When Christine Kehoe refused to offer Peter Navarro her hand

Thirty Years Ago

1. Why do you buy ink especially designed to come off all over me? I have to be careful not to read your issue wearing light-colored clothing!

2. Surely you get letters asking if Matthew Alice is a hermaphrodite, but do you print them? Of course not!

3. I once saw a letter you chose to print which urged you to start charging even a small sum for your little paper, but I say don’t push your luck!

— LETTERS: “BOMBS OVER BALBOA PARK,”Jacqueline Swatow, April 27, 1978

Twenty-Five Years Ago

Rob Hagey told fellow concert promoter George Wein that “many times I’ve felt like throwing a pie in your face.” While Wein’s local Kool Jazz Festivals were a big success, young Hagey had struggled since 1979 to keep alive his yearly San Diego Jazz Festival. That meant giving up his income as a tennis instructor for the summer months while he worked finding sponsors for the jazz festival and booking acts such as Sun Ra, Dexter Gordon, and Jack DeJohnette.

— CITY LIGHTS: “JAZZMEN AMALGAMATED,” Paul Krueger, April 28, 1983

Twenty Years Ago

"Let’s say you and I, we’re dealing dope. We argue over price. Say I’m a 300-pounder. You put a knife into me and kill me — unjustifiably. I’m sitting there on your sofa, a 300-pound dead man. What can you do to keep police from identifying my body? Hence, what is known by detectives as a ‘bathtub butcher’: the body is placed in a bathtub and sectioned.”

— “THE TOOTH DETECTIVE,” Judith Moore, April 28, 1988

Fifteen Years Ago

The best salvage yards in San Diego County can be found along the Mexican Border. Head south on I-5 or I-805, turn east on State Highway 905, chug up onto Otay Mesa, turn left on Heritage Road, and it begins, a bonanza of junkyards. The names beckon. First Auto Wrecking, Middle East Auto Wrecking, Central Auto Parts, Ramon’s, Montoya’s, Jalisco, Payless, El Leon, Miranda, Brothers, California. It’s a lip-smacking variety of mechanical refuse.

— “WHERE THE ROAD-BEASTS GO TO DIE,” Patrick Daugherty, April 29, 1993

Ten Years Ago

While Clinton was supposed to be there at 11:00 a.m., by high noon, he still hadn’t showed.

Rather than sweat through my pinstripes in my seat, I used this waiting time to work the crowd.

During my retail-politics reconnaissance of the crowd, one hand I didn’t shake — because she refused to offer it — was that of Christine Kehoe, the only openly gay member of the San Diego City Council. Kehoe is a bespectacled lesbian with the thick, amorphous body of a bull dyke gone to seed.

— “TRIUMPH OF HOPE OVER EXPERIENCE,” Peter Navarro, April 30, 1998

Five Years Ago

Hats off to the Reader for snatching Don Bauder out of retirement. I suspect he was pushed out the U-T door by the cocktail-corruption set he so eloquently describes in today’s issue (“Cocktail Corruption,” “City Lights,” April 17). I hope for some inside info on life at the U-T and on their senior management, but I assume they were smart enough to force the independent-thinking scribe into signing a nondisclosure agreement.

— LETTERS: “SCRIBE SNATCHED,” Chuck Allen, April 24, 2003