July 2008 Archives

Now and then a few of you have urged me to try a pastrami burger -- most recently Charles Bentley, in his comment on my post about eating at a Krystal's in New Orleans. I admitted that while I still planned to sample one sometime, I found the whole concept of a pile of pastrami atop a burger to be intimidating.

But that comment put the pastrami burger back on my mind. One lunch hour last week, feeling like eating a burger and having business in Pomona, I decided to revisit Bravo Burgers and go for it.

Bravo brags about its pastrami, and I knew its burgers were pretty good. Seemed like a good place to try the two in tandem.

(I've heard Bravo Burgers' chili cheese fries are top-notch, btw, but a sense of decorum kept me from getting those and a burger topped with pastrami. I got the regular fries and a Coke.)

Well, I hate to break it to Charles like this, but I didn't care for the pastrami burger.
Not that Bravo's wasn't an exemplary version of the sandwich. It no doubt was.

Me, I like my burgers fairly simple. Usually I don't even get cheese. Pastrami was akin to another condiment, one with a salty tang, getting in the way of the beef. For me, the pastrami diluted the pleasure, rather than increasing it. Your mileage may vary.

There was another issue that gnawed at me as I gnawed at my sandwich. Sure, I eat a fair amount of unhealthy things -- as well as a fair amount of healthy things, I hasten to add -- and perhaps some of those items are as unhealthy as a pastrami burger, or worse.

But they don't seem as bad. Each bite of the pastrami burger filled me with guilt. Also, fat and salt. Mentally blocked, I couldn't really surrender to the sandwich.

Was that a hiccup, or my heart seizing?

So it was an anxious lunch. Just as well I didn't develop a taste for a pastrami burger, I suppose. I'll continue to enjoy my pastrami and burgers separately.

Believe me, generating ideas for this column is no problem. Besides all the ideas cluttering my desk, my files and my brain, I have a dry-erase board on my desk that has, let me count, 34 column ideas, some of which have been there a long while.

Why? Newsier material keeps coming up and it's not often I'm able to tackle one of these perennials. And it seems as though every time I get to one, and wipe it off the board triumphantly, I add another one or two.

It occurred to me the other day that I can explain every word or phrase on this board -- except one.

"Towne house"? This apparently refers to a house I once saw on Towne Avenue in Pomona, but I have no recollection of what it means.

I suppose I should erase it, but, darnit, something made me write "Towne house" on there. Maybe the meaning will come to me.

Any, um, ideas? *

UPDATE: I remembered what "Towne house" means! And of the four comments so far (as of 11 a.m. Thursday), none are correct -- although they're all good guesses. Keep guessing, if you like -- but expand your thoughts to the entirety of Towne Avenue, not just the Pomona part.

That was fun, in a briefly scary way. I was standing in the newsroom preparing to leave for an appointment with my periodontist when our building shook, then shook again.

Biggest earthquake I've experienced in my 14 years in SoCal. I arrived here a couple of months after the Northridge quake and I've only felt one or two little quakes since then. (A native, finely attuned to such matters from birth, may have felt many more quakes but they haven't registered with me.)

My periodontist, in Upland, said he was suturing a patient after gum surgery and was a half-second away from another stitch when his office shook. The patient must've loved that.

Hope that Yangtze and other unreinforced brick buildings in Ontario and environs are all right, although we already know of damage in downtown Pomona.

Hearing that the quake was centered near Chino Hills makes me wonder if the Shoppes (you remember how to say it) are OK.

I'm headed for home now and have my fingers crossed nothing broke.*

UPDATE: Nothing did.

Ahhh, a rare week without Ontario and Pomona council meetings!

It's the fifth week of the month, meaning our friends in Ontario and Pomona have already had their get-togethers for July. Last time this happened was April.

I forget what it's like to have five nights in a row free of work obligations, just like normal people. In fact I almost filled time by going to Monday's Upland council meeting before getting hold of myself.

Come to think of it, though, one evening this week is spoken for. Thursday evening, Charles Phoenix is speaking to Fairplex Friends and leading a tram tour of the fairgrounds, 5:30 to 7:30. (It's free, but reserve a spot by calling 510-5606.) That's a must and it won't seem much like work.

Other than that, I'm looking forward to leaving work at 6-ish and spending time with friends, or just relaxing at home. Like I said: Ahhhh.

After a comment from reader Bob Terry about Z for Zanja, in which he referenced the tome "Windows in an Old Adobe," I heard from another Bob, reader Bob House. He writes:

"Mention of 'Windows in an Old Adobe' got me to revisit the Inland Empire section of my bookshelf to find 'A World of Its Own' by Matt Garcia, 'Claremont: A Pictorial History' by Judy Wright, 'Mexican Serenade' by Pauline Deuel (about the Padua Hills Theater and Players), 'Pomona Queen' by Kem Nunn and 'Sleeping Giant: An Illustrated History of Southern California's Inland Empire' by Rob Wagner (and published by the Daily Bulletin).

"I'd really like to hear what other books about or set in the Inland Empire you and other readers may have or know about."

There are a fair number of city histories, Bob, although to be candid, most leave an awful lot to be desired in the readability department. We can only hope my colleague Joe Blackstock writes a history someday; as his Daily Bulletin columns prove, he not only knows his history, he knows how to research and he can write, too. Most of our history writers, bless 'em, can do only one or two out of the three.

That said, a few of the books on my shelves: Charles Phoenix's "Cruising the Pomona Valley"; Don Clucas' "Light Over the Mountain," about Cucamonga, and "Upland, a Century of Community"; Ruth Austen's "Ontario" and William King's "Pomona," two coffee table books; Gloria Ricci Lothrop's "Pomona, a Centennial History"; and another Bulletin-published book, "Witness to a Century," by Blackstock and Wagner.

Anyone want to add to the list?

[Well, with "Pomona A to Z" finished, my Sundays are now free here on the blog. But I like the idea of rerunning a past column.

For now, what with travel costs soaring and a lot of people planning stay-cations, I'll satisfy the armchair travelers by rerunning a few past columns about trips I've taken. Let's start with this Aug. 30, 2006 column about Seattle. Unanswered question: Does anyone read the Internet from an armchair?]

No monotony, and no monorail, on Seattle trip

Just got back from my first-ever visit to Seattle, the hip destination George Costanza once derided as "the pesto of cities."

Seattle has always intrigued me, and it's not the coffee, grunge music, flannel or rain.

What intrigued me was the Space Needle and the Monorail.

As you may know, they were built for the 1962 World's Fair. The Needle is a 500-foot spindle with an observation deck at the top. The Monorail is an almost noiseless train that whooshes from the Needle to downtown on an elevated track.

At some point in my childhood, which was largely spent watching "The Jetsons," gaping at NASA moon landings and playing with my Major Matt Mason astronaut toys, I became aware of the Space Needle and Monorail and decided they were awesomely futuristic.

Today they are awesomely retro. I know they were only built to impress the out-of-towners, but as an out-of-towner, I'm fine with that. In my mind, the Needle and Monorail were working examples of the shiny future we were promised, like flying cars and steak dinners in pill form.

So off I went. My first day in town, I read Seattle Weekly's "Best of Seattle" results, which included "Best Place to Send Tourists." Answer: "Elsewhere."

Ha ha! I suppose 10 months of rain a year makes people bitter.

Somehow, though, my visit coincided with a stretch of dry, sunny, warm days. And even though I was carrying a guidebook and a map, the locals were friendly.

One evening, I walked to Safeco Park at game time hoping to buy a Mariners ticket. As I approached the ticket booths, a man walked up to me and said, "You need a single ticket? Here's one for free."

Thus, I watched the Mariners come from behind to beat the Red Sox 4-3 from a decent seat without spending a nickel.

Yes, my visit involved a lot of luck. But not all of it was good.

A poorly written sign at the Monorail station, which is at a downtown shopping mall, broke the bad news. "The Monorail is temporary out of service," it read.

Can we get this thing running? C'mon, I'm leaving in three days!

Thwarted in riding the Monorail to the Space Needle, I took a bus. Ascending to the Needle's observation deck cost $14, but this was no time to be cheap. In exchange, I got a 360-degree view of Seattle. I was so excited I almost bought a souvenir T-shirt.

(Later I got a similar view from the landmark Smith Tower for $6. The Smith tour guide dismissed the Needle as "a restaurant on a stick.")

After the Needle I checked out the adjacent rock 'n' roll museum, the Frank Gehry-designed Experience Music Project, and its Science Fiction Museum, which has, among other cool stuff, Capt. Kirk's chair.

Once outside, I was delighted to see the Monorail whoosh by right above me into the Seattle Center station. Employees, alas, said it was just a test run during repairs. No passengers allowed.

The next day I called the Monorail information line. "Good news!" the recording said. "The Seattle Monorail is back in service as of Friday, Aug. 11!" As this was Aug. 26, the recording clearly wasn't in any better shape than the Monorail.

I had plenty of neat experiences -- too many to list. Among them: browsing at bookstores and the Rem Koolhaas-designed Central Library, noshing at Pike Place Market, learning some bizarre and hilarious local history at the Seattle Underground tour, riding a ferry to
Bainbridge Island and grabbing a burger at Dick's Drive-In.

My last day, I checked the downtown station again. The test runs must not have gone so well, because the Monorail was still broken.

So I left Seattle with only half of my personal "Jetsons" experience fulfilled. Too bad, but I'm philosophical about it.

After all, it makes sense for the Monorail to still be in my future, tantalizingly out of reach.

(David Allen writes Wednesday, Friday and Sunday, within depressingly easy reach.)

As you may have heard, "At the Movies" is being overhauled without Richard Roeper and Roger Ebert, news that made me think back to the show's early days with Ebert and the late Gene Siskel.

When I started watching the show, circa 1980, "At the Movies" was on PBS and the duo were just coming into prominence. It was a hoot to watch them argue about movies. They were never rancorous but they could get arms-and-elbows with each other, Siskel employing dry wit, Ebert's owlish face bobbing forward pugnaciously. They could be pretty hilarious as they ridiculed movies they hated.

Watch them go at it here about "Bachelor Party."

Without Siskel, who died in 1999, the show was never the same. Roeper was fine but an intellectual lightweight compared to Ebert. I stopped watching it regularly some years ago. The idea of two critics talking about the latest movies was out of the box and a lot of fun, and perhaps it can be reinvented.

I stopped at Borders in Montclair Thursday on my way back to the office from buying Vampire Weekend tickets in Pomona. Wanted to check a reader-contributed Pomona factoid from, of all things, Rachael Ray's magazine.

In the new-release section, there's something really new: a table of cardboard boxes full of $3.99 books. Little of interest, unsurprisingly, but for some reason, perhaps a miscalculation of a Pearl S. Buck revival that never happened, they have something like 20 trade paperback copies of "The Good Earth."

If you ever wanted to read it, this would seem to be your time. In no rush, I picked up the lone copy of F. Scott Fitzgerald's "Tender is the Night." At $3.99 for a novel that lists at $15, I couldn't believe my luck.

Yes, the hot band of 2008. They're playing -- wait for it -- Pomona.

Sept. 16 at the Glass House. That's a Tuesday. Vampire Weeknight?

I saw a notice of the show in Thursday's L.A. Times Guide (the last issue, btw) as part of its list of upcoming shows at various venues. Tickets went on sale Saturday. The show precedes two dates at L.A.'s Wiltern Theater on Sept. 17-18.

On my lunch hour, I headed for Pomona's Glass House Record Store a couple of storefronts from the venue. Tickets are still available, maybe because the Inland Valley is light on Columbia grads. Picked up two tickets, $23.50 each. Two opening acts, including Abe Vigoda, a rising band from (believe it or not) Chino.

I wasn't immediately sold on Vampire Weekend. A friend had loaned me a burned copy of their debut CD early this year and a couple of spins didn't do much for me. Weeks later, I was riding in another friend's pickup and eventually noticed the catchy, vaguely familiar CD he was playing. Turned out it was Vampire Weekend. They kinda snuck up on me. Bought the CD myself and it quickly became a favorite.

"I see a mansard roof through the trees"! Bom! Bom bom!

For me, this is the biggest Glass House show since the White Stripes in 2005. Can't wait.

This week's restaurant: Lollicup, 4323 E. Mills Circle, No. 104, Ontario.

Lollicup is a chain of tea and coffee shops specializing in boba drinks; there are other local locations in Chino Hills (14320 Chino Hills Parkway) and Pomona (961 E. Mission Blvd.) But the Ontario location, which is operated by a family from Indonesia, also sells food.

The menu has a few fried snacks, which may be common to other Lollicups, but the Ontario store has a small bakery-type case atop the counter, a sign near it about taro pudding and various jellies, a few bagged items for sale to-go (Dendeng Sapi, described as sweet beef jerky, and something crunchy-looking called Rempeyek) and a short lunch menu displayed on the counter. A chalkboard had five or six specials, including Soto Ayam (a soup) and several noodle dishes.

From the specials I ordered Mie Goreng Jawa ($6.50), which was much like pad Thai, with thin noodles, onion, Chinese cabbage, tomatoes and chicken. It was too much for one meal; I took the other half home. For a beverage, I had a jasmine milk tea ($3.25) with boba (35 cents).

The interior seats 20. It basically looks like a Starbucks except with tables. Kind of cute. There's a Korean-style yogurt shop, Berry Trees, a couple of doors down but when I left I was too full to go in.

Lured by the false promise of excitement about the future of the day labor center, two TV stations sent cameramen to Monday's Pomona City Council meeting.

One set up on the left side of the dais, the other, a late arrival, on the right. He was assembling his camera as the meeting was under way, aiming and focusing about two feet from the elbow of Councilman George Hunter, who was standing there handing out Home Beautification awards.

Councilwoman Paula Lantz interrupted to ask: "Could the cameraman wait until after the presentation to set up the camera? I think it's disrespectful."

"Just doing my job," the operator said, somewhat disrespectfully, while continuing to practice focusing and swiveling.

The day labor center item didn't come up on the agenda until 9:51 p.m. For a change, speakers on both sides of the issue were respectful. The center's budget was trimmed by a modest 10 percent.

Only the cameraman on the left was still there. Sometime around 8 p.m., the cameraman who had made such a fuss had left.

I stuck around until 10:40 p.m., feeling I was in too deep to leave despite the lack of action. After all, my presence requires a complicated setup too, what with opening my notebook and uncapping my pen.

China is spending $43 billion on its Olympics to improve air quality, etiquette and transportation in Beijing, the most ever spent by a host city on the Games, according to Monday's L.A. Times.

For instance, not one, not two, but three subway or light-rail lines are opening.

All this made me think L.A. could really use another Olympics. Not so much for the prestige of the Games, but just to get itself to focus and tackle some long-standing problems.

Gangs, smog, traffic -- an Olympics could create the civic will to solve them all!

Heck, maybe Montclair should host the Olympics. At least then the MTA would give us the Gold Line.

Inland Empire Restaurant and Food Reviews is the name of a blog I discovered last week, and while the name is awfully literal, so is The David Allen Blog, right? So let's not hold that against it.

The posts are a kind of diary of the unnamed writer's lunch outings, heavy on photos, light on text. The photos of the food are fun.

This blog really does cover the Inland Empire -- restaurants from Riverside, Corona, Upland, Ontario, Rancho Cucamonga and good ol' Pomona have received writeups. Whoever the writer is, he/she gets around.

[My encore of "Pomona A to Z" is complete, but here's a followup column -- originally published July 3, 2005 -- of reader reaction to the series.

As a final note, "A to Z" taught me a lot about Pomona and since then I've learned how little I knew when I wrote it. Hope you've enjoyed reading, or rereading, these columns anyway.]

Readers 'letter rip' on A to Z

With the 26-part series "Pomona A to Z" having ended, some readers are having trouble letting go.

"Don't you have any more letters?" Pomona Councilman George Hunter asked me after Z for Zanja. "Could you do some diphthongs?"

Complex vowel sounds aside, I'm sorry to see the series end too. After all, for 26 Sundays I always knew where my next column was coming from. Now what?

"Perhaps you should reprise 'A to Z' for all Inland Valley cities," C.J. Fogel, a former newsroom colleague, wrote to suggest. "Or how about 'A to Z' but using Khmer, the world's largest alphabet? Moving on from 'tha,' we now have 'pha'..."

Well, yours truly wrote about pho, so why not pha?

I brought my A-game to "A to Z," hoping to have fun -- and I did -- while nudging people into looking at Pomona in a new light. It was successful, at least up to a point.

Jim Downs, a 28-year resident of Ontario, said he enjoyed reading about the valley's other big city.

"I found out some interesting things about Pomona each week, and I even thought about going to see one or two of them," Downs wrote. "But then I thought, 'It is Pomona!'"

You say that like it's a bad thing.

"An underrated city" is how reader David Fleury described Pomona, and he's got it exactly right.

Fleury, who spent 24 years in Pomona, insisted he learned "so much" from my series, which is quite a compliment. He can't have learned more than I did, though.

I knew very little about Pomona going into "A to Z." Even now I know just a smidge -- but it's a good smidge.

Thanks to everyone who nominated people, places and things, by the way. True, I could have done the series without you. But it would have stunk.

Will there be another "A to Z"? Probably.

Downs, the Ontario resident quoted above, requested an "Ontario A to Z."

With such a series, "we could discover some little-known or forgotten facts about Ontario with which we could wow and amaze our friends in other humdrum communities not nearly as interesting as our area! Whaddaya think?"

It's a great idea, but I do have one worry.

What if people from Pomona refuse to check out the attractions because, after all, "It IS Ontario"?

You may recall that I stole the alphabet concept from a fine, funny PBS documentary by Rick Sebak, "Pittsburgh A to Z."

I recently shipped off all 26 columns to Sebak, who was so excited he wrote me, then called me.

Turns out the Bard of Pittsburgh had already quoted me on the back of the DVD version of "A to Z" (available at www.wqed.org), and how cool is that?

Sebak called my series "totally fun to read" and encouraged me to do more. The "A to Z" concept, incidentally, wasn't even his -- a Pittsburgh museum official suggested it.

"You can't copyright the letters of the alphabet," Sebak added cheerfully. "As far as I'm concerned, it's a marvelous gimmick. Take it and run."

When readers least expect it, I will.

But first, I'll let two of you run with it. Because two separate e-mails from two separate readers took an alphabetical approach to critiquing my series.

Judi Guizado wrote:

"I found your columns to be amazing, beatific, classy, delightful, edifying, first-rate, groovy, heartfelt, interesting, joyful, kindhearted, laudable, masterful, neat-o, orderly, praiseworthy, quirky, reminiscent, scandalous -- oops, sorry, wrong column; that one's for Pomona's self-imposed pay raise -- transcendent, unusual, valiant, well-written, Xeroxable, yatterless and zestful."

Guizado would like to thank the members of the Academy, plus Webster's Thesaurus.

And Ruth Wells chimed in with this:

"Allen's Bulletin Columns Did Effectually Furnish Great Highlights, Interesting Jewels, Knowledge Listing Many Nuances of Pomona's Quintessence -- Restaurants, Specifics of our ethnic citizens, Tableaus of Today, Unforgettable, Valued Works of the past, X-cellent Yarns, Zealously told."

I'm awe-struck, blushing, content, dumbfounded, etc.

Now let's let the alphabet rest a bit. We've given it a heckuva workout.

(David Allen writes Sunday, Wednesday and Friday, a workout for your eyes.)

No, that's not the headline atop the Bulletin's "click picks" list online. It's the title of a collection of post-Katrina columns from Chris Rose of the New Orleans Times-Picayune.

I picked up a copy at Beckham's Bookshop while visiting the City That Care Forgot, having heard good things. I dipped in, liked what I read and bought it. By the time I'd left for home I'd read about half, finishing the back half a few days ago.

Excellent stuff. Rose became a voice for the Crescent City, chronicling the community's collective despair, helplessness and triumph. He defends Mardi Gras, cheers for the Saints and finds a strange sense of excitement when the first stoplight is turned back on. There's also the story of Miss Ellen, his shut-in neighbor who whiled away her time after the hurricane by painting pictures on blown-off roof shingles.

By the end of 2006, where the book ends, Rose was recovering from a near-breakdown, much like his city.

He's rarely angry in his columns but usually direct, empathetic and often very funny.

So, for anyone interested in a ground-level view of New Orleans' recovery, as well as in reading a real columnist for a change (ahem), "1 Dead in Attic" is recommended.

This week's restaurant: Sal's Pizza and The Bagelry, 2095 Foothill Blvd., La Verne.

I've passed this combo restaurant on Foothill at D Street probably hundreds of times, but for whatever reason it never occurred to me until a couple of weeks ago that I ought to actually eat there sometime.

I had been inside once. Circa 1998, for a feature story, a photographer and I spent a day driving around the Inland Valley to check out banks that had been converted into other commercial uses. I don't have access to that story, but the La Verne building had been some sort of a bank -- anyone remember which one? -- and the main entrance was then The Bagelry. Sometime in the past few years, Sal's Pizza was added.

(The sign out front advertises the building's two less-visible businesses, Taco Factory and Juice Stop. Because of the strange spacing, I always read the sign in jest as Taco Juice/Factory Stop.)

Anyway. The restaurant seats 87, plus another 20 or so on the patio, so it's quite large. It's pleasant enough, tiled everywhere. A lot of restaurants would envy the generous patio. Speaking of generous, the sprawling menu has bagels, bagel sandwiches, salads, sandwiches on fresh-baked bread, pizza and pasta, and there's an espresso bar.

I had the Route 66, a sandwich of turkey, swiss, tomato, onion and pickle, and got it on a plain bagel, toasted ($5.95-ish), and an iced tea ($2-ish). I didn't expect great things, and didn't receive them, but the sandwich was acceptable. There were several customers, including a young guy on a laptop at the espresso bar and an older couple in a booth, each reading a paperback as they ate silently.

Anyone tried the pizza?

The 600 Starbucks that are closing aren't having much of an impact in the Inland Valley. Only one store, on 4467 E. Mission Blvd. (at Ramona) in Montclair, is shutting down. Thanks to Meg at M-M-M-My Pomona for steering us to the list. Only eight locations in all of California are closing.

Tuesday evening I took Vineyard to Holt on my way to the Ontario council meeting. A brand-new Starbucks is nearing completion on that corner -- the sign is up. That was a surprise to me. But I did know about a Starbucks under construction at Vineyard and Fourth, replacing a Sizzler. Both operations will be within blocks of the Daily Bulletin and can't be more than a mile apart.

Meanwhile, there's still a Starbucks at Vineyard and Foothill, plus a second one inside Albertsons on the same corner. Both are across the street from Coffee Klatch, which valiantly hangs in there, and good for them.

Reader Gail Sundberg writes:

Dear David,

Once again life as I know it is changed. Thanks for reading.

Hey, thank YOU for sharing, Gail. I suppose Claremont is a long way to go for an onion bagel if you live in Rancho Cucamonga. The only bagel alternative that comes to mind is Bruegger's Bagels in the Ontario Mills food court.

If you can break the onion bagel habit, Panera is certainly Target-adjacent. You might become a fan of Dolce Cafe in Montclair, which has pastries and is a block or so from that city's Target. Or enjoy another pastry shop, the homey Local Baker in downtown Upland.

Anyone have any better ideas for Gail?

Sid Robinson has joined the blogosphere. A Claremont High grad who may be best known for his years as L.A. County Fair spokesman, Sid has been blogging for a few weeks now.

I just discovered his blog this week when he wrote about "Things that aren't here anymore," kindly noting yours truly's role as a collector of such ephemera.

Sid wrote a post sharing memories of places he enjoyed growing up like Thriftymart, Value Fair and Magic Tower Burgers. Oh, and a Keds shoe store run by midgets. Good reading, and he even has a few photos.

Urban Dictionary.com, a sort of Wikipedia of slang and wannabe slang, has numerous definitions for the Inland Empire and its cities. Most of them lame, unless you still crack up over meth jokes.

Start with 909 or Inland Empire and then type in your own searches if you want more.

While most are dopey and kind of mean-spirited, I like the definitions for La Verne and Claremont.

[Well, here we are at the end of our little recap of my 2004-05 "Pomona A to Z" columns. I had the topic for Z picked far in advance, relishing the neatness of ending the series the way it began. People kept asking what Z would be but I think the only person I told was Mickey Gallivan, and that's only because I interviewed her for it. This column was published June 19, 2005.]

You'll really dig Pomona's letter Z

Zounds! "Pomona A to Z," which began in this space last (gulp) July 18, today finally reaches the 26th letter: Z.

Yes, it's been a zigzag path to Z, but now we're at the zenith of the "A to Z" ziggurat!

Here we can sip zinfandel, munch on zwieback and dance to zydeco music, while reminiscing about the Z Channel and musing about the zeitgeist.

But let's hold the zeal until Z is revealed.

Admittedly, my job would be a lot easier if Pomona had a zoo. But to my surprise, the city is zaftig with Z's:

* Zarzuela, or Spanish musical theater, performed annually at Ganesha Park by (whoa!) the L.A. Opera.

* Jim Zorn, a former quarterback for the Seattle Seahawks who set 10 school records in football at Cal Poly Pomona.

* Tom Zasadzinski, Cal Poly Pomona's official photographer.

* Dorothy Ziolkowski, a hard-workin' volunteer for the Friends of the Pomona Library.

* Zzooms Bail Bonds, located near the police station, the better to zoom in to get you out.

Blow me down with a zephyr!

Our Z, of course, is none of these. Admittedly obscure, this Z was there at the start of Pomona, and it's still there today.

It's zanja.

(No, not ganja, which was there at the start of Jamaica, and is still there today -- zanja.)

Pronounced "sahn-ha," this was the stone-lined ditch that carried water to Pomona's first settlements.

It was dug beginning in 1840 to bring water from San Jose Creek to the adobes for irrigation and personal use.

"It was the first water system," says Mickey Gallivan, president of the Historical Society.

Short segments still exist outside the three remaining adobes: La Casa Primera and Palomares Adobe, which are public, and Alvarado Adobe, which is privately owned.

I learned about the zanja when I visited La Casa Primera (1569 N. Park) for the letter A. Docent Luis Guerrero showed me the ditch in the back.

Going out the way "A to Z" came in, we're back to the beginnings of Pomona.

Two ranchers, Ygnacio Palomares and Ricardo Vejar, were given title to 15,000 acres of former mission land in 1837, when California was still part of Mexico.

Vejar settled in the south. Palomares took the north, building La Casa Primera, the first house in the Pomona Valley.

He soon had a neighbor. He invited his cousin, Ygnacio Alvarado, to build a house a stone's throw away.

(Archaeological note: This stone has not been found.)

Alvarado dug the zanja in 1840. It was enlarged as more settlers moved in and needed water, according to an 1888 report by the state engineer.

Palomares moved to a new, larger home in 1854, now known as Palomares Adobe (491 E. Arrow Highway), and a zanja was dug there, too.

A drought in the early 1860s killed thousands of cattle in California, making vast ranches hard to sustain. Vejar borrowed money at predatory rates and lost his holdings.

Palomares' widow sold 2,000 acres of the homestead in 1874 for $8 an acre to two investors. The sale spelled an end to the Rancho San Jose days -- but paved the way for Pomona!

Investors sold off lots for the fledgling city, which incorporated in 1888 with a population of 3,500.

Progress eventually zonked the zanjas.

"The little ditch that had brought water from San Antonio Canon across the sandy waste lands became tunnels and pipe lines and irrigating ditches ..." wrote Bess Adams Garner and Miriam Colcord Post in a Historical Society pamphlet.

In L.A., a zanja resurfaced, literally, in March 2005. The Zanja Madre ("Mother Ditch"), the city's primary water source from 1781 to 1904, was discovered by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which was grading land for a rail line.

The 4-foot-wide, brick-lined ditch was quickly reburied out of concern people would develop an interest in history.

In Pomona, the zanjas have been seen by generations of children on field trips to Palomares' two adobes. The adobes are open to the public from 2 to 5 p.m. each Sunday.

The longest zanja is at La Casa Primera. Two feet wide and almost two feet deep, it's lined with rock and has a bottom of dirt and pebbles (and dead leaves and weeds).

The zanja begins at the corner of Park and McKinley, then winds behind the house. It passes under a fig tree reputed to be 150 years old and disappears into the pavement at the rear of the property.

A zanja runs through it.

Hey, that could be a movie!

(David Allen writes Sunday, Wednesday and Friday, columns that should be ditched.)

You may have heard the L.A. Times is cutting not only 150 jobs in its newsroom, but 15 percent of its pages. The Guide and Highway 1 are goners, with more sections and pages likely to get the heave-ho, according to the LA Observed blog.

Gazing into my crystal ball, I predict the Times, in its quest to cut pages without harming itself, will have no choice but to drop its Pomona coverage.

Granted, based on stories so far in 2008, that will free up...what? Maybe five column inches per month? I'm a pretty thorough reader and what with a Home feature on a garden, a Calendar piece on an art show, a California feature on the mayor and a couple of other news stories, Pomona has been the subject of perhaps five stories, plus a few briefs, through all of this year.

And this has actually been a good year for Pomona by Times standards. The L.A. County Fair is usually good for one story and maybe a standalone photo. Sometimes that and a couple of briefs is all Pomona gets in a year.

So, it's safe to say the fifth-largest city in L.A. County can be ignored without readers even noticing the difference.

As for what else the Times can cut, any mention of the 909, from Riverside to La Verne, could also go. I read the so-called Inland Empire Edition and it's a rarity to have any Inland Empire news in it. Drop whatever there is, mostly obits of Claremont artists, and you've freed up, oh, two more pages per year, maybe three.

After that, Times, you're on your own. What do I look like, your Innovation Editor?

(Completely seriously: Speaking as a devoted Times reader, 150 jobs is a lot to lose. You could put out an entire newspaper with 150 people. The Daily Bulletin, at its peak, had around 120 newsroom positions, and now it's more like 50, a number of whom are shared with the San Bernardino Sun. So the cuts are in no way a good thing.)

To get into Pomona on Friday morning, I took Indian Hill to Holt and was pleased to see the new supermarket replacing Food 4 Less on that corner is nearing completion. The construction fence is down and the store's exterior looks about done. It's called El Super and the building looks much better than the slowly decaying Food 4 Less did.

The interior still needs work -- I could see scaffolding through the open front door -- but it can't be long now.

This part of town could really use improvements and attention. It's nice to see the rather sharp-looking supermarket, which replaces an eyesore.

Speaking of attention, the City Council on Monday discussed buying an empty lot just east of the Bekins tower, a welcome sign of interest.

This week's restaurant: KiKiRyKi, 344 S. Indian Hill Blvd., Claremont.

That dull, gray shopping plaza at Indian Hill and Arrow doesn't look very interesting but it has some gustatory gems: Casa Blanca Mexican, Ce Fiore frozen yogurt and KiKiRyKi, which I tried on Wednesday at the urging of a friend who's a fiend for the place.

It's Claremont's other Peruvian restaurant, the finer one being Inka Trails on Foothill near Towne. That place has atmosphere and is a bit pricey. KiKiRyKi is cheaper and you order at the counter, but the food seems every bit as good.

Before you ask, I don't know what the deal is with the upper-lower name, which reminds me of Sarah Jessica Parker's character in "L.A. Story" -- you remember, SanDeE* ("capital S, small A, small N, capital D, small E, capital E, star"). Just as confusing, you walk up to the entrance under the sign and a small sign tells you to use the entrance to the left, which is under a sign reading Pollos.

Well, they specialize in rotisserie chicken, but we skipped it. I had the Lomo Saltado ($9.99) and an Inka Kola in a can ($1.75). My friend got the Tallarin Saltado (also $9.99) and, to split, a fish ceviche ($11.99).

The ceviche was dressed in lime, cilantro and slivered onion, with a hunk of sweet potato on the side. Simple and tasty. Our lomo dishes were beef with chunks of tomato and onion, mine served on papas fritas (french fries), with rice on the side, the other with spaghetti. Mine was quite good. The sole disappointment was the dry rice, but as it was on the side I just left it. The Inka Kola was pleasantly unnatural, tasting like a Fanta soda crossed with bubble gum.

People on Yelp like the place too but, alas, none explain its name. In fact, Yelp calls it Pollos Kikiryki.

Linens 'n Things at Montclair Plaza is liquidating, part of the closure of one-fourth of the chain's American stores after a bankruptcy filing. I pass by on Monte Vista Avenue almost daily and see someone standing there with a sign advertising the latest discount. It's now 20 to 50 percent.

If you want linens, sure, you can go to Linens N Things without guilt. But what if you're in the market for things?

That gets dicier, because Upland is home to the sublimely named Thoughts N Things, a much smaller operation that would appear to compete directly for the things market.

Discounted things or mom-and-pop things? Gad, what an ethical dilemma.

After Monday's Pomona council meeting, I approached Councilwoman Paula Lantz, asked if she's still on the Foothill Transit board (she is) and then asked, "How come you're not in France?"

Nine board members or employees of the bus agency are in France for a transportation conference, as noted on the Foothill Cities and Claremont Insider blogs.

Lantz, who laughed at the question, explained that the whole thing was overblown. A private company operates Foothill Transit under contract for a set price. That company, Veolia Transportation, is paying for the trip itself, at no extra cost to taxpayers or bus riders, she said, because of its perceived importance.

"I read the blogs," Lantz added, specifically referring to Foothill Cities. She then added the Insider to the list, noting it had mentioned her (approvingly) concerning the transit agency's vote to reject turning portions of the carpool lanes into toll lanes. The vote, she told me, was essentially retaliation against the MTA for refusing to fund the Gold Line. The toll lane money would have included $47 million for Foothill Transit, but a majority of board members, herself included, felt the deal was a poor one, she said.

Unfortunately, the clerks were waiting to close up the council chambers, so I wasn't able to ask Lantz if she reads other blogs. I figured the best way to find out if she reads mine would be to write about her.

For you "Restaurant of the Week" fans, you may have noticed that some weeks back I began adding the name of the restaurant to the entry title.

I liked how it looked, so more recently I went back through all the past entries and standardized things by adding the restaurant name to all the old titles. Now they're all consistent. Makes scanning the list a bit easier, I think.

You can find all the entries, as well as a few other dining-related items, by clicking on the "Inland Valley Eatin'" category on the right-hand side of this page. (The "Eateries Past" subset has nostalgia entries and comments about fondly remembered dining spots.)

I see there are now 43 "Restaurant of the Week" entries covering around 50 meals. Plenty of eatin', and readin' too.

Looking up Pupuseria Cuscatleca (shoot, I had to type the name all over again) for a blog post last week, I Googled it. One hit that came up was a surprise to me: a page from Pomona's city website where you can search for restaurants.

Good ol' Pomona, hiding its light under a bushel again.

Check the page out here. The list is actually fairly up to date -- I noticed Pho Vi and Philadelphia Broasted Chicken on the list -- although Osuna's ought to be deleted, as it became El Molcajete, which has a separate entry, a year or two ago. There are numerous places I've never even heard of, perhaps topics for future culinary exploration.

I'm pleased to report that, based on the list, Pomona has a restaurant for 24 letters of the alphabet, missing only U and X. Restaurateurs should feel free to take that as a challenge.

This week's restaurant: Pupuseria Cuscatleca (whew!), 990 E. Holt Ave., Pomona.

I noticed this restaurant's sign (I'm going to avoid typing the name a third time) some weeks back while taking Holt into Pomona for a council meeting, and finally returned for a meal at lunchtime the other day. It's in an older, one-story building directly across the street from the Pala Motel. (It appears the restaurant relocated from 1380 S. Garey.)

The interior is L-shaped and the entrance is at the bottom right of the L. In other words, when you walk in, your view of the back half of the restaurant is blocked by a wall. I took a seat near the door and have no idea what you see if you sit toward the back along the left wall. Just one of those quirks of a space that may not even have been designed for a restaurant.

As the name implies, the restaurant has pupusas. I've had those in Upland. They're Salvadoran and are like a corn pancake filled with a thin layer of meat, cheese and beans. The colorful menu downplays the pupusas and plays up seafood dishes, many of which looked pretty good from the photos and descriptions. But I decided to stick to the pupusas.

I ordered two, with pork -- my options were two or three -- and frankly one would have been plenty for me; they're good but filling. There was a pleasant cabbage and carrot salad on the side. I also had an agua fresca of pineapple. I couldn't see them make it, of course, but I could hear the blender whirring behind the wall. The frothy juice drink was served in a goblet and hit the spot on a hot day.

The server, who may be the owner or co-owner, was very nice to the visiting Anglo who probably stuck out like a sore thumb. There's an A in the window and the place (see how I avoided typing all those syllables again?) serves breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Not sure what the individual items cost but the bill came to $6.50, which wasn't bad for a satisfying lunch.

The other day I noted here that Claremont's Back Abbey has a $13 hamburger, one that may actually be worth the money.

At ONT I discovered the $10.40 breakfast burrito.

That would be at El Paseo, the Mexican restaurant in the concourse. I was there around 5 a.m. (yawn) before my flight to New Orleans, hoping to grab a bite. El Paseo at that point seemed to be the only restaurant open. The juice place next door, my usual stop before a flight, is out of business.

I saw the price for the burrito at El Paseo and decided I didn't need food that badly.

(I'm going to presume that rent at the airport is sky-high and that the prices reflect that. But that doesn't mean I'm going to pay it.)

It could be an amazing breakfast burrito, of course. And is there a reason I would pay $13 for a burger, but not $10.40 for a breakfast burrito? I guess it does sound strange.

My reasoning is, I don't really like breakfast burritos -- my hazy, pre-dawn recollection is that that was the only breakfast-ish item on the menu, hence the only reason I considered it -- and I didn't want that much food. Whereas I like a good hamburger and for the ambience at The Back Abbey, I was willing to pay. Seeking a quick meal at the airport, I wasn't.

Thankfully, ONT's Carl's Jr. opened before my flight and I had a breakfast sandwich and OJ for under $5. Their breakfast burritos were all around $3. You could probably get three for $10.40.

Anyone want to share tips or memories of meals at ONT? Hungry passengers will thank you.

You know the 1964 song "GTO" by Ronny and the Daytonas? The one with the lyric about how Ronny is going to buy a Pontiac GTO, "take it out to Pomona and let 'em know that I'm the coolest thing around"?

I was walking along Canal Street in New Orleans one evening of my visit, passing by Harrah's Casino, which was on the other side of the street, as its sound system blasted "GTO."

My ears perked up and I paused on the sidewalk a moment, waiting for the Pomona line. Once it came, I resumed walking, a smile on my face, feeling a little closer to home.

You can watch a video here with the complete song plus photos of vintage GTOs.

I've got a few more notes from my New Orleans trip that I'll get out of the way in the next couple of days. Here's one.

On our bus tour of the Lower 9th Ward on June 21, we passed by Fats Domino's house. Yes, the famous house from whose roof Fats was rescued after Katrina. He lives at Caffin and Marais streets, in a low-slung house right there on the corner. No gate, no nothin'.

Next door is the modest office for his music publishing company, which I recognized from a photo included in Fats' latest CD (more on that below). I had no idea it was next door to his residence.

Let me say, I am a Fats Domino fan. I own the four-disc boxed set and the later replacement 4-CD boxed set, two greatest hits CDs, a CD of his early R&B material, an import LP of same and the '70s Legendary Masters double-LP. I've debated buying the 8-disc Bear Family boxed set of all his Imperial Records tracks.

Fats, needless to say, is fabulous is my book. I'll even recommend his most recent CD, "Alive and Kickin'." It took me months to find a copy because it's on some dinky label and received poor distribution. It has one of the most hideous covers you'll ever see, one that appears to have been put together by a friend whose qualification is that he has Photoshop. The music, I was surprised to learn, was recorded in 2000 but unreleased until now because no labels were interested.

And yet the music is quite good -- not as prime as the '50s material, of course, but much better than we had any right to expect. The songs are catchy and the minimalist piano playing very compelling. One of the songs has a three-note (I think) repeating pattern that is simplicity itself, and for days afterward the figure was on repeat in my brain.

You'd think, after Katrina, some record label would mount a Fats Domino reclamation project and put the man in a studio, or even give "Alive and Kickin'" a push. If they'll do it for Jerry Lee Lewis, they could do it for Fats.

Anyway: I found my thrill, not on Blueberry Hill, but in a glimpse of the great one's home. If he was home, I hope he was taking a nap, sitting at the piano, cooking or doing something else he loves.

The new cell phone law goes into effect today, but while many of you are rushing around shopping for headsets, yours truly is unconcerned. (So is Captain Hook, who's been hands-free for years.)

I'm one of those holdouts who has yet to embrace cell phones. Never owned one.

Historically, so few people needed to get hold of me that owning a cell phone seemed like an act of vanity. The inevitable rebuke would be day after day of silence, akin to the disappointment of coming home from vacation to find a big red zero on the answering machine, except the cell phone's zero would always travel with me.

It's likely I'll have a phone before the end of 2008 because now, there are enough times when it would come in handy that it's probably worth the trouble. Also, not having a cell phone is an increasingly untenable, not to mention eccentric, position. At this point it's almost like not having electricity. In the meantime, I'm savoring the freedom.

Not that I would expect to ever talk on a cell phone while driving anyway. I don't know how anyone does it, honestly. Driving is difficult enough. So is conversing, for that matter.

Cell phones are something of a mystery to me, as you can imagine. I watch with curiosity as friends use them. A part of me would like a BlackBerry because of the Internet connection; plenty of times I've been on the road and wished I could look up the address or cross street of a business, for instance. If you're going to get a cell phone, just go for it.

On the other hand, maybe a half-step would be less overwhelming.

I was at a Dodger game last week with a group of dozen friends. The friend next to me (I was at the far right end of our row) kept getting text messages from friends further to the left and responding. One of those people was getting drinks and food for the group, which was quite nice of her.

And yet my friend's phone kept buzzing, and he would read the message, reply by typing with his two thumbs and hit send. Must have been eight or 10 messages throughout the game. Would you like a drink? What about food? I'm in line, ask so-and-so what she wants because she's not responding. I'm in line and forgot what you wanted. Etc.

After a while, the allure of the device kind of wore off. It was pleasant to sit there unencumbered, thumbs relaxed, and enjoy the game.

Although I did relay a drink order.