A Star Is Berthed

Thirty Years Ago
Dear Matthew Alice:
Are there more men than women in San Diego?
— Curious Couple, San Diego

Men generally outnumber women in this city and will continue to do so in the next decade, according to the special census of 1975 and projections into 1980. But these figures show some interesting exceptions. In 1975, men between 20 and 24 years old outnumbered women by about 2000 (75,024 men compared to 73,017 women); but in 1980 the majority is expected to reverse, with 80,487 women compared to 74,838 men.
— STRAIGHT FROM THE HIP, Matthew Alice, September 6, 1979

Twenty-Five Years Ago
The port district is clearing the B Street pier for exclusive use of a small fleet of lucrative cruise ships stopping here on their voyages south, so port officials decided that the Star of India’s sister ships — the ferryboat Berkeley and the steamship Medea — would be evicted from B Street and moved 20 yards north, to the Star’s current docking. The Star would in turn be moved farther north to a new home on the north side of Anthony’s Star of the Sea Room restaurant.
— CITY LIGHTS: “A STAR IS BERTHED,” Paul Krueger, September 6, 1984

Twenty Years Ago
Unless he absolutely cannot avoid them, John Pugh does not do windows. “Windows — they just ain’t cool,” he says. “You’re climbing through a window — I mean, how does that look? I don’t like to do that. There’s enough people and enough businesses who leave their doors open, their safes open. I don’t have to climb through windows.” Pugh also doesn’t like to be thought of as a common burglar who relies on crude force rather than intellect to get through life. He is most proud of the heists he accomplished with a good deal of forethought.
— CITY LIGHTS: “JOHN PUGH BUSTS OUT,” Jackie McGrath, September 7, 1989

Fifteen Years Ago
I am one of the few residents of planet Earth unfamiliar with Baywatch. Some one billion people in 72 countries watch it weekly. And those numbers — one billion viewers, seventy-two nations — frighten me. I am frightened that nomadic tribesmen in Mongolia cuddle in their toasty yurts and giggle at images of tight, bronzed buttocks bouncing around Will Rogers State Park near Los Angeles.

The Great Unification of Humanity, the Day-When-We-Ain’t-Gonna-Study-War-No-More, the Messianic Age, what have you, frightens me because I am not a team player. I am not “one of those guys.” I am not a “people person.”
— AS SEEN ON TV: “THE TAN AT THE END OF TIME,” Abe Opincar, September 1, 1994

Ten Years Ago
First time around, I sketched the death scene as a pretty picture. I had Edith bathe, shampoo and set her hair, lacquer her finger- and toenails (leaving, as she always did, the moon of each fingernail bare, a detail from 1940s nail-polishing etiquette of which I am fond). I dressed her, swathed her, really, in a sheer pale pink nightgown whose neckline I circled with a discreet lace border. Under the nightgown, she wore a bra (Edith despaired of her fallen breasts, how they hung, useless and loose, the sallow skin striated with translucent stretch scars, the long corrugated nipples an obscene maroon). I had Edith climb into her four-posted bed. I pulled her chenille bedspread up under her arms, set her head back — gently — on two plumped goose-feather pillows.
— “RADIO NIGHTS,” Judith Moore, September 2, 1999

Five Years Ago
Britney Spears was spotted in San Diego August 20, walking the paths at Seaport Village with her fiancé, Kevin Federline, and then she went house-hunting in the La Jolla area.

Her spending range for the purchase is said to be “in the two- to-four-million-dollar range.” She told the realtor that she like the way she “fits in” with the La Jolla community.
— BLURT, Jay Allen Sanford, September 2, 2004