My Life of Crime I married my third wife in ’78. She was pregnant. We went to the swap meet in Spring Valley, and I was doin’ dealings for some turquoise rings, and I looked …

Offbeat Tourist Spots You don’t have to go to Northern California in order to see redwoods. A substantial stand of trees estimated to be about seventy years old and ranging up to eighty feet tall …

We Used to Play Acoustic Delta Blues on the Corner of Prospect "We used to play acoustic delta blues on the corner of Prospect and Herschel. We would put on really nice suits and shine …

Two Divided by Two Learning some of the courtroom shortcuts made things easier for me — places north of Date Street where you can park all day for free, the back entrance to the county …

Are the van Dams Fit Parents? In their neighborhood, with the type of activity they had in their house, who knows what other types of things were going on in that house? It all stems …

Loser’s Guide to Lakeside Most of Lindo Lake is nice, with grass and ducks, but on the north side of the lake is a small ditch where future generations of white trash like to hangout, …

Home Before Dark “Part of the procedure before praying is washing their feet in the sinks. That was another problem. This was going on in the restrooms, creating water on the floor. It was not …

I Don’t Need This Aggregation Reggae (the music played by impoverished Jamaican blacks, often revolutionary in nature) blasts from the back yard of a nearby fraternity party. Young men holler, wiggle their behinds, and wave …

Don’t Bust That Bottle on My Account “The last real trouble he had was when bikers — predominately members of the Mongols, a particularly tough East County outfit — would frequent the hotel and often …

SD’s Tennis Curse San Diego has played its own role. Great weather, ample facilities, and the region’s heavily middle-class economy depolarize tennis, blunting country club snobbery, and turning tennis instead into just another California outdoor …

Read about San Diego architecture by Susan Vaughn. Tower Envy San Diego’s least successful tower aesthetically is Sea World’s 320-foot Skytower. Unlike the 984-foot Eiffel or many other towers throughout the world, where you ascend …

National City Confidential DeForest pointed out that 90% of NC businessmen, who are primarily Anglo, live outside the city and “therefore don’t elect city officials and don’t contribute to officials’ campaigns.'’ He asserted that he …

South of Broadway: The Pigeons in Horton Plaza He used to own the Off-Broadway Theater next door, the last burlesque house on the West Coast, “I paid $5 a week rent, and I took in …

The Derek, Frieda, and Abbe Chronicles At the corner of Magnolia, the only area on Renette Avenue where apartment buildings now stood, I spoke with the managers of each of the four apartment complexes, all …

This is a Test Sketch briefly the condition of the country at the close of the Revolutionary War until the inauguration of Washington. 2. What officers constitute the cabinet of the President? Sketch the history …

On Top of the City Higgs is seventy-four, has been practicing law since 1934, and was president of the San Diego County Bar Association in 1940. His voice is raspy but his sentences are clear …

How to Read a Mug Adolf Hitler's strained smile was frightful, it gave away too much, even embarrassed him, and he always brought a hand up like a claw to cover it. No one has …

Prodigals They speak better English, with better intonations and slang. They listen to American music and Japanese groups like Lunatic Lion or Ayumi Nakamura, whose album covers and song titles burst with English, who slip …

Tijuana Mi Amor Marcos lived for months at the Hotel San Francisco, on Calle Primera, across from La Funeraria San Martin. His room was littered with Argentine novels and Communist literature from Latin America. The …

A 180-million-year-old Friend It was sheer proximity that charmed me. His claws were as thin as embroidery floss unraveled, and he had a wisp of grass on his head, which gave him an agreeably foolish …

The Last Vaquero I’d tell Mollie where I was gonna camp, and she’d pack the ol’ mule and drag him around till I got to that camp, and she’d have it all set up. The …

The Tale of an Elephant The worst of Jouett’s problems were yet to come. Media representatives wanted to be present when Cindy arrived in mid-December. The elephant trainer and keepers wanted no one there. They …

Magical Dwarf’s Sad Orbit Maybe it’s premature to call someone an astronomer while they’re still in graduate school, but it would probably be okay in Ben Oppenheimer’s case because he and another graduate student had …

Climbing Some millions of years from now, the San Jacintos will look the way the White Mountains in Vermont do now: soft and rounded. The Sierras of Yosemite are granitelike quartz diorite, like the San …

For more celebrities, click here. For author celebrities, click here. For public figure and fraud celebrities, click here. For sports celebrities, click here. Bursting With the Relentless Energy of All Human Life Do you remember …

Hell with the Fire Gone Out There is a small library in town, but not a single stoplight. Parking is free. There is no hospital in Borrego, which, I’m told, militates against larger development. A …

Soul of a City I left Kensington and found an apartment in the College Heights section. I thought that living near the university might be like living in the small New England college town where …

The Imperial Valley Paradox Cesar Enriquez is the director of Casa de Amistad, a community center in Brawley that works with farm workers. “I really was a believer in what our hero, Emiliano Zapata, said: …

Diary of an Orange Grove About 45 percent of the water in Fallbrook flows into groves, nurseries, and fields. In Rainbow 95 percent of the water is agricultural; in Valley Center, 85 percent. But when …

Party’s Over "At first it was sporadic," she said. "It was, like, for two years, the same group of people, and it bothered us, but it was every once in a while. Then, this past …

Moon for the Misbegotten Pearce snapped away while Arenas’s city uniform was draped around his ankles. Then it got ugly. Arenas and two other public employees allegedly grabbed Pearce, pushed him around, stole the camera, …

The Reader dines out at the Shanghai in La Jolla The appetizers are good but not unusual, and the egg roll pastry (but not the filling) is the best I’ve ever eaten. The shellfish dishes, …

Deepak’s Six Pack No doubt about it: Deepak Chopra has the New Age set enthralled. This is Wayne Dyerland. Past-Lives Therapyland. Verging on the spiritual turf of Linda Evans and Ramptha, her 5th-century revived adviser …

For more celebrities, click here. For author celebrities, click here. For thinker and artist celebrities, click here. For sports celebrities, click here. Best Wishes Always He had 1000 letters printed: “I have a collection of …

Kensington Ends at Monroe The town’s demographics are altering. As older lifelong residents die, houses change hands — sometimes to younger kin; other times to younger strangers. Kensington homes, which according to a recent Multiple …

What Do I Have to Be Thankful For? Reed: "I have no plans for Thanksgiving. Just be with good friends, like my family here and with Sister Winnie and St. Vincent's and the Salvation Army." …

Women’s Work She said when she told Castaneda and Silva about the basket, they were excited and wanted to know if it was a fancy tamul basket. They were disappointed to find out it was …

Drilling in on a Little Piece of Oregon “See those gouges, where the ponds are?” He points to what look like two giant tank-tracks through the middle of the valley. “Those are what happened here …

Reservations But for all its civilizedness — this thing of history — I guess what was missing was a real sense of tradition, of classic history. You know, like when you see these names — …

Man vs MD Every patient, as well as every dog, has his day, and mine came. It occurred in the local hospital ward during my recovery from a rather serious illness. In this environment our …

I tell them my name is Ernie Klein, I'm 42 years old, and I'm unemployed Finally, after tapping her forehead with a pencil and then looking through a pile of papers on her desk, she …

Mystery of the Beaked Whales By the time they arrived the tide had gone out and the animal lay dead on the sand. “There was a guy from the Navy already there. He was asking …

The Julia Child of gardening “Chickweed is the main winter weed of my garden, and in a way I don’t mind because it’s edible.” She pulls up the tiny plant, its leaves not so feathery …

What Greater Curse Than Life Without Verse Theobald opened a correspondence with Ezra Pound that lasted for years. Throughout this time, the poet was an inmate at St. Elizabeth’s mental hospital in Washington, D.C., having …

If I’d been born a woman Ask any man you know if he’d like to be a woman, you get an automatic “No.” Too messy. Too emotional. Too hard. Most men can’t imagine going through …

Triumph of the Swill “Schwarzkopf’s got a hard-on for special ops. He and General Stiner, who commands SEALS and Special Forces, can’t stand each other. Then there’s the rivalry between Army line officers —artillery, infantry, …

Where We Were “Tell them there’s been a terrible tragedy and lots of people have died and that we need to pray for the victims and for their families and for the horrible people who …

Josie Scripps She reports that the county, for its size, is second only to an area in Africa. Larger areas like Brazil and Ceylon contain greater quantities of gems, she says, but none has the …

Clang, clang, clang In the summer you could get a fifty-cent pass for the whole week. ” She recalls passing her ticket out the window to a friend to squeeze two rides for the price …

Here to Clean Up Bruce’s departed tenant had left telltale signs of the "young bachelor" — a floor so encrusted with dirt in places that I had to chisel it off with a knife, a …