Photo by Robert Burroughs

"What would a convention be without pyramids!”

Louv wrote feature stories for the Reader in the 1970s before becoming a regular writer for the San Diego Union.

Editor's picks of stories Louv wrote for the Reader:.

• Where the bad boys are

• Just as the people who live along the ocean shore are affected by the tides and the pull of the moon, the children of the street in 5- inner territories like Shell Town and Logan Heights must be charged with energy when the heat, smog, fumes, and noise drive them into the cool night, seeking rifamo—a ghetto communion. (Aug. 5, 1976)

"This is like Chicano Park, only nobody gets shot."

• Timothy Leeeeeary – in jail in San Diego

• Timothy Leary, whose name was once synonymous with the Beatles, LSD, psychedelia, and the generational turn inward, now wants to depart this planet. (Oct. 14, 1976)

Chester Hanson: “The Spanish Flu started in the winter of ’17. They were blasting graves all night long. We were quarantined for two months. Madame Curie advised drinking four ounces of brandy a day."

Ian Dryden

• WWI veterans tell how the war really was

• On this day, over half a century ago, Chester Hanson threw his bandolier into a camp stove and ran from the exploding bullets, while Ettore Bronte was singing in the streets of Paris, celebrating the end of the last war on earth. In San Diego, young American soldiers, wearing white masks, heard the news as they came streaming out of a quarantined Camp Kearny for the first time in weeks. (Nov. 11, 1976)

• Thorn in the mayor's side

• Hubbard hates the fact that Wilson is enthroned upstairs, and he is down here in this cavern, this dungeon, badly outnumbered by Wilsonites. And he hates that useless open space between the offices. Sometimes he gets out there with his golf clubs and putts around on the carpet. (Feb. 17, 1977)

Lee Hubbard: “Dad always talked about property rights."

Ian Dryden

• All the mayor's men

• White, 35, has been with Wilson longer than any of the mayor's advisors, and has made it a personal policy not to get within writing distance of reporters. He ducked back into his office, then suddenly reappeared. "Listen," White said to the reporter, "I hear you've been calling a lot of people around town about me. They're all calling me up. Look, I'm not the candidate, and I'm not very interesting." The door shut. (Written with Paul Krueger, July 14, 1977)

Otto Bos, Bob White. When Bob White finally did consent to an interview, he insisted that Otto Bos sit in on it. "Otto talked me into this,” he shrugged.

Photo by Robert Burroughs

• Gimme that drive-in religion

• Rev. Paul Veenstra is wrestling with his umbrella. The wind has the umbrella and the umbrella has Veenstra and he is being pulled upward. Rain is whipping around him. He is standing on the back platform of the official red, white, and blue Harbor Drive-In Worship truck, which is parked between an empty movie screen and 50 cars. (July 28, 1977)

“We started out with a canopy-covered wagon, which had been used as a parade float."

Photo by Robert Burroughs

• Babbitts flock to San Diego – Norman Vincent Peale, Robert Schuller, Paul Harvey, Dwight Chapin, W. Clement Stone

• Overflowing with ten thousand Red Carpet real estate salesmen and women, Amway home-products distributors, lawyers, scores of would-be millionaires. Arena was a great caldron of brimming with clean-cut, close-shaved positive thinkers. (Feb. 16, 1978)

These potential positive thinkers had trekked, like Moslems to Mecca.

Vince Compagnone

• Take that pyramid off your head when you're talking to me

• Reverend Douglas Sobel leans toward me and tries to figure out what I am thinking. I lean backward and try to keep him from reading my mind. Reverend Sobel, a psychic, is Assistant Pastor of San Diego’s First Spiritualist Church. He has organized “Exploring the New Dawn.” a convention of eighty-five “New Age” groups at the El Cortez this week-end in November. (Dec. 8, 1977)
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