Brian Worley is in Redlands this week, cleaning and repairing a Millard Sheets mural on a former Home Savings there. Worley was the subject of a recent column as he labored over a 41-foot Sheets mural that had been removed from a Santa Monica bank and was in pieces on the floor of a Claremont building. Here he was at a mural that is in place on the exterior of a building and is going to stay that way. That’s the subject of my Wednesday column.
To update my column on artist Tiffany Brooks, I met up with her again on Wednesday as her deadline loomed for the enormous mural she’s painting in downtown Riverside. She had worked 21 days straight at that point. But she finished on schedule Friday and the hydraulic lift can be returned to the rental company. I tell that story in Sunday’s column.
The old Islands restaurant in Montclair is finally demolished, a mere 13 years after it closed. Panera is coming. It took six years to pull off. Also, more news from around Montclair, like why the splash pad is closed for repairs. (Blame the supply chain.) Friday’s column is a rare all-Montclair effort.
Cellar Door Books is open — finally. The Riverside bookseller’s move proved far more complicated than expected. But the books, and the bookstore dog, made it through. I tell the story in my Wednesday column.
Brian Worley is helping conserve a mosaic mural by Millard Sheets, his onetime employer, that was removed from a Home Savings branch in Santa Monica after 50 years. The mural, now repaired, is bound for the Hilbert Museum in Orange. Worley was working on the sprawling mural on the floor of the old Candlelight Pavilion, which had ample room for a piece 41 feet long. I visited for my Sunday column.
Ontario OKs a framework to start talks with the Rancho Cucamonga Quakes about relocating. I attend a council meeting to try to understand what’s going on. (I may or may not have succeeded.) I write about it for my Friday column — my first from an Ontario council meeting in four years.
I interview writer Luis J. Rodriguez about the unexpected start to his literary career: covering crime in San Bernardino for The Sun. “It was a great news town,” he says. That’s my Wednesday column.
A new population forecast through 2060 shows L.A. County losing people, as you may have heard. Well, the forecast also shows the IE continuing to add population, as you probably hadn’t heard. Also, Riverside got a state grant for its planned Civil Rights Walk downtown, its version of Boston’s Freedom Trail. Plus a few more items from around Riverside and the IE, all in my Sunday column.
An all-Upland column! Amazon Fresh store remains unoccupied, Starbucks is belatedly coming, City Council restores some perks for itself, a famous novelist will give a talk, and a new sign downtown is a replica of an old sign. For one day, I’m all about Upland, in my Friday column. It’s an experiment on my part. They’ll probably love it in Upland and neighboring cities and shrug in Riverside.
After writing about how the fledgling Beach Boys performed sets in such cities as Pomona, San Bernardino, Ontario, Hemet and Indio as they sought experience, I had to wonder why Riverside wasn’t on the list. I couldn’t find any documentation that the band ever played in the IE’s largest city, but a bunch of people remember having seen them. Unfortunately, if somewhat comically, they remember seeing them at five different venues. I write about these memories, overlapping or not, in my Wednesday column.