back when

Thirty Years Ago ALL ANIMOSITIES aside, I would like to organize a party for people who regularly place Reader personals. Interested "regulars" reply through the Reader. The Ad Tracer. -- CLASSIFIEDS, June 3, 1976

Twenty-Five Years Ago Last Thursday at 3:40 in the afternoon Stan Brown was peering intently down at the freeways from the passenger seat of a Hughes 300C helicopter.... "You know the hardest thing to remember," Brown yelled to an observer sitting between him and the pilot, "is that on KPRI I'm Captain Stan in the Rock Chopper, and on KOGO I'm Stan Brown in the Trafficopter!" -- CITY LIGHTS: "HOVER BOYS," Neal Matthews, June 4, 1981

Twenty Years Ago We had crossed the border at Tecate and driven east through the Sierra Juarez, battling the Tijuana-to-Mexicali buses. Not far past the town of La Rumorosa, where Governor Abelardo Rodriguez had once built a summer mansion to escape the heat of Baja California, the road descended the eastern escarpment of the mountains to the desert floor, near Laguna Salada. This lake bed was once part of ancient Lake Cahuilla, and periodically throughout its history, it has been flooded by water from the Colorado River. A Mexican ranch worker we spoke with told us Laguna Salada had been wet now for six or seven years, to a depth of about 12 feet, but before that, the lagoon had been dry for 39 years. The lagoon contained many fish, the worker told us -- even an occasional sea tortoise. -- "LIKE WIND THROUGH THE CANYON," Steve Sorensen, June 5, 1986

Fifteen Years Ago August 30, 1990. Mayor's home. Conversation between Susan Bray and Mayor Maureen O'Connor.

Bray: Say, Mo. Tell me a secret. Who'd ya really really really like to be the next mayor?

O'Connor: Hmm?

Bray: Susan Golding?

O'Connor: Oh, barfola! I'd rather bring back Hedgecock.

Bray: Well, you want a woman, right?

O'Connor: Huh?

Bray: For mayor, I mean.

O'Connor: Mavourneen would be nice.

Bray: Yeah!

O'Connor: But she hasn't got enough posh.

Bray: Yeah!

O'Connor: Why you askin'? You wanna be Mavourneen's campaign manager? Good luck! Hah!

Bray: No, I got another --

O'Connor: Quit leanin' on my arm.

Bray: --idea.

O'Connor: It's goin' numb.

Bray: You can make me mayor, Mo.

O'Connor: You? You got the looks, maybe. What else ya got? Who's gonna support ya?

Bray: Bobby Spaulding and Johnny Lockwood, Mo. They say they'll go to bat for me -- that is, if you don't run again.

O'Connor: You been foolin' around with Spaulding and Lockwood?

Bray: Me? Gross me out! -- "SECRET SEX TAPES: CITY PLANNING SCANDAL," Margot Sheehan, June 6, 1991

Ten Years Ago "In September of '78, on a Monday, I was given the job of doing the news here. I had to do it for three hours, and two other people were supposed to do it with me. Well, they don't show up. That's the day PSA decides to crash their plane in North Park. I decided right there the news is not for me. -- "NOT ALL WHITE PEOPLE HAVE REALLY GOOD VOICES," John Brizzolara, May 30, 1996

Five Years Ago According to San Diegan Jennifer Dors, 26, who started Glitter Girls last fall, the site has a "spicy, saucy vibe." What's a Glitter Girl?

"A Glitter Girl is a girlie-girl, like a power girl, kind of. You know, you can be cute and kind of glittery and girlie and still be powerful at the same time if you make your insides just as good as your outsides type of thing." -- SIGHTSEER: "ALL THAT GLITTERS," Justin Wolff, May 31, 2001