San Diegans at the Renegade explain country music The Renegade does not hide behind that generic tyranny of the latest urban middle-class version of good taste. The tavern is in-your-face like Willie Nelson with his …
September 5, 2021
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Stories by Stephen Dobyns
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Country fans at the Renegade, fireworks fanatics, the troubles of apartment ownership
Army-Navy Academy, wine experts behind doors, castrated man's life
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 …
August 29, 2021
San Diego's weasels, squirrels, worms, rats
I Wanted to Own Him Until He Opened His Mouth Six days later, on a morning when the air was light blue, the weasel left his kill on the driveway, a young opossum so dead …
August 14, 2021
Reader writers get up very close to San Diego's homeless
Blood Brothers It wasn’t long before the owner of the radiator shop discovered that Rat had been sleeping in the van. But when the man saw Rat’s beat-up face and how sick he was, he …
June 27, 2021
Would-be feminists on sand in PB, why the Yukon is dangerous, great white sharks lurk nearby
Pretty Woman Ann, 21, who filled out her bikini in a perfectly proportionate manner, said she was satisfied with her figure. She listened serenely as I spoke with her friends, but her voice boomed with …
March 14, 2021
UCSD entertains species bending, the automated house, an app to find gun bearers
My Gender Is Bunny Cárdenas is spending more than 15 consecutive days living in Second Life. “My contract with myself was to be in Second Life for 365 hours [wearing the headset], except when I …
November 16, 2020
Border Angels, being Muslim in San Diego, what's a green card worth?
Border Angels "We know the kind of people we catch here. They're horrible people." The Border Patrol agent's tone was no more than blandly informative. It was 7:00 p.m. July 16, and we were at …
November 14, 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
Hacker in Mission Valley, gene warrior in La Jolla
She told me my arm was gone. We argued about that for five minutes. I mean, I could feel it. When I was in school, I was given two pieces of information about the brain …
August 16, 2020
Immigrants flock to San Diego
Border Angels "We know the kind of people we catch here. They're horrible people." The Border Patrol agent's tone was no more than blandly informative. It was 7:00 p.m. July 16, and we were at …
August 9, 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
Best Reader stories from 2006
Border angels I wanted to learn about a group called Border Angels that, among other things, sets out water in the desert areas of the 66-mile San Diego sector. Usually, gallon bottles of water are …
February 16, 2020
Best Reader stories from 2005
Salvation Mountain The Slabs are Slab City, three miles east of Niland, between the sultry Salton Sea and the Chocolate Mountains. Years ago the concrete slabs supported the barracks of Camp Dunlap, where General George …
February 15, 2020
Best Reader stories from 2002
He's sad for ships DeRosset doesn’t speak abstractly about his work. He’s a storyteller. “What’s really nice,” he told me before I’d had a chance to see the painting at the church, “is that I’ve …
February 2, 2020
Stephen Dobyns and the Reader
Stephen Dobyns wrote cover features for the Reader from 1998 through 2008. Dobyns’ poetic works count among them the 1971 Concurring Beasts, a National Poetry Series award winner (Black dog, red dog), and a Melville …
July 20, 2019
Other San Diego summers
Phoenix without apologies Traveler, consider our Phoenix. An hour away by air, this flat, posh suburb of Greater L.A. is your finest summer vacation bargain. For the price of a bad weekend in a tacky …
July 6, 2019
Certain San Diegans feel their missing limbs
Most stories begin with a person or an event. This one begins with a book. Last summer I read The Brain That Changes Itself by research psychiatrist and psychologist Norman Doidge, M.D., which discusses developments …
July 9, 2008
Bodies…The Exhibition. at University Towne Centre
Maybe it’s my age — the dark side of my sixties, an elder proto-baby boomer, those 78 million Americans born between 1946 and 1964. Maybe it’s because I’ve been tearing my hair filling out Medicare …
March 5, 2008
23 Reader writers describe the regime of editor Judith Moore
Busy Fingers Are Happy Fingers — Joe Deegan Mother Reader — Barbarella Build Your Writing Muscles — Ollie Let the Tape Recorder Do the Work — Matthew Lickona Faith — Abe Opincar Make Something Better …
August 16, 2007
Make Something Better
I never met Judith Moore. To me she was a voice over the phone: slangy, half-cynical, eager to talk about her dog, and passionate about writing. I first talked to her in the summer of …
August 16, 2007
Enrique Morones puts out jugs of water in Otay Mesa, in Ocotillo, in Jacumba, in Campo
"We know the kind of people we catch here. They're horrible people." The Border Patrol agent's tone was no more than blandly informative. It was 7:00 p.m. July 16, and we were at the edge …
December 7, 2006
Reader writers tell of great wedding moments and minor disasters
At Times It Was Like Shared Music, at Times Like a Skin Graft or Root Canal — Stephen Dobyns I do at a coffin sale — Dorothy Stewart A Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream Cake …
June 1, 2006
At times it was like shared music, at times like a skin graft or a root canal
Chunks of ice rode the whitecaps as the Nantucket ferry steamed out of the harbor in Woods Hole and into the Atlantic. The March wind had driven Isabel into the warmth of the cabin, while …
June 1, 2006
Leonard Knight's Salvation Mountain at Slab City
My friend Rex says, "You'll love the Slabs in August. Some would call you adventurous and brave, and some completely out of your mind." The Slabs are Slab City, three miles east of Niland, between …
November 3, 2005
Thomas Lux's The Cradle Place
"Much poetry is arbitrary, obscure, and inaccessible. It makes people feel stupid. That has a great deal to do with Modernism and Post-Modernism, even though many of the Modernists were great poets undeniably."
April 8, 2004
Will Bob McElroy's Alpha Project solve San Diego's homelessness?
Bob McElroy, head of the Alpha Project, and Martin Luther King III were walking slowly along the sidewalk as McElroy was telling King about homelessness in San Diego and the problems of alcohol and narcotics …
December 12, 2002
Casa Raphael in Vista takes on drunks
John’s eyes were red and unfocused. He couldn’t stand still but took a few steps into the parking lot, then kicked the railing of the stairs leading to the second floor. “They set me up, …
December 5, 2002
Tugboats of San Diego Bay
From the wheelhouse of the Harbor Commander, I spotted two fat sea lions lounging on a buoy about halfway between the Silver Strand and the Navy shipyard. It was a bright warm February morning, and …
January 24, 2002
San Diego blacksmiths as fine artists
The black-caped, cast-iron devil figure was playing the violin and wearing a top hat and heavy horn-rimmed glasses. It rested on a cast-iron drum with a drumhead made out of a $450 piece of cobalt …
January 10, 2002
They make their home by the San Diego River
His name was Petey and he had lived in the riverbed for 20 years. “It’s a nice place.” He told us that that morning 30 “Mexican kids” had come down looking for a chrome bike, which had been stolen.
October 18, 2001
Cajon Speedway, the fastest 3/8 mile pave oval on the West Coast
Like two dancers executing half a pirouette, the two 3000-pound late-model Sportsman-class stock cars spun out side by side, squealing their tires, as their rear ends slid toward the crash wall and their front ends …
September 6, 2001
San Diego drag queens' allure for heterosexuals
To walk through Horton Plaza at lunchtime on a gorgeous day in late spring with a flamboyantly beautiful woman on your arm is a sure way to snag a lot of looks — quick, long, …
March 1, 2001
San Diego's top tango dancers, Ive and Ludmilla Simard
Like two predatory birds performing a mating ritual high above the mountains, twisting and looping around one another before they lock together and fall hundreds of feet, still spinning, until they break apart moments before …
October 12, 2000
A precarious life in San Diego Bay's A-8 anchorage
“The Port Authority took away all the good anchorages and they put us out here because they knew we wouldn’t last, but it’s the furthest place from anything too. They couldn’t put it anyplace else.”
August 3, 2000
29 Reader writers on their fathers
To commemorate Father's Day, this issue contains a collection of reflections from Reader writers about their fathers: The Last Tag Sale — Jeanne Schinto An Air of Exoticism — Duncan Shepherd Kinder Than I Would …
June 15, 2000
Positioned on a Pedestal
My father died in the autumn of 1989 of congestive heart failure. His name was Lester and he was 79 and, as he recedes into the past, he gradually ceases to be a single human …
June 15, 2000
Barrio Logan's Mini Truck Dismantling Center
Support your local junkie,” read the bumper sticker. “Ahh, Marion, do you have to?” said the police in Barrio Logan. The junkie is Marion Martinez, part-owner of Mini Truck Dismantling Center, what used to be …
May 4, 2000
On January 22, San Diego Opera will burn a witch
A cockroach looking down toward the empty end of a cereal box — that’s my sense of the bare stage of the San Diego Civic Theatre viewed from the first row. No trace is left …
January 13, 2000
Moody's, Fiesta, Hector's bring lunch to San Diego worksites
In and out, in and out – it reminds me of my grandmother darning the toe of a sock as the needle came and went, except these are lunch trucks see from far away: white, …
July 29, 1999
San Diego's intrepid metal finders
The faint sound through the earphones is like the buzz of a mosquito on the other side of the room when you're trying to sleep. It nags at your attention, keeping you alert. Then, when …
July 1, 1999
Pt. Loma's Glen Fisher plays electric bass with everyone
The drummer wears a puffy red cap over his dreadlocks, and dangling behind his head from a nail in the wall of the garage is a squashed red, yellow, and blue Sesame Street ball, so …
January 21, 1999