Just caught the opening 12 minutes of Gordon Ramsay's show, Kitchen Nightmares on Fox. I don't usually watch it (and I just turned it off) but I thought I'd at least catch the start of this episode since it was on a Pomona restaurant.
Never heard of it? Gordon Ramsay, the world-famous chef and hothead visits failing restaurants and yells at owners/managers and staff until they make improvements. If they follow through they tend to succeed and no harm done.
This evening must have been an old one because it focuses on a Pomona eatery that to my knowledge, is no longer in operation. Lela's. I recognized the building instantly. In the 1990s it was a gallery space/coffee joint/reading room that I worked in for a very brief period. Very brief. It's a nice spacious unit on W. 2nd at Main and many businesses have failed there since. Even with the hardwood floors, decent kitchen, and expanses of brick wall perfect for art display it's not enough. Doesn't help that Downtown Pomona is basically a ghosttown between shows at the Glass House. Imagine, the Glass House didn't even exist when I worked around there and businesses relied on Saturday morning Farmer's Markets. I used to go down there pretty often, after school, to scour the antique markets. Collections of junk. Useless stuff. A friend and I would ride around listening to old punk tapes (yeah, cassettes!) and look for old comics and clothes and say hi to the rasta guy that worked at the Jamaican shop that sold Bob Marley-everything.
Also doesn't help that the neighborhood is teeming with homeless people and gang activity. It's always been that way. There's a lot of old town charm there, but the attempts to gentrify never really flourished. After all, it's still Pomona. I love Pomona but...come on. I wouldn't send a non-909 resident there even in broad daylight. I was recently scouring nearby junkyards when I came across a Mexican circus set up in a residential neighborhood complete with elephants and tigers. I don't know anything about zoning, but my guess is the circus wasn't in compliance. Most other places even in the Empire, it would seem odd. In Pomona it did not surprise me at all.
Since 2006
2 comments:
My dad always tells me little stories about what Pomona was like in the late 60s when he came there to study at Cal Poly (where he met me mum in the library) - he said it was idyllic and clean and the homes were beautiful and old, and people took care of their lawns. Then between then and the 80s things just began to slip. By the time were at PC it wasn't even done slipping yet!
So many little corners of Pomona can be so nice. Then there are long stretches of Holt that seem like they'll never get better again.
When do suburbs gentrify? Does such a thing happen? Oh yeah, in Rancho Cucamonga?!
@CitizenRobots Yours might be the best comment this blog has ever seen.
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