A clock in downtown La Verne is broken, with the hands stopped at times a half-hour apart. Why? The answer is in my Wednesday column — along with Cultural Corner items and a related La Verne item about the city’s origins.
Above, as seen Tuesday, the clock’s west face reads 8:16; below, its east face proclaims 8:48.
The former Person Ford dealership site on Foothill Boulevard in La Verne is now a residential complex named La Verne Village, which has 172 apartments. It also has some retail space along Foothill. Waba Grill is coming as are other small shops.
The history of the site, once home to a revolving door of restaurants before the Ford dealership, has been explored pretty fully in a previous blog post.
This looks like a scene from UCLA this week, but it’s actually La Verne. Reader Nathan Keeler shot this at 3:50 p.m. Wednesday at D and Sixth streets, across from Roynon Elementary, where a car struck a hydrant and broke it. The water was jetting up 40 feet high, Nathan says. A little spot news on my blog. Nathan, by the way, is 16 and a resident of Claremont. Thank you, Nathan! Nice picture.
Wednesday’s column begins with two items from La Verne regarding historic homes and continues with news from Rancho Cucamonga and Ontario, examples of local people and cities in the news, and a hat-tip to a recently retired Press-Enterprise columnist.
Roberta is back at Roberta’s Village Inn in La Verne, although as manager this time, not as owner. She sold the business in 2009 but now is working there full time again.
In a second item, reflecting the rapid changes in the newspaper industry, the Daily Bulletin has junked its presses. (We’ve been printed elsewhere in recent years, but now there’s no going back.) I pay a fond farewell.
Read all about both these items in my Sunday column.
On that terribly rainy Sunday in late March, I had just eaten at the original Bob’s Big Boy in Toluca Lake and was looking for the freeway when, just behind a 24-hour dry cleaner a block from Bob’s, what did I see but a University of La Verne satellite campus. Wha…?
“What you spied on your trek to the original Bob’s Big Boy was University of La Verne’s San Fernando Valley Regional Campus in Burbank,” reports ULV spokesman Charles Bentley, a familiar name in this blog’s comments section, in answer to my query.
Bentley continues: “The university has served the ‘Valley’ for more than 30 years, providing accelerated degree programs for working adults. Today individuals can take classes at the regional campus, at the College of the Canyon’s Dr. Dianne G. Van Hook University Center, and at 10 corporate locations we are partnered with in that area.”
Presumably no classes are offered at Bob’s Big Boy. That’s just where you go for a malt after class. And if you spill any on your sleeve, you can stop at the 24-hour dry cleaner.
But back to Bentley, who continues: “La Verne, currently celebrating its 120th year, is proud to state that we are ‘Eleven campuses, four colleges, one university, one vision.’ ” Stirring. Here’s the full list of the campuses (campi?):
* Main campus – La Verne (1950 Third Street)
* College of Law campus – Ontario (320 E. D Street)
* Inland Empire Regional Campus – Ontario (3237 Guasti Road)
* High Desert Regional Campus – Victorville
* San Fernando Valley Regional Campus – Burbank
* Orange County Regional Campus – Irvine
* Kern County Regional Campus – Bakersfield
* Ventura County Regional Campus – Oxnard
* Central Coast Regional Campus – San Luis Obispo
* Vandenberg Air Force Base Military Center
* Point Mugu Naval Air Station Military Center
ULV at one point had a campus in Athens, Greece. No joke. For all its obvious benefits to transfer students, the Grecian campus wasn’t near a Bob’s Big Boy. I can’t speak to the dry cleaning situation.
Wednesday’s column (read it here) concerns an art exhibit in La Verne, of all places, devoted to John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s peace activism, of all things. “Imagine Peace” is at the Harris Art Gallery. Hours and such are here.
I arranged to visit Monday, and I’m awfully glad I did. Of course the price is right (admission is free) but it’s also a neat exhibit for John and Yoko fans. I’m enough of a fan that in reading the exhibit booklet it jumped out at me that (on p. 32) Yoko’s daughter Kyoko is referred to as Kyoto. Please. We all know the name of Yoko’s daughter by her first husband, right?
Ahem. Anyway…
Oh, here’s a line considered for the column but wisely dropped:
The city has no obvious connection to the Beatles, although it’s a little-known fact that “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” was originally to be titled “Ob-La Verne-Di, Ob-La Verne-Da.” Just kidding.
The former Ellsworth’s Stationers at 2317 D St. in downtown La Verne is being replaced later this year by House of Wings.
This 7-Eleven, on Towne Center Drive in La Verne, often catches my eye when I drive past on Foothill, a half-block away.
Looks very 1970s, doesn’t it? If there’s an older 7-Eleven sign in the valley, I’m not aware of it. The store itself, seen below, seems to have been remodeled.
Every time I passed by I worried the sign would be changed out before I could document it, so I took the time to snap these photos recently. Here they are, for posterity.
But I hope the sign remains for a long time; at least 7 or 11 more years.
