Every dive around San Diego yields discovery One of the oddest of these noises, an irregular bumping sound heard frequently in the rocks and ridges off the beaches from the La Jolla Caves south to …
July 23, 2023
Back to profile
Stories by Roger Anderson (RIP)
Dead dolphin off La Jolla Cove
With the Rolling Stones 500 miles north of El Cajon
Lester Bangs and me on Altamont the day the music died "We’re getting word that the free Rolling Stones concert planned for San Francisco is on,” the radio DJ said after spinning some platter. “The …
November 20, 2022
San Diego cops talk about prostitutes after the Stingaree
San Diego prostitutes after the Stingaree shut down When Guthrie joined the police force back in ’29, his superiors explained to him that sex was “nice and necessary” but needed to be kept quiet. “If …
October 3, 2022
I-15 mimics L.A traffic, when there were quail in Bonita
Traffic spares no one “People say, ‘You got a real transportation problem on the 15.’ Well, it’s less a transportation problem than it is a land-use problem. A lot of the people, because they can’t …
January 24, 2022
Early San Diego Italians, Grandmother hosted the Marstons and Fletchers, La Mesa as Hollywood
India Street and Beyond: A history of the Italian Community of San Diego, 1850-1980 Pietro Lusardi came to San Diego with his brother, Francesco. They ran sheep on Mt. Palomar, then built a 3000-acre sheep …
May 22, 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
Beat Farmers, Norteno, Psychotic Waltz, Altamont with Lester Bangs
Birth of the Beat Farmers “Somewhere along in there, Herrera became partners with Jim Pagni, who brought in a lot of concerts in those days, and the Palace changed its name to JJ’s. Glory ended …
May 3, 2021
Acorn history, Don Juan Forster, Cabrillo, John Crosby traces trail over Baja
Acorns in San Diego History The people roasted grasshoppers, yuccas, and ate abalone. But their number-one food source was the acorn, shaken from branches of Coast Live Oak trees. They poured hot water through baskets …
April 26, 2021
Eucalyptus transformed San Diego landscape, oleander sends me over the edge
Eucalyptus It Is The eucalyptus tree and its history are not so different from the human influx into the area. Everywhere from El Cajon and La Jolla to Scripps Ranch and South Bay, up to …
April 19, 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
El Cajon classmates Robert Houghton, Roger Anderson, Andrew Hamlin on Lester Bangs
Lester Bangs, El Cajon Kid These “great man” theorists see Lester as self-made and El Cajon actually was a hindrance. Those of us from El Cajon, especially those who knew him well, have a much …
January 24, 2021
Beat Farmers, Frank Zappa, Lester Bangs
Birth of the Beat Farmers Jerry Raney: “This guy from El Cajon High named Jack Chan knew how to play, we’d go out and get the Beatles songbooks and go through 'em and he’d teach …
June 7, 2020
Ramona – a lot of stories
Was Helen Hunt Jackson's Ramona real? During late winter and early spring of every year, a bit of confusion reigns up north in the town of Ramona. The folks at the chamber of commerce there …
January 13, 2020
Best Reader stories from 1988
Ku Klux Klan 's John Metzger talks of hate and tears "My father was in the Crusaders, a national organization that was pretty powerful in San Diego, which was part Christian Identity. It’s a church …
December 15, 2019
Roger Anderson and the Reader
Roger Anderson grew up in El Cajon, was part of early San Diego rock scene, wrote for alternative weeklies, and served as art director for the Washington Post. He died in January, 2003 in Baltimore, …
April 14, 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
Old Highway 80: Guatay, Buckman Springs, La Posta, Live Oak Springs, Boulevard, Bankhead Springs, and Jacumba
"Shorty’d gotten on a freight tram in San Diego, headed for Chicago. Got locked in there and froze to death. They found his body later — he was wearing two pairs of pants, and his wrist was cut."
February 22, 1990
Eucalyptus, the non-native tree that does so much. Like kill people.
The branches grow so fast that they cut off views; the roots crack sidewalks, curbs, and roads; they steal water from nearby plants, drop litter on the ground, and exude an oil that kills other plants.
December 14, 1989
Lester Bangs on Altamont the day the music died
In summer of 1969, when the Rolling Stones announced that they were going to tour the United States, it was one of the biggest deals to come along in hippieland in a good long while.
December 14, 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
When early filmmakers zoomed in on San Diego
Disappointingly, the movie shows no scenes of recognizable Lakeside streets or structures that I can compare with the town as I’ve known it during my lifetime. But it does show something more evocative: vistas of wild grass and brush…
September 7, 1989
The Zipper – near death at the Del Mar Fair
Through the hard frozen streets we go at a regular canter; often I am upraised as high as the first story of a house; n*ver do I sink as low as the house doors. — …
July 13, 1989
My grandfather in Point Loma killed himself
My father’s death from cancer last June, at age 71, was a mercy not just because it freed him from the pain of his illness but because he was — always had been — a …
May 25, 1989
Birth of the Beat Farmers
“Country Dick was a Glory fan during the old days, back when he was in high school. As a matter fact, he was student-body vice president at Grossmont High and hired us to play a dance there.”
March 16, 1989
Development more rapacious in San Diego's South Bay
The City of El Cajon bought from us (at an enforced discount) about two-thirds of our front yard and sent in heavy machinery to chop down the olive trees and grade away the lawn and the fence.
December 8, 1988
Was Helen Hunt Jackson's Ramona real?
“I there was such a woman as Ramona, the odds are that she was married not here but in a little chapel on Conde Street. Father Yubach said he seemed to remember marrying a woman by that name.”
September 29, 1988
The Hardback Lester Bangs
I moved to the Bay Area from El Cajon and the fifteen- or twenty-page letters we used to exchange dwindled down to a precious few and the next thing I know you had quit Creem.
November 26, 1987