Taking the stairs in Montclair

As you may have gleaned from stray references in a few columns, I’ve gotten into climbing stairs daily, which isn’t easy to do when you live in a single-story home. This means I’m always on the lookout for stairs. At Montclair Place mall recently, I was leaving Barnes & Noble by its parking lot entrance when I spotted this impressive new set of stairs a few paces east leading to the upper-level AMC theaters — and gasped.

I went up and down five times. How many steps? I counted. Something like 42. Each trip up counted as two flights on my fitness app. This has to be the best semi-public staircase in Montclair, if not in many of our cities.

Only one other person, who looked like an AMC employee, took them while I was there. Everyone else lazily used the escalator.

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Column: Hitting every ballpark is a worthy but elusive goal

Visiting all 30 Major League ballparks is a nice idea and a good way to see the country from stem to stern, but it would take more dedication and vacation time than most of us have. I’m at 11. I have friends who’ve been to 13 and 17. A Menifee man tells me he’s been to 27, and only to see the Dodgers — speaking of dedication. I write about all this in my Wednesday column.

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Looney tune

Mention in a couple of recent columns of the 1963 Bugs Bunny short “Transylvania 6-5000” prompted a note from reader and jazz musician Carl Schafer, who asks: “Did you at some point in your columns explain that it’s a play on words from the Glenn Miller instrumental ‘Pennsylvania 6-5000’?” I didn’t, but I’m hep to the 1940s song and got the joke. If you didn’t, now you do. That link takes you to the history of the song; this one takes you to the recording.

Who says cartoons are stupid?

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Peach donuts are BACK

Many of you know about Donut Man’s strawberry donuts. It’s the Glendora (and, now, Grand Central Market in DTLA) shop’s signature item, available about half the year. Less heralded is the fresh peach donut, available for only two or three weeks per year.

Personally I like the peach better. Is that due to its taste or its scarcity? More the former, I think, but the latter has something to do with it. Peach is the underdog (the underfruit?), the taste the masses don’t know about. Every summer I try to get at least one peach donut. Once I delayed too long and missed out. Hashtag: #neveragain

Donut Man announced Friday morning on Facebook that peach was back. On Sunday morning I was in line in the Glendora parking lot.

I had a 45-minute wait simply to get a single donut, since many in line ahead of me (and, eventually, behind me) were getting a dozen or more, and only one window was staffed. That’s fine; I read my Daily Bulletin standing up. And the donut was worth it. You might blanch at $5 for a donut, but then, how often do you get a giant donut split down the middle, stuffed with about 6 ounces of fresh, glazed peaches, and served in a box?

In my case, once a year. Or twice, if I manage to go back.

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Column: NoHo, Fonzie, the Stones, and then there’s Maude

It’s a grab-bag of items. Readers share memories of North Hollywood after my recent column, my praise for a used bookstore that I’d said was the biggest and best is qualified, recollections are sought from anyone who attended the 1966 Rolling Stones concert in San Bernardino, the Fonzie statue in Milwaukee leads to a mention of a TV sitcom film site in Claremont, and a top pop singer hails from Murrieta. All of this — whew! — is in Sunday’s column.

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