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
Comic-Con cosplayer did not “fall”
On tumblr, Milly Makara writes about the about Comic-Con incident. Anonymous asked: Are you claiming that you were raped in your past or that you were raped during your time at Comic Con? I think people are confused about this and maybe you could help clear it up? I have been raped in my past.. and I dont remember what happened at comic con.. the police say that I feel over a fence…. well I re went to the place they say I fell and honestly im no5 very good at climbing fences and the injuries that I have dont really happen from just falling once.. I would have had to climb the fence and then decided ” oh lets just jump head first into some rocks and roll around a bunch” to have been hurt that way.. I had an opinion from a few body gards and they have been in and broken up many fights and have seen injuries like mine and all of them said that I was hit in the face and then tryed to defend myself.. thats the only way I would have 2 black eyes and a fracture to my orbital bone.. I had 2 skull fractures just to be clear. One to the back if the head and then a fracture to my orbital bone(right eye) I also had 8 stiches to close a cut on my right eye brow. And after I was out of the hospital I had brusies that showed up a day after the event.. brusies on my arms that are the sizes of hand prints on both arms.. I would also like to just publicly say thank you to anyone and all cosplayers who defended me during this event and anyone who has wished me a speedy recovery. It really has made me feel alot better to just know that im not alone. Its great to know that the cosplay coumimity will stand together to help one another out.. I mean I knew that us cosplayers stick together and were always willing lend a helping hand to loan you our super glue or some thread and a needle to help fix a cosplay.. but really to help fight back to the san diego police department to say that this is not what happened really means alot.. and im just extremely greatful. And pround to let you guys know that I will be continuing cosplaying and working on cosplays for a while. Much love to you guys and many thanks♡♡♡♡♡♡— August 12, 2014 12:14 p.m.
Comic-Con cosplayer did not “fall”
At the Project Cosplay page on Facebook, Justin Kalior wrote that he was not going to be putting up photos from Comic-Con 2014 because of what happened to Milly Makara. The comment has disappeared and there is now a photo album of Comic-Con 2014. There are no photos of Makara in the album.— August 12, 2014 9:49 a.m.
Comic-Con 2014
One of the Hocus Pocus cosplayers told me that children don't recognize their characters from Hocus Pocus. The woman told me that children today don't get exposed to the movie as much.— July 26, 2014 6:36 a.m.
Anime Conji 2014
The marines had a booth at Anime Conji. The marines timed people as they held their head above a bar. I noticed that some of the women were doing vastly better then many of the guys. I saw some guys who struggled to even get their heads above the bar. I didn't even try because I don't believe I could lift myself above the bar. I saw a woman, who looked like a teenager, hold her head above the bar for over 70 seconds. A marine told her she was in third place for longest time. She did not look like Xena or Wonder Woman. With someone of her physique, I was very impressed with what she accomplished. I saw another women also doing very well. I posted this comment before but I wrote pole rather then bar by mistake.— May 2, 2014 2:45 p.m.
Anime Conji 2014
The marines had a booth at Anime Conji. The marines timed people as they held their head above a pull. I noticed that some of the women were doing vastly better then many of the guys. I saw some guys who struggled to even get their heads above the pole. I didn't even try because I don't believe I could lift myself above the pole. I saw a woman, who looked like a teenager, hold her head above the pole for over 70 seconds. A marine told her she was in third place for longest time. She did not look like Xena or Wonder Woman. With someone of her physique, I was very impressed with what she accomplished. I saw another women also doing very well.— May 2, 2014 1:11 p.m.
Anime Conji 2014
One of the things that surprised me about Anime Conji was that there was not more Anime DVDs, especially since the convention is called Anime Conji. One exhibutor had at least hundreds (maybe low thousands) of Anime DVDs. Whatever DVDs, that were elsewhere, were not in great numbers. There was massive numbers of hentai x-rated comic books being sold by a number of dealers. I saw one exhibutor selling hundreds of mainstream/non-x-rated manga. There was a mixture of manga and and anime artbooks being sold by some of the other dealers. One of the things that surprised was the large number of teenage girls/women in early 20s (this is my best guess of their ages) going around the exhibit hall looking at and asking for porn comic books. When they asked for specific kinds of hentai comic books, it was Yaoi (male homosexual) that they asked for. There was one exhibutor who seemed to be selling exclusively Yaoi by the hundreds. Women were swarming that booth much more then guys (who one would assume be mostly homosexuals). When I was a teenager, I remember seeing fanzines at Star Trek conventions of Kirk and Spock together as a couple. A few years ago, I read that mainly women were responsible for these and other fanzines showing male TV characters in homosexual embrace. When looking at porn comic books, I noticed that the women were mostly traveling in groups whereas guys would go by themselves. There was one guy with a woman who was looking with him. At one of the booths, an exhibutor asked a girl what her age was and she said she was 18 years old. This does show that the booth was trying to make sure that underage people were not looking at the hentai books. It seemed the number of the children going to the convention was very small (probably less then 5 percent, maybe as low as 1 percent). Even at x-rated convention such such as Erotica LA and the AVN Expo, I have never seen so many women actively seeking out porn. I bought some heterosexual x-rated comic books (I have a preference for group sex scenes). I believe that it is a good thing that women are more open about being interested in porn. So many women have been stigmitized for being promiscuous or enjoying erotica. It's too bad that the United States is more puritanical then Europe.— May 2, 2014 12:54 p.m.
Anime Conji 2014
I have read about people on the internet advocating violence toward others in the comic book community and that has been criticized in articles about comic book fandom, etc. and yet a couple of people have written threatening things about Jay Allen Sanford in the facebook comments. Voo Doo wrote about Jay: "Lil Red's in the hood" really? You need to be punched in the face for that comment alone!" Natalie Christie wrote a comment: "The guy who wrote these should prroooobably go ahead and die." People in the Steampunk cosplayer community, who were criticizing the ConDor 2014 photo gallery, did not write anything this bad! The Steampunk cosplayers were more civil in their criticism then Voo Doo and Natalie Christie. When I talked to a friend about these 2 commenters he mentioned how artist Tony Harris has been threatened by cosplayers because of an opinion he expressed. Tony Harris Returns To Talk Cosplay http://www.bleedingcool.com/2012/12/08/tony-harri…— April 27, 2014 12:43 p.m.
Anime Conji 2014
http://www.sandiegoreader.com/users/photos/2014/a…— April 27, 2014 10:44 a.m.
Anime Conji 2014
With the man's Captain America costume, it was not shining when I would looked at in person. When I took photos of his costume, the glowing would show up in the photos. The man told me that he did not do anything to his costume with the intent of it shining when photographed.— April 21, 2014 12:57 p.m.
ConDor 2014
Before Jay started using my photos for the San Diego Reader, it was he who recommended that I go to Steampunk events. He spoke favorably of Steampunk people. An opinion that Jay expressed that surprised me was that the Will Smith Wild Wild West had a big influence on getting people interested in Steampunk. The Will Smith movie was so heavily criticized that it never entered my head that it inspire interest in Steampunk. When I was at the last Conjecture convention, I asked someone wearing a Steampunk costume about the Will Smith movie. The cosplayer did not agree with Jay, he thought the 1960s Wild Wild West TV series was much more important in the Steampunk culture. When Jay saw some my facebook photo albums of cosplayers, Jay was already doing the Comic-Con photo galleries. This is the 5th convention that I have supplied photos for. The ConDor 2013 photo gallery had no comments (positive or negative) at all. With the 2 Comic Fest conventions, Mike Towry (organizer of Comic Fest and one of the founders of Comic-Con) has spoken favorably of the San Diego Reader galleries of Comic Fest. Many of the captions were informative rather then humorous. The humorous captions seemed to be tame enough in their humour so that there were probably not many people offended. The last Comic-Con International: San Diego gallery had a significant number of photos with sexual humour in them. When I saw some of the captions that Jay came up with, I started wondering if Jay was going too far in his humour. I worried about people being offended. Since there was not a bunch of negative comments like there was with ConDor 2014, I figured that my concern was not warranted.— April 3, 2014 5:14 p.m.