SUNDAY REVIEW /TRAVELLING POSH & LOOKING THE PART

First-class passengers aboard the London, Midland and Scottish Railway’s Royal Scot in 1928. The celebrated express connected London Euston with Glasgow Central in an era when railway luxury meant leather armchairs, curtained windows, newspapers—and, for those in smoking accommodation, a pipe. 

ALL ABOARD, 1928 

It is 1928, and this is not a station lounge but the first-class lounge car aboard the London, Midland and Scottish Railway’s Royal Scot. The celebrated express had been formally named the previous year and travelled between London Euston and Glasgow Central. 

Observe the civilized acreage. Nine passengers occupy a carriage that a modern operator might try to fill with three times as many seats. There are leather armchairs instead of assigned positions, curtained windows instead of tinted glass, a patterned carpet, polished woodwork, table lamps and enough room to cross one’s legs without entering negotiations with a stranger. 

The young woman has a newspaper. The young man opposite has a pipe, a splendid pair of socks and the untroubled expression of someone who has never heard the phrase “replacement bus service.” Farther back, gentlemen converse or read while an attendant stands ready. No one is staring at a telephone. No one is conducting a conference call loud enough for the world to hear. 

This was travelling posh. 

What have we lost? We have lost the lounge car as a shared drawing room. First class today usually means a wider reclining seat, additional legroom, food at one’s place and fewer passengers per carriage. Comfortable, certainly—but it rarely offers the club-like informality shown here. 

We have also lost some of the ceremony. In 1928, a long-distance train did not merely transport passengers; it announced an occasion. People dressed for the journey. Newspapers were opened to their full wingspan. Tea arrived in china. Porters handled luggage. Railway companies understood that gracious service and handsome surroundings were part of the ticket. 

Most of all, we may have lost unoccupied time. Those passengers could read, converse, stare through the window or do nothing at all. Today’s traveller carries an office, cinema, newsroom and telegraph system in one small device. We are better connected and less absent. 

That is not entirely progress. 

What is better now? Quite a lot, beginning with speed. In the late 1920s, London to Glasgow generally consumed about eight hours. Today the fastest direct journeys take roughly four and a half hours. 

Modern trains are cleaner, quieter and vastly safer. Steam romance came with coal smoke, soot, cinders and a locomotive crew doing punishing work up front. Today we have air conditioning, reliable heating, power outlets, Wi-Fi, improved toilets and better provision—though still imperfect—for passengers with disabilities. 

Present-day Avanti West Coast first class offers larger seats, a table at every place, complimentary food and drinks and access to station lounges. Those are worthwhile comforts. Yet the company’s own description of “roomier seats” inadvertently identifies the difference: in 1928, the railway offered a room. 

Avanti West Coast’s current first-class service retains some of the old privileges, but the leather club chair roaming freely across a carpeted salon has departed with the steam locomotive. 

What did it cost? Exact 1928 Royal Scot fares varied, and a surviving ticket or contemporary LMS fare table would be needed to state the precise price for this particular journey. A useful historical benchmark placed ordinary first-class fares at approximately two old pence per mile. 

Over the roughly 401-mile London–Glasgow route, that suggests a one-way fare near £3 7s—an estimate, not an authenticated Royal Scot quotation. That sounds absurdly cheap until wages and inflation enter the compartment. 

Roughly converted by purchasing power, £3 7s in 1928 represents about £270 today. For many working Britons of the period, however, first class remained an uncommon luxury. 

Modern fares behave like nervous stock prices. Advance purchases can produce bargains, while flexible first-class tickets cost considerably more. As one documented example, a traveller paid about £209 one way for Glasgow–London first class in 2022; cheaper standard tickets for the same route began around £33. 

Today’s actual fare depends heavily upon the day, train and how early one books. The comparison is therefore deliciously untidy: the modern journey is twice as fast, but the 1928 passenger appears to have received twice the furniture. 

Was pipe smoking ever banned? Not in that carriage in 1928. The pipe in our photograph was perfectly acceptable provided the passenger occupied smoking accommodation. British railways offered both smoking and non-smoking compartments long before smoking disappeared altogether. A pipe was treated as smoking just as a cigarette or cigar was; there was no gentlemanly loophole for superior tobacco. Restrictions gradually increased, and individual operators eliminated their remaining smoking sections at different times. 

The final smoking accommodation on Britain’s scheduled trains disappeared in 2005 when GNER and the Caledonian Sleeper withdrew it. The later smoke-free laws reinforced the prohibition throughout enclosed public places and workplaces. 

So, yes, pipe smoking was ultimately banned aboard British trains—but it was not singled out. The pipe went down with the cigarette. 

 And those socks? The young man’s socks may be the photograph’s quiet triumph. They appear patterned, possibly Argyle, and are displayed with precisely the confidence required of a fellow occupying a leather chair on the Royal Scot. 

Argyle—the diamond pattern associated with Scotland—remains easy to find online. For an elegant British version, try the London Sock Company’s Highland Argyle collection. 

Britain’s SockShop offers a larger range at more moderate prices. 

American shoppers wanting many colors and gift options can also browse No Cold Feet. 

Wear them properly: polished shoes, trousers with sufficient clearance and the serene expression of a man certain that the train will wait until he has finished his pipe. 

What are we missing from 1928? Space, polish, ritual and permission to be unreachable. 

What is better now? Speed, safety, cleanliness—and the air. A fair exchange, perhaps. But looking into this carriage, one still longs to buy a ticket, settle into the leather and spend eight leisurely hours travelling posh. 

COFFEE BEANS & BEINGS: CEUTA'S TEMPEST IN A COFFEE CUP

Aura, a new coffee house opened in Ceuta in March.  Mohamed (pictured) is the proud new owner.

Earlier this month, the seven-square-mile Spanish city of Ceuta (below)  has been in the international news following an extraordinary two-day surge in which an estimated 50,000 to 60,000 migrants crossed its border from Morocco. 

FYI: Ceuta occupies a strategic position on the North African coast, bordered by Morocco and the Strait of Gibraltar. Portugal captured the city in 1415. It came under Spanish rule in 1580, and Portugal formally recognized Spanish sovereignty in 1668. Morocco continues to dispute Spain’s possession of Ceuta. 

The latest crisis overwhelmed the small city. Shops closed, food became scarce and Spanish troops and additional police were sent to reinforce local authorities. By the weekend, most of those who had crossed had returned to Morocco. The human cost was appalling. Spanish authorities reported that at least 70 people died, some by drowning and others during the crush near the border barriers. 

Whoever encouraged the mass crossing—whether traffickers, political operatives or reckless voices spreading false information online—must bear responsibility for helping turn desperation into catastrophe. Ceuta is now slowly returning to normal. 

Residents are venturing outside again, businesses are reopening and customers are returning to the cafés that ordinarily help give this unusual Spanish outpost its character. 

In quieter times, Ceuta is a tourist city whose coffee houses reflect its mixture of Spanish, Mediterranean and North African influences. 

Among other Cueta coffee centric receiving favorable attention are: 

--Bollo, at Calle General Serrano Orive, 5, combines a neighborhood bakery with brunch dishes and homemade cheesecakes in a relaxed, dog-friendly setting. 

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--Cafetería Monalisa, at Avenida Cañonero Dato, 21, offers coffee, fresh juices and Arabic sweets accompanied by views across the harbor. 

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--Café Solano 1999, at Calle Teniente Coronel Gautier, 6, is known as a welcoming neighborhood café serving tea, coffee and traditional Spanish breakfast toast. 

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FRIAR FRIDAY / O HOLY NIGHT! POPE HATS TURN WHITE SOX PARK INTO BASEBALL’S FUNNER CATHEDRAL

Text and Illustration by the Editors of PillartoPost.org 

Leave it to Chicagoans to discover that the first American pope is a White Sox fan—and immediately turn the revelation into a ballpark promotion. 

Pope Leo XIV, born Robert Prevost and raised in suburban Dolton, Illinois, has never been coy about his allegiance. He attended Game One of the 2005 World Series and has been photographed at the Vatican wearing a Sox cap. Once the baseball world confirmed that His Holiness preferred the South Side to the Cubs, 

Chicago’s marketing minds went to work. The result was “Pope Hat Night” at Rate Field on August 11: nearly 40,000 black-and-white mitres bearing the White Sox logo. What began as a special-ticket giveaway for 2,500 customers sold so quickly that organizers added 500 hats. 

Those disappeared, too. The team finally surrendered to popular demand and ordered enough for practically everybody in the building. Announced attendance reached 38,113, producing the splendid sight of an entire major-league crowd dressed like an unusually rowdy College of Cardinals. The national media could not resist. MLB.com proclaimed, 

“O holy night!” ESPN reported on fans lining up early, while Reuters distributed the spectacle internationally. The Associated Press soon placed the hats among baseball’s most imaginative modern promotions. 

The Athletic captured the essential Chicago incongruity: people in religious headgear drinking beer and eating hot dogs while celebrating the Vatican’s most prominent Sox supporter. 

The Sox handled the joke with a degree of restraint. Officials reportedly considered—and rejected—a papal bobblehead. Instead, they added “Leo Knows” signs, borrowing from the old “Bo Knows” campaign. Players who hit home runs wore the mitres in the dugout. 

Special guest for O Holy Night at White Sox Park was Dominican Sister Mary Jo Sobieck, who tossed out the first pitch.  Father Tom Hurley and Pat McGann, comedian and White Sox fan, led a blessing after the fifth inning. The team also raised money for the Midwest Augustinians, which was Prevost’s order in Chicago, which gave the evening a legitimate connection to the man being honored.

The commemorative hats were reportedly selling online for about $70 before the game had ended. That was more than some tickets had cost. 

Only one element refused to cooperate: the baseball gods. 

The White Sox built a 4–0 lead, hit three home runs and appeared headed for a storybook victory. Then the bullpen surrendered the advantage, and Cincinnati won 5–4 in ten innings. So much for divine intervention and proving the baseball Gods still rule the game. 

Fans filled every seat for O Holy Night promotion

Still, Chicago had its fun, the ballpark sold out and the White Sox received the sort of cheerful national publicity that no conventional bobblehead could have delivered. The evening proved that baseball promotions work best when they spring from something genuinely local—a hometown pope, a long-suffering team and thousands of fans delighted to look ridiculous together. The Cubs may have the larger congregation. But the White Sox have the Augustinian pontiff. 

SOURCES: * MLB.com * The Athletic * Reuters * Associated Press 

AMERICA ON THIS DAY / THE CHEERS HEARD "ROUND THE WORLD

 Celebration in New York City's Times Square on V-J Day, August 14, 1945 after news of Japan's unconditional surrender ending World War II.    William Stroudt, Life Magazine.

THE FOODIST / CASE IS CLOSED: THE BLT IS THE BEST SANDWICH OF OUR TIME

BLT Rules [with or without avocado]!

By the Editors of PillartoPost.org 

Here's a tenet for our times and taste buds, daily online magazine PillartoPost.org hereby declares the bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich—and its California cousin, the BLTA, with avocado—the finest sandwich in current culinary history. Amen.

Period. Done deal. Sez us. 

Of course, we realize “best” is a fighting word. Tough luck cheeseburgerites; Reuben loyalists will pound the table; grilled-cheese devotees will demand a recount. 

Somewhere in the bowe's of Philadelphia, a fellow holding an overstuffed Philly Cheesesteak will consider our judgment evidence of diminished capacity. 

Let them all howl. 

Here's why: Internet’s cooks, food writers and sandwich eaters have been building our case for years. The BLT succeeds because every ingredient has a specific assignment. 

--Bacon supplies salt, smoke and crunch. 

--Lettuce brings coolness. 

--Tomato contributes sweetness, acidity and juice. 

--Mayonnaise makes peace among them, while toasted bread holds the proceedings together. 

Media pals agree with us: The Kitchn calls the BLT the “sandwich of summer,” a title earned by its dependence upon ripe tomatoes rather than culinary ornament. The Kitchn 

J. Kenji López-Alt of Serious Eats goes beyond. His advice for creating the best BLT is wonderfully direct: “Use the best tomatoes. Put away the fancy bread. And most importantly: Don’t mess with it.” Serious Eats 

That last instruction deserves to be framed and hung in every delicatessen in America. López-Alt also argues that the BLT is not really a bacon sandwich. It is a tomato sandwich seasoned with bacon. That distinction explains why a January BLT  assembled with a pale supermarket tomato can taste like an office memo, while an August BLT made with a ripe backyard tomato becomes a legitimate reason to remain alive until lunch. 

The sandwich also has the numbers. 

In a national YouGov survey, the BLT earned a 69 percent approval rating and finished among America’s five most-liked sandwiches. The club sandwich, which is essentially a BLT forced to carry unnecessary luggage, finished behind it. YouGov 

Another consumer survey [yet to wise  up] placed the BLT second among the nation’s favorite sandwiches, trailing only the club—its taller, overdressed relative. pair. Lab 

Even celebrity testimony favors the defense. When Stephen Colbert asked Julia Louis-Dreyfus to name her favorite sandwich, she answered without hesitation: “A BLT.” Colbert agreed, calling it “the American classic.” Her preferred proportions were a medium amount of tomato, a medium amount of lettuce and “a hearty supply of bacon.” Allrecipes 

Then comes avocado. 

Purists may insist the addition produces a BLAT. [PillartoPost.org prefers BLTA] because it allows the historic three-letter name to remain intact while avocado receives a well-earned promotion. 

Note: Avocado does not improve a poor BLT. Nothing can rescue flavorless tomatoes, limp bacon or bread toasted to the tensile strength of roofing tile. But when added to a properly built sandwich, avocado contributes buttery richness without smothering the bacon or tomato. 

Food writer Carolyn Gratzer Cope describes the avocado version with admirable economy: “Simple, classic, perfect: when you want a BLT, there’s no substitute.” Her BLTA, she adds, is “juuuuust right.” 

Umami Girl Chef Gabriel Pascuzzi’s formula for what Food & Wine called “the best BLT of all time” relies upon thick-cut bacon, heirloom tomatoes, butter lettuce, sourdough and a restrained hand with the aïoli. Avocado is offered as the natural optional addition. Food & Wine 

The BLT and BLTA also possess something many celebrated sandwiches lack: balance. A cheesesteak can overwhelm. A meatball sandwich may collapse before halftime. A towering deli sandwich sometimes requires the jaw mechanism of a reticulated python. 

The BLT remains recognizable, manageable and democratic. It is equally at home on a diner plate, at a kitchen counter or wrapped in waxed paper for a picnic. It is simple without being dull, familiar without becoming obsolete and indulgent without requiring a nap and a cardiologist. 

The verdict of PillartoPost.org [and its 43k average daily readers] therefore stands: the BLT is the best sandwich of our time. The BLTA wins the same crown while wearing avocado. 

DESIGN / AMONG THE AVANT GARDE, 1933

An Overdue Revision 

By Thomas Shess, Founder of PillartoPost.org Daily Online Magazine 

Yes, they were all men in this photo. But that was the 1920s. Women, a century later would not be absent from such a photograph. Progress with more progress to come. 

And yes, a woman: Anna Riwkin-Brick, a Russian born Swedish photographer took the photo (above). 

WHO ARE THESE MEN?

Tristan Tzara made his name as a founder and chief provocateur of Dada, using absurdist poetry and manifestos to challenge conventional art and bourgeois culture. 

 Paul Éluard became famous as a leading Surrealist poet whose emotionally direct verse joined dream imagery, love and political resistance. 

 André Breton defined and led Surrealism, establishing its principles of dreams, automatism and the liberated unconscious in his 1924 Surrealist Manifesto. 

 Hans Arp helped shape both Dada and Surrealism through biomorphic sculpture, collage and compositions governed partly by chance. 

 Salvador Dalí became Surrealism’s most recognizable painter by rendering dreams, paranoia and impossible scenes with meticulous, almost photographic realism. 

 Yves Tanguy created haunting Surrealist landscapes populated by strange organic forms that seemed to belong to an undiscovered dream world. 

 Max Ernst expanded the possibilities of modern art through experimental techniques such as frottage, collage and grattage, creating uncanny images from chance textures. 

 René Crevel was a gifted Surrealist writer whose novels and essays brought psychological intensity, social rebellion and personal anguish to the movement. 

 Man Ray transformed photography into a major modern-art medium through experimental portraits, solarization and his camera-less “Rayographs.” Front row, left to right: Tristan Tzara, Andre Breton, Salvador Dali, Max Ernst, Man Ray. Back row, L-R: Paul Eluard, Hans Arp, Yves Tanguy, Rene Crevel. 

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Front row, left to right: Georgia O’Keeffe, Frida Kahlo, Tamara de Lempicka, Käthe Kollwitz and Sylvia Beach; Top row, left to right: Anna Riwkin-Brick, Sonia Delaunay, Hannah Höch, Dora Maar and Méret Oppenheim. At the tripod camera: Lee Miller. Illustration circa 1933: Janus et al, Chatgpt.com

AH, WOMEN: 

If we imagine a comparably historic photograph of women from the international avant-garde of the 1920s and 1930s—chosen for their achievement, originality and personal magnetism—the editors of PillartoPost.org would select the following eleven: 

Georgia O’Keeffe — The American modernist who transformed flowers, bones and Southwestern landscapes into monumental expressions of color, form and sensuality. 

Frida Kahlo — The Mexican painter who converted physical suffering, national identity and an uncompromising self-image into intensely personal symbolic art. 

Sonia Delaunay — The Ukrainian-born French artist who carried modernism’s dynamic color into painting, fashion, textiles, theater and everyday design. 

Tamara de Lempicka — The Polish-born painter whose sleek, erotic portraits became the glamorous visual signature of the Art Deco era. 

Hannah Höch — The German Dadaist who pioneered photomontage and used its fractured imagery to attack politics, gender conventions and mass culture. 

Käthe Kollwitz — The German artist became famous for emotionally powerful prints and sculptures portraying poverty, war, grief and the dignity of working people. 

Anna Riwkin-Brick — The Russian-born Swedish photographer became famous for expressive portraits, pioneering photojournalism and humane photographic books that documented the lives of women and children around the world. 

Dora Maar — The French-Croatian photographer and painter whose experimental pictures, political awareness and commanding personality made her a major Surrealist presence. 

Méret Oppenheim — The Swiss artist who became a Surrealist icon by turning familiar domestic objects into witty, sensual and unsettling works of art. 

Sylvia Beach — The American bookseller made literary history by establishing Shakespeare and Company in Paris and courageously publishing James Joyce’s Ulysses in 1922. 

Note: No such photo exists of all of the above women posing for one photograph. But if we could give that assignment to one name it would have been Lee Miller's. 

YESTERDAY, TODAY AND TOMORROW / THE VOICE THAT CARRIED A MOVEMENT

 

Mavis Staples possesses one of those voices identifiable before she completes her first line. Deep, grainy and remarkably warm, it can carry sorrow, humor, faith and defiance within the same few notes. 

This summer at 87, she remains a working singer with a new album, Sad and Beautiful World, and concert dates on her calendar. 

Staples is often described as a contralto. In formal terms, a contralto is the lowest natural female singing voice—the female counterpart, roughly speaking, to a male baritone. Contraltos sing comfortably in the lower register, where the sound becomes dark, full and resonant. True contraltos are comparatively rare. 

That explains the range of Staples’ voice, but not its effect. 

Hers carries the rough texture of gospel without losing its tenderness. She can lean into a note until it sounds weathered, then soften the next phrase into something intimate. There is always a pulse beneath it, a feeling that the song existed before the musicians arrived and will continue after they leave.

 She was born in Chicago on July 10, 1939, and began singing professionally as a child with her father, Roebuck “Pops” Staples, and her siblings Cleotha, Yvonne and Pervis. 

Pops played a spare, tremolo-laden guitar while the family voices moved around Mavis’ extraordinary lower register. When 16-year-old Mavis sang lead on “Uncloudy Day,” listeners heard a voice that seemed to belong to someone who had already lived a long and difficult life. 

The Staple Singers carried gospel beyond the church without abandoning it. After Pops became close to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., the family joined the struggle for civil rights. Their repertoire expanded from traditional spirituals to songs of dignity, protest and racial justice. “Respect Yourself,” “If You’re Ready (Come Go with Me)” and “I’ll Take You There” became popular records, but they also served as invitations: stand up, come along, and do not surrender your humanity. 

Bob Dylan recognized the power of the Staple Singers early. The family recorded several of his songs, including “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” and “Masters of War.” Dylan’s admiration for Mavis was musical and personal. The two courted during the early 1960s, exchanged letters and, according to Mavis, did some “smooching.” 

Dylan even told Pops Staples that he wanted to marry her. The marriage never happened, but their friendship endured. Dylan’s admiration is easily understood. Both singers value truth above polish. Neither has a conventionally pretty voice, and neither requires one. 

Dylan heard in Mavis what he sought in his own singing: conviction. Her voice could make a lyric sound witnessed rather than merely performed. Mavis later worked with Curtis Mayfield, Prince, Ry Cooder and Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy, among many others. 

Yet producers and fashions never managed to disguise her. The essential Mavis remained: the church-trained contralto, the civil-rights veteran, the woman whose laughter is nearly as recognizable as her singing. 

Seven decades after “Uncloudy Day,” age has added wear to the voice, but little weakness. The lower notes have grown earthier, and she uses them with the judgment of someone who knows she need not shout to be heard. Mavis Staples has spent her life singing about a better world while keeping both feet planted in the one we have. That is why her voice lasts. It carries history, but it is still moving forward. 

AMERICANA / LEST WE FORGET

Just after 10 pm on this day in 1977, police arrested a 24-year-old postal worker who called himself the Son of Sam. One of New York City’s largest—and most frustrating—manhunts was finally over. For more than a year David Berkowitz had terrorized New York, murdering six people and injuring seven more in a series of eight shootings while taunting investigators and journalists with cryptic letters. He eventually pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 365 years in  prison. At 73, he is serving six consecutive life sentences at Shawangunk Correctional Facility in New York. He declined a parole hearing in May 2026.prison.  --Encyclopedia Brittanica.

CBS News correspondent Maurice DuBois interviewed David Berkowitz in 2017 at Shawangunk Correctional Facility in Wallkill, New York. Berkowitz discussed his lonely, troubled youth, his prison routine and his work as a clerk in the prison library. He accepted responsibility for the six “Son of Sam” murders but continued to describe the shootings in terms of demons and his desire at the time to “appease the devil.” Now professing to be a born-again Christian, Berkowitz expressed remorse, spoke of seeking God’s forgiveness and said he hoped his story might warn young people away from Satanism and violence. The interview originally aired on CBS on August 11, 2017, and was rebroadcast in updated form on August 2, 2025, as Son of Sam: The Killer Speaks. --PillartoPost.org

SUNDAY REVIEW / ORIGINAL FICTION: "MEXICALI SALLY"

             By Thomas Shess, author of "Tough Love" and "Cantina Psalms."

We called her Mexicali Sally. 

She wasn’t from Mexicali and her name wasn’t Sally. She was an 18-year-old Mexican woman and Sally rhymed with Mexicali, which at eighteen ourselves was reason enough for us. 

 There were five of us, seniors at the same San Diego high school, a couple of years into our driver’s licenses and the conviction that civilization ended at the border and adventure began on the other side. 

Tijuana was a dozen miles away. 

 We went every chance we got. 

 My name is Richard Huebler. Everybody called me Ricky. The others aren't important except for Rapid Rolland, who earned his nickname by doing almost everything before the rest of us thought of doing it. 

 Sally went to our high school in Chula Vista, the last big town between San Diego and the border. That came as a surprise because she crossed the border every morning to attend classes and went home to Mexico every afternoon. We knew her by another name at school. At night she used still another one. 

We discovered that one night at the Hollywood. The Hollywood was a strip joint a few blocks off Tijuana's Avenida Revolución. By ten o’clock it would be full of sailors, tourists and young idiots like us drinking beer we couldn't legally buy at home. 

 That was where we discovered our classmate dancing onstage. She was tall in her dancer's high heels, dark-haired, blue-eyed and beautiful. Not pretty. Beautiful. There was a difference, especially to five boys who had only recently discovered women came without clothes in real life not just mens magazines. 

 Seeing someone from algebra class walk naked onto a stage changes algebra forever. 

 She spotted us during her first number. 

 We expected panic. 

 Instead, when she came over afterward, she made us a deal. “You don't know me here. I don't know you at school.” 

 We agreed, Staring at her bikini top we would have agreed to sell California back to Mexico. 

She arranged for a pitcher of beer to appear at our booth. 

That made our treaty official. 

She danced because the Hollywood paid better than anything she could find in Tijuana or San Diego. Most of the money went home to her mother and three younger brothers. 

At least that was what she told us. 

There were probably a hundred things about her life she never told us. 

At eighteen you don't know enough to know what questions to ask. 

We became regulars. 

 Sally became, in our minds, our private discovery. She would stop at our booth between numbers. Sometimes she'd sit with us. At school she barely acknowledged us. 

Naturally, all five of us fell in love with her sweaty-after- dance-set self. For the first time, we basked in her aroma. Girls sweat to. So do grown women in our soon to be college years. 

But then under those blue smoky lights, none of us knew what love was but dancing with a naked girl, who wore high heels on stage came in second. 

 Of course, the trouble started after too many pitchers of beer. Someone—I honestly don't remember who—suggested we pool a hundred dollars and offer it to Sally if she would let us go farther than the Hollywood allowed. 

 Not sex. 

Just,..you know, she does it for us..." 

 That distinction seemed enormously important to us at the time. 

 Because I had been elected the silver-tongued devil of the group, they sent me to make the proposition. I found her after her set. I explained our magnificent idea. 

 She didn't slap me. 

 I almost wish she had. 

 She simply stared at me. 

 It was the longest anybody had ever looked at me without saying anything. 

Then she said, “Your idea, too, Ricky?” 

 That hurt. 

 She walked away. 

 For the next month we ceased to exist. 

No free pitchers. 

No visits to our booth. No touching smooth thighs under the table.

At school, she passed us in the hallway without a word. 

We were baffled. 

We stopped going to the Hollywood and found the Long Bar, where the rowdier American chickas hung out. 

 That tells you everything you need to know about us. We couldn't understand why a woman willing to take off her clothes in front of a roomful of strangers would be insulted by our proposition. 

 Years later I understood. Taking off her clothes was her decision. We wanted to buy the decision. There is a difference. 

 Just before Christmas vacation I saw her outside school while she waited for hker ride. 

She had been crying. She'd wiped most of it away, but not all of it. 

 I had been trying for weeks to find a way back into her good graces. The five of us were planning a camping trip. We'd drive east through Mexicali, then south toward San Felipe and camp somewhere overlooking the Gulf of California. I asked if she'd like to come. 

 “No funny business,” I insisted. “I promise.” 

 She studied me. Then she asked a question I wasn't expecting. “Is the hundred dollars still available?” 

 It wasn't. Whatever money we'd had was long gone. I told her I'd see what I could do. 

 That evening I gathered the boys at the Hollywood and told them what she'd said. Rapid Rolland reached into his pocket. He had just been paid at the grocery store where he bagged groceries after school. We all put twenty-dollar bills on the table. 

 We drew straws. 

I won. 

 Nobody was joking. That should have told us something. 

We gave Sally the money after her last set. She didn't count it. She took it, folded it once and put it away in her g-string. Then she took my hand. There was a room upstairs. 

 What happened there isn't important except that I entered it an eighteen-year-old virgin and came downstairs about half an hour still a virgin later trying desperately to look like somebody who understood what she just told me. 

The boys surrounded me. 

“Well?” 

 I told them a lie. "Best I ever had. I'm going to pay you all back. I swear." 

 Rapid Rolland stared at me. The first twenty dollars had been his. If he'd demanded his money back, I wouldn't have blamed him. Instead, I told them the important part. “She's coming with us to San Felipe." 

 We left the next weekend. Five boys and Mexicali Sally in an old Chevrolet heading east on Highway 2 with the windows down. There was too much wind to talk and maybe that was good. 

 She never explained to the others why she suddenly needed a hundred dollars. 

 I never told. 

 It was our secret. 

 That bothers me now. It didn't then. 

 We camped south of San Felipe on a rise overlooking the Gulf. There was nothing around us but sand, water and sky. What happened there belongs to the six people who were there. 

 She made out with me in the tent then it was Rapid Rolland's turn. For years afterward, whenever the five of us got together, somebody would eventually bring up that trip. Some years we told the same story. We remembered it as the weekend Mexicali Sally taught us how to be men. 

 We were wrong. She taught us nothing of the kind. She was an eighteen-year-old who needed a hundred dollars for medical reasons known only to her, trusted five fools from her high school enough to go into the desert with them. We mistook trust for something else. The trip ended. We drove home. And Mexicali Sally disappeared. She didn't return to school after Christmas vacation. She didn't graduate with us. At first we asked around. Nobody knew anything. 

Then graduation came, followed by jobs, college, the service, marriages, children and all the machinery that carries young people away from one another. 

Rapid Rolland stopped being Rapid Rolland. 

 I stopped being Tricky Ricky. 

 Mexicali Sally became a story we occasionally told. 

About ten years later I attended a convention at a hotel in San Diego. During a cocktail reception I recognized one of the women who had danced at the Hollywood on the same stage as Sally. She was older, of course. So was I. She was working as a cocktail waitress. I waited until she wasn't busy and introduced myself. 

 She remembered the silly gringos who danced on the stage with her. That surprised me. I asked about Sally. She knew immediately who I meant. For a moment she said nothing. Then she told me Sally had married a wealthy rancher in Baja California. She said her older husband died and she now owned a successful vineyard operation in the wine valley Northeast of Ensenada. 

 “Seen her lately?” I asked. 

 She thought about it. “Years ago.” 

 “Is she all right?” 

 The woman looked at me. Something about the question seemed to amuse her, although she didn't smile. “She was fine when I saw her. I was working cocktails at the Caliente Race Track and she was there in a private box." She added a governor of one of the Californias was there with five other men.

 I wanted to ask more. 

 Instead, I asked the question I shouldn't have. Do you know why she needed a hundred dollars back then?” The waitress looked at me sternly: "Es cosa de mujeres, Ricky." 

 She remembered my name. 

 Someone across the room called for another drink. She lifted her tray. 

 I stopped her. Tipped her. “One more thing.” 

 She waited. “What was her real name?” 

 This time she smiled. “It's not Sally?” 

 “Yes?” 

 She shook her head. “You boys never knew anything about her.” 

 Then she walked away. She was right. We didn't know she was the sole support of her family and that she occasionally took gifts from rich men and politicos from both sides of the border. 

 I never saw Mexicali Sally again. 

 And after all these years, we still don't know her real name. But we think of her when we order a bottle of Sierra Rico Vino Tinto from what we're told by our travel insurance guy as being the only matriarch owned winery in Baja. 

 She also gave us a bittersweet lesson to remember what fools we were and we should not ask personal questions as older men. 

***

For more free short stories go to the website: ThomasShess.com

COFFEE BEANS & BEINGS / LITTLE WHILE: A FAMILIAR ADDRESS GETS A FRESH START

By Thomas Shess, PillartoPost.org Coffee Editor--Some coffeehouses have to introduce themselves. 

Little While doesn’t quite have that luxury. It occupies 3019 Adams Avenue, a North Park address many serious San Diego coffee drinkers already know. 

Until recently, this was Hawthorn Coffee. I was an early Hawthorn fan. The place reminded me of the sort of coffeehouse I knew along Grant Avenue in San Francisco—unpretentious, urban, a little bohemian, and devoted to the idea that drinking coffee could be an activity unto itself. Then Hawthorn became popular. 

 With popularity came the computer squatters: customers who bought one cup of coffee, opened a laptop and established corporate headquarters at a table for the next three hours. 

Eventually, those of us who wanted to drink coffee, talk, read the paper or simply enjoy the room sometimes found there wasn’t a chair left. One coffee, one electrical outlet and apparently a 20-year lease on the table. So I went elsewhere. 

 Now the address has been reborn as Little While, and it is worth coming back. The shop comes from the Sweet & Savory Collective, the people behind Pop Pie Co. and Stella Jean’s Ice Cream. Little While roasts its own coffee and has paired a serious coffee program with an ambitious pastry counter. 

The room itself is bright, handsome and warm—natural wood, sunlight and enough design to feel considered without turning the place into a showroom. Most important, the coffee is treated seriously. 

Espresso and pour-over devotees will find plenty to investigate, while the pastry case may destroy whatever resistance you arrived with. There is something fitting about the name Little While. A good coffeehouse should be a place where you can spend one. 

 Just preferably not your entire working day. 

 Little While Coffee & Pastries 3019 Adams Ave., San Diego.

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Illustration: F. Stop Fitzgerald, PillarttoPost.org

FANTASY FRIDAY / PABLO’S HIPPOS: A CONUNDRUM FOR FUTURE PALEONTOLOGISTS, MAYBE.

Pablo Escobar and his South American collection of Hippos.

By Thomas Shess 

Sometime in the distant future, when Wikipedia has vanished, Google is an archaeological curiosity and Pablo Escobar is no better remembered than the fellow who invented the Bronze Age doorstop, a paleontologist digging along what once was Colombia’s Magdalena River discovers a very large bone. Then another. And another. 

Eventually, alien scientists exploring this vast uninhabited planet deliver a verdict. Hippopotamus. 

There is only one problem. 

What the hell is a hippopotamus doing in South America? The fossil record, assuming our future scientist has one, insists that hippos belong to the Old World. Africa, certainly. an area once known as Colombia, certainly not. 

Yet there they are. 

Not one unfortunate hippo, either. That could perhaps be explained away by some prehistoric maritime mishap involving a remarkably buoyant animal and an accommodating current. 

No, our paleontologists discover evidence of generations of them. Suddenly, somebody has a dissertation. Perhaps the continents were connected later than previously believed. Perhaps an unknown land bridge once crossed the Atlantic. Perhaps hippopotamuses were magnificent long-distance swimmers. 

Perhaps some forgotten African civilization possessed oceangoing ships and an inexplicable desire to transport three female hippos and one male to South America. Careful, Professor. You're getting warmer. 

The truth, of course, is considerably less dignified. 

During the late 20th century, the late bullet riddled Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar once stocked his private estate, Hacienda Nápoles, with exotic animals. Among them were four hippopotamuses—one male and three females. 

Escobar died rather violently in 1993. 

The hippos didn't. They wandered away, discovered that Colombia suited them rather nicely and began doing what one male and three female hippopotamuses left largely to their own devices are biologically equipped to do. They made more hippopotamuses. And the offspring made more. 

Eventually, descendants of Pablo's original quartet established themselves in the Magdalena River basin, creating a population of wild African megafauna approximately 7,000 miles from where any sensible paleontologist would expect to find them. 

Which raises an unserious question containing a serious one: How much of what we believe about the ancient world depends upon explanations that disappeared before anyone could write them down? 

Consider our alien-based future scientist. She or he or it has the bones. Let's stick with a he.

He has the sediment. He can date them. He can measure them. He may even establish that these Colombian animals were closely related to African hippopotamuses. What he doesn't have is Pablo. And without Pablo, the evidence is begging for an explanation that geology alone cannot provide. 

Now take the absurdity one planet farther. Suppose someday extra terrestial explorers digging on Mars find fossils. Real fossils. Not suspicious squiggles in a meteorite or something microscopic that requires six committees and an electron microscope to decide whether it was ever alive.

 Imagine bones. Leaves. Shells. Something unmistakable. 

Science would properly go berserk. 

Ergo, Mars once supported complex life. 

Then comes the dangerous question. Did it originate there? 

Perhaps. 

Did Earth and Mars independently produce flourishing biospheres? 

Possibly. 

Did primitive organisms travel naturally between the planets inside rocks blasted into space by enormous impacts? Century 21 scientists already consider versions of that possibility. But what if something moved them deliberately? 

That sounds preposterous. 

So does an African hippopotamus grazing beside a Colombian river until somebody explains Pablo Escobar. 

This is where the pathways of the mind become deliciously inane. Imagine Earth and Mars millions of years ago as flourishing sisters. Imagine some civilization—or some natural mechanism we haven't dreamed of—moving life between them. 

Then erase the civilization. Erase its machines. Erase its records. Wait long enough for cities to become sediment. Leave only the bones. Future scientists would be forced to reconstruct an event from its surviving consequences. Which is precisely what paleontology does. Usually brilliantly. 

But Pablo's hippos offer a small warning from our own time: sometimes the craziest explanation happens to be the correct one. No land bridge carried those hippos across the Atlantic. No evolutionary branch of South American hippopotamuses has been discovered. No prehistoric herd swam heroically from Dakar to Cartagena. 

No, even though it should have, it didn't happen that way.  An omnipresent godlike entity knows the truth: A drug lord wanted a private zoo. Four hippos arrived. Humans lost control of them. The hippos took it from there. 

So perhaps our distant visiting paleontologist eventually publishes his monumental work, The Transatlantic Hippopotamus Migration of the Late Anthropocene, complete with charts, isotope studies and a computer reconstruction of courageous hippos island-hopping across the Atlantic. And, of course yawns from the hoi polloi, but his colleagues applaud. Universities teach it. For three centuries it becomes settled science. 

Then some future archaeological Aquarian intern from Trappist-1e digging through the remains of an ancient Colombian building finds a miraculous surviving photograph. There stands Pablo Escobar. Behind him stands a hippopotamus. Professors stares at it.  On the back is the name of the civilization where this mysterious photograph came from: Kodak Paper.

Fifty years of research disappear before lunch. And somewhere in the great faculty lounge of eternity, Pablo is laughing. Science wasn't foolish. It simply didn't have all the evidence. Which leaves us with a useful thought the next time we stare at Mars—or at any ancient mystery—and announce with great confidence what absolutely could or could not have happened: Sometimes the bones survive. The punch line doesn't.

Thomas Shess is the author of two short story collections available online on Barnes & Noble: "Cantina Psalms" and "Tough Love."  Other free samples of his work are posted on his website ThomasShess.com

THE FOODIST / A RESTAURANT RENAISSANCE IS BLOOMING IN CORONADO

Hotel Del Coronado's SunLife Organics right on the world's best beach

Coronado eateries have never lacked an elegant and delicious role model. Since 1888, the Hotel del Coronado has shown the rest of the island how memorable restaurants become part of a community’s personality. 

Generations have gathered beneath the Del’s red turrets for birthdays, anniversaries, romances, business lunches and long afternoons when nobody was in a hurry to leave the table. 

 Restaurant names and menus have changed over the decades, but the Del’s basic recipe has endured: graceful surroundings, professional service, good food and the Pacific Ocean waiting just outside. 

 Now the village beyond the hotel gates is following the old master’s example. Coronado has all the ingredients of a first-rate restaurant town. The Pacific anchors one end of Orange Avenue. San Diego Bay sparkles at the other. In between are residents, sailors, hotel guests, beachgoers and day-trippers carrying healthy appetites and credit cards. Something especially tasty is happening in 2026. 

Coronado is enjoying a restaurant renaissance. New dining rooms are opening in storefronts that needed fresh life. Hotel restaurants are creating small worlds of their own. Burgers, tacos, Mediterranean cooking, Champagne, oysters, ice cream and healthy beach fare are elbowing one another for room on the island menu. 

BY THE SEA

 The latest entry is By The Sea, the long-awaited restaurant at 1300 Orange Avenue. Coronado residents Doug and Lara Hamm have spent three years developing the project, drawing inspiration from the Amalfi Coast, the French Riviera and the Greek Isles. 

The menu is expected to offer elevated coastal fare with Mediterranean and Italian influences. By The Sea occupies the former Boardwalk Beach Club space, a short walk from the Hotel del Coronado and close enough to the Pacific to remind diners why seafood tastes better near salt water. 

 By the Sea: 1300 Orange Avenue Mediterranean-influenced coastal cooking, Italian flavors, seafood and cocktails. Website: bytheseacoronado.com  

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NIGHT HAWK 

 The new Baby Grand hotel has given Coronado a restaurant with a flair for theater. Night Hawk is an open-air dining room where the kitchen works with live fire and the menu leans toward Greece and the Mediterranean. Expect citrus, herbs, olive oil, sea salt, smoke and a thoughtful selection of Greek wines. The setting includes palms, statues, stonework and rock-formed booths. 

Night Hawk does not look as though somebody merely opened a restaurant. It looks as though somebody discovered one during an archaeological dig and added a bar. 

 Night Hawk at The Baby Grand: 1315 Orange Avenue Open-fire Greek and Mediterranean dishes, cocktails and Greek wines. Website: thebabygrandcoronado.com 

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FALLEN EMPIRE

Fallen Empire: Some restaurants place a hostess near the front door. Fallen Empire makes customers find the door. Hidden behind a statue inside the Baby Grand, Fallen Empire is a reservation-only Champagne and oyster bar with brass booths, red mohair, an undersea mosaic and enough atmosphere to make James Bond check his tie. 

The combination cocktail and raw bar gives the room the feeling of a private European hideaway. This is not a place for a hurried cup of coffee before running errands. It is built for lingering. 

Fallen Empire at The Baby Grand: 1315 Orange Avenue Oysters, raw-bar selections, Champagne and cocktails. Website: thebabygrandcoronado.com 

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DOUBLE STANDARD

Double Standard: Restaurateur David Spatafore and Blue Bridge Hospitality opened Double Standard beside Village Pizzeria in March. Its appeal is wonderfully uncomplicated: American Wagyu burgers, large chicken sandwiches, hand-breaded tenders, fries, onion rings, milkshakes and root-beer floats. The revived Leroy Burger comes with Muenster cheese, bacon jam, pickles and garlic aioli. 

Nobody enters Double Standard fearing dinner will arrive as three peas, a flower petal and a mysterious streak of sauce across an oversized white plate. This is food designed to require two hands and several napkins. 

Double Standard: 1202 Orange Avenue Wagyu burgers, chicken sandwiches, tenders, fries, onion rings and shakes. Website: doublestandard-sd.com 

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Kim and Tyler Malek are cousins and creators of Salt & Straw empire

SALT & STRAW

Salt & Straw: Coronado’s new Salt & Straw has brought a measure of Portland imagination to the traditional ice-cream cone. The shop supplements 13 regular flavors with monthly limited editions. Sea Salt with Caramel Ribbons remains a dependable favorite, but the adventurous can encounter combinations involving goat cheese, berries, chocolate, flowers and occasionally enough habanero to make the tongue sit up and take notice. 

 Vegan and gluten-free choices are available. Salt & Straw proves that ice cream no longer has to choose between chocolate and vanilla and then call it a day. 

Salt & Straw: 1303 Orange Avenue Small-batch ice cream, rotating specialty flavors and vegan selections. Website: saltandstraw.com 

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CRACK TACO SHOP

--This place has carried its Cardiff-famous burgundy-pepper tri-tip south to Coronado. Corn tortillas are pressed to order, ingredients are prepared fresh and the kitchen uses olive oil and beef tallow instead of seed oils. Its signature Crack Taco combines marinated tri-tip with onion, cilantro and guacamole. 

 The place is casual, substantial and open late. Orange Avenue can always use another kitchen willing to feed people after respectable dining hours have gone to bed. Crack Taco Shop 1009 Orange Avenue Tri-tip tacos, burritos, quesadillas and freshly prepared Mexican favorites. Website: cracktacoshop.com 

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SUNLIFE ORGANICS

The Hotel del Coronado added SunLife Organics to its beachfront offerings in June. Its menu concentrates on smoothies, açai bowls, juices and lighter food aimed at customers who have just exercised—or hope their clothing creates that impression. After a burger, onion rings, Champagne and a double scoop of Sea Salt with Caramel Ribbons, an açai bowl may qualify as responsible behavior. 

SunLife Organics at Hotel del Coronado: 1500 Orange Avenue Smoothies, juices, açai bowls and health-conscious beach fare. Website: sunlifeorganics.com 

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 CROWN CITY'S FOOD SCENE GROWS LARGER 

 What makes Coronado’s restaurant revival worth celebrating is the variety. 

-- By The Sea is reaching for Mediterranean coastal elegance. 

--Night Hawk cooks over flame. 

--Fallen Empire pours Champagne beside an oyster bar. 

--Double Standard understands the continuing importance of a well-made hamburger. 

--Crack Taco Shop keeps the avenue fed late into the evening. 

--Salt & Straw handles dessert. 

--SunLife Organics offers absolution the next morning. 

 And watching over them all is the Hotel del Coronado, which has been teaching the island about hospitality since Grover Cleveland occupied the White House. 

 Credit here belongs to the publications and reporters who have been on the ground documenting this dining boom. 

-- Lori Weisberg San Diego Union-Tribune brought renewed attention to the long-awaited opening of By The Sea. 

-- Megan Kitt of The Coronado Times provided an excellent firsthand look at the imaginative Baby Grand hotel and its Night Hawk and Fallen Empire restaurants. 

-- Jennifer Velez of The Coronado Times reported in appetizing detail on the openings of Double Standard and Salt & Straw. 

-- Kate Murphy of Axios San Diego placed the Baby Grand restaurants within the larger wave of new dining rooms appearing around San Diego County. 

--Discover Coronado also deserves a tip of the coffee cup for keeping close watch on the changing Orange Avenue restaurant scene and supplying useful details on By The Sea and Crack Taco Shop. 

 Good local food reporting does not happen from a distant desk. Somebody has to walk through the door, meet the owners, study the menu, ask questions and occasionally sample the merchandise. These reporters and publications did the legwork. We happily followed the aroma. 

 Coronado remains a small island village, but its restaurant ambitions are becoming anything but small. In 2026, Orange Avenue is developing into one of the most interesting and delicious promenades in San Diego County.

DESIGN / SAN DIEGO’S VICTORIAN SURVIVOR

 

Sherman Heights (above, looking West)

occupies a small rise immediately east of downtown San Diego, close enough to see the modern skyline yet old enough to remember when there was very little skyline to see. It is one of the city’s earliest residential neighborhoods and remains among its most architecturally distinctive. 

Victorian towers, ornamental gables, Craftsman porches and modest wooden cottages stand along streets that have absorbed nearly every major turn in San Diego’s civic history: prosperity, immigration, freeway construction, disinvestment, neighborhood activism and, now, renewed interest from preservationists and homebuyers. 

Sherman Heights was named for Matthew Sherman, a Civil War veteran, businessman and future San Diego mayor who purchased approximately 160 acres east of Alonzo Horton’s developing New Town in 1867. The elevated land looked west across the flats toward the harbor, giving the subdivision both its name and its original selling point: air, views and distance from the activity below. 

Sherman built first a farmhouse and later a larger residence in the district. As San Diego expanded during the building booms of the late 19th century, Sherman Heights became a desirable address for merchants, professionals and civic leaders. Homes built from the 1880s through the early 20th century reflected the fashions of their day—Queen Anne exuberance, Folk Victorian practicality, Craftsman restraint and later Spanish and Colonial Revival influences. 

The neighborhood’s architectural celebrity is Villa Montezuma [above], the fanciful 1887 mansion built for Jesse Shepard, an internationally known pianist, writer and spiritualist. Designed by the architectural firm Comstock and Trotsche, the house is a Victorian performance in wood, glass, towers and richly decorated rooms. It remains one of San Diego’s most memorable historic buildings. 

 Yet Sherman Heights is important for reasons extending beyond ornate houses. Unlike some early San Diego subdivisions, the neighborhood developed without the same level of racial exclusion found elsewhere. Over succeeding decades it became home to German, Italian and Jewish residents; Japanese and Chinese families; African Americans; and, beginning especially in the latter 20th century, a predominantly Mexican-American population. 

Its history is therefore not a neat succession of architectural styles but a continuing account of newcomers building lives near the center of the city. That continuity was badly disrupted during the middle decades of the 20th century. Highway construction carved new boundaries around Sherman Heights and separated it physically and psychologically from downtown and neighboring communities. Suburban expansion drew away some established households. 

Large homes were divided into apartments, additional dwellings were placed on rear lots, and absentee ownership contributed to deterioration on some blocks. By the 1970s and 1980s, the neighborhood was struggling with neglected infrastructure, declining homeownership and the familiar consequences of official inattention. 

 Residents did not wait indefinitely for rescue. 

In 1984, neighborhood activists organized what became the Sherman Heights Community Center. They first gathered in a Victorian house remembered as the casita amarilla—the little yellow house—and later helped design a 12,500-square-foot community facility with architect Rob Quigley (designer of the San Diego Downtown library]. The building was created through workshops in which schoolchildren, older residents and other neighbors contributed ideas. It remains a persuasive example of architecture produced with a community rather than simply placed within one. 

 The city designated the Sherman Heights Historic District in 1987, protecting a substantial collection of houses and helping establish preservation as part of the neighborhood’s recovery. 

 Its Modern Appeal Sherman Heights today offers something increasingly rare in San Diego: a genuine urban neighborhood whose identity was formed before automobiles, shopping centers and master-planned subdivisions dictated the city’s shape. Its first appeal is visual. A walk through its residential streets reveals houses with asymmetrical rooflines, narrow windows, turned porch posts, stained glass and decorative shingles. 

Some have been restored carefully; others bear the evidence of adaptation, divided households and several generations of repair. The resulting streetscape is not museum-perfect, but it is alive. Its second appeal is location. Downtown, East Village, Golden Hill, Barrio Logan and major transportation routes are close by. From parts of the neighborhood, the downtown towers and Coronado Bridge appear almost as extensions of the local scenery. 

Sherman Heights retains the scale of an older residential district while sitting beside the working center of a large city. Its strongest appeal, however, may be cultural. The Sherman Heights Community Center continues to offer youth activities, senior programs, digital-literacy instruction, citizenship and English classes, food assistance, neighborhood beautification and cultural events. 

Sherman Cocina, launched in 2024, provides training and support for small culinary businesses and food entrepreneurs. These are not decorative neighborhood amenities. They are the working machinery of community stability. The center’s annual Día de los Muertos observance has grown from a modest local gathering begun in 1994 into several weeks of programming with community altars and thousands of visitors. The event demonstrates how Sherman Heights has converted cultural memory into a public tradition without surrendering its neighborhood origins. 

 

Sherman Heights should not be romanticized. Traffic, freeway edges, uneven property maintenance, housing pressure and the threat of displacement remain part of its reality. 

Renewed interest in historic homes can fund restoration, but it can also attract speculation and short-term investment that weakens the very community responsible for preserving the neighborhood through its difficult decades. 

That tension is central to the modern Sherman Heights story. Preservation cannot mean saving façades while pricing out the families, elders, artists and merchants who gave the district its cultural life. Nor should the neighborhood be treated as an inexpensive annex to downtown awaiting discovery by outsiders. Sherman Heights has already been discovered—repeatedly—by generations of San Diegans who arrived, established households, opened churches and businesses, raised children and defended the neighborhood when public attention turned elsewhere. 

Address 2709 Imperial

Its modern appeal lies precisely there. Sherman Heights is beautiful, central and historically significant, but it is not merely a collection of Victorian houses. It is a community that has survived prosperity, division, neglect and reinvention while retaining a recognizable sense of itself. From its hills, old San Diego and new San Diego remain visible at the same time. Few neighborhoods provide a better view of either.

Address 20 Twenty-Fifth Street

SUMMERTIME, SUMMERTIME / ENDLESS SAN DIEGO BEACHES

SAN DIEGO COUNTY BEACHES [TOP TO BOTTOM]:  

Del Mar Beach; Windansesa (La Jolla); Moonlight (Encinitas); Pacific Beach by drone); Mission Beach Boardwalk; La Jolla Shores; Shell Beach [La Jolla]; Imperial Beach, most SW beach in America; Catamaran Resort Mission Bay beach with Pacific Ocean, above;  Black's Beach and Ocean Beach.