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…
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…
Big Tepee? Do you know the way, Jose’? Go around Escondido. Ask anyone about the Big Tepee. Since we can’t bet dollars against donuts anymore — some donuts cost much more than a dollar — let’s wager dollars against Chargers super bowl appearances that people asked that question will believe you should go to a big tepee of the medical kind. There’s an answer to…
People have been debating D.B. Cooper ever since his Thanksgiving 1971 leap into history and out of a commercial flight from Portland to Seattle with a whole bunch of money. The same, on a smaller scale, appears to be happening with North County’s own Geezer Bandit, so-called. He hit Vista — twice — Rancho Santa Fe, La Jolla — twice — Poway and 10 other…
“A payphone (alternative spelling: pay phone) is typically a coin-operated public telephone, often located in a telephone booth or a privacy hood, with pre-payment by inserting money (usually coins) or by billing a credit or debit card, or a telephone card. Around the Big Apple, Google Sidewalk Labs is replacing them with free city-wide Wi-Fi. In Ireland, units now are used less than once every…
Go down to Hernandez Hideaway at rural Lake Drive in Del Dios and people will swear up and down the long wooden bar that Hodgee, the friendly Lake Hodges monster, really truly — well, almost definitely exists. “The Lake Hodges Hodgee monster is kind of like the Loch Ness monster,” said Stan Smith, a long-time Del Dios resident. Smith, a cowboy poet and man about…
It was all over, especially the shouting, little that it was, as the San Diego Padres wrapped up the 2015 home schedule at Petco Park. And oh, by the way, in this season of their continued discontent, the Padres humbled their apparent arch-nemesis Milwaukee Brewers 3-1 behind Ian Kennedy’s best game of a 9-15, .428 ERA season. Believe it or not, the Brewers had won…
Rancho Santa Fe’s Covenant Association, basically a quasi-governmental homeowners association dating to the community’s founding in the 1920s, refuses to change the covenant designation that harkens back to racist restrictions in its original 1928 documentation despite the 1948 outlawing of the practice by the United States Supreme Court, sources say. “What’s unique about Rancho Santa Fe’s covenant is that it went beyond just restricting the…
Is Jennifer Lopez moving to Escondido? Only The Shadow knows. However, local radio stations and the Internet were buzzing about the possibility that Jenny on the block was moving to this block. While it might be true — who knows, Donald Trump might have been president; the Cubs might have won the World Series — the rumor blasting across several local radio stations and celebrity…
Re: Hubcaps going second time around for art at the California Center For the Arts, Escondido from April 8 to May 28… Disclaimer: I do not carry, or sell, or handle, or trade in, or have anything to do with hubcaps Let me make this perfectly clear: I am not —- repeat not —- a hubcap dealer. OK, the tussie-mussies were one thing. I mentioned…