Jane’s Addiction in Mount Baldy, 1990

Not only did the band perform in La Verne in 1987, they performed a private concert in Mount Baldy on July 7, 1990. You can find the setlist and more on the band’s website, which says in part:

“This was the first headlining show of theĀ RitualĀ era. It was a special invite-only show in an outdoor amphitheater in Mt. Baldy, CA. Jane’s Addiction played at one end of a pool with fans around and inside the pool itself. Peter DiStefano, guitarist for Porno for Pyros, attended this show and can be seen in some video footage standing on the diving board.”

Footage was used in the video for the song “Stop!” The photo above is one of several taken by Tod Goldberg; see more on his blog. The show flier, from the band’s amazing website, is below; as you can see, the location was kept secret and concertgoers were bused in. There are at least two songs on video on YouTube. Here’s “Pigs in Zen.”

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Humor, heart

The other day on my Facebook page, reader John Bredehoft happened to ask if any of my billboards were still up, and I had to break it to him that those came down probably a decade ago. A couple of days later, out of the blue, a friend sent me a photo of that billboard which she’d found on the Internet while, she said, doing a Google image search for “clouds.” Huh.

The “Humor and Heart” slogan (dig the court jester!) jointly promoted my column and another’s, who wrote more heart-warming stuff.

I hadn’t seen that billboard in years and, in fact, didn’t have a photo of it, at least not handy. What I did have was one of me in front of it, taken by my then-colleague Tom Zasadzinski, whose name, even years later, I can spell from memory. (You’ll notice that I put the wrong hand on my chin. Either that, or I had the wrong hand on my chin in the billboard.)

Here are both photos for posterity. The billboard was up circa 1999 and maybe for a year or two beyond, on Central Avenue at the Montclair-Chino border, and maybe somewhere else too. Of course I took a lot of ribbing about it at the time, and also very recently when friends weighed in on the photo. As one commented: “Wait. Which one has the humor?”

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Winnie the Huell

Unless you watched Disney’s 2011 feature “Winnie the Pooh,” you probably don’t know that in the post-credits sequence, Huell Howser voiced a character. Link is here, and thanks to reader Judi Guizado for bringing this honey of a clip to our attention!

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Jane’s Addiction in La Verne, 1987

Strange but true: The alt-rock band Jane’s Addiction performed on Sept. 3, 1987 at Topper’s, a nightclub that took over the Cattleman’s Wharf location in La Verne. (A previous blog post about Cattleman’s, with a photo, can be seen here.) It’s not as momentous as Van Halen playing at Walter Mitty’s in Pomona in 1976, but it’s still peculiar.

Reader Eric alerted me to the gig after seeing an eBay listing for a bootleg from the show.

He says the set list was: “Ted, Just Admit It…,” “Whores,” “Pigs In Zen,” “Idiots Rule, “1%,” “Mountain Song,” “Trip Away,” “Had A Dad,” “Ocean Song,” “Up The Beach,” “Stop!,” “I Would For You,” “Standing In The Shower… Thinking,” “No One’s Leaving.” He found fliers for the two gigs on the band’s website.

Why were they in La Verne? It’s slightly mysterious. Eric notes: “At that time, they were on a tour and playing larger venues like Irvine Meadows (now Verizon Amphitheater) just a few weeks before. Maybe they were playing as a favor to the owner?”

* Update: Two readers tell me the crucial factor was probably Pat Bacich, who “presented” the concert. He was also involved with Montclair’s Green Door bar, where a lot of bands played, and his brother, Mike, was a keyboardist for Oingo Boingo. One thought Jane’s Addiction might also have performed at the Green Door.

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New Yorker eyes San Bernardino County’s mortgage crisis

Sunday’s column has items about Inland Valley mentions in the New Yorker magazine, in the Financial Times and on “Late Nights With Jimmy Fallon,” as well as few cultural items of note, including the Oscars.

Oh, and in the *groan* category, the Ontario library movies listed in loving detail in the column will screen each Thursday — a little detail I, er, forgot to include. That omission certainly jumped out at me as I read the newspaper over breakfast this morning, although it slipped right past me (and my editor) on the computer screen last week. Sigh.

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Restaurant of the Week: Bruxie

Bruxie Gourmet Waffle Sandwiches, 13865 City Center Drive (in the Shoppes), Chino Hills

Waffles are tasty for breakfast, and as any Roscoe’s admirer can tell you they pair perfectly with fried chicken, but do they make a good bread substitute for sandwiches? Bruxie, which is based in Orange County, thinks so. Expanding northward from its locations in Rancho Santa Margarita, Orange and Brea, they opened last December in Chino Hills, taking over a Johnny Rockets that had just closed in the Shoppes outdoor mall.

The joint was jumping on a recent weekday lunch. Occupying a corner spot, Bruxie has a wraparound patio and, because it was a warm day, had opened the rollup doors that separate the patio from the dining room, turning the whole restaurant into an open-air environment. (There were heat lamps operating on the patio.)

A friend who’d already eaten there twice met me. The menu has savory waffle sandwiches, sweet waffle desserts, salads, coffee and frozen custard, a Midwestern treat that is rare out here. For the uninitiated, it’s essentially ice cream that’s made with egg yolks. (The Bruxie website has an amusing and informative FAQ section, by the way.)

A greeter explains the concept for first-timers, a nice touch for a restaurant where you order at the counter. She described the waffles as light and crisp, much like toast, which proved true. Overhearing us discuss frozen custard while in line, small samples were profferred. That spared us from having to order that on top of the dessert waffle we wanted to try.

We shared a tuna melt with waffle fries ($10.45 as a combo), a chicken-and-waffle sandwich ($7) and a creme brulee waffle ($6.50).Ā I preferred the chicken and waffle, a boneless, breaded piece of chicken inside a wraparound waffle. (You can get syrup for $1 but we didn’t.) My friend liked the tuna melt better, commenting on the tuna’s seasoning. To me, a connoisseur of the tuna melt, it was tasty but more like tuna salad and a waffle rather than melding into a unit. We liked the dessert waffle best, filled with strawberries and bananas and dusted with powdered sugar.

The meal was light and fun, as was the experience. I also had a root beer made with cane sugar ($2.50), like the rest of the sodas. I will definitely go back, especially for the frozen custard. No waffling on that.

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Claremont scholar studied uncivil ‘Lincoln’ figure

If you’ve seen “Lincoln,” you’ve marveled at Thaddeus Stevens, an abolitionist congressman who gets some of the movie’s best lines and who was played by Tommy Lee Jones. Well, I was scanning the letters section of the LA Times last weekend when I saw a letter by Beverly Wilson Palmer regarding the movie, identifying her as 1) a Claremont resident and 2) editor of “The Selected Papers of Thaddeus Stevens.”

And so it was that a couple of days later, I was interviewing her by phone. No time like Oscars week, right? Stevens and Palmer are the subjects of my Friday column.

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Adios, Los Monitos

The long-lived Los Monitos chain seems to be defunct, with all locations closed except the one in Upland, which has changed its name to Chuck’s Tacos. The one at 752 E. Holt Blvd. in Ontario, seen above, reportedly dates to circa 1947. The chain gives its founding as 1936 due to its pre-restaurant incarnation as a tortilla factory. At right is the owner’s message in the window. A Bulletin colleague hopes to write a story on the situation. Keep reading for my April 30, 2006 column on Los Monitos’ 70th anniversary. The beginning and end are somewhat ironic now, but they were true at the time.

Continue reading “Adios, Los Monitos” »

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Ontario practically had a monopoly on irons

Monopoly’s decision to retire the iron, one of its eight original tokens dating to the 1930s, reminded me that Ontario had an important role in the electric iron, through GE’s Hotpoint factory, and that a permanent exhibit at the Museum of History and Art (225 S. Euclid Ave.) is devoted to the household appliance. All that is the subject of my Wednesday column.

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