out what I am thinking. I lean backward and try to keep …
December 8, 1977
1977 San Diego guide to health clinics
In the early 1970s, a handful of San Diego “free” clinics struggled along on private donations and limited county and city funding. Revenue sharing, introduced by the Nixon Administration, opened up a steady source of …
October 6, 1977
Shotgun Tom Kelly –last of the screamers
Disc jockeys don’t walk down hallways the same way television announcers do. TV announcers walk down halls like they’re off to an important meeting, staring at some memo in their hand; coiffured, rosy, manicured statesmen …
September 29, 1977
The latest Christian worship fad – in National City
Rev. Paul Veenstra is wrestling with his umbrella. The wind has the umbrella and the umbrella has Veenstra and he is being pulled upward. Rain is whipping around him. He is standing on the back …
July 28, 1977
Pete Wilson's aides - Otto Bos, Bob White, Larry Thomas, and others
"If Jimmy Carter had set out in 1973 not to run for president but to wage a proxy fight for control of the Anaconda Corporation, he'd have had the same people with him. Hamilton Jordan, …
July 14, 1977
Lee Hubbard – free enterprise friend on San Diego's city council
IT IS 7:30 a.m. and you can hear an industrial vacuum cleaner. The office of Deputy Mayor Lee Hubbard is at the end of a long, cavernous hall in the city administration building. This hall …
February 17, 1977
Advent, Sony, Muntz change TV for everyone
Electronic philosopher Marshall McLuhan used to be widely quoted as saying, “Television reintegrates the human senses, thereby making books obsolete.” TV critic Michael J. Arlen had something to say about that: “Oh, boy, some life …
November 23, 1976
WWI veterans tell how the war really was
On this day, over half a century ago, Chester Hanson threw his bandolier into a camp stove and ran from the exploding bullets, while Ettore Bronte was singing in the streets of Paris, celebrating the …
November 11, 1976
Timothy Leeeeeary – in jail in San Diego
"The media loves to set up people as heroes or villains; and sure, if you want to see me as a villain, that's fine with me, but I have no more relationship to acid, in the overall scope of my work, than the bomb has reference to Einstein."
October 14, 1976
Christ the King church – separation of races by Mass
The statue in front of Christ the King Church in Logan Heights is becoming legendary. During the '60s, vandals broke the hands from Jesus's outstretched arms and painted his face black. Then one morning the …
September 23, 1976
Mondale unconvincingly presses flesh in San Diego
The media have a hard time with Walter Mondale. Dole is related to pineapples, though he’s supposed to have the personality of a radish. Ford is a dependable, unexciting four-door. And recently, I heard two …
September 16, 1976
Del Campo, Del Rio juvey camps – better than home
Just as the people who live along the ocean shore are affected by the tides and the pull of the moon, the children of the street in 5- inner territories like Shell Town and Logan …
August 5, 1976
One process server lights a paper bag at the back door
In the process server’s basement office the air is charged with excitement. Steve Knox starts jumping up and down, but his feet do not leave the floor. His face is getting redder. He’s sweating, grinning. …
July 29, 1976
No supermarket in Golden Hills, just corner markets
If you drive south on Highway 5 and take the Pershing Drive off-ramp down to 26th Street, you will wind up on a narrow road through green hills and cool groves of trees, past a …
July 8, 1976
How 1976 graduations felt in San Diego
In a 1958 issue of San Diego Magazine, Associate Editor James Britton described white, middle-and upper-middle-class Grossmont High School this way: “Symbolically, Grossmont High School is on a hill just below Mount Helix, the point …
June 24, 1976