Post by Charles HobbsPost by Tim MayThe large corner store opposite the Rusty's location, in the same block
that the old B of A was in, has changed hands many times. I don't even
recall what it was when I was there, '70-'74.
Wow, was that the B of A where the IV riot was (70?) They still have the
plaque commemorating the kid that was killed there, right near the door.
* a video game arcade
* a gym
* a couple of different dance/drinking spots
* who knows what else.
That large building was there when I arrived in September 1970, very
quickly built to replace the much smaller building which was burned in
the spring of the same year. I never heard any details of just how it
got built (rebuilt is the wrong word) so quickly, in obviously less
than 6-8 months, but I figure various strings were pulled to get it
rebuilt FAST.
It was a bank the whole time I was there, but, as you say, had various
other uses later. When I was at UCSB for a cryptography conference in
1988 it was some kind of dance place.
Post by Charles HobbsRight now, I think UCSB bought it and uses it for office and/or
classroom space. Same with the IV "Magic Lantern" Theater, but that was
back in late 1984 when UCSB bought that.
The Magic Lantern was where I probably saw 95% of all the films I saw
back in '70-'74, from "Carnal Knowledge" to "Barbarella" to "A
Clockwork Orange," plus a series of cheesy Alex De Renzy and Russ Meyer
skin flicks, which passed for porn in those pre-video years.
I can't speak for why the owners sold, but converting a real movie
theater into Yet More Classrooms, when the university had more than
enough already (face it, a lot of classrooms were nearly empty, at
least at some hours...and there are cheaper ways to find 500 more seats
than acquiring a real movie theater), was close to being a criminal
act.
Post by Charles HobbsPost by Tim MayAcross the street from both it and the Rusty's site, kitty-corner
across from Rusty's, was a slapped-together complext of huts and sheds,
one of them the first felafel place I had ever seen.
Baba's Falafel....about the time I graduated, they replaced the funky
hut with a squarish building
Yeah, Baba's was what it was. I'd never even heard of a felafel until
then.
Post by Charles HobbsPost by Tim MayI do remember that the bicycle store next door to it (also near the
I.V. Foot Patrol and James Ventura, the rental company, my landlord
back then)
....just about *everyone's* landlord, if you lived in I.V. J. Ventura
shared a building with a pool room/video arcade (last time I was up
there, oh, around late 2002, they had gotten a liquor license)
A run-down used bookstore was nearby, at least as late as around 1986,
when I scored a copy of Heidegger's "Being and Time" there on a brief
stop over on my way down to the LA area. I recognized the proprietor,
"Bob" I think his name was, as someone who ran it, or a similar place,
in 1974.
Post by Charles HobbsPost by Tim May(And in I.V. Bookstore, the younger Japanese guy who worked for the
older Chinese guy is now the owner...I at first mistook him for the
Chinese guy, but he told me he bought the business from the old man,
who died sometime in the 1990s.)
Remember Merlin's Used Bookstore (right next to the IV Foot Patrol
office)? It always smelled of cigar smoke.....
Ah, I think you are now referring to this same bookstore I cited above!
I recollect the owner as being named "Bob," but the store was probably
called what you said it was.
Post by Charles HobbsWoodstock's Pizza is still around, though.
I'm not sure how much I remember of that. There was a complex of
run-down stores roughly across from the IV Bookstore, but further away
from campus. A burnt-out druggie opened some kind of "Sicilian pan
pizza" place there in 1972, one of the first competitors to Rusty's. He
offered a "free if you can eat it all" deal, and some of us tried it.
One of my roommates, now a senior math professor at Rutgers or
someplace like that, tried to eat the whole thing...I forget if he
managed to or not.
Another roommate, now the head of some kind of "autonomic computing"
program at IBM, was also a participant.
Did this evolve into Woodstock's Pizza? I don't know.
I do know that the original site was a used bicycle store last time I
was through, and Burger King had moved in kitty corner across the
street.
(I'll throw a new ringer into the mix. My last year in I.V. an "off
campus" beer seller arrived...prior to around 1973 there had been some
legal restriction on beer or wine sales within X miles of a UC campus.
This place started just around from my last apartment, on Sabado Tarde.
It was called "SOS" or somesuch, and had funky waterfalls and suchlike
in the rock garden outside. And it has lasted...everytime I drive
through I see it. So has the Mexican restaurant nearby, on the ocean
side of the Loop. Funny thing is, I never ate at that Mexican
restaurant. Back then, too poor to eat at sit-down restaurants.)
An interesting Web project might be a Wiki-style database of various
college communities across the country, where people could contribute
recollections of what was where, which stores and shops and hamburger
places were where, by year.
I'd love to see our cumulative recollections put together into a rough
data base of what happened to various places (the first Kinko's shop,
the Borsodi's site, the old taco joints, the Rexall Drugs store (now
gone), and so on. I expect folks knowing Madison, WI or Burlington, VT,
or several hundred other cities would think the same, especially if by
Web searching on remembered names they landed on such Web sites.
Just seeing a timeline, perhaps organized as a map (though this is not
strictly necessary) of old college hangouts would probably be almost as
interesting, and a lot easier to piece together, than those old high
school yearbook sites.
--Tim May