Column: Mission Inn’s angels gave wing to Anne Rice novel

The horror writer stayed at the famed Riverside hotel and was so inspired by its arches, angels and atmosphere that she used the hotel, and even the suite where she stayed, as a setting in her 2009 novel “Angel Time” and its sequel. “That’s a great thing for a writer, when you see a place that sparks your imagination,” she once said. I write about her local connection in Sunday’s pre-Halloween column.

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Column: Mike Davis was a proud son of Fontana

Writer Mike Davis, who died Tuesday, was known for his stinging social critiques, especially about Los Angeles in “City of Quartz” and elsewhere. He spent the first six of his life in Fontana and never forgot, in fact reveled in, his working-class, Inland Empire roots. I pen an appreciation, with a lot of details from a 1998 interview I did with him that’s otherwise been lost to time, in my Friday column.

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Column: This subcontractor stops traffic. Its name: Gridlock

In Friday’s column, I talk to a traffic control company that’s on the job in Riverside: Gridlock Solutions. (I’d noticed the word “Gridlock” on orange traffic barriers and inquired whether that was a company or a joke or what.) Also, two events of possible interest are coming Oct. 30: a screening of “The Phantom of the Opera” (1925 silent version) at the Mission Inn and a reading by yours truly in Ontario. Finally, a public servant, in canine form, is saluted in Rancho Cucamonga.

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