High Above Downtown

Thirty-Five Years Ago
RECREATIONAL VEHICLE. You had better give up am radio, drinking, and Elton John — you know why? Look at another ad, toots. Love, Leenie Baby.

LOOKING FOR people to help start a commune farm. Serious only, send stamped envelope to Future Freak Farmers, P.O. Box 9865, San Diego, 92109.
— “CLASSIFIEDS,” May 8, 1975

Thirty Years Ago
Everyone who wants the new-wave scene in San Diego is advised to keep supporting the Zebra Club. The way things are developing, this smoky, funky, intimate little dump is becoming — by default — the town’s premier punk palace.

I urge you all to sing “Auld Lang Syne” to the Skeleton Club. The accelerating fiascos have prompted the club’s demise. Those of you who think that disrupting shows, defacing private property, and urinating in sinks are clever ways of thumbing the establishment can take heart. Your efforts have helped insure that “the establishment” (cops, club owners, et al.) will give thumbs down to future new-wave shows. Is everybody happy?
— MUSIC SCENE, Steve Esmedina, May 8, 1980

Twenty-Five Years Ago
Fishing for bass in San Diego approaches religion; if you don’t pursue it, there are dark questions regarding your claims as a genuine local sportsman. We are talking about world-record territory, rivaled only in Florida. Nevertheless, I see bass fishing as arcane as say, falconry. I am quite aware that there are anglers around who get bass to rise to the fly. But it can be awfully hard to find them, especially through the smokescreen of Magnumlite Hungry Stiks, ball-bearing plug casters, swivel-seat powerboats, electronic fish finders, and other popular accouterments deemed essential.
— “WHEN THE FLY SLAPS THE WATER,” Scott Sadil, May 9, 1985

Twenty Years Ago
Last Wednesday, May 2, was a day of reckoning foretold by many Tijuanans. They got Vera Palestina! began as a whisper the night before, when the former bodyguard wanted in connection with the murder of “El Gato” Felix was taken into custody at the border. They got Vera Palestina! became a shout just after sunrise amid the commotion at Eighth and Constitución, outside the Tijuana Police Station. Later it was official: they had finally captured Tijuana’s most wanted fugitive, a short, bearded man who could at last shed light on one of the many unsolved murders of Mexican journalists.
— “JORGE HANK FINALLY TALKS,” Neal Matthews, May 10, 1990

Fifteen Years Ago
Baby Think It Over, the much-ballyhooed electronic doll developed by San Diegan Rick Jurmain to stimulate a real-life baby, is being recalled. The $220 doll, which ex-aerospace worker Jurmain has sold to high school parenting, pregnancy, and child development classes throughout the country, has repeatedly broken down, causing the doll to cry uncontrollably and drawing complaints from school officials around the country. “I did not design the feeding plug sturdy enough to withstand the rigors of teen handling,” Jurmain says.
— CITY LIGHTS: “WHAT IF THIS HAPPENED TO BARBIE?” Thomas K. Arnold, May 4, 1995

Ten Years Ago
How long do you figure we’ll be able to watch movies in a drive-in theater? Not long, is what I say. The Santee Drive-In off 67 at Woodside Avenue is looking like its seen better days. I don’t know, I’ve never been there before, but the place already has a kind of historical quality to it and you can smell the diesel of the bulldozers in the wings, riding on the summer-night air along with the smell of sage and popcorn.
— T.G.I.F., John Brizzolara, May 4, 2000

Five Years Ago
As I was getting ready to leave, I saw in old Indian praying in the lobby.

Two women were leaving at the same time, and one said, “I loved those bird singers.” The other one said, “I loved the Indian dudes with long hair. They were kind of hot.”
— CRASHER: “HIGH ABOVE DOWNTOWN,” Josh Board, May 5, 2005