The Grim Woozies

Thirty Years Ago
Jack Ford, son of the former president, will soon make his home in San Diego. The 26-year-old Ford, who first visited San Diego during vacation breaks from Utah State University, where he majored in forestry, says he would purchase a place of his own in the Encinitas area within a few months.

Young Ford has a share of the Del Mar-Rancho Santa Fe News-Press, a weekly paper owned by George Gorton, a GOP fundraiser. Co-publisher Ford says he’s actively involved with the paper and spends his weekends supervising the News-Press staff. (He’s still “dabbling” with Jann Wenner’s Outside magazine, where he serves as “assistant to the publisher.”)
— CITY LIGHTS: “FORD FINDS PARKING SPACE IN SAN DIEGO,” Paul Krueger, May 4, 1978

Twenty-Five Years Ago
When Ms. Widmer described (“Three for Tijuana,” April 7) the hills surrounding Tijuana as “romantic,” we should have known better. If Ellie-baby thought that the dim lights shining out from the homes of the abjectly poor were charming, then it’s only natural that she went gaga over her latest T.J. find.

The meal transcended what is commonly called “bad food”; it became for us, at the very least, the archetype of Evil Cooking, something over which Plato would have gotten all misty-eyed, something of which Pythagoras would have been proud. It was all this, except it lacked the conviction of a truly Faustian malevolence and so remained merely benevolent dreck.

Eleanor, honey, get a real job.
— LETTERS: “THE GRIM WOOZIES,” Randy Opincar and friends Scott, Tim, Nadine, Jay, Peter, and Bernard, May 5, 1983

Twenty Years Ago
Richard Meltzer’s contribution to “This Is San Diego” in the April 28 issue is a remembrance of youthful fun during a visit here in 1969. In it he recalls his elation in just having beaten the draft in the days of Vietnam.

Mr. Meltzer’s gifted prose is reminiscent of what is described in a First World War poem by Wilfred Owen.
— LETTERS: “REMEMBERS AN OLD ROUTINE,” Douglas Sharpe, May 5, 1988

Fifteen Years Ago
Where Moore reveals her over-reaching theme of men-as-villains, though, is not only in her patronizing title and subtitle (“Men will be boys”), but in a paragraph that clarifies her labored “ironies” concerning the death of Mary Jo Kopechne, the woman killed in a car accident while on her way to a one-night stand with Teddy Kennedy. Moore proposes this unlikely saint as a cautionary example to “women with scant experience of men,” implying that no man should be trusted (all men get drunk, drive off bridges, and leave their dates to drown).
— LETTERS: “IS THERE ANY SELF-PITYING POSE TOO HYPOCRITICAL EVEN FOR CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN WOMEN?” Paul Johnston, May 6, 1993

Ten Years Ago
On July 2, Vice President Al Gore came to San Diego for my fundraiser, I raised over $100,000, and I got to ride in a vice presidential motorcade. I got to watch Al Gore inhale a chocolate cake. It was a grand day and evening, but it did not come easy.

The Gore event almost didn’t come off at all, because host Chuck Davenport nearly pulled the plug. If you guessed that the problem was with Congressman Bob Filner — the Grand Canyon of assholes — you win a free, one-way trip with Bob to the Aleutian Islands.
— “AL GORE’S LOVE HANDLES AND OTHER TALES FROM THE POLITICAL CRYPT,” Peter Navarro, May 7, 1998

Five Years Ago
Russell says he’s been selling off his units to Nick Inzunza, offering him extremely favorable terms in the bargain. Since 1995, records show, Russell has deeded eight separate parcels of real estate scattered around Barrio Logan and environs to Inzunza, purchased by the National City mayor for a total of about $2 million.
— “WHAT’S NICK INZUNZA GOT THAT YOU AND I DON’T?” Matt Potter, May 1, 2003