Past Stories
STAY TUNED . . .
Where Would Jesus Live?
A north Fontana pastor DC Tomas was among the throng of tract home property owners who passionately petitioned the Fontana Planning Commission last week. His sermon was quick and the propaganda fi...
IN SEARCH OF . . .
There’s a new sheriff in InlandEmpiretown—a mob squad, some might say—calling itself the Private Police Force, and it’s decided to pick up where they feel the local and federal governments have left off:...
Norman Mailer
This past Saturday, author Norman Mailer died of kidney failure at 84 years old, which marks the first time in his career that failure succeeded in stopping him—at least physically. Mailer led an extraordinary life, havin...
ENDA the Conversation
Last week, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act was pushed through the US House of Representatives en-route to the Senate (and assured veto by President Bush). The bill’s goal is to ensure that sexual orientation cannot ...
The Vault Fought the Law
The club was filled with young, dimly glowing faces, mulling around and chatting last Friday night. Lake Elsinore band Ready For Vegas set their gear up on stage, while attendants collected donations to ship to the troops in Ir...
SB City Attorney’s War on Flesh
Sex, as any free clinic employee will tell you, is an inherently dangerous activity. Heart rates skyrocket. Capillaries dilate. Synapses fry.
Perhaps no one in the Inland Empire is more concerned about the perils of sexu...
Southern California WildFires
“Or maybe—just maybe— the secret to Lloyd’s is that you tend to feel good—relaxed, chatty and good-natured—when enjoying a beer in a mountain tavern. Running Springs is situated in a forest. ...
Riverside man’s dream of democracy crushed!
Riverside residents have long been aware of their elected leaders’ “shut up and take it” approach to governance, but now it’s official: A state appellate court on October 12 affirmed Riverside’s ri...
Man on the Streets
“Please stay out of the street!” shouted the protest organizer. “We don’t want you to get hurt, even though we are in front of a hospital.”
It was reaching dusk at Day Two of the nurse’...
Man on the Streets
As we approached Pomona’s Second Saturday Art Walk, Willie the DJ, the unofficial mayor of the downtown art scene, was busy singing along to Tom Jones’ “What’s New Pussycat?” It was a fitting metap...
BUNGEE BABY
BUNGEE BABY
Nick Fennelly, 31, was rushing his in-labor girlfriend, Sharon Taylor, into the parking lot at Calderdale Royal Hospital in West Yorkshire, England, just as their baby’s head started to appear, and, in a corri...
HOLD ME LIKE A GUN
Generally speaking, bands that share names with songs that they’ve written should be avoided like a smooch-happy barfly with a festering herpes outbreak—think Big Country, Wang Chung and the myriad swill-spewi...
CHARRED BIRD
During the Vietnam War, Operation Phoenix was a CIA-sponsored effort to win the hearts and minds of enemy sympathizers—by killing them. Few American spy programs were as bloody, or as rich in euphemism. Under the &l...
UR F’ED!
These are heady days for the parking enforcement folks at UC Riverside.
The previous school year was a banner season for those young magistrates in tight shorts. Between September 2005 and June 2006, they and their allies...
DOCTORS GONE BAD
DOCTORS GONE BAD
(1) The British General Dental Council found David Quelch guilty in January of professional misconduct for pulling two teeth of a patient, against her will, without anesthesia, because she had complained ...
The Revolution is Closed
Standing in the empty parking lot of the Rialto Music Coalition Saturday night, Randall Lopez thought about his planned event’s initial promise and its disappointing outcome.
Lopez, the organizer of “A Weekend...
A Handful of Crumbs
On a cold, rainy Presidents Day when they could have been at the movies or playing video games, 14 San Bernardino teens gathered in the auditorium of an old church building to fight city hall over a handful of crumbs.&hel...
Stop the War! (for extra credit)
The first Inland Empire soldier to be killed in Operation Iraqi Freedom may or may not have been Jorge A. Gonzalez, a 20-year-old Marine corporal killed along with eight other Marines on March 23, 2003, while fighting to ...
Critical Condition
It’s been a really warm March, and if Academy Award-winning PowerPoint presentations are to be believed, it might have something to do with the fact that Americans love to roar down the highway in monster-truck-styl...
A Nero of Our Own!
The ‘60s were very good to Ramona High grad John Tavaglione, the current Riverside County Supervisor, who back then celebrated the youthful exuberance and spirited independence embodied in rock & roll with his b...
Greasing the Wheels
Martin Matich must have felt especially proud that autumn day last year in San Bernardino. With his wife, Evelyn, and three of his sons at his side, the retired head of Matich Corp. silently beamed as a host of California...
THE RUNDOWN
TUESDAY, MARCH 27
The economy in San Bernardino is so bad that the idea of using one of the closed military bases to traffic in human misery sounds good. A national immigration bill introduced in Congress last week would ...
Fire Away!
For all its many shortcomings, the Riverside Press-Enterprise has a few things going for it. Its reporters can and occasionally do kick ass, as when they booted Rep. Gary Miller’s corrupt butt up and down the IE over his ...
Knights in White Hoods?
Most schools in the Inland Empire have standard, unobjectionable mascots like blue jays, bobcats and cougars. Choosing one usually isn’t a brain-draining task, unless campuses go the creative route and pick bizarre mascot...
Empire Chatter
Raymond Chandler had Los Angeles. Stephen King has Maine, and William Faulkner was devoted to fictional Yoknapatawpha County. But for writers Susan Straight (Highwire Moon, A Million Nightingales), Gayle Brandeis (A Book of Dea...
No Heart for the Heartless
Within minutes of the official announcement Tuesday—Christian televangelist Jerry Falwell, dead from heart arrhythmia at 73—the cable networks broke out their mourning accoutrements: the frost-tinged graphics of the...
Tourist Trap
The Inland Empire doesn’t so much welcome people as it traps them in its grip—less ticker-tape parade, more tar pit. Spend a Friday night in any IE bar, and you’ll hear the tragic tales from world-wise wayfare...
Sticking it to Mr. Sam
Sure, Wal-Mart underpays its employees and unfairly burdens the federal and state governments by not providing most of its workers health benefits. Yes, the family behind the mega-chain inspires otherwise apathetic couch potato...
