For Our Matchless Friends

Thirty-Five Years Ago
The Introduction Agency was founded in 1973. Their motto is “Dates for every SINGLE one.”

The Introduction Agency does not use a computer. They use what they call an “entirely new method.” We could not find out what this method was.
— “FOR OUR MATCHLESS FRIENDS,” Jacqueline Burn and Margo Woods, February 13, 1975

Thirty Years Ago
Here’s how it went at one recent soiree sponsored by the Gift Exchange, this year’s new, improved, updated, get-rich-quick-and-mellow chain-letter scam:

New players merely do two things: they pay 50 dollars to purchase a list of ten names (the tenth name belongs to the seller of the document) and they give a “gift” 50 dollars to the person named at the top of the list. The new player then retypes the list, deleting the first recipient from the top, adding his own name to the bottom. He finds two friends, selling one list to each for 50 dollars, thus recouping his 100-dollar investment. Then he waits for his name to advance to the top of the list — a position that should net him $50,140.
— CITY LIGHTS: “EASY STREET MADE EASIER,” Jeannette De Wyze, February 14, 1980

Twenty-Five Years Ago
While enjoying a recent dance concert at the Spreckels Theater, we wondered: How do the ceiling light bulbs get changed?

[A]n intrepid worker ascends the stairs to the wooden catwalks hidden away between the suspended ceiling and the beams, looking for bulbs that no longer glow. If one or two bulbs are burned out, it’s not worth the effort.
— STRAIGHT FROM THE HIP, Matthew Alice, February 14, 1985

Twenty Years Ago
Camp Pendleton is Southern California’s biggest and most valuable piece of undeveloped land — a 195,000-square-mile island of open space where bison and bobcats coexist with bazooka-carrying infantrymen.

But as Bate’s Camp Pendleton Preservation Act moves slowly through Congress, state transportation planners are making progress on a six-lane expressway that would cut through the base’s northwestern corner. Named the Foothill Transportation Corridor, it would begin at the intersection of I-5 and Cristianitos Road...and head northeast into Orange County.
— CITY LIGHTS: “FOR A FEW GOOD LANES,” Paul Krueger, February 15, 1990

Fifteen Years Ago
I don’t know ANYTHING about the O.J. trial, I don’t CARE about the O.J. trial, I’m not even CONCERNED that the trial will be fair (’cause how could it be?), and the only thing all this O.J. biz has done for MY homelife is to strengthen my desire, fortify my resolve to get the fuck out of L.A.
— “BIGGEST TWEAK SINCE THE IRAQ WAR,” Richard Meltzer, February 9, 1995

Ten Years Ago
Vicente Fox Quesada. Over six feet tall — and some will tell you, the sexiest candidate for the leadership of Mexico, since, well, Emiliano Zapata.

The cowboy boots and the engraved belt buckle signal his accessibility. And when he targets the drug trade, the roar of the crowd becomes greatest.

“The [present government] talks about the lack of safety in Baja California. Narco-trafficking and organized crime are federal crimes. Those are the federal government’s [responsibility]. This is an affair they have not resolved because they are part of the problem.”
— CITY LIGHTS: “FOX POPULI,” Bill Manson, February 10, 2000

Five Years Ago
The woman I planned to marry was accused of first-degree murder. She’d (uncharacteristically) taken part in a home robbery in which someone had ended up being killed. Someone else had already been convicted of wielding the murder weapon and sentenced to life without parole. Dee was brought to trial afterward, where it was established she hadn’t been spattered with blood and her fingerprints hadn’t been found on the weapon or near the murder scene. She had, however, stolen belongings from another room.
— “WHEN YOUR LOVE IS LOCKED UP,” Jay Allen Sanford, February 10, 2005