He loves the people no one wants"I'm used to voices downtown, of agony and pain and just dysfunction, and I had the window down a little so I could hear. I look and there's a …
October 2, 2023
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Stories by Tim Brookes
David Ross – knew San Diego homeless intimately
The Fletchers leave a cautionary tale about alcohol
What happened? A pioneer family's tragedy There was nothing to do but walk back to the house. Eric and his wife walked 10 yards, 20 yards, 30. The sky was still pink in the west. …
August 21, 2023
Fled my father in La Jolla
La Jolla 1962 Dressed in long trousers and boat shoes and a white Lacoste tennis shirt, I accompanied Toby across Vista del Mar and Neptune Place to the Pump House and down concrete steps to …
August 19, 2023
San Diegans who stay on the I-5
The freeway is nobody's home We pass the merge, the infamous junction of I-5 and 805, and paradoxically the traffic slows down even heading south, where four lanes become eight, as we all change lanes …
November 28, 2022
San Diego's hospice users
Grief is like carbon monoxide At this point, this article is going to seem to go seriously astray, so I might as well come clean. My aim is not simply to write about hospice, though …
August 28, 2022
VA Hospital patients tell how they were wounded
Temple of the wounded "The Marines had nothing to do with Agent Orange directly. It’s possible that some Marine groups were out on patrol or in the field, and a spray plane might have flown …
August 1, 2022
1939 Australian Sixteen pops up in San Diego, falconry on Fiesta Island
The Simple Magic of Being Pushed Forward By Wind Norm was still alive. From photographs Annie had sent, he identified the skiff as his own creation by the unique placement of ribs just aft of …
February 13, 2022
San Diego Hell's Angels, truck kills bicyclist near Pringle and Kettner
Where the Bikes Are I noticed one guy playing pool using a broom as a cue. He looked as if he might have been an extra in a movie with a title like Chainsaw Rapists …
December 12, 2021
Dahmer's Diner, Nico, Deadheads, Paul Williams
Eating people is the ultimate control You won’t find Dahmer’s Diner on the bill at the Cannibal Bar in Mission Beach. In fact, DD has been banned from all but two venues in town, SOMA …
September 19, 2021
All San Diegans now: Koreans on Convoy Street, Africans driving cabs, Saddam Hussein's bodyguard
Happy Endings on Convoy Street In all the years I lived in and visited Korea, almost always staying in some relative’s household, I went to countless parties. When they were outside the household, they were …
August 16, 2021
San Diego's highest paid carpenter, smartest plumber, most moral washing machine repairman
He Crawled 700 Miles On His Hands and Knees There’s a rare affliction called the 38-Year-Old Burned-Out-Carpenter Disease. You wake up one morning and your body is crippled, your wife has left you, you’re broke, …
May 17, 2021
Best Reader stories from 1997
Childhood's End: Dr. Spock at 94 53-year-old Morgan, Dr. Spock’s second wife, has been relentless and inventive in her search for ways to keep her husband youthful and healthy. For his 75th birthday, for example, …
January 18, 2020
Best Reader stories from 1996
Mafia in San Diego before World War II (first in series of six stories) “The raids, all made with search warrants, started soon after noon and were not completed until early evening. All of the …
January 12, 2020
Tim Brookes and the Reader
Tim Brookes, born and raised in England, living in Vermont, founded Writers Without Borders and the Endangered Alphabets Project. Brookes has been an essayist for NPR. He wrote for the Reader in the 1990s and …
April 27, 2019
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
A Ben & Jerry's ice cream cake comes to mind
Happy weddings are all alike; every unhappy wedding is unhappy in its own way. I've been married three times. My first and third were both happy, and startlingly alike. Both took place within a few …
June 1, 2006
Guitar: An American Life
Guitar: An American Life by Tim Brookes. Grove Atlantic Press; May 2005; 339 pages; $24. Audio book version Blackstone Audio. FROM THE DUST JACKET: "Shortly before his 50th birthday, baggage handlers destroyed Tim Brookes's guitar, …
The English ex-pats living in San Diego
You don’t go to a pub to meet new people: you go to a pub to meet people you already know — in a sense, to avoid people. The pub allows us to be sociable without taking risks;
April 22, 1999
Problems with the Dale Akiki-Faith Chapel case
Here are two stories about memory: When Carol Hopkins visited New York as a young woman, her best friend said to her, "Whenever you get into a cab, look at the license number. That way, …
August 20, 1998
Sledd In the canyon of envy
The first thing Dino DeLuke does when I ask him about his heavy metal/alter-native hard rock band Sledd — after making sure that I know the band is in the studio recording a CD and …
February 19, 1998
San Diego's Steve Garber – a thinking man's plumber
The Romans were as efficient at plumbing as they were at building roads, bringing water from the hills into Rome, and used an astonishing 300 gallons per person per day, more than twice what even Californians use.
June 26, 1997
San Diego commute – by bicycle, trolley, car pool, van pool, Coaster, and alone in car
The first curious thing about commuting by car is that in some ways it is the exact opposite of travel in general. When we travel we do so with our eyes and ears open, asking …
September 12, 1996
Why San Diego asthmatics won't take their meds
THIS IS WHAT ONE KIND OF BAD ASTHMA ATTACK IS LIKE. At half-past midnight on a November night in 1991, my stomach suddenly felt uneasy. This was hardly unusual. For the past month, barely a …
May 16, 1996
San Diego cricketers in exile
Practice begins at 5:30 SDCC time (that is, about 5:50) on Wednesday evening. It’s warmer than this in England, dammit. I haven’t brought my white cable-knit sweater, and I put on a grey sweatshirt, feeling vaguely illegitimate.
September 14, 1995
Who uses hospice care in San Diego
When someone dies in the state of California, we know, or can find out, what would seem to be everything we might want to know about the event: the place, date, and time of death; …
May 25, 1995