You Can't Fight Rose Lynne

Thirty-Five Years Ago
I had two phone calls.

The first caller, a woman, began plaintively, “I find your reviews depressing. You’re always writing about how to save money, share meals, find bargains. My husband and I...don’t care about a few extra dollars. We don’t like scruffy places. Can’t you just review good restaurants without worrying about the right side of the menu?”

The second, a male, began plaintively, “I find your reviews depressing. They’re so bourgeois.”
— “POLES APART,” Eleanor Widmer, August 12, 1976

Thirty Years Ago
For the past 25 years the city has been searching for an alternative to Lindbergh Field.... At least half a dozen studies have been commissioned, several million dollars have been spent, and more than a hundred different sites have been proposed. San Diego has been told it should build a floating, offshore airport; that it should level mountains and fill in valleys to create a suitable site; even that it should pave the desert near the Salton Sea.... But in the end, only three practical places for a new regional airport have ever been found; Miramar Naval Air Station, Carmel Valley (east of Del Mar), and Otay Mesa.
— “TROUBLE DOWN THE RUNWAY,” Gordon Smith, August 13, 1981

Twenty-Five Years Ago
Rose Lynne approaches the microphone. Rose is 72 years old and looks her age, but her voice is firm. She boasts that she can offer relevant commentary on virtually any subject the [San Diego City Council] is discussing, but sometimes the connection between what Rose wants to say and what everyone else has just been talking about are apparent only to Rose. She stands there, lecturing insistently, passionately, about sprout farming or no-cost schools or “ombudscience,” while people in the audience squirm or glower or smirk.
— “YOU CAN’T FIGHT ROSE LYNNE,” Jeannette De Wyze, August 14, 1986

Twenty Years Ago
As friendly singles in the American Cancer Society Club know, nothing greases social axles like ALCOHOL! This summer’s CLUB-authored Chardonnay by the Bay was streamlined for efficient wine-guzzling.

And the high number of eligible doctors and lawyers...makes every CLUB function a “potentially profitable” occasion. In sequined trios and besuited quartets, cancer-conscious singles nabbed plastic hospital-type I.D. bracelets and plastic wine cups at the check-in table, passed up a ramp, and trotted toward the booze.
— “LIZ LANG’S ON THE TOWN,” August 15, 1991

Fifteen Years Ago
Eight years ago, Herman [Irwin] retired from his appliance sales and repair company in Chicago and moved with his wife, Bunny, to San Diego to spend his sunset years on a sunny beach. Instead, he located a need in his new community and became a Johnny Appleseed of books. His one-man program gives away a thousand books a day, seven days a week.
— “THE JOHNNY APPLESEED OF BOOKS,” Robert Glück, August 15, 1996

Ten Years Ago
San Diego County — indeed, all of California — is an orthopedic basketcase. For millions of years, the ground beneath us has been shattered by slow but sure, incremental changes that can be read, by subtle observations, in the jumbled topography existing here now. Tectonic forces have bent, broken, displaced, and distorted our country’s granitic bones; fractured its backbone (the Peninsular Range of mountains); sliced and crumpled its sedimentary skin; and altered the circulation of its surface water.
— ROAM-O-RAMA, Jerry Schad, August 9, 2001

Five Years Ago
It was touted as an urban village, akin to a combination of Horton Plaza and Point Loma’s Liberty Station, at the doorstep of San Diego State University. One hundred fifty-three thousand square feet of retail, including an Urban Outfitters and a 7-Eleven; a 14-theater multiplex cinema; housing for 1300 students; and 110,000 square feet of university offices, all designed, built, and financed by the San Diego State University Foundation — a nonprofit university auxiliary — at no cost to taxpayers. Estimated price tag: $350 million.

Christened the Paseo, the elaborate development proposal, 18 years in the planning, had the blessing of everyone from neighborhood community groups to the San Diego City Council.... It sounded too good to be true, and it was.
— “WHO’S IN CHARGE HERE?” Matt Potter, August 10, 2006