Back When

Thirty Years Ago
VERY ATTRACTIVE blonde lady at the Strand Theatre on 10 July. Shy black guy would like to meet you. Eye contact — answer here.
TINA DELGADO is alive. Saw her at Vince Lombardi High School the other day, dancing to the Standells. Gabba Gabba Hey!
PROCRASTINATORS have no belief in the future, rely on either people to do things for them, dwell in the past, and are faithless in themselves.
— CLASSIFIEDS, July 19, 1979

Twenty-Five Years Ago
The lifeguards who organize the Del Mar Longboard Contest and who have put on a few years themselves, do everything they can to create the illusion that the year is 1965, not 1984. The old surf clubs — Del Mar, Swami’s, San Onofre — are there with their vans and banners. There are woodies parked on the cliffs. Sixties rock and roll is provided by the Mar Dels. All surfboards under eight feet, six inches are banned.
— “THE WORLD’S WORST SURFER,” Steve Sorensen, July 19, 1984

Twenty Years Ago
Though that section of Balboa Park has long been a cruising ground for hustlers in search of older customers who’ll pay $20, the prostitutes have changed over the past eighteen months. Gays familiar with the Balboa Park scene say the white hustlers — often runaways and drug addicts — have been replaced by groups of Mexicans who live in ramshackle encampments on the western embankment of Highway 163.… “One, two, or three Mexicans would come up to them and ask for a cigarette. Then, all of a sudden, they’d feel a sharp object in their side, generally a screwdriver, and the attacker would demand money.”
— CITY LIGHTS: “TRICKS,” Paul Krueger, July 20, 1989

Fifteen Years Ago
Now up dark twisting Clevenger Canyon. “To the east and northeast lay ranges of high mountains, their tops lost in the clouds” [HHJ, Ramona], the road I learned to drive on, Daddy screaming at me, past Judy Ferguson’s — haven’t seen her in 30 years — the road we saw the mountain lion on, returning from the fateful eighth-grade trip to the Ramona Pageant in Hemet, when we stopped to let Claudia off at Weekend Villa Road, this road Vicki, Daphne, and I could make in 13 minutes — dying every minute, guys we’d flirted with at the drive-ins in Escondido chasing us, the danger worth it not to encounter Daddy’s wrath if I got home one half minute past curfew.
— “RAMONA THEN, RAMONA NOW,” Sharon Doubiago, July 14, 1994

Ten Years Ago
“Prosperity,” Pastor Evans told us, “is an expression of what God’s done in your life.”
And, “Because you are sanctified, your money is sanctified.”
The most striking thing about Word-Faith and Pastor Evans’s sermon, is that it hardly seems necessary for religion to encourage Americans to be materialistic.
Assistant Pastor Jensen said he wasn’t comfortable disclosing the church’s annual budget or average weekly giving. In light of Pastor Evans’s sermon, this seemed an odd evasion.
— SHEEP AND GOATS: “SAN DIEGO CHRISTIAN WORSHIP CENTER KEARNY MESA,” Abe Opincar, July 15, 1999

Five Years Ago
According to my how-to sites, The Price Is Right was the only game show someone with my microscopic patience was likely to get on. It seemed to be the easiest; as I would come to learn, the prerequisites were simple and few: one must have the patience of a rock, the enthusiasm of a hyperactive seven-year-old on Christmas morning, and a stupid T-shirt. I figured Monday was a perfect day to be on TV, so I booked a room at the Wyndham Bel Age off Sunset Boulevard for Sunday night. On Thursday afternoon, as I was getting a fabulous new “do,” I recruited my good friend and stylist Ronaldo to be my game-show companion.
— “WE LOOKED RIDICULOUSLY FABULOUS,” Barbarella, July 15, 2004