The Vanishing Chaparral

Thirty Years Ago
JIM FROM Mom’s Saloon December 8 after Christmas party. Remembering your blue eyes and smile. You haven’t phoned. Let’s go ride wild horses. Country Sue.

BRIAN JONES, his ideas stolen, his strengths diminished, his character destroyed, picked clean then discarded. Who’s to blame Mick? You must answer.

JAY - SAM’S sexy meatball, Breakout, Spielberg, aromatic Ted, Steely Dan, deer on Bear Mountain, roses, transcontinental talks. Sharing life with you brings such joy! K.
— CLASSIFIEDS, January 17, 1980

Twenty-Five Years Ago
Dear Matthew Alice:
When the state/Caltrans built the O.B. Freeway, why didn’t they put a ramp from Ocean Beach I-8 east to I-5 north? Sea World Drive is a pain!
— Brad Cronk, Ocean Beach

Rather than spend all this money on elaborate interchanges, planners thought, there was a simple solution: build the interchange at Sea World Drive and have Ocean Beach residents get to and from their community via that interchange. The city planners’ eyes were cast eastward anyway, since grand schemes were being devised for the Tecolote Canyon area, and it was thought at the time that more people would be driving east along Tecolote Road. But there’s that old maxim about best-laid plans, and expansionism was nipped in the bud (or somewhere painful, you can bet). Tecolote Canyon was kept as an open space, and engineers went back to their drawing boards.
— STRAIGHT FROM THE HIP, Matthew Alice, January 17, 1985

Twenty Years Ago
The Reader cover article about eucalyptus trees (“Eucalyptus It Is,” December 14) made some good points, but its general tone was misleading. Contrary to an analogy attempted by the article’s author, a concern for San Diego’s native plants is not akin to xenophobia. The eucalyptus tree’s relationship to the plants it displaced is not like the relationship of Mexican or Chinese immigrants to white American culture. A better analogy would be made by comparing the eucalyptus to the Spanish conquistadors: the Spanish destroyed the native American cultures in their path, just as eucalyptus trees destroy native plant communities by causing increased alkalinity in the soil.
— LETTERS: “THE VANISHING CHAPARRAL,” Jared Aldern, Julian, January 18, 1990

Fifteen Years Ago
With the rise of the computer and its so-called modem-linked “virtual community,” even the white heterosexual professional can take steps to rid himself of L.A. anomie. Screen names and netiquette or la.general to complain about lousy service at Burger King, recommend good dim sum, find a good body shop, or play the oldest game on earth. That is, finding a girl.

Yesterday a friend tells me that Debbie Mazar — yes, TV’s Debbie Mazar — says several of her friends have found boyfriends on the Internet. That’s right: attractive, successful, intelligent women troll the Internet.
— HELL.A., Adam Parfrey, January 12, 1995

Ten Years Ago
An affiliate of the San Diego–based diet-drug company Metabolife — already California’s sixth-largest donor of soft money to national political campaigns — has written a $25,000 check to a committee set up to benefit the U.S. Senate bid of Hillary Rodham Clinton. Metabolife International, Inc., is one of several big-money givers to the National Democratic Party’s “New York Senate 2000” committee, which was created to allow Hillary Clinton to collect corporate donations and those greatly in excess of the $2000 limit imposed on individuals.
— CITY LIGHTS: “HILLARY’S BENEFACTORS,” Matt Potter, January 13, 2000

Five Years Ago
Superintendent Alan Bersin has sold his Point Loma house and moved into a manse down the hill in La Playa, overlooking San Diego Bay. The controversial school honcho got $1,250,000 in September when he sold the house he bought for $535,000 ten years ago. He’s moved into a home owned by greengrocer Ron Cohn, owner of Henry’s market in Chula Vista.
— CITY LIGHTS: “HIGH-INCOME HOUSING,” Matt Potter, January 13, 2005