Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed
Big Screen — Movie commentary
Blurt — Music's inside track
Booze News — San Diego spirits
Classical Music — Immortal beauty
Classifieds — Free and easy
Cover Stories — Front-page features
Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes
Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts
Feast! — Food & drink reviews
Feature Stories — Local news & stories
Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore
From the Archives — Spotlight on the past
Golden Dreams — Talk of the town
The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it
Letters — Our inbox
Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites
Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans
Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists
Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news
News Ticker — News & politics
Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated
Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna
Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated
Poetry — The old and the new
Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers
Reading — The hunt for intellectuals
Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails
San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds
SD on the QT — Almost factual news
Sheep and Goats — Places of worship
Special Issues — The best of
Street Style — San Diego streets have style
Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves
Theater — On stage in San Diego this week
Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative
Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work
Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego
Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads
Your Week — Daily event picks
Did citizens lose when Councilman McCann won?
Three for the price of one examples of our legal system's continued undoing to serve the rich and powerful: a judge issuing an order without legal citation, that same judge ordering a whistleblower to pay for fees, and the revelation that the Registrar of Voters does not count provisional ballots. This case has ramifications far beyond this one race, and should terrify anyone looking toward this years' elections. Ms. Clark is absolutely correct that provisional ballots are disproportionately cast by people of color and those with lower incomes, many of whom on election days are either unsure of or unable to be at the precinct where their names are on the roster. The fact that poll workers are religiously instructed to lie to anyone out of place, to pacify them with a provisional ballot and the false promise that their vote will still count so long as they haven't voted twice, should be making headlines. What she has exposed is an outrage, and I for one want to know when the GoFundMe is up to pay for this trial and her appeal. Any funds left over can go to pay for the ads against Judge Sturgeon when he runs for re-election.— March 22, 2016 4:50 p.m.
Local lawyers speak on Scalia's death
The Founding Fathers' explicitly crafted a Constitution able to grow and accommodate situations they could not, so that it would not become obsolete. That is why the Bill of Rights was so quickly added. Scalia's prejudiced interpretation of those first ten amendments, his refusal to grant real authority to the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, and especially his extra-Constitutional maundering in Bush v. Gore, demonstrates that his mindlessly repeated 'intellectual rigor' was nothing more than unwavering petulance. Let us hope the Supreme Court never sees his like again.— February 14, 2016 12:42 a.m.
Phew. No fees for SOHO
Things too rarely go right for those who stand up for what's right in San Diego, so congratulations to SOHO for all their efforts to stop the Centennial Car Gutter and Paid Parking Garage. Now they get to keep $96K for future battles.— January 16, 2016 3:34 p.m.
No new Mission Beach lifeguard station
And here is the problem with every solution the city proposes when it gets caught in dereliction of duty: rather than set up procedures to ensure going forward it follows the rules as set up to protect all concerned, they re-write the laws to exempt themselves. The only lesson learned is that they have to be more thorough in denying any legal responsibility for their actions. Eventually they'll get around to changing the criminal code to say shaking down people on the street isn't robbery so long as a municipal employee is the perp.— December 28, 2015 12:18 p.m.
Developer's traffic study challenged
"Regulations can’t prevent people from renting homes, but 'I can’t fathom why someone would spend $700,000 on a three-bedroom home and fill it with college students,' said Pauker." Are you freaking kidding me? That's all many buyers in the College Area are already doing! These 3 bdrm/3 bath and bigger houses are absolutely going to be bought as investment properties to turn into mini-dorms for rent to three to six-plus students. Their traffic study can't begin to account for all the extra vehicles this will bring. Might as well plan now to have a campus shuttle run to this development; that's about the only hope to mitigate the impact.— December 10, 2015 3:11 p.m.
AirBnB, the elephant in the room
I can't believe the comments supporting this blatantly selective enforcement totally out of proportion to the "infraction." Making this one person pay 25 THOUSAND DOLLARS and not doing anything to any of the other hundreds of people doing the same thing she is, and not fixing the statutes so that they address the actual situation, intuitively should be considered unacceptable to anyone worried about abuse of power. Typical that Toad Gloria would be behind this, once again leaving his real person constituents in the dust in order to serve his corporate contributors. If you don't think the hoteliers aren't behind this, you haven't lived here long enough. Voice of San Diego did a great job showing that the worst offenders of the AirBnB system are property management companies working the beach front housing. But rather go after the worst but again moneyed and well connected offenders, the city decides to squash the low-hanging fruit.— August 11, 2015 10:05 a.m.
No to Ridgewood Park eucalyptus cell phone tower
Thank you, Bob, for your ham-handed attempt to defend expediency over legality. Apparently thirty foot towers rising from 240-square foot concrete barb-wired bunkers are no more intrusive than a flyer flitting in the wind. But even if this land use weren't clearly illegal under the city charter, the reason the cell carriers target municipalities is that city leaders are chumps when it comes to negotiating a decent business deal. Belmont Park, anyone? This is a clear case where the private sector and private landowners could benefit from and make more profit than the city unfairly competing against them for this business: "The companies that manage these cell towers will sublease space to other companies and end up making a great deal of money off of them....But that value is not always reflected in the lease agreements with the landowners.....In 2011, cell towers around the country generated more than $2 billion in revenue just from leasing space to other telecom tenants. At the same time, the total rent paid to property owners came to just 12 percent of that amount." http://www.bizjournals.com/sanantonio/print-editi…— August 7, 2015 1:24 p.m.
It’s raining PR
Excellent title, guys. The only thing this contract will precipitate is taxpayer-funded PR for Faulconer's 2016 run. A needless duplication of efforts already being made by paid public employees from the state on down. Shame on all the council members voting for it. Two big questions for you, Matt: You report along with others that this contract is for $1.6 million, but what the docket says is "a total contract value not to exceed $1.46 million." (See photo.) While $140,000 may not be much among friends, our elected officials owe it to be more precise. Why the different numbers? You drop the bombshell that "The participants were told that TV adverting costs, said to be a major part of the soon to burgeon program, aren’t included in the $1.6 million." The city repeatedly grants contracts under a low figure while burying the real costs in the budgets it authorizes the contractors to spend and get reimbursed, intentionally distorting the actual "total contract value" or actual taxpayer cost. When is someone like Corey Briggs going to go after them for such flagrant B.S.? http://www.sandiegoreader.com/users/photos/2015/j…— July 29, 2015 11 a.m.