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Thirty Years Ago [Lee] Hubbard hates the fact that [Pete] Wilson is enthroned upstairs and he is down here in this cavern, this dungeon, badly outnumbered by Wilsonites. And he hates that useless open space between the offices. Sometimes he gets out there with his golf clubs and putts around on the carpet. He says that makes the other council members unhappy. He calls it the Green Belt, the council's Open Space Policy. -- "THORN IN THE MAYOR'S SIDE," Richard Louv, February 17, 1977

Twenty-Five Years Ago Not too many days ago I sat at the Pannikin in La Jolla, sipping my fourth mug of Kenya AA coffee, elbow to notebook with a crowd of others like myself. Some plotted novels, some broke their hearts into poems, some reorganized Kant, Hegel, and Nietzsche for the benefit of the confused. Me, I was back under the "Architecture" heading, noticing how much comment I had collected on the subject of contemporary church design. -- "A HOUSE OF WORSHIP IS A (BIZARRE) THING TO BEHOLD," Stephen Heffner, February 18, 1982

Twenty Years Ago When the San Diego Symphony disbanded in January, everyone suffered the same consequences: no more Wagner in the winter, no more Gershwin in the summer, and no more men in tuxedos carrying picket signs in between. But for the ladies on the symphony's fundraising council, it could have been worse: no more fashion shows, no more afternoon teas, and no more Christmas musicales at Ramona Sahm's gorgeous Rancho Santa Fe home. -- CITY LIGHTS: "AUXILIARY VERVE," Brae Canlen, February 19, 1987

Fifteen Years Ago The San Diego skyline doesn't measure up in terms of height because of the city-imposed 500-foot limit, yet it does sport some innovative architecture. I look around, flashing on other nights and other jumps. Over by the convention center stand the new twin towers of Harbor One. I had the pleasure of being the first to jump from both towers, a distinction that forever makes me Harbor One Number One.

Farther down the street, toward the harbor, stood the steel skeleton that has since become the new Hyatt hotel. We've done the Hyatt so many times that the guards at Seaport Village call us by our first names. It wasn't always that way; our first confrontation came at gunpoint.

I asked him to put the gun away; nothing really bad is happening here. He approached so close that I could see his bottom lip quivering uncontrollably.

"You just broke the law."

"What law?"

"You did an illegal stunt." -- "THEY JUMP AT NIGHT," Nick DiGiovanni, February 20, 1992

Ten Years Ago The desert can be dangerous in summer if your car should break down, an uplifting spiritual force if your faith or hope should. The relative inaction and remarkably unstrenuous lives natives lead remind me of the game of baseball, dull half the time, with local people either sitting or standing around, when, suddenly, an emergency -- engine breakdown, gully wash, snakebite, even intense cold, and, in summer, a desperate killing heat, sometimes reaching as high as 121 degrees -- can come your way. Sharp thorns protrude everywhere. Tarantulas are sometimes fist-sized. Certain cul-de-sac box canyons can be explored often only with a small jeep or on foot. Wood is odd and shattery, trees Giacomettian and thin. And the Brueghel-empty vastness can haunt the very soul. -- "HELL WITH THE FIRE GONE OUT," Alexander Theroux, February 13, 1997

Five Years Ago "What we find with most people is that they're religious about flossing and brushing, but they haven't been doing it correctly. Instead of doing the buffing motion, they just go up and down, so they're actually not cleaning. They still have particles caught between their teeth. What they end up doing is actually tucking the particles into the soft tissue." -- BEST BUYS, Eve Kelly, February 14, 2002