At the Ontario library, they gave up email for a week, and (gasp) survived. You can read about that in Sunday’s column. Also, elephant rides won’t return to the Upland Lemon Festival, and I present a half-dozen restaurant and cultural items.

George Muecke, above, has opened Ontario’s first tattoo parlor in recent memory. You can get inked in virtually all our local cities, but only now can you do so in Ontario. Friday’s column is about Muecke, his shop and his oddly unique status in Ontario.

Wednesday’s column kicks off with the belated news that the London double-decker bus parked outside a restaurant on Ontario’s Mountain Avenue has left the building for good after the eatery’s sale. Then there’s a clutch of cultural items of note and word that a woman claiming to be Jesus recently visited Upland. Heh.

Sunday’s column recounts highlights of last week’s Ontario council meeting, which offered (mostly) intentional humor from Paul Vincent Avila. Also, a look at the special collection holdings of the Honnold /Mudd Library in Claremont and a few short items from around the valley.

Friday’s column is about Paul Avila, the newly seated Ontario councilman, who ran off his mouth at Tuesday’s meeting in entertaining and sometimes bewildering fashion. “I like to talk,” Avila admitted.

When I shot the photo recently of all the campaign (and other) signs at Fourth and Via Asti, west of Ontario Mills, I was struck by the dead office building there and the state of the landscaping. Part of the Piemonte master planned development, the building, circa 2006, is kind of snazzy but appears entirely vacant, the parking lot is cracked and weeds are about the only thing growing from the dirt.

A few yards to the southeast lies the Best Buy that closed earlier this year; east of that is the still-operating Target, El Pollo Loco and other businesses hanging in there despite the housing crash that prevented hundreds of dwellings from being built to the south. The business center above is our own little ghost town. Call it Ontario’s answer to Bodie.

Sunday’s column (read it here) has items about a trio of Bond movies to screen for free at the Ontario library; a couple of pleasant physical changes to the same facility; some valley vignettes (one about the new sign in front of our building); an anecdote about the “Argo” filming at ONT; and a local astrologer’s prediction for the presidential race.

Just in time for the dog days of summer, Crossroads Car Wash by Ontario Mills has installed a do-it-yourself doggy wash.

On-the-spot correspondent James Rodriguez of Fontana, who recently found the roadside mannequin beckoning customers to an auto glass shop, discovered this oddity while getting his car washed and contributes the photos.

“Upstairs in the same building is a hair salon,” Rodriguez continues, “so a lady can get her Mercedes washed while she washes poochie, then get her hair and nails done all in one outing. Sweet.”

Reader Pamela Arterburn brings to our attention the above film, “Life in Ontario: You and Your Friends.” The footage was found and uploaded by the Ellingwood Model Colony History Room at Ontario’s Ovitt Library. It’s almost an hour long but makes for interesting viewing.

As Arterburn describes the video, evidently compiled from several sources, it includes “a view of the Daily Report’s office (hard-boiled reporters included) and the printing press at work, newspaper boys (some who look about 10) and city officials doing official-looking things at special functions.

“Other highlights include orange juice being processed, Chaffey High students swimming, milling around and engaging in sports, Euclid Avenue before stop signs and lines to separate lanes of traffic, the good people of Ontario leaving church on a Sunday, and fascinating footage of a train crash that must have happened just before the film was taken — and this is just the highlights.

“The silence makes the viewer imagine what people are saying; it’s eerie, like a visual whisper. Even racism seeps through — the only people smiling are white; citizens of color seem almost physically downcast.”

Arterburn also wonders: “Why the heck did ladies’ Sunday hats go out of style, anyway?”

Posters for a Bully Expo have popped up in Ontario and environs, and under the logic that brides are attracted to a Bride Expo (identical signs for that are nearby) and tattoo enthuasiasts to a Tattoo Expo, my worry is that this poster advertises (warns of?) a conclave of bullies.

Be afraid, Ontario. Be very afraid. These are not only bullies, these are bully conventioneers.

What might one expect at a Bully Expo? Submit your ideas and worst nightmares below.