July 2009 Archives

This week's restaurant: Bistro Roti, 1041 E. 16th St. (at Upland Hills), Upland.

Bistro Roti is in the business center immediately west of Upland Hills Country Club. The name refers to the restaurant's wood-burning rotisserie. I tried the place out for lunch the other day.

The interior is upscale-casual. A flat-screen TV was silently showing the Food Network and three other tables were occupied. The lunch menu has salads, sandwiches, pastas and pizza; the dinner menu is more ambitious with steaks, chops and seafood entrees from $16 to $45. They also do breakfast. (See the menus on the bistro's website.)

I went casual with a tuna melt on sourdough with fries ($9.25). I've mentioned before that a tuna melt is my baseline sandwich. (This remained true even though Upland uses 16th Street as its name for Base Line, ha ha.) No, seriously, a tuna melt is what I tend to order to judge whether a place is putting any effort into its food.

Well, the Bistro Roti tuna melt displays real effort. It tasted like, and was, according to the server, made from real tuna, not tuna from a can. Chopped onions, celery and shredded cheese completed the effect. The fries were thin and crispy. At first I thought they were nothing special, but then I noticed I was finishing them. A small dish of ketchup was delivered rather than a bottle, a nice touch. The service was prompt and professional.

Bistro Roti merits further investigation. The only obvious drawback is that when you look out the windows, or sit out on the patio, your view is of for-lease signs in the center's numerous empty spaces. A sign of the times. But the quality of the food proved distracting.

It's the Mimulus aurantiacus, or Sticky Monkey Flower, "easily found in our local foothills in abundance and in a variety of colors, yellow to orange to red," according to the report to the City Council.

The idea of a city flower came from the Claremont Community Foundation as a way to celebrate its 20th anniversary. The foundation plans to distribute Monkey Flower seed packets. Six possible city flowers were identified by Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden in Claremont, all California natives, and the Monkey Flower was its top choice.

Unafraid to make the tough decisions, the City Council named it Claremont's official flower at Tuesday's meeting.

The only other Inland Valley city flower I'm aware of is Ontario's Charlotte Armstrong Rose. The rose was named for the wife of the founder of Armstrong Nursery, which began in Ontario circa 1889.

Bom bom.

Bom.

Bom bom bom.

Bom bom.

Bom bom bom bom bom BOM BOM BOM BOM (chomp).

Just when you thought it was safe to visit downtown Pomona, this Friday's free movie is "Jaws" -- woo-hoo! -- and starts at dusk, around 8:45. The movie is in the Thomas Street Plaza on West Second and Thomas streets. Bring a lawn chair or a beach chair. And it really is safe in downtown Pomona, btw, if not in the waters off Amityville where a great white shark...well, you know the plot. Don't you?

You can see the complete schedule of downtown movies here.

If there's a big crowd, be prepared to say somberly: "We're going to need a bigger plaza."

The Goddess of Pomona blog is back. After shutting down in early June and putting her page off-limits behind a wall, G of P removed the wall (did someone proclaim "Ms. Goddess, tear down this wall"?) after the Pomona fire near her neighborhood.

Although she initially described her return as her "possible comeback," she's posted seven times since then. Guess it's safe to welcome her back.

In the meantime, the go-to source for Pomona news and commentary online has become M-M-M-My Pomona. It presents a Lincoln Park-centric view of the city, understandable since that's where its bloggers live, but it did good work on the fires and often has reports and chatter about council meetings.

(Pomona has a real blogging community with something like a dozen blogs, most of which link to each other. Claremont has a couple. If our other cities have local blogs, they're keeping quiet about it.)

Wish I could be as positive about the Foothill Cities Blog, which attempted to cover the area from Pasadena to Claremont. After a good push, the blog sputtered, crashed, returned on a limited basis with contributions almost entirely from Monrovia (and, hmm, with Pomona and Claremont reversed in its west-to-east lineup of cities) and now hasn't been updated since June 9.

It can't be easy to stay motivated to produce a blog when you're volunteering. Which is too bad, in my opinion; I like the competition and the alternative voices.

Granted, the utility of city-centered blogs as news sources is limited. Unlike newspapers, bloggers rarely phone anyone, show up at City Hall, request documents or pound the pavement. They just write about whatever crosses their field of vision. That's fine, especially since most blogs are a hobby, but the result is no replacement for a newspaper.

Some bloggers come across like people writing in their underpants in darkened rooms, griping because all their questions about the world can't be answered by the Internet. ("Mr. President, tear down this cave!")

Still, the difficulty in keeping a local blog up and functioning in the long term ought to give pause, and perhaps already has, to those who were quick to proclaim the faults of the so-called mainstream media and the supposed superiority of the blogosphere, which would rise to take our place as local news sources. Maybe someday, but not quite yet, obviously.

Flawed we most certainly are, but hey, at least we're still at it every day.

I really like Brand Boulevard, Glendale's main drag, and spent half a day there Saturday.

I saw "The King and I" at the Alex Theater, the restored 1925 theater, which occasionally shows old movies (live theater, musicals, etc., fill the rest of the schedule). I'm unsure if I'd ever seen the whole thing before, but knew I'd seen bits and pieces of it on TV as a child. Not that you need me to tell you, but it's a great movie with a surprising finale.

The same block is home to two excellent used bookstores, Bookfellows and Brand Books. At the latter, a browser in his 30s in the stacks seemed unfamiliar with the concept of used bookstores. He asked an employee, "Are these for sale or do you, like, rent them?"

My lunch was nothing special. Porto's Bakery is excellent but it's so crowded it's hard to relax, and the sushi bar I'd intended on patronizing had closed down. In retrospect I should have gone to Thai in L.A., the movie's Siam and modern-day Thailand being the same, but that thematic tie-in didn't occur to me. Instead, I went to the new Panera outlet for its amazing strawberry-poppyseed salad.

After all this, I walked a few blocks south to the Americana at Brand, the cutesy shopping area created by the developer of the Grove by the Farmers Market in L.A. I enjoyed a slice of cheese pizza at Richie Palmer's Pizzeria and a burger at Jewel City Diner, a small, circular diner with a bar looking out through plate-glass windows. Great for people-watching.

Americana is, like the Grove, too artificial for my tastes, but it's okay. Have any of you checked it out?

I didn't know until my colleague Louis Brewster's column today in Sports that Hugo Zacchini, "a former Fontana resident, commonly is credited with being the first human cannonball." The Peruvian native died in 1975. His father, Ildebrando Zacchini, is said to have invented the compressed-air cannon used to propel humans in circus acts.

Well, for what it's worth, Wikipedia repeats the story. Brewster just passed by my desk and I asked him about it. When he was growing up in Fontana, all the kids knew about Hugo Zacchini, who kept a cannon in his backyard.

I don't know how this ties in with Emanuel Zacchini Sr., who according to his 1993 New York Times obituary was brought to the U.S. from Italy in 1934 by John Ringling, created a human cannonball act with his brothers (none of whom were named Hugo) and set a record in 1940 by traveling 175 feet at 54 mph. He was subject of the song "The Human Cannonball" by Loudon Wainwright III.

Flyin' Zacchinis must be as common as zucchinis.

Via LA Observed, I see that Wired magazine's "Unofficial Thomas Pynchon Guide to Los Angeles" maps out real-life places connected to the famously private novelist's life and work. I was pleased to see that "The Crying of Lot 49's" fictional city of San Narciso, home to a college and an aerospace plant with the sublime name Yoyodyne, is identified as (possibly) Claremont.

Click on the bubble near Upland in the top map.

The Wired mapmaker is skeptical, but there's a San Narciso College website hosted by Pomona College (www.pynchon.pomona.edu) in which the Pynchon-obsessed lay out an argument for why the college and town must be based on Claremont. The website hasn't been updated in years but there's still useful information there for fans.

The old Ontario Plaza was built starting in 1956 at Mountain Avenue and Fourth Street and expanded in 1959 down to I Street. The nearly six blocks of shops and services marked Ontario's transition away from the downtown core and into suburban-style shopping.

The Plaza was torn down in 1998 for a new development, also named Ontario Plaza, but with an Albertsons, Rite Aid and other shops.

Sunday's column talks about the Plaza and notes many of the stores that were there. Feel free to comment here about your personal favorites or about any Plaza memories.

The photo above was shot Friday morning on the northeast corner of Mountain and Fourth. It depicts what I believe is the only surviving portion of the Plaza. The post office and Laundramatic were original tenants, arriving shortly after the Market Basket supermarket, and the signs and architectural style look like they might be original, don't they?

This week's restaurant: The Boiler, 4665 Chino Hills Parkway (at Ramona), Chino Hills.

Reader Charles Bentley once asked us in vain about the presence of any New Orleans-style restaurants in the Inland Valley, after the demise of New Orleans Express/Crescent City Cafe. Well, we now have one, albeit with an untraditional take on the cuisine.

The Boiler, a restaurant offering "steam kettle cooking," opened at the start of June in The Commons at Chino Hills. I had dinner there a couple of weeks ago with my Chino Hills friends. (Everyone should have Chino Hills friends.)

The interior is dominated by a U-shaped bar at which most customers sit. The menu is short and almost entirely seafood. They have gumbo, jambalaya, oysters and pan roasts, plus some pastas.

The sauces are made in advance from scratch and once you choose your item and the degree of spiciness from 1 to 10, they quickly steam it in a small kettle in front of you, put it in a big bowl and hand it over.

I had the pan roast house ($18.95) with shrimp, crab, lobster, clams and trinity in a tomato cream-based sauce. My friends had pan roast crab ($17.95) and pan roast clam ($13.95).

We liked the food and took home the extra. One remarked lyrically on the "layers of flavor." We weren't convinced of the accuracy of the spice levels, with my "4" and another's "7" tasting about the same, but that's fine. I never know what the deal is with the sauces they mix at your table at P.F. Chang either. You just accept the gimmick and move on.

The service was friendly, and the person who explained the concept to us and answered our questions turned out to be the owner. Surprisingly, this is a single-location business, although he hopes to expand. He developed the recipes at the Oyster Bar in Las Vegas.

Our group's only quibble is that the prices (entrees $12.95 to $21.95) might be a couple of bucks high given the fast-casual setting.

You can view the menu online here.

And what is The Commons at Chino Hills? Just off the 71, it's the latest happening spot in suburbia. There's a Pei Wei (the 909's sole survivor after the Rancho Cucamonga one shut down last year), a wine bar with live jazz named Wine Down, a Lucille's BBQ, Corner Bakery, Wahoo's and BJ's, not to mention a Lowe's and a Toys R Us, with more stuff coming, in theory at least (what with the economy and the developer's bankruptcy).

Friday's column employs the word "blogosphere," a word that denotes the virtual realm in which blogs such as this one reside. Spellcheck flagged it and suggested three alternatives: "bloodshedder," "bookshelves" and "bloodsucker."

Various Claremont parks are the sites for a family friendly, and free, film series this summer, sponsored by those cineastes over at the Claremont Police Department, who sponsor the movies and serve hot dogs, chips and sodas. No wonder police officers are our friends.

The events start at 6:30 p.m. with food and games for the kids; the movies start at dusk. The remaining movies:

Thursday, Blaisdell Park: "Firehouse Dog."

Tuesday, July 28, Larkin Park: "Sandlot."

(Which is a great movie, btw.)

Thursday, July 30, June Vail Park: "Open Season 2."

Tuesday, Aug. 4, Memorial Park: "Night at the Museum 2."

That night is the last in the series and coincides with National Night Out. The first 750 guests get free In-N-Out burgers. Oh, yes, police officers ARE our friends.

There's kind of an unusual community fundraiser in Pomona on Wednesday for the two families displaced by the July 11 fire: a beer bash at a downtown bar.

Event name: "Brewing Hope." Har! Sounds like fun: Dale Brothers beer, snacks, baked goods, donated prizes, etc., with proceeds going to the Van Allen and Hardy Henry families. Donations of toiletries and other goods are welcome. The whole shebang is the brainchild of a dba bartender named Tibbi Perez who happens to be an eighth (!) generation Pomonan, a great-great-great-great-great-grandson of Don Ricardo Vejar.

You can read more about it here on Tibbi's blog -- in Pomona, from what I can tell, every citizen has a blog -- but the basics are: 6 p.m. until midnight, dba 256, 256 S. Main (at Third).

Great bar, too, even though all I ever have there is bottled water, or maybe, if I'm feeling wild, a Coke.

Reader Elizabeth Ertel alerts us that Mama's Grill, a Greek restaurant on Haven Avenue in Rancho Cucamonga, near Arrow Highway in the JC Penney Outlet center, is closed.

I had a good meal there a few years back and that's all I know. Anyone eat there or know anything about the place?

Good gosh it's hot. My house doesn't have air conditioning and isn't really set up for a window unit either, so things get mighty toasty this time of year.

Saturday I took the train to L.A. and caught a matinee of the Iraq war movie "The Hurt Locker" at the ArcLight -- very good, and not just because of the a/c. Sunday I left the house for a late lunch in La Verne, a trip to B&N in Montclair and then a coffeehouse visit in Claremont. Back home by 7-ish each evening, I opened windows and started cooling the place down.

How's the heat treatin' ya?

In Sunday's column I write about my childhood memories of the Apollo space program. You can read about, listen to and see photos of the moon landings on NASA's website and watch videos there or on YouTube, such as this one.

Do you remember where you were on July 20, 1969? What did you think? Were the moon landings important to you?

Hit the comment button and tell us about it, at whatever length you choose. The Internet, like space, is infinite...

With the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing upon us, I've been musing about the moon and the space toys I had as a boy.

No. 1 favorite was Major Matt Mason, the astronaut figure (OK, doll). I also had his pals Sgt. Storm, Capt. Lazer and Callisto, the alien with the green transparent head.

And, based on perusing the excellent Major Matt Mason website The Space Station and ransacking the brain in my non-transparent head, I owned more MMM merchandise than I'd have thought.

I had the Talking Command Console, the Moon Suit, the Jet Propulsion Pack, the Space Sled, the Space Bubble pulled by the Unitred Space Hauler, the Cat Trac, the Space Crawler and the deadly Firebolt Space Cannon. I was fully accessorized. (Although I never had the Lunar Base Command Set.)

All of that's long gone, but I still have my Big Little Book for Major Matt Mason, in which he encountered giant burrowing moon worms. It remains vaguely terrifying.

Anyone else ever play with these or other space toys?

This week's restaurant: Riverside Grill, 5258 Riverside Drive (at Central), Chino.

In Chino last week for an evening meeting of the school board, I definitely wanted to eat afterward, business not taking me often to Chino. Riverside Grill, along Riverside Drive, is just a block from the school district office and was an inviting choice.

It's a bistro and half the seating is outside, on a patio enclosed by glass walls and surrounded by palm trees and landscaping that makes busy Riverside and Central seem a world away. The interior is upscale casual, with an open kitchen (well, it's glassed in) and photos of old Chino on the walls.

The breakfast-lunch-dinner place has sandwiches, burgers, nine salads and some ambitious entrees from $16 to $24 that include sirloin, N.Y. steak, scampi and baby back ribs.

I got the champagne chicken salad ($10.50) with baby greens, grapes, gorgonzola, walnuts, grilled chicken breast and "our own champagne dressing." No idea what's in the dressing, but the salad was delicious and made for a light, healthy dinner. Like all the salads, it came with a slice of the restaurant's signature beer bread, which they also use for their morning french toast ($5.25).

You can see Riverside Grill's website and menu here. The restaurant is a nice place and a haven from the cares of the world -- which include the school board.

Hours: Wednesday to Saturday, 8 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Sunday to Tuesday, 8 a.m. to 3 p.m.

The question came up in the comments section the other day about whether it's still possible to transfer for free from a Metrolink train to the subway or bus. The policy had been under review but its resolution was unclear.

"Nothing changes for now," Metrolink spokesman Francisco Oaxaca said when I asked.

Metrolink reimburses 23 different transit agencies in six counties for lost revenue due to the free transfers, which obviously are a selling point for train riders. Some 56 percent of those transfers involve LA's MTA, which raised its reimbursement rate.

Metrolink could raise ticket prices or eliminate transfers in response but, other than a 3 percent fare increase, is holding the line for now. "Ultimately we're going to have to face that music," Oaxaca said. But that probably won't happen until July 2010, the start of the next fiscal year.

So that answers that. We Metrolink fans have at least another year of free transfers, which make the service both simpler and cheaper. Metrolink directors, we salute you.

Books bought this month: "Pulp Culture," Frank M. Robinson and Lawrence Davidson; "The Circus of Dr. Lao and Other Improbable Stories," ed. Ray Bradbury.

Books read this month: "Farewell Summer," Ray Bradbury; "From the Dust Returned," Ray Bradbury; "Collected Shorter Plays," Samuel Beckett; "Vanishing America," Michael Eastman; "Metropolitan Diary," ed. Ron Alexander; "Near-Life Experiences," Jon Carroll; "A Purple Place for Dying," John D. MacDonald.

Halfway through 2009, I've read 31 books, including seven this month. Also note that this month I limited my purchases to two. Progress on two fronts! (I own an embarrassing number of unread books.)

Bradbury, "Farewell Summer" (bought in 2007): In May I reread "Dandelion Wine" for the first time in 30 years. This month I followed up with the 2006 sequel, which is slimmer but has more plot. Supposedly at least part of the book comprised leftovers from 1957's "Dandelion," but with its preoccupation with the elderly and the passage of time, "Farewell Summer" reads more like a product of the octogenarian Bradbury. A lot of people found it a letdown, but I think they were romanticizing the original. And I thought the sequel's "controversial" ending audacious and funny.

Two-fisted eating at Bennett's Ice Cream. (Actually, he was holding the second cone for his mom while she pays.)

You've all been to the Farmers Market in L.A., right? Third and Fairfax? I certainly hope so, since you've had 75 years, as of today, to get there.

Yep, the Farmers Market opened on July 14, 1934, when 18 vendors parked their trucks on a large vacant lot that had been a dairy farm and an oil field. The market became a popular place and food stands sprouted, eventually rendering the farm part a rather small aspect compared to the international food offerings.

Today the market is somewhat overshadowed by the Grove shopping center next door, and I miss the days you could park for free on the acres of free asphalt. That was too good a deal to last, but at least the market survives. And the incursion of chains seems to have stopped at Johnny Rockets, Starbucks and Pinkberry.

Hearing about the anniversary -- activities are planned today and Thursday; read more at www.farmersmarketla.com -- I went to the market on Saturday with a friend. Busy as ever, it remains one of the great crossroads of L.A.

We split an oyster and shrimp po'boy from Gumbo Pot and a shrimp cocktail from Tusquella's and got ice cream cones at Bennett's. We also ogled the vintage toys at Shine Gallery, the imported and specialty groceries at Monsieur Marcel's and the hot sauces at, well, whatever the hot sauce place is called. Oh, to have gone to Bob's Doughnuts, Patsy's Pizza, Bryan's Barbecue, Singapore's Banana Leaf and any number of other delectable eateries.

Do you have a favorite Farmers Market routine or memory?

* The LA Times wrote a long, very good feature on the Market.

Remember our first mystery photo? Here's another one. The subject is out in plain sight in the Inland Valley and, in keeping with the idea behind these quizzes, is known by some of you, but not all of you. Can you guess what and where it is?

(The "busy" background, nearby trees and dull coloring made a good photograph difficult, but I did my best.)

Like last time, I will withhold posting your comments to avoid spoiling the fun if someone gets it correct right away. Wild guesses are encouraged. Comments and the answer will be posted here Tuesday morning.

UPDATE 6:38 a.m. Tuesday: The contest is closed, the comments posted, and it looks like I underestimated how recognizable the scene is. Or perhaps I underestimated how many Montclair readers this blog has. Either way, almost everyone guessed that the above scene is of a statue outside Montclair City Hall, with the council chambers in the background.

Congratulations to Lisa, Kathy, Kristin McConnell, Shirley Wofford, Derek Deason and Desdave. But kudos to Bob House for trying.

We'll do this again soon and I'll try to be even sneakier.

This week's restaurant: Los Portales, 10244 Central Ave. (at Kingsley), Montclair.

I'd seen Los Portales for ages in the strip center behind the estimable Cafe Montclair, but hadn't yet gone in. That is, until looking for a new place to eat before Monday's Montclair council meeting and finding most restaurants on Central closed, Mondays being what they are. Los Portales it is!

I was pleasantly surprised how large the interior is and how nice it looked. There were at least four dining rooms and the one where I was seated had banquette seating, those wooden booths with high backs. Chips, salsa and a menu were quickly delivered. The place was moderately busy.

The menu has plenty of seafood and steak dishes in the $10 to $15 range. Not having time to linger, I opted for the fish taco plate, grilled ($9.95). The two tacos had at least an entire filet between them, more fish than Rubio's would put in a half-dozen tacos, plus some cabbage, diced tomatoes and cilantro on corn tortillas. Double tortillas would have made the tacos easier to eat, but I felt like I got my money's worth. The plate also came with beans and rice. A horchata ($2.25) washed it down well.

My first impression of Los Portales is positive and it may be one of the valley's better Mexican restaurants. Anyone else been there? Do any of you know the location's history?

On my way to Masala Bowl in Chino Hills the other day, I spotted an insurance office seemingly tailored to Russell Crowe.

That reminded me of an Ontario insurance office that apparently targets that subset headed off to Africa with pith helmets, guns and native bearers. At least the insurance looks affordable.

However, my hopes of a trifecta of oddly named insurance offices was thwarted when a visit to the Mountain Green center in Upland revealed that Survival Insurance is no more. Survival Insurance didn't survive? A sobering note for us all.

A poignant YouTube video (under a minute long) of the much-maligned Claremont Trolley (RIP) can be seen here. Keep a hanky handy.

I'm not much on parades, unless I'm the grand marshal of course, but Claremont always has an entertaining July 4th parade. Since I ran out of room in Wednesday's column to note some of my favorite moments, let me belatedly mention them here.

The Goddess of Pomona clad in a white gown and a laurel rode on an electric cart from Pomona College. But don't ask me to explain why a boombox was playing "Sweet Home Alabama."

Friends of the Bernard Field Station carried signs on sticks for various plant species. Go, coastal sage scrub!

The Claremont Ukelele Club played lilting tunes on the namesake instrument while riding in a flatbed truck. The truck, for obscure reasons, dragged an 8-foot papier mache turkey on a wheeled platform with a wordy placard I couldn't see well from the sidewalk, although it seemed anti-military. Did anyone see it or get what it was about?

Less obscurely, a vehicle for a senior housing development carried several seniors blowing bubbles with bubble fluid and wands. A placard on the side read "Claremont Manor Rocks." Perhaps in no other era would even a retirement community be said to rock.

Loud applause greeted parade entries for gay marriage, peace and an end to the death penalty. You don't see that stuff in Upland.

But where were the Claremont Grammarians, who rode in the last few parades in a panel truck decorated with placards like "I Before E" and "Don't Use Contractions"?

Continuing Shelby Garrett's memories of old Upland:

"Over on Foothill at Fifth Avenue was Booth's Market on the SE corner and a small filling station on the NE corner. In 1948 there was a miniature golf course on the SW side of Foothill and Third Avenue. We had such fun playing there.

"In the early '50s, over towards Second Avenue on the south side of Foothill, was the Shopping Bag, Upland's first big supermarket. It was so different from the neighborhood grocery stores we were used to. Jan's Drive-In to the east of the market was a local spot to hang out.

"On the north side of Foothill from Third Avenue on over to Euclid there was nothing but orange groves. On the south side were groves too, from Second Avenue west to Euclid, until Bob & Dave's Chevron Station went in on the SW corner of Second and Foothill.

"In 1950, Yum Yum's Frostee Freeze was put in by Mary Weitzel on Foothill across from the Memorial Park. In their recreation and eating area on the side of the building there was a jukebox. Teenagers went there for great hamburgers, shakes, malts and dancing. The adults got wind of the fun we were having and several of them came in to dance with us often.

"Across Foothill at the ball park, my brother, Kirby, used to announce the ballgames.

"For fine dining, people went to the Magic Lamp (formerly Lucy & John's) or to the historic Sycamore Inn, both east on Foothill past Grove Avenue.

"In 1951 the Swim Club was built out on West Foothill. They had great folk music by various artists performing around the pool.

"Another unforgettable place was Stinkey's on the NW corner of Mountain and Foothill. They had the best hamburgers in town and were open all night for the boys and men who went out smudging in the wintertime. Jack, the owner, always had a cigar with a long ash on it in his mouth, but I never saw it fall off into the food.

"Matteo's Pizza was out on Foothill and Central, as was Lloyd's. Both great places to eat."

Hope you enjoyed the piece. Anyone have memories of these places to share, or just general comments on the above?

Two short comments by me: I believe the Shopping Bag building is now Pep Boys; if memory serves, circa 2000, construction exposed a brick wall with a painted sign for Shopping Bag to motorists on Foothill, until further construction covered it up.

Also, the idea that Foothill was lined with groves is hard for us to picture today, but it does explain an odd news item I saw in an old Daily Report ('40s? '50s?) about a controversial zoning plan to make Foothill a (gasp!) commercial district!

I always enjoy Marilyn Anderson's monthly Hometown Spirit newsletter published out of downtown Upland's Cooper Museum and available for free around town (I get mine at the museum or at my periodontist's).

I've meant to share a long chunk of a couple of essays published there last year and written by former Uplander Shelby Garrett. He wrote about his family's arrival in Upland in 1943 from Alabama and about the businesses along Foothill Boulevard back then. They deserve a wider audience. Marilyn said it was fine with her. Take it away, Shelby:

"Dad was able to get us a 3-bedroom, pre-fab home in Parkside, the huge 550-unit project on the SE corner of Campus and Foothill. Big parking lots separated the groups of houses and there were nice grassy areas between the houses. They had basketball courts and every day when Dad came home from work we'd all go play.

"In the '40s, most people still had ice boxes for refrigeration. The Union Ice Company truck delivered daily to the project. The blocks of 25 to 50 lbs. would be loaded onto a two-wheel pushcart rolling up and down the sidewalks going from house to house delivering various quantities. Tom, the ice man, would let me split the blocks with an ice pick and give me 50 cents for helping him. Boy, was I rich!

"There was a large open field from Eleventh Street down to the San Antonio Hospital on San Bernardino Road, where I used to go rabbit hunting. And quite often Mom would have rabbit to cook for our supper.

"On the NE corner of Foothill and Campus was a little white stuccoed service station with Pegasus, the Flying Red Horse, as its symbol, later to become a Mobil station. Right next door to the east was a little cafe called Pow's Chow. Mr. Pow was in business there for many years.

"On the NW corner was Gilliland Gardens Nursery, the greenhouses and the small Upland Motel. In 1945 they moved their business to the north side of Foothill at Third Avenue. My parents bought the old nursery and motel, making the nursery house our home and moving the greenhouses over to Third Avenue. Mom later had her office (Garrett/Tyberg Real Estate) in that house.

"On the SW corner of Foothill and Campus was Martinez' Grocery Store and next to it was Martinez' Long Bar Restaurant, where you could get an excellent Mexican dinner for about $1.75."

That wraps up the four corners of Foothill and Campus: Gilliland Gardens, gas station, Parkside and Martinez'. Shelby's piece concludes here tomorrow with more '40s-era Foothill businesses.

This week's restaurant: Masala Bowl, 4200 Chino Hills Parkway, Chino Hills.

Indian food is still a mystery to most of America, unlike many other ethnic cuisines. Masala Bowl is a small chain -- locations in Irvine, Tustin, Chino Hills and Plano, Texas, with more coming -- that attempts to remedy that by offering a simplified menu and walk-up service.

The Chino Hills location is in the Chino Hills Marketplace, a sprawling shopping center just off the 71 Freeway. Inside there's a flat screen TV with Indian music videos and a few decorative touches, but mostly it's the standard exposed-pipe, no-frills interior.

The woman at the counter (who was Indian) explained the menu. They have tandoori-cooked dishes and wraps, but the primary entree is curry. There are seven curries, from mild to spicy, and eight meats or vegetables, meaning 56 possible combinations.

I got lamb tikka masala ($7.49 on its own), which is chunks of lamb in a creamy tomato sauce. It arrived at my table in a plastic bowl with basmati rice. Pretty good stuff. I got the meal as a combo ($9.48) with a soda and samosa bites ($1.19 on its own), crispy pockets filled with potatoes. I also ordered garlic naan ($2.49) and bhel ($3.79), a puffed rice mixture with chopped onions and tomatoes.

The bhel was interesting, a sort of dry, crispy salad, but perhaps an acquired taste. The samosa bites were just okay. I couldn't finish all this, so lids were brought for the two bowls, which were easily portable.

Well, Masala Bowl is no Haandi, but it's not meant to be. As a low-priced, casual introduction to Indian food, it's worth a visit. I noticed another couple of restaurants in the Marketplace I hadn't tried and another one across the street when I exited the parking lot onto Pipeline, which means I'm already looking forward to my next excuse to head to Chino Hills.

Did you know Perry Mason creator Erle Stanley Gardner used to practice law in Ventura? Gardner had an office in a stately downtown buildiing and walked a couple of blocks to the courthouse to try cases, while writing a few of the earliest tales of the defense lawyer in his office. On my visit to Ventura, I photographed a plaque on that office building, which has been renamed in honor of Gardner.

Perry Mason used to be hugely popular in Gardner's series of 80 (!) novels as well as in movies, radio and the Raymond Burr TV drama. Like a lot of mid-century mystery novelists, Gardner, who died in Temecula in 1970, seems to have faded from public consciousness. I tried reading one of his Masons during my mystery-reading phase of childhood but didn't get far, which was probably my fault, not his.

You can read more about him here.

The elaborately named T. Willard Hunter, one of Claremont's biggest and grandest characters, died Monday night. (Tony Krickl of the Claremont Courier got it first.)

Hunter is best known for having started the Speakers Corner segment of the Fourth of July festivities in Memorial Park in which anyone is allotted 10 minutes to speak on any subject they choose. But he was also a frequent contributor to the Courier and the Bulletin, wrote a few books and spoke all over the country.

He also founded the annual Labor Day Walk from the San Gabriel Mission to Olvera Street in 1981, L.A.'s 200th birthday, to commemorate the city's founding. The nine-mile walk follows the path of the city's first settlers.

You can read more about him in the Bulletin on Thursday and in my column Friday. Here's a photo of him holding forth (Fourth?) at a previous Speakers Corner.

Know him, ever meet him or ever hear him? Post a comment below. He was one of a kind.

Well, I had a fine time, even though I ignored all your advice. (Sorry about that.) The hotel was right on the beach and represented the first time I can remember being able to see the ocean out my window.

I had a couple of decent meals and hit two bookstores and a comic shop prior to the start of the conference, which tied up the rest of my visit. Except for a side trip during some built-in free time to the Reagan Library, but I plan to write about that in Friday's column.

As a fan of downtowns, let me offer an eyewitness report. Ventura's is gentrifying with boutiques, a wine bar and interesting restaurants, but it's changing slowly enough that thrift stores, art galleries and mom and pop places haven't been priced out. There's a modern movie theater, a vintage theater now used for rock shows and very few chains, only a Starbucks and a Ben and Jerry's that I noticed.

Downtown hasn't reached its potential and it's still a little scruffy, but it's in considerably better shape than a few years ago. If Ventura were in the Inland Valley, its downtown would be second only to Claremont's. It's something for Pomona to aspire to; Upland, meanwhile, would kill for a downtown with the activity of Ventura's.

Not feeling in the mood to go to Ojai on my way home as Bob House suggested (all the bookstores except Bart's appear to have closed, Bob), I took Highway 126 to luxuriate in quasi-rural atmosphere before transitioning back to the urban fray.