Orange County has a notorious tradition of historians who subscribe to the Cult of the Orange Crate, the idea that our region's yesteryears are as immaculate as the images depicted on the labels of the long-gone citrus industry. This paper has long challenged such orthodoxy by publishing stories dealing with the dustbin of OC's past: Francisco Torres, Modesta Avila, the 1936 Citrus War, San Juan's swallows. Because of this, we get accused of being revisionist commies--go figure.
The biggest bel
Ate at El Pollo Fino over the weekend with Cynthia Ward, head of the Anaheim Historical Society and a longtime reader. Over bites of the best charbroiled chicken in Orange County not cooked at The Surfin' Chicken, Ward informed me of a terrible development: the orange grove on Santa Ana and Helena streets in Anaheim is dying.
This orchard is part of the original grove where the 1936 Citrus War began and is a minor miracle considering it's been continually harvested decades after that area becam
I've known Cynthia Ward, president of the Anaheim Historical Society, for a couple of years now, and have always found her to be someone with an open mind and a passion for what's ultimately right. Ever an Anaheim booster, she's the lady who escorted Huell Howser 'round our hometown for his Anaheim special this weekend. All the places Ward took ol' Huell to--the last remaining working orange grove in Anaheim, the Anaheim History Room, old homes and the like--are all deserving of love. In the spi
Spent the weekend hawking books at the Anaheim Historical Society's biannual home tour. There, many folks told me the bad news: Cafe Contigo, located just down the street from Anaheim City Hall, is no more.
I reviewed it late last year, just a couple of weeks after it opened, and made it my place to meet Anaheim sources. They drank coffee, Cuban-approved by Weekly editor Ted Kissell (who spent years in south Florida and therefore knows his media noches from ropa viejas), while I munched on deli
Woman or half-breed?As mentioned in my ¡Ask a Mexican! column this week, I'll be speaking tomorrow to the Anaheim Historical Society at what's now called the Woelke-Stoffel House but which generations of Anaheimers know as the Red Cross House. Address is 418 N. West St., Anaheim, (714) 292-0042, and the fun will start at 7 p.m. AHS head Cynthia Ward--one of the few self-identified conservatives that truly gets it--is billing this on her blog as "Gustavo Meets the Old Guard" because I tend to go
Guerrero with her mural
I cringe every time I drive past Anaheim's GardenWalk and its
fortress of chains. This isn't my Anaheim of immigrant shops mixing with
longtime businesses in cheap strip malls, nor does it have the Googie charm of the original hotels
and stores that sprung around Disneyland with free-market glee before Anaheim
officials passed some type of code or other that makes every damn property in the so-called Resort area have
the same Mission-esque marquee outside...wher
