For my last column of 2023, let me try to clear the decks of some items and notes that got squeezed out in recent weeks or months.
On a Friday in September, behind schedule and facing deadline for a complicated column I hadn’t even started, I decided to throw a hail-Mary pass.
Improvising, I wrote a simple one about how I’d taken Metrolink and the Metro subway the previous weekend to go to Amoeba Music and Shake Shack, both in Hollywood.
I felt a little sheepish about that effort, but a lot of you liked it. That reminded me that any time I write about a day trip, response is good. And that made me think that I should fret a bit less about these columns and wing it now and then.
Anyway, a charming moment that I’d observed on that trip fell by the proverbial wayside.
In the seating area at the Hollywood and Vine subway platform, two women in their 60s were snacking on apple slices and peanut butter from small plastic tubs. They offered to share with a young man also resting on the same slab-like bench. He took them up on it.
“I haven’t had apples with peanut butter in years,” he said with satisfaction.
They asked him about himself. He’d been living in the Midwest until learning his mother was ill, so he quit his job, moved back home to help her and was working as a security guard. The women asked how his mother was. His somewhat off-point answer: “She was shorter than I’d remembered.”
Soon his train arrived. He stood, pulling on his backpack. “Thank you for the apples and peanut butter, ladies,” he said in parting.
On public transit, human connections are made, too, not just train connections.
Back at Union Station on that trip, with a few minutes to kill before my train home, I took in one last, unexpected treat. That was “Where You Stand: Chinatown 1880-1939,” a history exhibit in the waiting room about L.A.’s original Chinatown, the one that was displaced to make way for the 1939 train station.
Maps, vintage photos and stories about people and businesses tell the story of this largely forgotten place, which was rebuilt a few blocks away in the 1930s as the Chinatown many of us know today.
I was back aboard Metrolink last weekend to eat at Philippe, the French dip specialist with the sawdust floor, walking there and back from Union Station. The Chinatown exhibit, I can report, is still in place in the train station concourse. In fact, it’s there until fall 2024 and worth a look.
My Oct. 18 column about the book “Octopus’s Garden,” a history of the Inland Empire’s orange and railroad industries, mentioned the so-called Kite Train. That was an excursion train from L.A. that made a figure-eight loop, like a kite, to take in picturesque Inland Empire scenery from Claremont to Corona.
That inspired a note from reader Juli Lloyd: “You may be interested in this book written by Redlands author Edith Hinkley and illustrated by famed artist Leo Politi detailing a trip on the Kite railroad.” That would be “Two Girls and a Kite,” published in 1984.
When we left the tale of when and where the early Beach Boys had appeared in Riverside, back in my Sept. 3 column, we had pretty much settled on this version among many conflicting accounts.
Thus: They performed sometime in 1962 at the DeAnza Theater during a Harris’ department store event for teen girls, possibly including a screening of “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” then adjourned to the Harris’ store at Riverside Plaza to sign autographs.
Subsequently, Jim Murphy, an East Coast veterinarian who has doggedly researched the West Coast band’s early years for his website “Becoming the Beach Boys,” also got in touch.
He noted that the band did other events for Harris’ in spring 1962 for which there is documentation, including one in San Bernardino.
“I suspect the Beach Boys made a personal appearance at the DeAnza Theater on the morning of March 24, 1962,” Murphy theorized, “and then drove to San Bernardino for a 1:30 p.m. appearance at Harris’.”
We may never know. Regardless, the band’s repertoire was so limited they would have played only two or three songs, including “Surfin’,” their first and only single, Murphy explained.
It’s not impossible the band made more than one appearance at Riverside Plaza. That might explain some of the conflicting memories.
For instance, former Riversider Patty Martin emailed from Arizona to say she once saw the Beach Boys at Harris’ at the Plaza “promoting white Levi’s and plaid wool Pendleton shirts.” Could be, as that was the band’s signature look at the start.
While we’re on the subject, here’s a side note about another possible appearance by the band in Riverside, one that wasn’t public.
In fall 1963, when the Beach Boys were becoming a success, they practiced at Riverside’s Ramona High one Saturday morning in the auditorium, according to a former sophomore at the time who prefers not to be named. Word of mouth got around and students — dozens rather than hundreds — drifted in and out of the rehearsal.
Why a school auditorium? It held some 4,000 people when occupied. Perhaps the rising band — “Surfin’ U.S.A.” had been a hit earlier in 1963 — needed to get a sense of a larger venue. Or maybe Riverside was convenient to wherever the band had a concert that night.
Anyway, it probably beat another visit to Harris’.
When I wrote Nov. 24 about Riverside writer Susan Straight’s appearance in Santa Ana to promote her 2022 novel “Mecca,” she noted that a sequel is in the works. Details didn’t come in until after deadline. Said Susan: “The sequel is called ‘Sacrament,’ and I hope it will be out next year.”
Next year is now right around the corner. Happy New Year!
David Allen writes Sunday, Wednesday and Friday, happily. Email dallen@scng.com, phone 909-483-9339, like davidallencolumnist on Facebook and follow @davidallen909 on Twitter.
