If I look like this later, I only have myself to blame

At Marinello School of Beauty in Ontario for a men's haircut. I hope today's lesson isn't on "the Hilary Duff makeup style."

Doubletree Hotel Ontario Airport

On Vineland - I mean Vineyard.

Ontario, the city of uninspected apartments

Yes, I know I'm supposed to be a danged libertarian, but this just doesn't strike me as right.

Andrea Bennett covered this story.

It seems that there was a proposal before the City Council to require city inspections of apartments, at a charge of $36 per unit, at the astonishingly high frequency of once every 48 months.

Most if not all of the City Council members indicated their support for the measure at an April 15 meeting, either personally or by letter.

But now, the Council has deferred implementation of the measure, delaying its discussion until June 3.

Why?

Karen Fricke, executive director of the Apartment Association of the Greater Inland Empire or AAGIE, said her organization, which represents more than 5,000 units within the city, said she had planned a rally at the Euclid Avenue bandstand before Tuesday's meeting.

The scheduled protest was canceled, however, when city officials agreed to revise the ordinance, Fricke said....

Fricke said with the $36 per door fee, a few Ontario landlords in her association will pay $17,000 a year.

That fee was too high, and the proposed entry of every single unit would be too time-consuming for city staff, apartment managers and residents, she said.

Let's look at that $17,000 fee that is so detrimental to the landlords. For a landlord to have to pay $17,000 a year, that means that the landlord has at least 472apartments that need to be inspected that year. And, since inspections are on a four year cycle, that means that the landlord actually owns 1,888 apartments.

Now let's figure that the 1,888 apartments have an average monthly rental of $500 per month. (That's probably low, but humor me.) This means that each of the 1,888 apartments takes in gross rentals of $6,000 per year.

In other words, the landlord that has to pay $17,000 a year is already grossing over $11 million a year.

And, what's more, the landlord doesn't have to pay the money. You can guess what's going to happen once this gets ratified. Anyone who rents an apartment in Ontario will suddenly find themselves subject to a $36 inspection fee. Even if they stay in the apartment for less than four years, they'll still have to pay a $36 inspection fee.

But what the hey, the Apartment Association Greater Inland Empire (AAGIE) is just doing its advocacy. But they can't plead poverty.

Yard sale at Christ Church Parish

On San Antonio at 4th.

We're getting our junk - I mean, valuable treasures. (TV tables and Pyrex.)

And I didn't even have to pledge to uphold the Millennium Development Goals!

This one!

El Pollo Loco, Holt Ave, Ontario, California.

Picture taken from the east near sunset.

Now to order - whoops, I already got our dinner. They're quick.

@karenswim is missing California right now...

Well, at least they didn't say that it was in Canada

There's a work related conference coming up in May, and one of my co-workers mailed me some information about it that he received from another party. Since the conference is in Ontario, I'm naturally interested in it.

Here's the information that he had on the location of the conference:

Ontario Doubletree
222 N. Vineland Ave.
Ontario, CA 91764

I was the one who had to tell him, "By the way, the hotel is not on Vineland Avenue, it's on Vineyard."

We all then went through a period of self-doubt, and had to confirm things on Hilton's website:

Doubletree Hotel Ontario Airport
222 North Vineyard Ave, Ontario, California, United States 91764-4431
Tel: 1-909-937-0900 Fax: 1-909-937-1999

Although I haven't visited the hotel in years, it's one of my first impressions of southern California. Back in November 1983 it was the Red Lion, and when I came to the Inland Empire for a job interview, the company put me up there. It made a good impression, but not as good as the impression that I got when the company owner interviewed me from his office in Rancho Cucamonga.

His office with a north-facing window.

On a clear, non-smoggy day. (Kaiser had already closed by this time.)

If you're not familiar with the area, there is a series of mountains just north of Rancho Cucamonga which, when you can see them, are absolutely beautiful. My church also has north-facing windows, so I get to enjoy the view weekly.

But I haven't ever stayed in the Red Lion/Doubletree again. My loss.

What's in a two letter abbreviation (CA)?

I just ran across this tweet from Jim Weirich:

reading the tracking info from UPS and suddenly realized that there is a big difference between "Ontario, CA" and "Ontario, CA, US"

A Google search of the words "ontario ca" yields a hodgepodge of results:



As you can see, Google shows a link to the Google Map for Ontario, Canada; the official website for the city of Ontario, California; a Wikipedia entry for Ontario, California; and the home page for the Government of Ontario, Canada.

The confusion is the result of two competing standards: the official state abbreviations as maintained by the US Postal Service (in which "CA" stands for California), and the list of top-level domains as maintained by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (in which "CA" stands for Canada). And, of course, there's the underlying fact that the California city was named after the home of the Chaffey brothers who founded the place. (Not sure where they got the "Mildura" name from when they went to Australia, but did you know that there is a Chaffey Secondary College down under?)

But despite this confusion, Canada and California have learned to work together. The Canada-California Strategic Innovation Partnership does a lot of things that I'm sure are strategic and innovative.

Just don't refer to the organization as CACA. That's a Japanese seminar devoted to the categorical aspects of constructive algorithmics. It ended up changing its name to TOPS (The Tokyo Programming Seminar).

Permit me

Ontario's "Tent City" has been revamped for safety and other reasons, and there are new procedures:

Ontario's improved Homeless Services Area will start admitting permit-holding homeless people Tuesday, said Brent Schultz, the city's housing manager, at a meeting of service providers at the Ontario Convention Center....

The first order of business for volunteers who plan to continue feeding, counseling or otherwise helping those at Tent City is getting "provider permits."

Schultz said those who can show affiliation with a legal organization (such as a nonprofit), who have insurance, and county approvals for things such as kitchen inspections would qualify for permits.

"Anyone within the Homeless Services Area will need a permit to be there," he said. "This is to respect privacy, limit illegal dumping and reduce crime and keep people from coming in to prey upon the homeless."

And perhaps permits sound like Hitler tactics, but one could argue that if a restaurant needs a permit to provide food outside of Tent City, then permits should be required inside of Tent City.

Unfortunately, I don't care for Counting Crows

Mrs. Jones was not spotted at the Starbucks at San Antonio and Holt.

McDonalds - Starbucks Round Four

Now if this is the only blog you read, you may be wondering about rounds one, two, and three. Well, those rounds appeared in my general interest blog, mrontemp.

Round one, entitled You think Feldman-Israel is a bad war? Wait until McDonalds-Starbucks gets into battle mode!, ventured the opinion that Starbucks would do better by differentiating itself from McDonalds, rather than trying to grab the McDonalds crowd.

But then I remembered how businesses work. Round two concentrated on the needs of stakeholders other than the customer - namely, the investors. Investors, whether public company shareholders or private company investors or venture capitalists, wants businesses to grow and expand and continue to show growth, and growth, and growth. A Starbucks that maintains the same level of revenues and profits is a failure for those folks.

I just wrote round three, which concentrated on cost optimization, or whatever euphemism you want to use for cost cutting - another thing that the investors want to see, since lower costs result in higher profits, don't they?

Well, I saved round four for this blog, because it's taking place right in Ontario. Continuing on the cost-cutting theme, but adding a new twist.

From the Daily Bulletin:

Mervyns distribution warehouse in Ontario is laying off 200 employees and will outsource to a manager of third-party logistics vendors called Kalserve....

Mervyns expects to save $4million. It will keep about 30 employees in Ontario to oversee its third-party vendors.

More here. While Matthew Wrye took the local point of view, the Sacramento Business Journal noted that layoffs took place in northern California also. (By the way, I didn't realize that Mervyns was no longer part of Target. But hey, it's only been independent for four years now.)

As for Kalserve...well, I can't find out anything about any logistics company called Kalserve, or for that matter any company called Kalserve, other than an unidentified company in Dublin, Ireland.

But Mervyns would probably like it better that way.

Isn't it a little too early to declare success?

Louis Brewster wrote about the Citizens Business Bank Arena, which isn't scheduled to open in Ontario until October. But it's already a success, according to Mayor Paul Leon:

"This is money we've saved," Ontario Mayor Paul Leon said Monday at the unveiling of the Ontario Reign logo. "We are not spending taxpayers' money as it's being built."

The Ontario Reign is a minor league hockey team, and they issued their own press statement about the event:

ONTARIO TAKE COVER, THE REIGN IS COMING
Logo Unveiling Ceremony Conjures Up Excitement Over Impending Season
03/17/2008 2:54 PM

ONTARIO, Calif. – The Ontario Reign Professional Hockey Team of the ECHL and affiliate of the Los Angeles Kings, formally unveiled their official logo today at a press conference at the Hilton Ontario Airport Hotel. The historical event marks the official debut of Ontario, California’s first-ever professional sports team.

Today’s ceremony served as an induction of the Reign into the history books of Ontario and included over one hundred and sixty representatives from local cities and organizations throughout the Inland Empire. Speakers included Reign president Barry Kemp and Executive Vice President of Business Development Justin Kemp, Los Angeles Kings President of Business Operations Luc Robitaille, Ontario Mayor Paul Leon and Senator Bob Dutton.

The ceremony unveiled the Reign’s first advertising campaign as well as the team’s primary and secondary logos which will be used for all future branding and marketing initiatives.

Designed by Keith Flynn of Flynnagain Productions out of Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, the logo incorporates the Reign’s colors of navy, orange and silver into the design which will be used to brand the team’s image in the Inland Empire.

The logo depicts a sleek, but menacing dragon grasping a hockey stick, set atop an iron shield. The body of the image, the dragon, is colored navy with highlights of orange outlining the wings and head. ‘Ontario Reign’ sits across the middle of the logo in white lettering accented in silver and orange, while the shield in the background is colored silver and rimmed in navy.

The Reign believes that the logo will command a presence in the Inland Empire that promotes a sense of strength, honor and pride of being a part of an outstanding community and encourages an on and off-ice attitude of dedication, determination and action.

“This logo represents everything the Ontario Reign stands for”, said Justin Kemp, Executive Vice President of Business Development for the Ontario Reign. “The fierce image signifies strength, intimidation and power carrying on the Los Angeles Kings’ royal tradition.”

The name ‘Reign’ came from a team naming contest that was held from November through December, 2007 with over 600 entries submitted. The winning entry was submitted by Mike Brewster of Fontana, Calif.

The Reign will begin play of the 2008-2009 season in October at the state-of-the-art Citizens Business Bank Arena with the schedule to be released to the public in the near future.

Can’t wait to check out all the excitement of Ontario Reign Hockey? Season ticket deposits are now being taken for only $25 per seat! For more information contact the Ontario Reign office at (909) 941-PUCK (7825) or log on to www.ontarioreign.com.

The history books of Ontario? Promotion of on and off ice attitudes? I know that you have to talk your product up, but southern California is not really noted for its support of ice hockey. It may be a little premature to declare an Ontario Reign of ice hockey. (And anyway, I'm the emperor around here.)

And as for the Citizens Business Bank Arena, while it's wonderful that I haven't had to pay anything for it yet, we still have to see if people will come to the new arena.

Set for a Fall 2008 opening, Citizens Business Bank Arena will be a state-of-the-art facility that will play host basketball, ice hockey and a variety of other sporting competitions, concerts, family shows, special events, and community activities as well as private events. The venue will be the biggest and most modern arena within the Inland Empire.

Citizens Business Bank Arena will be the centerpiece of Piemonte at the Ontario Center, a massive mixed-use project, with large-scale office, retail, hotel, entertainment and urban living components. Built on a 37-acre footprint in the middle of the project between Haven Avenue and Milliken Avenue and Fourth Street and the I-10 Freeway...

Let me interject something here for those who aren't familiar with the area. Years ago, there was another wonderful sports facility at this same location; namely, the Ontario Motor Speedway. It's gone now. Continue:

...Citizens Business Bank Arena will include 9,500 fixed seats with additional "portable" seating risers to accommodate capacities of 11,089 for concerts, 9,736 for ice hockey and 10,832 for basketball. The 225,000 square foot venue will also feature 36 suites located on two levels and a continuous concourse hosting a variety of refreshment stands and merchandise kiosks, a VIP club and other fan amenities.

Now I've been known to drink the Kool-Aid from time to time. I hope that my mayor and city manager aren't doing the same.

Presumably not the hot wings

I have not been to the Wingnuts in northwest Ontario, but now I have an excuse to go.

Wingnuts restaurant is holding a fundraiser for Drashawn Vernon, a Fontana resident who lost her home recently in an arson fire.

The all-day event will take place Friday at 1520 N. Mountain Ave., Ontario.

Wingnuts will contribute at least 20 percent of its above-average proceeds from the day to The Vernon Family Assistance Fund.

Contributions can be sent directly to the fund, c/o Ann Gonzales, P. O. Box 1134, Ontario, CA 91762.

More information: (818) 524-0708.

More information on Wingnuts can be found here.

Logan's Candy

125 West B Street, Ontario CA 91762.

Best time to come is during the Christmas season, when you can see how candy canes are made.

The owners are the parents of the late Hannah Rowley, whom I've blogged about before.

[7:55: MORE ABOUT HANNAH ROWLEY HERE.]

Understatement of the Day

The following sentence appeared in the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin (and probably in the San Bernardino Sun).

Police Detective Jeff Higbee thinks there's much more to the story of the death of Santiago Contreras than has come out so far.

You can say that again.

Police Detective Jeff Higbee thinks there's much more to the story of the death of Santiago Contreras than has come out so far.

Yes, it bears repeating.

Incidentally, if you want to understand the difference between bloggers and reporters, I can illustrate it now.

• Early this morning I drove down Jacaranda, after debating for several days whether or not I wanted to do this. My intent was not to ask grieving people "How do you feel?" or even to take pictures, but just to get a feel for the area. As I suspected, the Jacaranda neighborhood is a nice neighborhood, with nice homes with nice cars and trucks. This illustrates the fact that, whatever the motivation for the Contreras kidnapping and murder, it could happen anywhere. There's a personal note also, since my German exchange student has a friend that lives a few blocks away, on the other side of San Antonio.


• The Daily Bulletin went about things a little bit differently. Someone (possibly staff writer Monica Rodriguez) went to Jacaranda yesterday afternoon and interviewed residents. First the journalist started with the Contreras residence, but no one answered. Then the journalist talked with a neighbor, 79 year old Josefina Orellana, who told the reporter (in Spanish) that Santiago Contreras liked to work on cars at his home, and that the neighborhood is (understandably) scared after what happened.

Santiago Contreras Coverage from rimoftheworld.net

One of my commenters (actually, on this blog, my only commenter so far) alerted me to G. T. Houts' coverage of the Santiago Contreras story at rimoftheworld.net.

The second update to the story includes a photo taken by Houts by Crestline, on SR 138 between Old Mill Road and Camp Seeley - or, more specifically, "just off Highway 138 near Call Box 138-388." Houts has included a map of the area in which Contreras' body was found.

The map below shows the approximate distance between Contreras' home and the location where his body was found. (Starting and ending locations are not exact.)


View Larger Map

NOTE: It turns out that you have to click on the "View Larger Map" button in the lower left corner to see the starting and ending locations.

Santiago Contreras Found Dead

My Google Reader feeds include an item from the San Bernardino Sun. According to the feed, a body with gunshot wounds was found in the Valley of Enchantment (off Highway 138) early Sunday morning. Fingerprints showed that it was the body of Santiago Contreras, who had been kidnapped on Monday.

[25 FEB: SAN BERNARDINO SUN STORY HERE.]

Guasti under construction

The Post Office has moved to a temporary building a block northeast of here. Many businesses have moved out.

What's the business behind the Santiago Contreras story?

I've been following the little tidbits from the Santiago Contreras kidnapping story, and, like everyone else, I'm still a little mystified.

The assumption in a home invasion and kidnapping is that money has something to do with it, so I've naturally been interested in the business angles in this story.

First reports indicated that Contreras was a mechanic. Well, I could see someone getting upset over a botched oil change, but not to that level.

At the same time, it was noted that Contreras made extra money with a food cart. Now I myself am a little leery of push carts, and I could see someone getting mad about getting sick from something bought at a push cart, but again, I can't see a multi-person home invasion and kidnapping arising out of this.

Then there was another report that referenced a struggling food truck business in Mexico. Now this sounds like a little more money might be involved.

But when you really want to talk about money, then there's another business that comes to mind. The Daily Bulletin posted this on their website last night:

Contreras' brother-in-law was held for ransom in Mexico earlier this year in a drug-related incident, said police Detective Al Parra....

The brother-in-law - whose name was not released, but who previously lived in Ontario - traveled to Tijuana, Mexico, several months ago, where he was kidnapped and held until his family paid a ransom....

When Contreras' brother-in-law came back to the United States, he moved to Los Angeles County. He was deported in October to Mexico after he was arrested on suspicion of drug possession, Parra said....

Parra said he has no physical proof to back up his allegations, but said "it appears to be some type of Mexican drug cartel involvement," Parra said.

Oh, and one other thing:

Parra said Contreras, like his brother-in-law, is not in the United States legally.

Not that this makes any difference to future president McBama, whoever it may be.

[25 FEBRUARY - this story has a sad ending. Note that the second link is a result of a comment to this very post.]

InsideTheIE on Ontario

Now that I've started this blog, I'm making the rounds of some of the local blogs/pages for Ontario to make sure that I'm accessing all of the available information on our fair city.

One of the sites that I'm revisiting is InsideTheIE, which uses the description "What to do and where to go when you're in the Inland Empire." It's not really targeted for dynamic information updates (it's not going to have the latest Santiago Contreras information), but it is a good source for general information about the Inland Empire.

You can access separate feeds for each Inland Empire city, including Ontario. Back in June 2006, Ghostpainter wrote a post that described the history of Ontario, California. This is a brief, but fairly good introduction to the city for those who don't know anything about it.

But I strongly urge you to read Ghostpainter's story about the mule cars. That's probably the best story about Ontario's early history - especially the part about the farmer who eventually bought the mules (see the second to last paragraph).

Ontario-Tijuana Business Connections

If you've been following along in this blog, you've seen the post that notes that Santiago Contreras was apparently involved with a food truck business in Mexico.

Meanwhile, I've placed a post in my mrontemp blog that discusses Tijuana kidnappings of people on the U.S. side of the border.

Let's look at something more pleasant (although possibly undesirable, depending upon your point of view) - Ontario-area businesses investing in Mexican operations. This was discussed in an August 2004 article in Hispanic Business. A few of the points:

• There are different labor laws in Mexico, which means that you can't just out-and-out fire somebody.


• It's possible to incorporate a business in Mexico, but the process can take between two weeks and two months.


• As of 2004, the minimum wage in Tijuana was $4 a day (something that I've touched on before), although factory wages are higher - a whopping $10/$11 a day.

[20 FEB 2008: FIRST PARAGRAPH TEXT CORRECTED, LINK ADDED.]