What O.B. Were You Visiting, Mister?

Thirty-Five Years Ago
Being a life-long resident of Ocean Beach, I found your article last week on the O.B. Pier a little amusing. Maybe your writer found one or two fishermen whom he could romanticize, but whenever I’ve gone down there on a Friday night, I feel like I’m lucky to come away alive. There’s nothing I’ve found there but a bunch of hoods, punks, just looking for trouble. But, give a writer a pen, and I’ll guess he’ll glorify anything.
— LETTERS: “GIVE A WRITER A PEN,” Luanne Carmichael, September 9, 1976

Thirty Years Ago
[Colin] Flaherty raises some basic questions about the notion that enlarging [San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium] is per se a good idea.

His research shows that last year the stadium was used only 125 days, with an average attendance of 35 percent on those days. “If you had lots of empty taxicabs on the street, would you hire more cabs, or would you get more passengers into those already on the streets?”... He also points out that revenues from stadium activities have never met the yearly construction bond debt of $1.5 million; the perennial deficit is covered by money from leases on city-owned land near the Sports Arena.
— THE INSIDE STORY, Paul Krueger, September 10, 1981

Twenty-Five Years Ago
“San Diego is the cradle of civilization for the Aquarian age,” declares Reverend Judith Larkin, Ph.D., seated in the living room of what she calls her dream home — a two-story house in La Costa.... “All the major planetary teachers are coming to San Diego to be trained, then going out to the rest of the world,” she says. “It’s like the eastern Mediterranean was 2000 years ago. San Diego is a geographical coordinate point with a high-energy vortex. Anybody who steps into the high-energy field here sees their life immediately accelerate.”
— “THE PROSPERITY GURUS,” Steve Sorensen, September 11, 1986

Twenty Years Ago
Listed below is select summary of civil cases that have been tried, arbitrated, or otherwise settled in San Diego County civil courts from 1984 to present.

Medical Malpractice:

Unnecessary implants in big toes — $214,270

Paramedic falls on hospital furniture — $334,264

Employee Negligence:

Fisherman hit by tuna — $295,925
— CITY LIGHTS: “THE HIGH COST OF UNDIAGNOSED SCROTAL GANGRENE,” Brae Canlen, September 12, 1991

Fifteen Years Ago
Remember when stations would run cheery jingles that promised “more music”? Welcome to the ’90s. The new 93.3 (the dial position formerly occupied by religious station KECR) wants you to know that you’re safe from gangbanger anthems on their frequency. Throughout the day 93.3 runs the following announcement: “You don’t have to listen to this [hard-core rap song followed by gunshots] to get to this....” The station then plays a title from its song list. The promotional zinger suggests 93.3 is the alternative to a local station that supposedly caters to rap-crazed gangs.
— BLURT: “THE ‘NEW CHANNEL 9-3-3’ WASTED NO TIME,” Ken Leighton, September 12, 1996

Ten Years Ago
Early in my short-lived marriage, I bought a small watercolor at an antique store. The painting showed the Bible’s Ruth standing amid the alien corn. The painting seemed a talisman. I hung it on the wall above my desk. After my wife and I came home from parties — and we went to many parties — I’d smoke a cigarette and consider the painting.

I have never, before or since, eaten so much ground turkey.
— “TIP OF MY TONGUE: “TURKEY BURGERS,” Max Nash, September 6, 2001

Five Years Ago
I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that by 2:00 in the afternoon on Friday, September 8th, it will be uncomfortably hot. It has been uncomfortably hot for some time now, with brief respites. The hothouse effect is becoming increasingly hard to dismiss outside of air-conditioned corporate offices or an air-conditioned Lexus.

Maybe $8.00 martinis and imported beer ameliorate the discomfort to a large degree; but hasn’t a single oil CEO and flat-earther who believes the greenhouse effect to be Luddite, liberal hysteria ever stuck his head out of a window?
— T.G.I.F., John Brizzolara, September 7, 2006