Thirty Years Ago
On this hot morning in May, as I load up my old battered red backpack at the Inaja Memorial Picnic Ground and prepare to head off into the brush, there’s a cowboy sitting in his jeep a few yards away watching me in his rearview mirror and trying not to laugh.

I have decided that if there is any true wilderness left in San Diego County it will probably be found on the San Diego River between the Santa Ysabel Valley and the El Capitan Reservoir. I’ve never been there before, and don’t know anyone who has.
— “RIVER RUN,” Steve Sorensen, October 26, 1978

Twenty-Five Years Ago
[T]he Fuller wave and tie-down were made popular in San Diego by the presence of black Navy men from the East Coast, where the style has been popular for the past two years. In the past six months, the style has caught on with the nonmilitary population here. According to the stylists, High Rollers alone services 40 to 50 men a week with Fuller waves, and owner Bill Smith says he sells nearly 200 tie-downs a month.
— CITY LIGHTS: “MEN WHO WANT TO BE TIE-DOWNED,” Abe Opincar, October 27, 1983

Twenty Years Ago
Is Republican congressman Bill Lowery gunning for Jim Bates? Several local Democrats, Bates included, say Lowery’s aides have phoned politics reporters at the local dailies and provided details about Bates’s alleged sexual harassment of female staffers. “I’ve been told that Lowery’s office is behind the story and is pushing to keep it in the media.”
— THE INSIDE STORY, Paul Krueger, October 27, 1988

Fifteen Years Ago
Food that had a mother can make us uneasy. Health concerns aside, part of the appeal of vegetarian menus is that eating, for instance, cole slaw, we don’t empathize with a cabbage head as readily as we do a cow’s or pig’s. When we bite down on slaw’s shredded cabbage and carrot and bell pepper, we don’t find our mind’s eye staring into a calf’s huge brown movie star eyes; we don’t hear echoes of slaughterhouse horrors.

Everyone who eats meat is responsible for the slaughter of 22 warm-blooded animals per year, 1500 in a lifetime. If we do eat meat (and I sometimes do), the very word “meat” (and “beef,” “pork,” and “poultry”) shields us from the facts of the lives of animals whose sliced flesh lies on our plate.
— “WHEN THE TONGUE IN YOUR MOUTH ISN’T YOUR OWN,” Judith Moore, October 28, 1993

Ten Years Ago
This morning I took inventory of my medicine cabinet.

As if I had tried to organize things in alphabetical order, the first items in the upper left corner are three Ace bandages. I’ve had them for years, and I’ve forgotten the occasion for their purchase, much less, why three? Bausch & Lomb ear drops and a plastic squeeze bulb: I tried these after a Megadeth concert at SOMA. Here’s a plastic box of Mack’s Ear Plugs: “Doctor’s choice for swimming, sleeping, noise, snoreproof, waterproof.…” I darted across the street in the middle of an Anne Murray concert for those. Don’t ask.
— “BATHROOM SECRETS,” John Brizzolara, October 29, 1998

Five Years Ago
As the clock ticked down this summer on the final campaign for Gray Davis, the embattled California governor turned to some old friends from La Jolla for some last-minute financial support.… Seats on the [Del Mar Fair] board have long been used as political plums and high-society stepping stones; plaintiff’s lawyer Fred Schenk, brother of Davis chief-of-staff Lynn Schenk, was named to the board last December after he and members of his firm gave the governor at least $30,000 in campaign money. This year he kicked in another $10,000 to Davis’s anti-recall committee.
— CITY LIGHTS: “FAIR AND FOUL PLAYS,” Matt Potter, October 23, 2003