I-15 mimics L.A traffic, when there were quail in Bonita

The 805 coming north out of South Bay, offbeat San Diego, a real California moment in local painting, dangerous spots to live

"They just opened an east-west loop road that connects Black Mountain Road to 56, and people snake across it."

Traffic spares no one

“People say, ‘You got a real transportation problem on the 15.’ Well, it’s less a transportation problem than it is a land-use problem. A lot of the people, because they can’t afford to live here, move up to Riverside County, so 30 percent of that traffic we take on the 15 below Lake Hodges originates in Riverside County. How can we better use our land down here so people don’t take such long trips?

By Justin Wolff, April 5, 2001 | Read full article

The four-lane system "would have a movable barrier in the middle, like on the Coronado Bridge. The first section will be between 56 and Via Rancho Parkway." (Joe Klein)

You Can’t Build Away Congestion

All the Temecula people hit Escondido, and traffic comes to a screeching halt until you get to Rancho Bernardo. "Felicita is when it starts to move, and when you get to the North County Fair, it opens up. Then comes a bottleneck because of Lake Hodges. Everybody has to get on the highway at Lake Hodges, including bicycles, because there's no other way around it. It bottlenecks again when you get down to Carmel Mountain."

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By Joe Deegan, Dec. 12, 2002 | Read full article

Jim Kilijanski, Bonita. “One of the most remarkable things I remember seeing in Rice Canyon were these huge flocks of quail."

Where the Wild Things Were

“There really wasn’t any fishing in Rice Canyon, though, so if we wanted to go fishing we went over to Bonita Valley. There used to be some pretty big ponds there — like the one we called Miller’s Pond, which must have been a good eight or ten acres. Once a friend of mine who lived across the street from us brought a bunch of live crappie fish back from Otay Lake, and I put them in our bathtub.”

By Roger Anderson, Dec. 8, 1988 | Read full article

Spruce St. suspension bridge. The weight of a solitary pedestrian makes this marvel tremble.

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 can be found in Balboa Park north and slightly east of the bowling green off the Prado. No one knows who planted these, but a city parks crew established another grove on the south side of Morley Field Drive between Florida Street and Park Boulevard.

By Jeannette De Wyze, May 26, 1988 | Read full article

Maurice Braun landscape. Braun is identified as San Diego’s first artist because his images of the rural areas were often exhibited in Los Angeles and New York City.

Last Light

Many of Crooks’s images are of the South Bay — Imperial Beach, Coronado — and east to the “severe and arid” Otay Mesa. “I don’t want paintings that are too pretty. I like them to start out a little on the ugly side because if you start with beauty and then you add the passion and beauty of art, you get gunk. It’s just sickening, it’s so sweet. It’s good to start with something homely and simple and a little battered.”

By Thomas Larson, Aug. 26, 1999 | Read full article

Tecolote Park. The sign explains that the tan and cantaloupe-colored rock on the left side of the fault is 50-million-year-old Eocene sandstone, while the putty-colored conglomerate on the right was formed only a half-million years ago.

San Diego Danger Zones

Abbott was forthright when I asked if he buys earthquake insurance for his home. “No, I do not! And not only do I not, but I think the vast majority of people would be far better served by spending a bit of money retrofitting things in their homes. I don’t mean hiring expensive consultants. I’m talking about the things you buy at Home Depot—little angle-iron braces, bags of cement, things like that.”

By Jeannette De Wyze, March 2, 2000 | Read full article

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