Column: After 62 years, this Shakey’s seems anything but shaky

Returning to the Shakey’s in Montclair for the first time since before the pandemic, I was surprised and delighted to see the entire staff was intact, working away just as I’d remembered them. After a long item about the restaurant and its manager, I throw together more leftovers from 2023 that hadn’t made print about Ontario, Rancho Cucamonga and Riverside. That’s my Wednesday column, the first of the new year.

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Column: Montclair writer spins tales about 1970s Compton

Mary Hill-Wagner of Montclair has published a memoir titled “Girlz ‘n the Hood,” which is about her childhood in South L.A. among 10 siblings and the mother who fiercely supported them. It’s kind of wild, sometimes sad, sometimes raucously funny. I read her book and then we had a good conversation about it and her mother for my Wednesday column.

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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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