August 2011 Archives

In November 2009, Jack Lam, the city manager of Rancho Cucamonga, and his wife, Linda, both enthusiastic travelers, vacationed in Antarctica.

Before they left, I suggested they pack a newspaper for our "Daily Bulletin on Vacation" feature. They did so, as this photo shows. Although the scene appears to be full daylight, the sun went down minutes later. Dig the crazy penguins!

This photo appeared in the newspaper after their return and I'm presenting it here to mark Lam's retirement, effective today. (My column about Lam can be read here.)

When I saw Lam at the dedication of the Haven Avenue underpass shortly after his return, he quipped, "I was happy to go on assignment for you." Since the Lams will next be traveling to Kenya and Rwanda, we await their next "Bulletin on Vacation" contribution.

Toluca Lake had the last Hot Dog Show restaurant, once a thriving chain. It closed Sunday, according to LA Observed.

Longtime Ontario denizens will recall the Hot Dog Show on West Holt (A Street) at San Antonio, which stood from 1951 to 1960, when it burned down due to a grease fire in the kitchen. A Burger King now occupies that corner.

Reader Chris Peterson found an Ontario Daily Report from Nov. 24, 1963 while cleaning a neighbor's garage and brought it by our newsroom for me (along with a Sept. 15, 1941 San Francisco Examiner).

The Daily Report issue is dominated by stories about President Kennedy's death two days earlier, among them a story with the prescient headline "Death Seen For Oswald." There's also an ad for "Lawrence of Arabia" at Ontario's Ritz Theater.

But Peterson drew my attention to a photo in the Sports section. Future Chaffey teacher, Ontario mayor and county supervisor Gary Ovitt was honored as Chaffey's junior varsity quarterback. He was described as "most inspirational." I'm not sure if this was a taste of things to come or a career peak, but there it is.

I emailed the clipping to Ovitt, who commented: "Who do I look most like from the Addams Family?"

What was the Pomona City Council doing 100 years ago this summer? Here's a report from the Pomona Daily Review from the council's "monthly" (!) meeting of June 6, 1911, scanned and sent to me practically that long ago by the Library's Special Collections Dept.

"Col. Midgley," by the way, owned Midgley Brothers haberdashers at 125 W. 2nd St., described in phone directories and advertisements of the day as being "just a whisper" off Garey Avenue. The 1911 City Directory gave the colonel's home number, in full, as 319.

Table to Farm Dinners, Fairplex, Pomona

This will be a little different. For one thing, it's fine dining; for another, my meal was comped, i.e., free. I always pay for these Restaurant of the Week meals out of my own pocket, but $75 was a bit much to absorb, so I took the Fair up on the meal (on their third invitation) rather than not go and not write about it. Take this writeup with all that in mind.

McKinley's Grille, the Sheraton's restaurant at Pomona's Fairplex, has been growing produce on an acre in the FairView Farms area of the fairgrounds for its own use and last year began hosting outdoor dinners there on roughly a monthly basis -- bringing, as the name suggests, the dining tables into the farm area.

I attended Aug. 19. So did a lot of people. After a writeup in the Bulletin's Home & Garden section, attendance was 102, more than double the usual number.

After taking a tram from the Sheraton, you walk past the garden plots, where hors d'oeuvres and wine are offered, and then are seated at communal tables. Food is prepared on a grill a few feet away and in an enclosed kitchen. The effect is pleasingly rustic and yet it's also fine dining, which this night included wine pairings, as a jazz duo played.

Dishes, to quote from the menu card, were Santa Barbara spot prawn with chili-fermented tomatillo; farm tomato with dill pollen, extra virgin olive oil, tomato tarragon jam and crisp pappadam; Hoja Santa steamed king salmon with Thai basil fig compote (pictured); Duroc pork belly with farm muscat grapes (pictured); Colorado lamb loin, farm eggplant and toasted sesame; and, for dessert, a cheese plate, farm strawberry creme fraiche tart and creme fraiche ice cream with ginger mint syrup (the syrup was missing, by the way).

Most of this was good to very good, the tomato appetizer, pork belly and tart being the standouts; the bread assortment was also excellent. The salmon was unseasoned and boring, the shrimp soggy. Two people who had the clam fritter hors d'oeuvre said it was rubbery and unpleasant. In another demerit, the plates given to two of us were dusty and we had to wipe them off with our napkins.

As a non-drinker, the wine pairings weren't of interest to me. My friend was of two minds: Because the wines all came from the same winery in Paso Robles, there wasn't a wide range; on the other hand, everyone received the equivalent of a half-bottle or more, which made the $75 price fair. Service was attentive and friendly, although most of the food was presented family style, and the wine kept flowing.

A couple from Chino Hills sitting next to us were there for the first time and were enthusiastic about the food (except the salmon) and the uniqueness of the setting. "It was absolutely worth it," the man said.

A dissenting view was heard from a man who'd been to previous dinners, saying the usual $50 price was a great deal but that $75 that night was too much, especially without the usual individual service.

It's a lovely setting, a novelty night out and a rare chance for fine dining in the Inland Valley, but the experience wasn't without problems. You'll have to decide for yourself if that's worth your $75. The last dinners for the year are planned for Oct. 7 (details are here) and Nov. 4. Contact McKinley's Grill at 909-868-5915 for reservations.

Next week in this space we'll be back to regular-folks food, where we'll all feel more comfortable.

A sign reading "Urgent Care" seems to point to one in a series of dilapidated, fenced-off stone buildings on Base Line Road near the 210 Freeway in Claremont. Rather than a political statement, the sign refers to a clinic on Monte Vista Avenue.

A year ago it was a doughnut upside down in the dirt by a curb at Towne and Arrow in Pomona that caught my eye. Now, at Garey and Grove in Pomona, it's a playing card.

I was walking from my car toward Fatburger on Saturday when I noticed this lone card in the gutter. Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

A few small, family-run convenience stores hang in there, sometimes in older residential neighborhoods where 7-Eleven can't be bothered. Ontario's D Street east of Euclid had two such stores within two blocks of each other, Ryan's (at Campus) and Lisa's (at Monterey). Ryan's recently closed and is for lease. Lisa's remains in business.

This dry cleaner offers "full quality service" but is candid enough to admit that 1 percent of its work may fall short. Spotted on Garey Avenue in Pomona.

That was my bowling score Thursday night at Upland's Brunswick Zone -- my highest yet by a wide margin. Previous best: 171. Fist-bump!

The Deli, 9671 Foothill Blvd. (at Archibald), Rancho Cucamonga

The Deli is a sandwich-making institution at the epicenter of old Cucamonga, the crossroads of Foothill Boulevard (Route 66) and Archibald Avenue. It's in half of an old market that apparently dates to the 1920s.

I don't know the age of The Deli, but it was in full swing in 1997 when I arrived here and it's still packed at lunchtime, with no obvious change or dropoff in quality.

It's not an ethnic deli, just a sandwich shop. Most of the sandwiches are hot. They have dip, steak, sausage and chicken sandwiches, burgers, cold cuts, hot dogs and salads. i haven't made a survey of the menu, but the grilled Cajun chicken breast sandwich ($6, pictured) is my standard order; the burger ($2.89) and Italian steak ($7.69) are pretty good too.

The oak-intensive interior is full of character, especially with the two model trains that chug along on tracks suspended from the ceiling (pictured) and the vintage photos of the intersection that line one wall. The soda machine stands atop an old safe. The shaded patio, which has its own order window, is a nice place to hang too.

At noon, the place is a hive of activity. (It's open until 8 p.m.) One can't help but notice that almost every employee is female, an observation a staff photo makes even clearer. Is The Deli an EEOC complaint waiting to happen?

Who knows, maybe it already has. When I visit I'm often reminded of the "Seinfeld" episode in which Elaine files a complaint with the feds against the diner over the pulchritude of its staff, and the investigators, two men, in the name of research become regulars.

But the eye candy is unnecessary (or a bonus, depending on your viewpoint). It's the food, atmosphere and sense of tradition in a young city that make The Deli well worth a visit.

I saw this framed advertisement in the Boddy House at Descanso Gardens in La Canada Flintridge on a recent visit. (Sorry for the poor photo.) Manchester Boddy not only wrote a column, he owned the old L.A. Daily News from 1926 to 1954.

His Daily News was the only L.A. paper to support FDR. Boddy ran unsuccessfully for senator against Helen Gahagan Douglas in 1950's Democratic primary, in which he labeled her the "Pink Lady," paving the way for Congressman Richard Nixon to defeat her in the general election.

Evidently Boddy was a columnist for his newspaper as well. I'd love to have the Daily Bulletin describe my column as "brilliant" and on everyone's lips -- but it might help if, like Boddy, I signed the promotional department's paychecks.

You've probably noticed our geographical restaurant guide over in the Categories section at lower right. Restaurants that I've visited for Restaurant of the Week writeups since this blog began in September 2007 are separated by city for your searching convenience. The lists aren't at all comprehensive, but they grow longer all the time.

To my knowledge, all of these restaurants are still in operation, even if the writeups are anywhere from one week to nearly four years old. If a restaurant closes, and I know about it, I move the writeup to the Inland Valley Eatin' category with a note on top that the restaurant has closed. That's my way of hiding the review so no one drives to the place on my say-so.

If you ever notice that a restaurant in our archives is no longer in business, drop me a line and I'll take the appropriate action.

In recent weeks I've moved Buckboard BBQ (Upland) and Phillips BBQ (Chino) to the Eatin' file after their closures.

General restaurant topics are also in the Inland Valley Eatin' category. The Eateries Past subcategory is mostly for "Remember when" posts about various classic restaurants.

While we're on the subject, older restaurant writeups (2007 and 2008) didn't have photos, as none of us Bulletin bloggers knew how to incorporate them (our training was zilch), but that's something I'm very slowly remedying.

I'm not going to re-eat my way through those restaurants, but now and then I'll revisit a place and at least photograph the exterior. Usually I note here on the home page when photos are added to an old post.

Any questions or comments on any of the above, or on something else regarding my restaurant writeups?

More than 150 people were inside Claremont's Rhino Records on Saturday for an instore performance by the Long Beach-based band Dengue Fever, whose Cambodian singer sings mostly in Khmer. The band played for 45 minutes, which was awfully generous for a free performance, and then signed posters, CDs and vinyl.

A real estate listing for 257 Oak Park Drive in Claremont bills the house as "the Childhood Home of Legendary Musician Frank Zappa!" Own it for $360,000, reputation included.

The Zappa family lived there beginning about 1959, according to my own research, when Frank was already 18. The family had briefly rented a nearby home on St. Augustine Avenue after relocating from Lancaster. After a few years on West Oak Park Drive the Zappas moved to Palo Verde Street in Montclair before moving away in 1968.

Thanks to the indefatigable, and aptly named, Bob House for forwarding the listing.

Roberta's Village Inn, 2326 D St. (at Bonita), La Verne

The Village Inn is a diner, not a hotel, in downtown La Verne, open since 1969. I wrote a column about the restaurant, but that was about the ownership change and the people aspect. (I'll put the column at the end of this writeup.)

Roberta's is a charming place with Coca-Cola kitsch, gingham curtains, a counter with swivel seats, two dining rooms, a lot of regulars, a friendly staff and a homey atmosphere.

They do breakfast and lunch at Roberta's, with all the staple items. I had breakfast there with a friend Monday. He had the special, chorizo and eggs ($6, pictured), which he liked. I had pancakes and sausage ($5.75) and had no complaints.

They also do dinner at Roberta's now, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays. The menu only has a half-dozen items, but there's always a special or two. Back in December I had chicken parmigiana over fettucine ($10), which was not only pretty good but enough food to take half home.

I returned two weeks ago for dinner and had lobster ravioli (ooh la la), price forgotten but probably $10 (pictured). The Italian wedding soup is excellent, the ravioli was good (perhaps oversauced) and it's a good thing for my waistline there were only two garlic knots. Desserts included a couple of cobblers.

So, Roberta's is a neat little place, where the food is solid but unspectacular. Dinner, though, is better than you'd expect.

Some of us from the Bulletin newsroom went to the Los Angeles Times one recent evening for a Facebook-for-journalism workshop. Afterward we lingered in the building's First Street-side lobby, which is open to the public and has a timeline, memorabilia and a giant globe. It also has a linotype machine, seen at left, and a plate of hot type used to make a front page in 1974.

Strangely, though, the plaques on each were reversed. The plaque on the linotype machine reads "This is the last plate of hot type set at the Los Angeles Times..." The plaque on the hot-type display begins "This is a linotype machine..."

Get me rewrite!

One wonders how long the plaques have been switched, and how many visitors to the Times on educational tours have left the lobby thoroughly confused ... or chuckling, like me.

The former Breakfast at Carl's building, 2011.

You know you've lived in the Inland Valley a long time if you remember when BC Cafe (locations in Claremont and Rancho Cucamonga) was located in Pomona and was known as Breakfast at Carl's.

Reader April Patterson remembers but has a question about the precise location.

"Could you please clear something up for me? There is a thread on Facebook about Breakfast at Carl's. I seem to remember them on Holt on the south side of the street just west of East End. And then they moved to Claremont.

"Quite a few people are saying that they were first located at the northeast corner of Holt and East End before IHOP went in. But I lived right around the corner from there from 1968 to 1997 and IHOP is the only thing I remember being there."

Patterson seems to be correct. I found the minutes of a 1976 Pomona Planning Commission meeting online when Carl's was applying for a beer and wine license. It was open for breakfast, lunch and dinner then. The location given is the southwest corner of Holt and East End, just as Patterson remembers.

The address, for the record, was 1280 E. Holt. (Bit-o-Sweden is described in the minutes as being "across the street.")

Those minutes say that Carl's had been open since 1959 at that location and since 1950 elsewhere in Pomona. Can anyone explain that? My understanding is that founder Carlo Purpero also owned a place named Perp's Purp's somewhere in Pomona, which may factor into this equation.

Purpero died in 2010 at age 95, according to his obituary.

Feel free to share what you remember about Carl's or Perp's. Oh, and does anyone remember their souffle omelet? I've been told that was a specialty, and that if you ask for one at BC, they'll make it.

We haven't done one of these for a while (the fifth quiz was in December), so here we go.

This photo was taken somewhere in the Inland Valley. But where?

Submit your guesses via the comment feature and the answer will be announced here by tomorrow morning.

* Answer: Roberta's Village Inn, La Verne. Thanks to Alan for the correct guess and the rest of you (John Bredehoft, Michelle Dubas and Shirley Wofford) for trying. More here about Roberta's later this week.

Has the Chino Valley ever had a bowling alley? There's certainly not one now in Chino or Chino Hills. Bowlers have to journey to Diamond Bar or Montclair for a game. But Chino Hills is getting a bowling alley. It's under construction inside a vacant Vons at Chino Hills Parkway at Pipeline Avenue.

Here's the cover of the first issue of The Fantastic Four, published Aug. 8, 1961, and the subject of Sunday's column.

The image is from the Marvel Wiki site.

And here's a link to the Hallowed Ranks of Marveldom, mentioned in that column.

* Marvel has posted the entirety of FF 1 on its website as a free digital comic.

Taqueria Los Magueyes, 185 S. Euclid Ave. (at 8th), Upland

This walkup taco stand lies on a quiet stretch of Euclid, a few blocks south of the Civic Center. The 1962-vintage building looks like a classic SoCal burger shack: angled roof, crushed rock facade, an order window and outdoor-only seating.

Actually, though, the building began as Taco Aqui, there from 1962 to 1974, followed by Gus' Burgers for the next 30 years, according to research by the Upland Public Library. Classic Burger operated from 2003 until Los Magueyes took over in 2010.

As Charles Phoenix put it in "Cruising the Pomona Valley": "With wings wide spread, this jet age taco and burger stand is ready for takeoff."

Los Magueyes, presumably an offshoot of the sitdown restaurant in Upland on 16th Street, has tacos, burritos, tortas, sopes, menudo, breakfast items and burgers.

On one of our recent warm evenings I went there for dinner, getting two fish tacos ($1.50 each), a shrimp taco ($2) and a horchata and eating on the patio. The tacos were pretty good, if not on the level of Senor Baja, and the walk-up concept is unusual. It's like Upland now has its own Juanita's. Way to go, Upland.

This exit sign on the westbound 10 Freeway is supposed to say Mountain. I can't tell what's up with the U, but there's either some paint or remnants of a previous letter or something making the U look sort of like an N. The first item of Friday's column is about the sign. Have you ever noticed the problem?

* Caltrans was out Friday morning to fix the sign. "It appears the 'u' flipped over and became an 'n,' " says spokeswoman Terri Kasinga. Mystery solved.

The video of Max Brooks' commencement speech at Pitzer College on June 2 has been posted by the university to YouTube. It's entertaining and unconventional, as you might expect from the author of "The Zombie Survival Guide," a 1994 alumnus.

Fair warning: Hearing the son of Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft talk about his post-graduation struggle with "adversity" might be a little hard to take.

A rare convergence at Glendora's Donut Man on Sunday: their fresh strawberry donuts, just ending their season, and their fresh peach donuts, just beginning their season, overlapped. A group of us got a group of donuts; here are two. There was no consensus on whether strawberry or peach was better. "The peach is sweet," one friend said, "and the strawberry is sweet and tart."

What you might call before-and-after photos of rock singer Sammy Hagar, above, were set to run with Sunday's column but didn't (the vagaries of the newspaper biz being what they are). But then another photo surfaced, courtesy of reader Sheree Vath.

"I read your article on Sammy Hagar's book and his Fontana years. He apparently spent some time at Alta Loma High School too. Attached is his senior picture which appears in the 1966 Sisunga (yearbook)," Vath writes.

That picture appears at right.

"We've had some debates about this subject in our Alta Cucawanda Facebook group," Vath continues. "Some of the people who grew up in Etiwanda say they remember him. Others say it isn't true because they researched online and couldn't find any information about it. I believe he spent some time at Alta Loma High School even if he was just there on picture day. Please take a look at the picture. It sure looks like him even if the hairdo is very different. We have the book to prove it!"

Looks like Sammy Hagar to me, Sheree. His memoir, "Red," doesn't name any of the schools he went to, although he talks about wanting to get out of Fontana after high school and he's known to be a Fontana High alumnus.

Hagar writes that his mom married again when he was growing up and that her new husband was a man from Cucamonga who was a chef at "Chafee" College. (They met at a polka dance.) So it makes sense that Hagar would attend Alta Loma High, even if only briefly.

At lunch Monday at Nancy's Cafe in Rancho Cucamonga I ran into a regular, Darlene Scalf, who saw me reading Hagar's memoir and said: "I went to high school with that guy." In Fontana, she confirmed. She added: "A friend of mine dated him. She had to break it off. Her parents said, 'He'll never amount to anything.' "

Books acquired: "Housekeeping," Marilynne Robinson; "The Divine Comedy," Dante; "The Man Who Was Thursday," G.K. Chesterton.
(All bought at the Borders closeout sale at Victoria Gardens. Sigh.)

Books read: "The Deadly Streets," Harlan Ellison; "Off Ramp: Adventures and Heartache in the American Elsewhere," Hank Stuever; "Roadside America," John Margolies; "The Verse by the Side of the Road," Frank Rowsome Jr.; "Lonely Avenue," Nick Hornby; "Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us)," Tom Vanderbilt; "Highway 61 Revisited," Mark Polizzotti.

Seven books in July, all with titles about roads or driving, even if the insides didn't always match the theme. (I get a weird kick out of having read "Off Ramp" and "Highway 61 Revisited" in the same month.) What did match was that all seven were pretty good in their own way.

"The Deadly Streets" is a 1961 story collection by Harlan Ellison, a favorite of this blog. He's best known for his fantasy work. These are stories of street violence, muggings, teen gangs and juvenile delinquency. Grim, brutal, efficient, these aren't Ellison's best, but they pack a punch.

"Off Ramp" is a collection by Washington Post feature writer Hank Stuever, who's become renowned for his indepth approach to offbeat topics. Self-storage facilities, "kampgrounds" and roller rinks are a few of the places in the American Elsewhere where Stuever stops for his closely observed pieces. He makes time for white plastic patio chairs, the creator of Josie and the Pussycats and the longtime stars of "Jesus Christ Superstar" too. In the collection's epic, he follows an ordinary working-class couple through their wedding, pace by pace.

"Roadside America" is pretty much what it sounds like: photos of motels, diners, coffee shops, movie theaters, gas stations and other commercial structures, some faded, some pristine, from odd corners of America. Some are paired nicely for humorous effect, such as two successive images involving a mock Statue of Liberty, one at a miniature golf course, one outside a heating and air conditioning business.

"The Verse by the Side of the Road" pairs a gracefully written history of the old Burma-Shave roadside signs with a complete compendium of all Burma-Shave jingles, some of which are awful and many of which are hilarious. One favorite, as spelled out on six successive signs: "Riot at/Drug store/Calling all cars/100 customers/99 jars/Burma-Shave." A fine bit of Americana.

"Lonely Avenue" is a 150-page hardcover of reduced dimensions that came with the deluxe edition of a Ben Folds CD, each song with Nick Hornby lyrics. The book has four Hornby stories, otherwise uncollected. Topics: soccer in the world's smallest country, a museum guard's reaction to a hot-button piece of art, a VCR that fast-forwards to the end of the world and parents who discover their teenage son is in an adult film. I liked each of them.

Most of us are worse drivers than we think (not everyone can be above average, after all), and driving is a lot more complex than we dare believe. In "Traffic," Tom Vanderbilt marshals dozens of experts and hundreds of scholarly studies, in dense but chatty prose, to lay out the psychology and physics of driving. Informative, perhaps too much so. Key points are already slipping away from me. But it's a worthwhile book about an activity most of us take for granted.

Lastly, "Highway 61 Revisited" is from the 33 1/3 series of slim books about classic albums, this one being an examination of Dylan's 1965 opus. Worthwhile if you love the album, as I do.

As for where the books came from, the Ellison has been on my shelf for 30 years (sigh), Stuever was bought used in New Orleans in 2008, "Roadside" was bought via mail-order last year, the Burma-Shave book was inherited from another reporter here a few years ago, the Hornby was bought at Amoeba this spring, "Traffic" was a birthday present this year and the Dylan book was bought cheap at Ontario's Virgin Megastore closeout in 2009.

That's a wrap for my dozens of Megastore purchases, incidentally, and also for this blog post.

What have you been reading?