"We want to go where people are. We don't expect people to come to us. In [Pacific Beach], people are at the bars, parties, and drinking beer, so this is where we go."

Love Bites Sam and I drive back to the dog room in El Cajon. By now, Sam has racked up a total bill (vets, food, clothes, general destruction, trainer, vaccination shots, equipment) in excess of …

Big Bite Gary Sehnert works as the United States representative and distributor for several wineries in the Guadalupe Valley ten miles inland from Ensenada. Though he operates from his home in Little Italy, his job …

Too Brief a Treat: The Letters of Truman Capote "Why did Capote dislike Gore Vidal so much?" "He didn't dislike Vidal so much. He didn't hate Vidal the way Vidal hated him. They rubbed each …

In Lakeside, Chickens Make Good Neighbors You can't use your nose to find the ranch because the sharp ammonia odor you may associate with chicken farms is absent. Harold Hilliker, second-generation owner of Hilliker's Egg …

All in the Family This story begins in 1951, with a brief liaison between Margaret Helen Kinney and John Hunt. She was a stenographer and he was a clerk at Borden dairy company in Cedar …

Developers Eye Sleepy Descanso It's only 35 or 40 minutes from downtown San Diego to the junction of Interstate 8 and State Route 79. And just a couple of minutes north of there lies the …

Grisly Grinders in Wildcat Canyon Goodwin acknowledges that Wildcat Canyon has developed a reputation for being a dangerous drive and offers this explanation. "It's a two-lane roadway, it's very windy, it's up and down. Maybe …

I'd Never Marry a Pale Girl On a sunny afternoon in June, Mark Davis is peeling off the top of his wetsuit after taking a swim at La Jolla Shores. Davis, 23, just returned to …

Tijuana Dream Tracker "Just like Florence, just like Rome, Tijuana, too, has its monuments." Professor Julio Rodríguez steers his blue Ford through Zona Rio, gesturing at one statue after another. "And what are monuments? What …

Generations My mother was a jazz fan. Her mother, Florence Hawkins, sang onstage (her signature piece was "My Man Bill"), and her showgirl aunt, Caroline Snowden, was a name star in the earliest moments of …

H is for Hacker Like many hackers, David Nakamura Hulton goes by more than one name. His other one, his handle, is h1kari. Some people say you shouldn’t ask a hacker what his handle means. …

Surfer Girls Female wave-addiction pioneers. Some women have always surfed. Three hundred years ago, Hawaiians of both sexes rode the waves, and when the sport moved beyond the islands, when the Hawaiian Duke Kahanamoku in …

Relevancy for the less-than-rabid — Ian Pike The Cali-Baja art scene — Chad Deal Art spaces that cultivate communities — Barbarella Fokos Beyond selfie curation — Deirdre Lickona The theater scene has rhythms — Jeff …

The Guest is Like God One Sunday in November 1989, Barry Lall, an Indian-American doctor, was driving over the Coronado Bridge with his wife Hema, their four-year-old son Arjun, Lall's father and mother, and a …

Reina's Story North County's sex slaves. In April 2001, 15-year-old Reina was leaving her home in Tenancingo, a high-plateau town west of Mexico City. She was happier than she’d been in a while, traveling north …

Site 151’s Four Million Dollar Mansion Wealth has nothing to do with luck. Ralph Genovese doesn't use the word "mansion" to describe the three dwellings he will construct on a mountaintop in Rancho Santa Fe. …

Crash, Crash, Crash A handsome rookie roars around Cajon Speedway. 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 …

The Death of Judy Huscher The body lies in a position of repose, a 12-year-old girl in pajamas, on her bed, in Fallbrook, California. Her blue eyes, though open, see nothing, and for ten more …

John Lennon's guitar found in San Diego Julien’s Auction House in Beverly Hills calls it “one of biggest finds in music history.” Intravaia and McCaw found video of Lennon playing the guitar and noted several …

Barber-slash-slasher gets ten years in jail Vaughn didn't know the barber, Daniel Roberto Flores, who was the only other person in the shop. When Flores insisted on trimming Vaughn's beard with a straight razor, the …

Women Think That Men Are Hairy Women Who cares if the hunter leaves home hungry? I was about to participate in a seminar where women spend two days learning about men. I mentioned my upcoming …

Maine lobster in North Park Pete’s Seafood and Sandwich brings the crustacean. The lobster roll had good-sized pieces of knuckle and claw meat from a Maine lobster, served chilled on a griddled New England style, …

My Highschool Days With Lester Bangs When Lester Bangs moved to Detroit to join the staff of Creem magazine, we kept in touch with letters and phone calls that came less and less often. The …

If I'd Been Born a Woman “Don’t be such a girl.” I hear the boys taunt each other at the playground near my house. “Don’t be such a girl.” Nothing could be worse. Most men …

Smugglersville “The cops mess with us. The thieves mess with us. Everybody messes with us.” I was hobbling back from the store with a liter of milk, when I saw three young men sitting on …

Who's in Charge Here? SDSU’s Paseo project is in a tangle. It was touted as an urban village, akin to a combination of Horton Plaza and Point Loma's Liberty Station, at the doorstep of San …

A Pit Stop on the FM Band The San Diego radio blues. 6:00: Our listening session kicks off about a third of the way into "Take Me Out" by Franz Ferdinand. You know, past the …

The wild west end: Park Boulevard to 805 — Chad Deal They sure do cuss American: 805 to 15 — Ian Anderson Shots are a dollar when an ambulance drives by : 15 through 56th …

Cornucopia: Stephen Facciola's Edible World “You’re eating bug excrement.” Stephen Facciola and I are standing in the parking lot of a Middle Eastern grocery in disheartening Anaheim. The streets are eight lanes wide. The blocks, …

Candy Man Stephen Traino’s life is sweet. "I was crossing the street in my old hometown of Fairport, New York, to get some candy," Stephen Traino admits, "and the next thing I knew, this car …

Crazy About You A former UCSD psychiatric resident with questionable habits. The date was September 27, 1991, and Dr. Stephen Gould, a La Jolla psychiatrist in private practice, wrote a memo regarding an unpaid assignment …

Foul Ball: The local mood of our national pastime It’s six o’clock in the evening on July 21, and the brilliant blue of the late-afternoon sky over San Diego is bleaching at the edges as …

What is Beauty to the Blind? They were being murdered by the light. I watched and said nothing. When we began our lunch, the sun was just burnishing the windowsill. It was a hot day …

Tacos Are a Tiny Taste of Temptation Eat up, little burros. Fancy wimmen are okay, but there's nuttin' like the real thing: a nice warm adobada taco on a nice cold night beside a nice …

Greetings from Tijuana A mile east of the Tijuana International Airport is an area police call El Fin del Mundo, the End of the World, where drug-cartel assassins dump their victims. Both Mexican and American …

The Hardback Lester Bangs Somewhere between life and literature. I think it’d really be groovy to give the readers an idea of what it was like growing up in El Cajon and reading Burroughs and …

Udo was gone German cyclist killed at Camp Pendleton by North County Transit bus Udo and his new cyclist companions were riding on a shoulderless stretch of a two-lane road, between two low-lying heavy guardrails. …

Everybody's Got a Favorite Bug "I asked Bob Parks to name his favorite wasp. Ammophila: after all these years. Perhaps it was her (the wasp Parks was observing was a female) shape that first drew …

Adventurous eaters know to dig deep into Kearny Mesa, Clairemont Mesa, Mira Mesa, Linda Vista, and Miramar for hidden joys and authentic Asian restaurants. And while some are launching more convenient outposts closer to a …

Food chains and family restaurants once dominated the dining hours of Escondido, Rancho Bernardo, and Poway, and the rest. But a growing foodie movement looks to change this. They've added some quality midrange fare to …

If BEACH TOWNS never offered better than fish tacos and carne asada fries, we'd all be fat and happy. But gentrification always brings a taste for something more, and even the Beaches Ocean and Pacific …

From Mission Hills to Kensington, in Heights both Normal and University, and in Parks North and South, UPTOWN residents don't rest on good looks or thick pocketbooks. They thrive on personality and artful presentation. So, …

The ultracompetitive restaurant landscape around the DOWNTOWN neighborhoods of Marina, Gaslamp, and East Village leaves little room for error in what's already a risky enterprise. The mere fact these restaurants survive recommends them. That they …

These days Little Italy offers some of the best food in town, or at least the most photographed. The neighborhood keeps serving up hits, almost eclipsing the tried-and-true eateries that sit between its shiny new …

Along 20 miles of coastline between Del Mar and Oceanside you can find food aimed at surfers, yogis, young families, and millionaires. Del Mar and Solana Beach give fine dining spectacular views, Carlsbad embraces the …

Foodies living close to the city's center are waking up to the fact that there are excellent reasons to drive all over this county. Reader feasters have caught on to worthy spots in East County, …

When Shirts Talk Clothes make a statement. I have this shirt because my husband says that I'm the slowest mountain biker in the world. [The shirt] says, "Behold the Turtle." By Cruz Medina, June 30, …

For Whom the Bell Tolled A Spanish Civil War story Dave Chriss balances a Scotch and water on the arm of a crushed-velvet chair in his Mira Mesa living room. He awaits the arrival of …

Apple Knows Who Stole Your iPod Anti-Big Brother attitude runs through technological community "Apple could go so far as to mess up an iPod internally, making it useless." By Cruz Medina, Aug. 31, 2006 | …