In Wednesday’s column, Rancho Cucamonga’s new library director tells me her impressions of the city and library and offers a few intriguing ideas for the future. She’s a big reader too.
Photo by David Thomas at 19th and Carnelian, 2007
He’s sort of a local legend, although his name isn’t widely known. Certainly I don’t know it. He’s the streetcorner evangelist with a van and a megaphone. The Filipino-American has been operating in the Inland Valley for years, probably since the 1990s, often with his wife at his side.
Reader David Thomas saw him most recently last fall. He calls him “the Amen guy…because when we see him holding his religious signs, we’ll give a supportive honk and he’ll reply through the megaphone ‘Amen!'” The man had a 7-foot pole with multiple signs and drives what Thomas called a Jesus van based on its signage.
He saw the Amen Guy at Carnelian and 19th, heard he’s been seen at Haven and Lemon and recalled years ago seeing him at Arrow and Archibald. He asked if the man had ever been profiled in our newspaper, and I said not to my knowledge.
I had tried, in 2003, after a tip that he lived next to a drive-through dairy on Grove Avenue; the operator promised to pass along a message from me, but the man never got in touch. Perhaps he prefers not to have his story out there, or maybe he’s just shy.
I have not seen him in a decade or more, I don’t think, so it was nice to hear he’s still around and shouting. Have any of you seen him? Do you know anything about him?
A woman and her daughter were leaving Waba Grill in Rancho Cucamonga last Thursday and encountered this parked car “with three cute canines who appear to be trying out for a Subaru commercial,” reader Louise Shane, who passed along the photo, reports.
“The German Shepherd remained calm and quiet in the rear, the ‘driver’ Pit Bull appeared to be looking past the steering wheel to get a better look at my friend, and the ‘passenger’ was standing guard barking and barking, protecting the car and his/her car mates.”
As long as they don’t slip the car into neutral, everything’s cool.
A couple in Rancho Cucamonga are almost constantly at the bakery they opened just over a year ago. They unexpectedly got a reward when BuzzFeed named their little-known Cake Among Us Bakery & Donuts as the best donut shop in California. Their story is in my Friday column. Above, co-owner Scott McCaslin has just made some vegan pistachio doughnuts.
A former grove and Christmas tree farm in Rancho Cucamonga has been sold for housing. I have a brief history on that, followed by four Valley Vignettes and four newspaper-related items, all in Wednesday’s column.
Sunday’s column starts with news from Rancho Cucamonga, from the departure of its top librarian for Pasadena to development items and more. Then come five Culture Corner items, one of which involves an Ontario concert with which I’m participating, plus a Valley Vignette.
As a behind-the-scenes tidbit, some of these RC items, just as with some of the Chino Hills items Friday, were written weeks or even months ago. This is a year-end move to take some material that has been bumped from previous columns, or saved for future use, and clear it out.
Sunday’s column starts off with a (golf) slice of history concerning the lot just west of the Pacific Electric bridge in Rancho Cucamonga: It once had a miniature golf course, and before that, a trampoline park. Heh. After that comes more RC items, a Culture Corner and more.
The Souplantation in Rancho Cucamonga was a favorite spot when I moved here, and I still go now and then. I ate lunch there last week after news of the chain’s bankruptcy, which is supposed to spare the Southern California locations, and write about it to kick off Sunday’s column. After that: four items from Victoria Gardens, three from a Chino council meeting and a Valley Vignette.
Friday’s column starts with news of development underway at the corner of Foothill Boulevard and Spruce Avenue in Rancho Cucamonga, where a series of Chinese buffets operated for nearly two decades. Also: three more RC items, five Culture Corner items and a Valley Vignette.
In a follow-up to my column last week on the Red Chief Motel in Rancho Cucamonga, Wednesday’s column is about Michelle Lindley, a woman who grew up at the motel when her grandparents ran it. She talks about its latter days in the 1970s and about the recently unearthed mural from the motel’s cafe, which she remembers well.
Above, Lindley says the doorway to the kitchen separated these two unmatching portions of the mural. Below are two fobs from room keys at the motel, which had been renamed the Sycamore.
