First they came for the new bookstores...

Times change, as David Allen notes in a Daily Bulletin article:

One of the Inland Valley's few remaining used bookstores is closing its doors. The Book Exchange, a used book store at 4847 Arrow Highway in Montclair, has been in business for 30 years, said owner Luisa Conner, who bought it in 1997. The last day of business is Saturday.

The closure of a used bookstore is no surprise.

Conner said her store was affected by the shift to online sales and e-reading, the same factors that have hurt other bookstores.

So what happens to the books?

After the close of business Saturday, remaining books will be boxed up and donated to libraries.

This assumes, of course, that the libraries (a) are still around, and (b) if they are still around, that they're actually stocking deadwood books.

The fourth E is Ending (Ramon's Cactus Patch is closed)

A few weeks ago, I wrote a three-part series of posts describing a Saturday in downtown Ontario. The third post in that series, The third E is Eating, described my first-ever visit to Ramon's Cactus Patch, a Mexican restaurant at the corner of San Antonio and Mission that has been in existence (at various locations) since the 1930s.

Toward the end of the post, I wrote:

I just regret that I waited so long to visit the place.

I really would have regretted it if I had waited a few more weeks to visit. According to David Allen, the restaurant is now closed, since Ramon has decided to retire.

After all, he's 99 years old.

Now some business plan extensive transition periods. Take NBC, which has decided (again) that Jay Leno will leave the Tonight Show and transition to a new host next year. But in the case of Ramon's Cactus Patch, the decision to finally close the restaurant (due to Ramon's health) was made rather quickly:

Customers who ate there on what turned out to be the last day [Saturday, March 30] had no idea the restaurant would close.

[Ramon's children] Roque and Ramona didn't either, although they knew the end was near.

The restaurant is typically closed Sunday and Monday. During a family meeting Sunday, they decided not to reopen Tuesday.

"It was very abrupt," Roque admitted.

I'm glad that I made it when I did. Hopefully, the family will be able to follow the suggestion that David Allen made, and open the restaurant for one last farewell to its customers.

(empo-jooryst) Now it can't be told

Yesterday, a jury in Rancho Cucamonga, California returned guilty verdicts in a criminal trial.

I have not said anything about this until now, for a compelling reason - I was an alternate juror on that jury, and obviously a juror can't discuss a trial while it's going on.

It turns out that a juror can't discuss a trial after it's ended, either. You can thank the O.J. Simpson circus - I mean trial - for this:

Gov. Pete Wilson on Monday signed bills spawned by the O.J. Simpson double murder case that make it illegal for witnesses and jurors in criminal trials to sell their stories until the case is finished....

Under the legislation, AB 501 by Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco) and SB 1999 by Sen. Quentin Kopp (I-San Francisco), it will be a crime starting Jan. 1 for jurors, witnesses or potential witnesses to provide information for compensation, a practice known as "checkbook journalism."...

Jurors will be barred from engaging in any arrangements for compensation until 90 days after being discharged.

Well, how does this affect me, you may ask? It's not that people are beating down my door offering to pay for my story. All that I can say is...um, look to the left over there. While it's a stretch to say that one of those boxes to the left may qualify as "compensation," you can't be too careful.

So I'll tell a few stories about my jury service...in July.

In the meantime, now that I am now able to read about the case and the particulars online, I'm going to do some catching up. When you're a juror, you are only supposed to base your decision upon evidence that is actually presented in court. If there was any coverage of the crime when it originally occurred, I'm not supposed to use it as a juror. In fact, I don't even know if the defendant hired his own attorneys to defend him, or if he were assigned a public defender.

After this self-imposed cone of silence, I have some catching up to do.

The third E is Eating

(Continued from previous post.)

So I was driving westbound on California Avenue, which is now a mixture of residences and car repair shops with the occasional other store thrown in. At the end of California Avenue, where it intersects with both San Antonio Avenue and Mission Boulevard, you can find Ramon's Cactus Patch.

This restaurant, which has been on this particular corner for over 50 years, and has been in existence in various Ontario locations since either 1937 or 1938, bears the distinction of being the first Mexican restaurant in Ontario. Except, however, that back in the 1930s, advertising a restaurant as a "Mexican" restaurant would be bad for business. (As I learned during my tour of the museum, the desegregation of Ontario public schools was a controversial issue in the 1940s.) So Ramon referred to his business as a "Spanish" restaurant - at least until he had a regular clientele.

I learned a lot of this while waiting for my order. Two articles - one from the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin's David Allen, the other from a local Upland newsletter - told of the history of the restaurant. (I couldn't find the Allen article that is at the tables of Ramon's Cactus Patch, but Allen has written about the restaurant several times, most recently here.)

The food is nothing fancy (no Chinese fusion here), but is very good.

I just regret that I waited so long to visit the place.

Ramon's Cactus Patch, like the museum, has limited hours. It closes for two hours every afternoon, and it is closed all day Sunday.

So how was your Saturday morning?

The second E is Education

(Continued from previous post.)

So after my Ingress/RunKeeper game play, I ended up back in the parking lot from which I had started.

This was the parking lot for the Museum of History and Art in Ontario.

I hadn't been here in several years, so I timed my Ingress/RunKeeper game play so that it would be completed by about noon - the time that the museum opens. (Check the museum's schedule; it is not open every day.)

From now until April 7, the north end of the museum includes an exhibit entitled "Seaweed, Salmon, and Manzanita Cider." This is a discussion of the foods eaten by the California Indians. The exhibit is described as follows:

The foods of California's Indian peoples were - and still are - as varied as the landscape, as are the methods of preparing them. Now, a new exhibition tells the story of foods important in the lives of Native Californians, including fish, shellfish, seaweed, meat, vegetables, berries, fruits, flowers, nuts, seed and salt.

Other than the seaweed, salmon, and cider, two other foods caught my eye. The first was acorns. The exhibit talked a lot about grinding acorns and making acorn bread.

The second was something that I didn't realize was a food. Perhaps you've seen the commercials for the Chia-Pets and similar items.

[PICTURE SOURCE, LICENSE]

Well, it turns out that the Chia seed is edible - and that Indians ate it. Luckily for them, they didn't have late night television.

The permanent part of the collection includes a variety of items related to the history of the city of Ontario. I had remembered the Hotpoint portion of the exhibit from a previous visit, but I spent most of my time in the "Roads" section. While Route 66 did not traverse Ontario (it went a few miles north of Ontario, through Upland), there were three U.S. routes that did go through the city, including routes 60, 70, and 99. Initially, all three of them went down Holt Boulevard, but then Route 60 was moved south, to Mission Boulevard. Eventually U.S. Route 60 was decommissioned in California, and the number was used for a state freeway a couple of miles south of downtown Ontario. Route 99 also became a state route, but you have to go all the way to Bakersfield to find it.

The relocation of U.S. Route 60 to Mission Boulevard resulted in a reconfiguration of the city of Ontario - one that adversely affected the businesses on California Street. So after I left the museum, I drove west on California Street. And after my exercise, and after reading about the delicious Chia seed, I was hungry.

(To be continued.)

(empo-plaaybizz) The first E is Exercise

I use a number of applications on my Android phone, including the two applications Ingress and RunKeeper.

I've previously mentioned Ingress in this blog (and have mentioned it more frequently in some of my other blogs). If you haven't heard of it, it's a location-based game from Google that can be played on Android phones. It's best described as a 21st century version of geocaching, except that in this case the caches are virtual. Ingress still requires you to move around in the real world, however, and visit particular locations to play the game.

I haven't mentioned RunKeeper in this blog, but I have discussed it in my Empoprise-BI business blog. One such discussion can be found here. RunKeeper, like Ingress, uses the GPS properties of your phone, but in the case of RunKeeper they are used to track your exercise, including (of course) running, as well as other exercises such as walking.

I have run hot and cold on both Ingress and RunKeeper. However, during the last week I've had the opportunity to get re-acquainted with both applications. (I can't tell you why I've had this opportunity, at least not yet; I should be able to discuss the opportunity in this blog at a later time - perhaps in July.) Basically, I'd use RunKeeper to get out to a particular point, and then I'd play Ingress.

In the ideal world, I'd be able to use Ingress and RunKeeper at the same time. That way I could play the Ingress game, and record my exercise while doing it in RunKeeper. However, I couldn't figure out how to do this; Ingress is a notoriously sensitive game, and if you leave it to do something else, the game is no longer active.

Finally, my boneheaded brain determined that if I started RunKeeper first, and THEN started Ingress, I should be able to use both applications simultaneously. I tested my theory in Montclair this morning, and discovered that it worked.

So I was off to downtown Ontario.

As I have previously mentioned, downtown Ontario has a number of Ingress "portals" where you can play the game. So I parked in a parking lot near one of these portals, started RunKeeper, started Ingress, and set off to play the game.

I didn't visit every Ingress portal in downtown Ontario - there were two that I skipped - but during my walk, I was able to visit six Ingress portals in the vicinity of Euclid Avenue. I walked approximately 0.8 miles during my Ingress gameplay, which is better than nothing.

So after doing that, I ended up back at my original starting point.

(To be continued.)

Rich Blocks, Poor Blocks for western San Bernardino County

From http://www.richblockspoorblocks.com/, a website that lets you enter a city name (or an address) and display income or rent information for that geographic area.

The Roman Gadass and a Tech Parody

Loren Feldman lives in New York and spends time in Los Angeles, but doesn't spend a lot of it in the Inland Empire or the eastern San Gabriel Valley. He is, however, obviously familiar with the area - to a point.

Feldman is no fan of Jeremiah Owyang or other self-styled "community managers," so when Feldman heard about Monday's "Community Manager Appreciation Day," his creative juices got flowing and he wrote this.

As part of his comment on the so-called Community Manager of the Year, Feldman wrote:

Mr. Mauran received his award at a gala even held at the Motel 6 in Pamona, CA, who graciously gave the Motel 6 ballroom in exchange for blog posts from attendees.

And no, I didn't send a spelling flame to Feldman for misspelling Pomona. In the grand scheme of things, I don't think he cares how Pomona is spelled.

Since Pomona is in our backyard, I figured I'd see if there actually was a Motel 6 in Pomona. Turns out that there is - on Garey Avenue, right by the intersection of the 60 and the 71.

I even found a Google Maps picture of the motel.

This prompted me to write something of my own on Google+:

After the impressive Community Manager Awards, held in the ballroom of the Motel 6 in Pomona, California (as ably reported by +Loren Feldman - see link in comments), the assemblage of distinguished community managers went to a swank reception at the Pomona Branding & Social Media Appreciation Park (seen on the right of the picture below, right next to the Motel 6). Attendees subsequently attended an informal gathering, organized by the Pomona Police Department and held at Pomona Police Headquarters. After the all night affair, one attendee remarked, "I got to experience the same thing that I do to the sheep - I mean customers."

Then, because most Google+ readers are not familiar with the specifics of Pomona, I linked to an old David Allen story that detailed how the Pomona Library closed, and then reopened with some of the former workers now employed as part-time hourly staff.

It's enough to make a Roman goddess - whoops, gadass - want to cry.

I need an Upland reporter, preferably young, to investigate a non-corpse

Dan Seifert shared a long-ish Laura June article in The Verge entitled For Amusement Only: the life and death of the American arcade. It's an extensively researched article that not only discusses the one-decade heyday of the video games arcade, but the long history before and after that decade, ranging from the years of Prohibition to the present day.

For my purposes, I will reproduce a very small excerpt from the article:

Arcades in the late 1970s and early 1980s held a particular place in the American way of life. Like shopping malls and roller skating rinks, they were safe, isolated areas where kids and teenagers could hang out, and, with a reasonable amount of money, spend hours without their parents. Bill Disney, a pinball enthusiast and owner of The Pinball Gallery in Downingtown, Pennsylvania, says of his younger years that "most parents, they basically didn’t know what their kids were doing any time of the day. They were on their bikes, out the whole day," and "they didn’t care where they were." This laid-back attitude varied by family, as well as by geography, but the relative autonomy of older children in the ‘50s, ‘60s, ‘70s, and early 1980s, was much greater than it would be moving into the ‘90s. Films of the early ‘80s such as E.T. and The Wizard show typical, American kids, left to their own devices, playing video games and capturing aliens with their friends while their parents are at work.

But the major thesis of the article can be summed up in the title: arcades in this form are now dead. Laura June defines the classic video arcade as a dark place, inhabited by young people, that only has video games. No food or drink, except perhaps for a stray vending machine. And by using this definition, most of the classic video arcades ARE dead.

But I suspect there may be at least one that is still standing. But, due to the "inhabited by young people" thing, I'll need someone to check this out for me.

In Upland, California, just east of Upland High School, there is a long-standing establishment called James Games. Despite the fact that I actually know James (who sold the business long ago), I have never set foot in the place, despite the fact that I lived within a quarter mile away from it in the mid 1980s, and that I literally lived down the street from it in the mid 1990s.

If someone is ready to take on the glory that is involved with being an official Empoprises correspondent, could someone venture in to James Games and let us know if it's still a video arcade place in the traditional sense?

If you know something about the 2013 version of James Games, you can post your comments here on this blog post, or you can write your own blog post in your own blog and let me know about it, or you can send me an email. I have a Gmail account under the name "empoprises."

In the meantime, here's the Yelp page for James Games: http://www.yelp.com/biz/james-games-upland.

Staying in the Ontario Airport area for $15 a night

Travel can be costly, but if you know what you're doing you can cut down on your costs. It just takes a bit of effort.

The writer of The Perpetual Traveler blog, Glenn Campbell, ran into some unexpected expenses when he arrived at Ontario airport too late to miss his flight. This meant that he wouldn't be able to get a flight out until the next day...and also meant that he'd have to find a place to stay. He had only been to Ontario Airport once before, but he surmised (correctly) that he wouldn't be able to sleep at the airport itself. But as he approached the airport to turn in his rental car, he hit upon a solution:

I had no real worry that I would find a place to camp. I knew that the airport was in a relatively sterile industrial area, away from any housing and probably without any homeless population. The aerial photos showed lots of open land and landscaping where I could easily hide. I could resolve exactly where after I dropped the car.

Campbell had a sleeping bag, but it didn't seem to be suitable for outdoor camping, so he bought a second one for $15. He dropped off his supplies in a field before turning in the rental car, then returned to the field afterwards.

More here.

I bet that Jeff Pope disagreed with David Courtney on one thing

If you haven't already read it, KGGI deejay Jeff Pope wrote a touching recollection of David Courtney, longtime announcer who suddenly passed away.

Pope has known Courtney for years and years, since they both worked at Metro Networks (some of you may recall the days when Pope did traffic on X103.9). Pope's post mentioned several favors that he received from Courtney over the years, including opportunities to announce both Los Angeles Kings and Anaheim Ducks games.

Pope then says:

Later, when I got the PA announcing job with the Ontario Reign 4 years ago, I sent him an e-mail, thanking him for helping me get the gig (thinking he had called someone with the Reign to recommend me for the job)

He responded, "I never contacted the team, you got that job all on your own."

I suspect that Pope disagreed on that point. Perhaps he technically got the Reign job on his own, but he probably wouldn't have gotten it if it hadn't been for the favors that David Courtney provided in the past.

There's much more in Pope's post - read it here.

P.S. Years ago, I knew two small businessmen in Rancho Cucamonga who got Rick Monday to record their business answering machine greeting. Not sure what happened to Steve Louderback and Alan Smith...

#IngressResistanceOntarioCalifornia

http://www.hmdb.org/marker.asp?marker=37512

From August 14, 1888, to September 24th, 1895, the Ontario & San Antonio Heights R.R. Company’s gravity mule car transported citizens up-and-down Euclid Avenue from Holt Boulevard to 24th Street. The cars were designed by John H. Tayes. After the termination of service, the original cars disappeared...

Ingress in downtown Ontario

You may have heard of Google's newest location-based game, Ingress. The game, which is (currently) only available for smartphones using the Android platform, is basically an online geocaching game, in which the geocaches only exist in the virtual world. Using the Ingress application and your phone's GPS capabilities, you locate these virtual geocaches (called "portals"). There are various game mechanics that are also used - for example, the game itself is a contest between two different teams trying to take over the portals. If you're interested, this review explains the game mechanics.

The portals themselves are intended to be fairly unique. Google's general portal criteria include the following:

Should be safe and accessible to the public

Example types of objects:

Statues

Unique architecture

Outdoor murals

Historic buildings

Special outdoor buildings

Unique local businesses

Note that they're looking for unique local businesses. Apparently Google doesn't intend for you to mark your local Applebee's. For example, I have suggested that Logan's Candies would make a good portal.

While players such as myself are beginning to suggest some portals to Google and the Ingress team, some portals were set up before the game's recent expansion to beta mode.

Perhaps I'm giving away game secrets that can be used by the other side, but there are several portals in downtown Ontario, most notably on Euclid Avenue between Holt and C Streets. For example, one portal is located at the Ontario Mule Car exhibit in the median of Euclid Avenue. The link goes to hmdb.org, the Historical Marker DataBase; I have noticed that several other items in that database are also portals in Ingress.

So, while some people have concerns over the Ingress game, there are positives. It does get you out walking around (although some portables are accessible by automobile), and you can learn something from many of the portals.

The Empoprises RCDCR Rule of Insider Food Talk

One of my goals in life is to establish stunningly informative rules that will guide your life for decades to come. Earlier this year, I coined (and copyrighted) the Empoprises FECES Rule of Corporate Me-Tooism, and the time has come to add a second rule: the Empoprises RCDCR Rule of Insider Food Talk. This rule, copyright 2012 John E. Bredehoft, is worded as follows:

Anyone who explicitly uses the words "restaurant concept" when addressing a potential diner should be exposed to continuous ridicule.

Now I have no problem with restaurant concepts per se. If you want to say that your restaurant is a Chinese-Mexican fusion restaurant, go for it. The problem occurs when you explicitly prattle on about your restaurant concept.

Earlier today I wrote a post in my Empoprise-BI business blog about a Washington, DC restaurant called Woodward Takeout Food. And while the post concentrated on the acronym for this restaurant, I also spent looked at the concept of this restaurant, taken from the restaurant's website. There are actually two concepts; here is how the second one is described.

...Woodward Takeout Food, a sprite artisanal alternative for breakfast and lunch.

But it's not just snooty northwest Washington restaurants that blather on about their concepts. Take Portillo's. People in the Chicago area are probably familiar with Portillo's, which originally gained fame as a hot dog place. The restaurant has expanded geographically, and now has a location in Moreno Valley, California (and a second California location in Buena Park). And if you go to the Moreno Valley location, you can see a big sign talking about Portillo's...RESTAURANT CONCEPTS.

If you don't want to drive to Moreno Valley or fly to Chicago, you can see the same yammering at Portillo's website:

Hi, I'm Dick Portillo and I welcome you to The Portillo Restaurant Group and its five different concepts (Portillo's Hot Dogs, Barnelli's Pasta Bowl, Honey-Jam Cafe, Luigi's House and Julian's Piano Bar). I hope you will find the time to visit each of the concepts and enjoy them as much as I have enjoyed developing them.

I'm sorry, but when I hear a restaurant owner talking about his or her "restaurant concept," I feel like I'm looking at the owner in his or her underwear. And unless your name is Giada, it's not a pretty picture.

Using insider terminology such as "restaurant concept" is almost as bad as using acronyms. When someone outside of the fingerprint identification industry asks me what I do for a living, I don't immediately start talking about "NIST Type 2." And if the person isn't involved in proposals, I don't immediately share our company's approach to red teams.

If I go to your restaurant to eat, just tell me what you're serving. Don't explain your concept, and don't prattle about your 7-Ups from artesian wells. (What is a sprite artisanal alternative, anyway?)

The Empoprise-IE Guide to Every Single Ballot Proposition

I wrote something on Google+ a few days ago, and I've decided to share it in this blog. I'm sharing it for two reasons: one, because I thought you might like it, and two, because I haven't written anything in this particular blog in a while and this would help me add some content. I'm going to try to blog about more IE-related stuff this month.

For my fellow California residents, I hereby present the argument for and against every single California proposition.

THE PRO ARGUMENT:

Help take power back from the evil politicians in Sacramento and the evil special interests! Proposition [ANY OF EM] puts the power back in your hands and preserves our California way of life. Supported by workers, small business owners, and people just like you.

THE CON ARGUMENT

Proposition [ANY OF EM] is a scam, written by the special interests that you hate for their own personal benefit. Proposition [ANY OF EM] does not guarantee that gas prices will go down, takes money out of your pocket, and it isn't gluten free. Vote NO and tell the special interests to go away! Supported by workers, small business owners, and people just like you.

Billy Kilmer's Inland Valley connection

Many of you probably don't know the name Billy Kilmer, but I certainly knew that name when growing up in the Washington DC area in the 1970s. Kilmer was one of three Washington Redskins quarterbacks during that decade (Sonny Jurgensen and Joe Theismann were the others), and Kilmer was the quarterback during the Redskins' Super Bowl loss to the perfect Miami Dolphins during that decade.

When I was growing up, however, I did not know that Kilmer grew up in Azusa, California. Not that this would have made any difference to me, since I wouldn't have known where Azusa was.

Kilmer was a local hero out here, playing for Citrus Union High School and UCLA, and turning down an offer from the AFL's Los Angeles Chargers to sign with the San Francisco 49'ers.

Then he broke his leg in a traffic accident.

If Kilmer had listened to his father, he probably would have become an dry cleaner out here in the Inland Valley. But Kilmer had other ideas.

He was determined to come back for the `64 season. “I always wanted to be a professional athlete and I wasn’t going to give it up easy. I loved the life and I loved to play, I loved everything about it. So I was determined that I would come back and play quarterback.

“Another motivating factor was that my dad owned a dry cleaning business. When I got out of the hospital and went back home he said, `You’ll never play again. So you might as well learn the dry cleaning business.’ I was pressing pants in Pomona, California in August when it was 100 degrees outside and the steam from the press was hitting me in the face. I said, `I am not going to do this for the rest of my life.’ So I worked even harder in re-hab.” He did return for the `64 season and played in 10 games for the 49′ers at quarterback.

Kilmer eventually moved eastward, playing for the New Orleans Saints until they drafted Archie Manning, and then moving to the Washington Redskins to battle Sonny Jurgensen for the starting quarterback job. But for Kilmer, there was no "controversy":

As far as Kilmer was concerned, there was no controversy. “Allen liked me, there’s no doubt about that. But when I won, he played me. When I lost, he put Jurgensen back in. Then Jurgensen would get hurt and I would go back in. It had nothing to do with me and Sonny. And Allen never tried to put a wedge between me and Sonny.

“There was a personality conflict between George and Sonny but I didn’t know why. George wanted Sonny to go along with the program and Sonny would bump his system from time to time. But there was never anything between me and Sonny. The way I look at it is that I got my shot. When you get a chance to play, you better perform. That’s what an athlete does and if you don’t perform, you’re not going to play. I don’t care what sport it is. When I got my chance to perform, I won and it was hard to get me out of there when I won. I didn’t have a controversy with Sonny. I knew my place and I knew that if Jurgensen was healthy he’d be playing.”

And it certainly beats dry cleaning in 100 degree heat.

On Dragon Loco Ontario, and the reviews, and the reviews of the reviewers

I never got around to writing about Dragon Loco on this blog. But I wrote about it elsewhere.

A little history: David Allen blogged about Dragon Loco and admitted that he didn't care for the way that the Chinese-Mexican fusion was executed. He noted, however, that Yelp reviewers tended to be positive. One of those reviewers happened to be Allan Borgen, by the way.

I posted my own review on Yelp, which I am reproducing below.

Allan Borgen liked it (see his review here on Yelp), David Allen didn't care for it (see his Daily Bulletin column). I figured that I'd play it safe and just order a taco, rather than one of the larger dishes (burrito, quesadilla, etc.). If I loved it, I'd return some other time. If I hated it, not much lost.

Having heard of the small number of tables, I decided to order for take-out one night. This was a good thing, because when I arrived, all the tables were taken.

I ordered the orange chicken taco...and LOVED it. I'm glad that I didn't order the spicy orange chicken, because the one that I got was spicy enough for me.

I definitely plan a return visit!

Upon re-reading this, I realize that I made an error in confusing Allen's blog post (which included negative comments on Dragon Loco's food) with his Daily Bulletin column, which merely said "I'm not so sure the items that made the menu are successful either."

But the review that has people talking is the review by Jeff - not a review of Dragon Loco, but a review of David Allen's review of Dragon Loco. Allen quotes Jeff's complete comment here, which primarily boiled down to Jeff referring to Allen as "antique."

Allen, incidentally, resisted the urge to comment on some of Jeff's statements, such as the phrase "We seen it ate it, been their." Instead, Allen raised a question about reviewing in general:

But regarding your comment that my criticism showed that I was "ungrateful": Surely you don't think I should give somebody a good review simply because they contacted me? That doesn't seem fair to readers, does it, to purposely steer them wrong? Being "grateful" in exchange for favors isn't ethical behavior.

Even if Dragon Loco granted Allen no favors, Allen's mode of reviewing (and the mode of Borgen) is to provide honest reviews - sometimes positive, sometimes negative. There are those who provide uniformly positive reviews of things, but I don't necessarily remember their names.

And it's worthwhile to remember that even if David Allen and Allan Borgen and my wife all loved a particular restaurant, that doesn't necessarily mean that I would like it. And if I didn't like it, I'd have no problem telling David and Allan that I didn't like it.

(Actually, my wife would be fine with my honesty. She'd just feed me green peppers for dinner instead.)

Cagles does what a big business would never dare to do

There are plenty of big businesses that spend all sorts of money on social media and other efforts to engage their customers.

Why do they do it? They have to.

Take this example. I bet that there are a lot of appliance superstores that are very busy with Labor Day weekend sales. These businesses are pumping out ads and Facebook messages and the like encouraging people to shop this weekend.

Cagles Appliance in Ontario is not doing this. Oh, they're putting out Facebook messages - but it's a very different message.

Remember Cagles Appliance is going to be closed till Tuesday Have a great Weekend

That's right. Cagles is closed on Labor Day itself, which is a refreshing thought. And they're closed on Sunday. And they're even closed today, Saturday.

And I bet that 99% of their customers are extremely happy about it. Cagles doesn't need to hire so-called "social media experts" to engage their customers. They just engage them. And when they're closed, Cagles customers don't think "This is terrible! I'm going somewhere else to shop!" Instead, they think "Hope they're having a great weekend! I'll see them next week."

Two local business blogs

I guess I'm not giving away any deep dark secret, but I would be extremely ecstatic if my name, or one of my blogs, came up first in a search for Ontario California blogs. (Actually, I'd be happy if I were third - I will gladly go behind Liset Marquez and David Allen. Heck, I'll go fourth and let Matt Munson go ahead of me.)

I'm not first in such a search - yet - but I did find a couple of Ontario business blogs of interest while searching.

Bumstead's Bicycles (now in northwest Ontario) - http://bumsteadsbicycles.blogspot.com/

Treasures N Junk - http://treasuresnjunkantiques.blogspot.com/

Make-a-Wish, and an update on a June 2009 post

In the process of commenting on a Drew Olanoff share on Google+, I had occasion to remember the story of Travis Clark and Gene Kranz.

You may recall this story from a few years ago. Travis Clark was a young boy who was, among other things, a huge fan of NASA. After Clark was diagnosed with a brain tumor, the Make-a-Wish Foundation and the Los Angeles Fox television station KTTV made arrangements for Clark to speak to former NASA Flight Director Gene Kranz via video hookup.

Sadly, the Fox report on this video conversation is apparently no longer online. However, I still remember the part of the video that gave me a smile. At one point Kranz asked Clark if he had any specific questions that he wanted to ask...and Clark pulled out some papers with a huge amount of questions.

And Kranz answered them.

I recently discovered a North County Times article from 2010 that discussed the wish. The article was written on the occasion of the opening of a Riverside office for the Make a Wish Foundation. Clark had unfortunately passed away by this time, but the article included several quotes from Clark's father, Barry Clark (whom I know personally). Here is some of what Barry Clark said:

"Initially, I hesitated to contact Make-A-Wish," said Travis’s father, Barry Clark, of Rancho Cucamonga. "I thought it was only for terminal cases. I learned it was for children with life-threatening illnesses."

Travis got to meet Kranz via satellite from a Houston television station. They spent an hour talking, Barry Clark said.

"He was thrilled to get to meet Gene Kranz. We were all so excited. It was a wonderful moment in midst of a tough time," he said, his voice filling with emotion.

Travis died June 9, 2009, a few months after meeting Kranz.

"On one hand, you’re going through the worst thing you can imagine and on the other hand, you get to experience something so wonderful that you're smiling from ear to ear," Barry Clark said. "We think about it frequently."

For more information about the local Make a Wish office, visit http://www.wishoc.org/default.asp.

On the late Rodney King

I just learned that Rodney King died today.

Why am I writing about King in my Inland Empire blog? Because in the last years of his life, King lived out here with us. Earlier today, he was found at the bottom of the pool at his Rialto home. He was pronounced dead at Arrowhead Regional Medical Center in Colton.

Views on King often span two extremes. Some considered him a heroic symbol. Some considered him a drunken criminal. The truth is somewhere in between.

King certainly was not perfect. Then again, neither am I.

Whatever else he did in his life, or was done to him in his life, King secured his place in history by his reaction to the Los Angeles riots - riots that began because of the initial jury verdict for the people accused of beating him. The Los Angeles Times records King's reaction to the riots:

King said he was shocked to see the destruction of the riots that followed the not-guilty verdicts.

"I couldn't believe what I was seeing," he says. "Mayhem, people everywhere ... looting, burning. Gunshots. I turned back and went home. I looked at all of that and I thought to the way I was raised, with good morals from my mother, even though I didn't always follow them.

"I said to myself, 'That is not who I am, all this hate. I am not that guy. This does not represent me or my family, killing people over this. No, sir, that is not the way I was raised by my mother.' I began to realize that I had to say something to the people, had to try to get them to stop."

So, on the third day of the rioting, he pleaded on television: "People, I just want to say, you know, can we all get along? Can we get along?"

A simple question, but a powerful one.

Rest in peace, Rodney.

Redirected from the 909 party (Gorilla Cookies band news)

In early 2009, I wrote a post in this very blog entitled 909party is not an oxymoron. Among other things, it referred to a club in Chino called Godfather's. http://909party.com/ is a flashy place, devoted to two locations. Happy's Grill, 23545 Palomino Dr., Diamond Bar CA 91765. Godfather's, 12570 Central Ave., Chino CA 91710. The two places are somewhat different - Happy's allows kids, while Godfather's is 21 and over only. Actually, I've been to Godfather's, but it was several years ago. Alexa's Wish played there once, and I saw them there. Well, the years have passed. Alexa's Wish broke up, and Godfather's closed. But I recently read this announcement from the band Gorilla Cookies. Update!! Gorilla Cookies debut show at Happy's Chino (formally Godfathers) on July 13th! Also, as an added bonus, we will also be having a special guest band.......TAVO! I am extremely happy to have Mark Taylor and Gus Garcia be a part of this special evening. Please save the date and do not miss this event! More details to follow! This is a full circle event in many respects, since Ralph Tomaselli of Alexa's Wish is now in Gorilla Cookies. The Happy's people no longer own the 909party domain, and my attempts to go to Happy's new website resulted in "too many redirects" errors. But the band Gorilla Cookies (not to be confused with other similarly-named bands) has a Facebook page here.

The Pacific Electric Trail revisited

When I started the Empoprise-IE blog on May 11, 2008, its first post concerned the Pacific Electric Trail. For those who aren't familiar with the trail, it is a bicycle/walking trail that stretches through a good deal of the Inland Empire, following the path of a former railroad.

At the time that I wrote my May 2008 post, portions of the trail had been completed, while other portions were still in progress.

I blogged about the trail on February 10, 2009, and returned to the topic on February 14, in a post that referenced the first occurrence of the "Cucamonga Challenge" under its new name. There was a brief post on April 9, and another brief post on May 11.

I have not blogged about the Pacific Electric Trail or the Cucamonga Challenge since.

My bad.

A lot has happened in the last few years, including a complete reworking of the bridge on the west side of Rancho Cucamonga over Foothill Boulevard. Inland Valley Daily Bulletin reporter Wendy Leung has blogged about the bridge work, and also mentioned that the 2012 Cucamonga Challenge is coming up, on May 12, with a variety of events. See Leung's post for events and fees.

Also see http://www.cucamongachallenge.com/.

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