A walk on the (whole) beachA San Diego summer, with all the time in the world, brings up one challenge I’ve tried before and failed to complete: walking our entire 70-mile stretch of Pacific Ocean …
May 1, 2024
Back to profile
Stories by Thomas K. Arnold
< Newer
| Older stories >
A 70-mile walk on San Diego beaches and other ways we'd spend our summer vacation
San Diego's 10% killed by strangers
You are more likely to be murdered by someone you know than by someone you don’t. The latest FBI statistics show that fewer than 10% of the 20,000 people who were murdered in the United …
January 17, 2024
San Diego's architectural marvels and misfires
There’s a hilltop house in Cardiff, at 959 Cornish Drive, that is not like the others in the tony seaside neighborhood. The house itself resembles a giant box, light yellow in color, with the front …
December 20, 2023
Truly weird San Diego collectors
I’ve been going to the San Diego County fair for decades, and in that time, I’ve seen so many things. But one of my standout memories remains the time I was walking through the hobby …
November 1, 2023
Fear and Self-Loathing in La Jolla
Frank. Frank the Tank. Frank. The. Tank.Frank is the Tank — well, sometimes… Let me explain.Frank — and we’re not going to use his last name here, in order to, as they say, “protect the …
October 11, 2023
Re-Animated Records works weird magic
Re-Animated Records, in the heart of La Mesa’s bustling downtown “village,” is a monster of a record store — in more ways than one. It’s named after the Lovecraftian horror comedy Re-Animator, which is about …
October 4, 2023
Flower feels
The famed Flower Fields of Carlsbad are among the few local attractions that have actually gotten better with time. The zoo? Natural-habitat-mania has put many of the animals out of sight. Sea World? Overrun with …
October 4, 2023
How long do the Imperial Beach, Ocean Beach, Crystal, and Oceanside piers have?
All my life I’ve been infatuated with piers, maybe because it’s the closest you can get to walking on water.Photograph by Matthew SuarezOne of my fondest early memories is fishing with my dad from the …
August 16, 2023
Antique collectives gone in Solana Beach, Ocean Beach, Carlsbad, Ramona, almost gone in Normal Heights
Antique stores and malls are fast becoming antiques themselves. The famed “Antique Row” along Adams Avenue in Normal Heights, which at its peak numbered 25 stores — and gave the stalwart Antique Row Cafe its …
June 28, 2023
From the Pt. Loma Women's Club to the Spirit on Buenos
He brought punk rock to San Diego The patrons heading into the Spirit club shortly before nine on a recent Saturday night might have thought it peculiar that a large, paint-splattered wooden stepladder would be …
June 26, 2023
Deadly San Diego hotels – from Harbor Island and Mission Bay to El Cajon and National City
The oldest hotel murder in San Diego is believed to be that of Roger Whitaker, a gambler who was shot to death in room 309 of the historic Horton Grand Hotel which now stands at …
May 10, 2023
Why La Jolla and Pt. Loma areas lack sidewalks and Burlingame exults in them
This lowly but common part of every city’s infrastructure, as the National Association of City Transportation Officials so eloquently states on its website, plays “a vital role in city life. As conduits for pedestrian movement …
San Diego Reader 2023 Music & Arts issue
On May 11, the Federal Department of Health and Human Services will end the Covid public health emergency. But the bureaucratic behemoth is a slow-footed beast; John Q. Public knows the pandemic ended some time …
March 29, 2023
San Diego's older oldies fanatics
Jeff Schafer is a 61-year-old engineer at Viasat in Carlsbad. He is married with two sons, ages 24 and 27. He estimates that over the last ten years, he’s attended over 100 concerts, featuring such …
February 22, 2023
Trump Trumps Love
Kevin Williams is a popular musician, based out of North San Diego County, who has played in local clubs and bars for more than 20 years. His son Reagan Williams is a musician as well, …
February 1, 2023
The Mission Valley Christmas murder and other sad tales
It was December 24, 2013, Christmas Eve, shortly after midnight. Ilona Flint was excited. She was just finishing up a long shift at the Cathy Jean shoe store in the Mission Valley mall. As soon …
December 21, 2022
San Diego glimpses: the Doors, Elvis, Grateful Dead, Kingston Trio, Beach Boys, Pearl Jam, Gary Puckett, Ritchie Valens
Buckle Up Slide into the passenger seat and buckle up: we’re about to take a driving tour down a decidedly rocky road. Yes, California’s second-largest city will always take a backseat to Los Angeles, which …
Artificial flowers not welcome at Mt. Hope
One day in late March, I got a call from Louise Wyatt. I had just interviewed her for a story on how genetic genealogy had enabled detectives to solve the murder of her daughter Michelle, …
August 24, 2022
Reader defines the limits of dog love
Murphy is an eleven-year-old, second-generation golden doodle, jet black, whom my wife and I nicknamed Velcro because he sticks to our sides. Every the morning he rubs up against my wife or me, whoever gets …
July 6, 2022
Michelle Wyatt murder solved with genetic genealogy
Forty years ago, in March 1982, I wrote a Reader cover story about the brutal rape and murder of a 20-year-old college student named Michelle Wyatt in her Santee condominium. Part of that story concerned …
June 1, 2022
Nixon man ended up as Helen Copley's man
Herb Klein — the perfect man for Helen Copley Gerald Warren, unlike Neil Morgan, is not on the list of close friends Klein named in the preface to his book, and there has been much …
May 21, 2022
Mission Beach – good enough the way it was
Welcome to Mission Beach, where time has stood still — sort of. Unlike Downtown, Old Town, Little Italy, and North Park, Mission Beach hasn’t been made over or “reinvented.” Drive down Mission Boulevard, which bisects …
May 4, 2022
Jaywalking, freeway speeding, dogs off leash, out of the bike lane, illegal trash
We’re all lawbreakers. Each of us. Every one of us. Ever go over the speed limit on the freeway? Then you broke the law. Walk your dog on the Oceanside Pier, or let your puppy …
Wahrenbrock's Book House, Chino's vegetables
A Long Shelf Life Valverde unburdens a perspiring white-haired man loaded from waist to double chin with titles about World War II. He says to Valverde, I'm just kinda reminiscing about my war.” Waiting in …
February 12, 2022
The internet writers gang up on San Diego
The Marina District is one of San Diego’s more prestigious addresses. Once consisting mostly of warehouses and vacant lots, the 343-acre area on the west side of Downtown is now a cluster of apartments, high-rise …
Doubleday follows Luis Urrea to Tijuana, priggish Richard Henry Dana visits the presidio
A Living Cloud The next morning, I am greeted by my media escort, Penny. This is a fascinating new feature of my life — escorts. They pick you up, drive you around, provide snacks, meals, …
January 10, 2022
What drives San Diego neighbors crazy
Michael Vilkin owned a huge vacant lot in Olivenhain, right next to a house John Upton was renting. On the morning of March 28, 2013, Vilkin drove up to the 2.6-acre lot on Lone Jack …
Clint McKinnon – San Diego's early Democrat; Gloria Penner – KPBS voice of the mundane
Mac “The Communists in San Diego had a little cell that was trying to take over the Journal. A general called me up one day; ‘Do you realize you have three Communists in your editorial …
December 27, 2021
San Diego roads that have disappeared, vanished movie palaces
The Lost Roads of San Diego In 1944, the land between Midway Drive and Sports Arena Boulevard (then Frontier Street) became combed with the short streets of a wartime housing project. After the war, transients …
December 6, 2021
San Diego – city of shame, University Avenue, roommates from hell, writers write about moms
Roommates from Hell I walked outside to the storage door. I pushed on the door and opened it. I saw the rope around John’s neck and John’s face looking at me. I screamed and ran …
December 5, 2021
Bike paths, bike lanes, cycle tracks, vehicular bicycling, sharrows, road diets, e-bikes
Back in 1897, Mayor Samuel Black of Columbus, Ohio, vowed to crack down on a new menace that appeared to be taking over his city’s streets: bicycles. He called reckless bicyclists “evil” and blasted “scorchers,” …
November 24, 2021
Where did San Diego's missing persons go?
At the time of his disappearance six years ago, Skylar Gregory Peterson Tosic was employed by the county of San Diego as a caregiver for his mother’s fiancé, a popular Escondido musician known as Ukulele …
November 10, 2021
San Diego Door, Street Journal, San Diego Magazine
Notes from Underground Most of the paper's staff lived in the Door commune in a Victorian House on Albatross Street that rented for $295 a month. In late 1973 they were asked to move by …
November 6, 2021
San Diego Reader’s Best Of issue 2021
Best Friend to Joshua Trees Is there anything to be done about the plight of the Joshua tree? While state and federal agencies dither over whether the imperiled desert dweller deserves endangered species protections, one …
October 20, 2021
The Copley family and the Nixons, Dr. Seuss, San Diego Magazine
Dear Dick: The San Diego Union, Evening Tribune, and Nixon: A Romance in Letters Nixon to Copley: “The ride down and back in your spic-and-span new plane, the superb dinner which you hosted jointly with …
October 16, 2021
San Franciscans and others driving San Diego's real estate
We’ve all heard about how home prices in San Diego have never been higher, and that demand is so great that homes for sale typically get multiple bids and wind up selling for more than …
September 22, 2021
Murder brings down price of some San Diego homes
The house at 2719 Chestnut Avenue in northeast Carlsbad sits on a tract of land once used for tomato farming. The tract is a neat, well-kept neighborhood that is home to a mix of young …
August 18, 2021
San Diego tacos – from the beginning to now
It’s just after noon on a Thursday at Escondido’s TJ Tacos. The place is surprisingly uncrowded, with only about six people in line for the taco stand’s signature adobada tacos, a spicy blend of marinated …
August 4, 2021
Unsheltered: ‘Homeless’ doesn’t tell the whole story in San Diego
Karina Martinez is 32 and a native of Oceanside. She was born and raised in the Los Arbolitos neighborhood, just west of where El Camino Real meets Mission Avenue. She has four children, who are …
June 23, 2021
Encinitas bolshevik beach bum, the demise of O.B. Spaceman, Bill Gookin
The Man Who Broke the Rules He worked for several months at a bakery injecting jelly into the jelly donuts. The job paid minimum wage, but it had great benefits: he could eat all the …
May 23, 2021
The siren song of Sunset Cliffs, our beach gangs – O.B. Rats, Tuna Boys, P.B. Vermin
The Deadly View from Sunset Cliffs “We used to average about a hundred calls a year,” he says, “but in 1986 it was down to sixty-nine, and in 1987, there were only forty-three.” These figures …
May 9, 2021