August 2026

Featured, History, The World August 27, 2026

Local Escondido ironworker Paul Pursley spent 10 weeks at Ground Zero following the Sept. 11, 2001 attack

Sept. 11, 2001: Local ironworker Paul Pursley spent 10 weeks at “Ground Zero” following the terrorist attack. His major complaint in the years following concerned his inability to get correct, and affordable, treatment due to the costs involved, costs that Congress finally agreed to add funding to the 9/11 First Responders fund almost 18 years later. “Ironworkers worked every day,” Pursley said. “We went on 12-hour shifts…

History, Media, North County, The World August 26, 2026

Sending in the llamas and clowns on 9/11

Sept. 10, 2001 was pretty much like any other day. That is to say honored only in its passing, don’t remember what happened. Sept. 11, 2001, as we all know, was a day seared in our personal and national memories like few others. Don’t know when the carnage began, but at my Del Dios home phones started ringing way too early in the morning and…

Featured, Sports, The World August 25, 2026

‘Lord of All Indoors’ soccer legend Steve Zungul lives quietly in Escondido retirement

Reclusive and sitting in a luxury home high above the San Pasqual Valley, the charismatic  “Lord of All Indoors” Steve Zungul continues to mystify and impress, albeit out of the public eye. He hasn’t spoken to anybody in the media for over a decade. His legendary indoor soccer career continues to do all the talking. Fans of the Croatian indoor soccer scoring machine, perhaps the…

History, San Diego, The World, Tourism August 24, 2026

Hail Estonia! Wait. What? La Jolla?

Hail Estonia! Wait. What? Estonia opened an honorary consulate at La Jolla on January 24, 2019, later moving it to downtown San Diego. The Estonian honorary consul in the San Diego area is Dr. Michael Corey Chan, and the address of the consulate is 330 13th Street #2111 San Diego, CA, 92101. Give him a shout-out at 858-717-6379. “Honorary consuls with their energy and network…

Rancho Santa Fe, Surprising and Strange, The World August 24, 2026

29 years ago, Heaven’s Gate couldn’t wait

Dateline Rancho Santa Fe. March 26, 1997. A 911 call came into the San Diego Sheriff’s Communications Center. It was treated as a prank call at first. From what turned out to be a nearby payphone, the caller said something so preposterous that dispatchers took their time in relaying the information to central command. “This is regarding a mass suicide. I can give you the address,” the…

Surprising and Strange, The World August 23, 2026

In age of Drumpf, Tony Clifton claims foul

Editor’s Note: Michael Patrick Welch, renowned New Oreans writer, musician, teacher and friend of The Escondido Grapevine, conducted an interview with the provocateur known to Andy Kauffman and Bob Zmuda fans as Tony Clifton. While others have shunned this outstanding piece of informational journalism, we embrace it and re-print this as a public service. “After years of chasing Tony Clifton to get his thoughts on…

Media, The World August 22, 2026

Local journalism can upend ‘fake news’

“For the first time media is the least trusted institution globally,” Edelman, the global PR and marketing firm concluded in its annual worldwide study on trust in institutions like the media, business and government. These international findings are in line with recent data coming out of the U.S. A 2016 Gallup poll reported that just 32 percent of Americans trusted the mass media, while an…

Education, Escondido, Featured, Surprising and Strange August 8, 2026

Idiosyncratic dinosaur ‘museum’ went extinct

Always a bit of an oddity, and itself a colorful exhibition of an Escondido antique dealer’s lifelong hobby, the Roynon Museum celebrating all things dinosaur, went the way of the creatures celebrated within, that is to say, extinct, on June 30, 2019. Applying the lofty title of Roynon Museum of Earth Sciences and Paleontology to its decidedly idiosyncratic exhibit and purpose, museum officials this week…

Business, Surprising and Strange August 7, 2026

Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps: He was a giant

Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps: He was a giant Oh, what a long —- and sudsy —- trip it has been for Dr. Emmanuel H. Bronner and the soap he created, then popularized along with a cleansing dose of proselytizing. Bronner may be gone now, but nowhere near forgotten given the hundreds upon hundreds of Web pages devoted to his memory. These pages are devoted to…