San Diego voices more than 40 years ago

High society, marijuana advocates, Zumwalt's Navy, downtown and Mt. Helix developers, condo conversion freak-out

Author

By Various Authors

Publish Date

Dec. 30, 2018

Former Del Mar Mayor Tom Pearson remarked, to my complete chagrin, that my testimony had convinced him to support the conversion. (John Maher)

Hopper listed old San Diego names, the Spreckelses, Marstons, Copleys, Grants, Klaubers, Seftons, and others. But the town didn’t buy it. (Tom Voss)

How easy it is to penetrate San Diego high society

Being a Marston or a Burnham is surely a social plus, but not being one won’t be held against you.“They don’t reach out to newcomers; they don’t make an effort to find new people or new ideas, really. But they’re not reluctant to accept people who appear and say take me,”Burl Stiff says, and his words ring with sincerity. “I think it’s one of the few places of its size left in the country where just being nice is a great social asset.

By Jeannette DeWyze, June 30, 1977 Read full article

Boz Scagg’s people were asking a cool $5,000 for the benefit; Dr.Hook and Steely Dan wanted $4,000 each. (Glenn Grant)

Time out in the struggle

The Beach Boys are making a hit. how about them? I reached their offices and the reply was, "The Beach Boys do some benefits, but none politically based.” I smoked a joint and called a group I thought might do it, they were going on tour—the Mothers of Invention with Frank Zappa. Zack Glickman, one of Zappa’s managers, asked me, “would this make marijuana legal?" “Yes,” I said. “No," Mr. Glickman returned.

What went wrong with Zumwalt's Navy

In Ltjg. Blatchford’s mind, it is the junior admirals and senior "stripers" who caused many of the problems with Zumwalt’s Z-grams. "Most of the commanding officers I knew of shit-canned (threw away) a lot of the Z-grams. On my first ship in the Med (Mediterranean), for example, my best friend was Communications Officer. The commanding officer had a standing order to send all Z-grams that came over the wire directly to him."

By Ed P., May 2, 1974 Read full article

Horton Hotel. Of the seven hotels the elderly now live in — the Commodore, the Knickerbocker, the Federal, the Senator, the Horton, the Mason, and the Golden West — only the Golden West looks like it will be saved. (Mark-Elliott Lugo)

Suburbanizing San Diego's downtown

Tom Hom says that his Gaslamp District will avoid the problems of a similar district in St. Louis that has now deteriorated because San Diego’s will be locally governed, where St.Louis’s was not. “There have been lots of other successes with areas like this — Pioneer Square in Seattle and Gastown in Vancouver have had their property values go way up.”

By John Martin, July 4, 1974 Read full article

“It’s not until the hammer’s hanging over your head that you start to move.” (John Maher)

Adios to La Mesa's Tom Sawyer lake

Hampered by a late start, which Mrs. Levesque attributes to the fact that “it’s not until the hammer’s hanging over your head that you start to move,” the Friends found it difficult to find rebuttals to the polished arguments the developers presented to the regulatory agencies. “They know all the tricks and how to play the game, something we had to learn as we went along.”

By Paul Krueger, July 10, 1975 Read full article

Gary Weber, city planner: "Conversions have only become an issue in the last year.” (John Maher)

San Diego apartment renters doomed by conversions

The conspicuous Top of the Beach, for example, stood vacant over North Mission for nearly a year, with inadequate parking and zero landscaping. Another, what Richard Spaulding of the Daily Transcript calls “spectacular,” example of conversion failure is “Le Rondolet” on Shelter Island, a luxury apartment complex converted over a year ago to condos. Faced with impossibly high prices and unsold units, Le Rondolet has gone back to renting.

By Mark Woelber, May 1, 1975 Read full article