The San Diego Door

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The San Diego Door, (in former versions: Good Morning Teaspoon, Teaspoon Door, and Free Door) was an underground newspaper that thrived in 1960s San Diego, California, United States. Alongside the San Diego Street Journal (formerly San Diego Press), it dominated the underground genre. Both contained anti-war and anti-establishment articles on business interests in San Diego during the 1960s. The newspapers encompassed New Left issues and the birth of the Chicano and woman's movement.

Reference to the long defunct underground newspaper was most recently made in the Cameron Crowe film Almost Famous. The film is a semi-autobiographical story of Crowe’s early years writing for Rolling Stone magazine. Crowe was something of a young literary phenom writing for popular music industry magazines like Creem and Rolling Stone at a very early age. But before that, he was a contributor to the Door where a clip that he wrote caught the attention of Ben Fong Torres at Rolling Stone. Famous rock and roll critic and Crowe mentor, Lester Bangs, also has a connection to the newspaper.

Other San Diego underground papers that dealt with related issues included: the OB People's Rag (food cooperatives and housing), State College Railroad (academic freedom and anti-war), Carpetbagger Express (the Miami Republican Convention in 1972), San Diego Wildcat (labor issues), Inside the Beast (third world-oriented articles), and Sunrise and Goodbye to All That (feminist concerns).

The San Diego Door and others are part of a highly interesting group of newspapers preserved in the San Diego Historical Society’s Archives. The archives contain a series of "underground press" newspapers from the late 1960s.