
In-N-Out Burger’s 75th anniversary kicks off in Pomona
- October 22, 2023
Fast food and racing car fans descended on Pomona on Sunday, Oct. 22, for a 12-hour festival marking the 75th anniversary of In-N-Out Burger.
It took place at the In-N-Out Burger Pomona Dragstrip, which is on the grounds of the Fairplex.
The event was a big production with a car show, car racing, live bands, an In-N-Out museum and plenty of burgers for sale.
It formally kicked off with a sky diver dropping onto the racetrack after a prayer of thanks and for peace in Israel by Sean Ellingson, husband of In-N-Out owner and president Lynsi Snyder.
“That’s my daughter!” said Mike Calmy as Kristi Calmy, a regional manager for In-N-Out in Las Vegas, sang the national anthem. He was wearing a 75th anniversary Hawaiian shirt and celebrating his own birthday at the event.
Lynsi Snyder’s grandparents Harry and Esther Synder opened the first In-N-Out on Friday, Oct. 22, 1948 in Baldwin Park. It was a drive-thru, which was an innovation at the time. Shortly after opening, Harry Snyder built a two-way intercom to take drivers’ orders before they reached the Snyders’ 10-by-10-foot stand, another innovation that changed the history of fast food.
Long lines formed at a tent housing the the In-N-Out company store shortly after the gates opened around 10 a.m. There Mike Calmy’s Hawaiian shirt was selling for $64.95, just one item among dozens of T-shirts, hoodies and caps.
The grounds were also dotted with selfie stations where families with toddlers were getting their pictures taken for free postcards printed on the spot.
“Oh cool!” said Amy Treadway of Irvine, where In-N-Out is currently headquartered, as she and Brandon Treadway received an image of themselves in front of an In-N-Out neon sign.
Several attendees also came to the dragstrip for In-N-Out’s 70th anniversary. That event had a much bigger car show but fewer attractions, according Richard Arbiso of Upland, who was showing his 1955 Chevy.
“The 70th, you couldn’t walk by all the cars,” he said.
In-N-Out Burger obtained the naming rights to the Pomona Dragstrip last year. It is a meaningful place to Lynsi Snyder, as she writes in new book, “The In-N-Outs of In-N-Out.”
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Her late father Guy was a drag racing enthusiast, and Lynsi writes that the family held a celebration of life there after his death in 1999. She herself races and competed on the track in a Top Sportsman 1969 Chevelle hot rod last spring.
Proceeds from the book will go to the In-N-Out Foundation, which works to combat child abuse, and Slave 2 Nothing, a non-profit Snyder set up with her husband Sean Ellingson to fight substance abuse and human trafficking. The festival is also raising funds for those organizations through entry fees for a Battle of the Bands and a separately ticketed rock concert.
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Random musings from the mind of a humorist
- October 22, 2023
There’s an expression regarding giving birth to one’s authentic self.
My birthing was laborious, bringing forth perhaps what you think you see is a plus-size babe, but that’s an optical illusion if you acknowledge that television makes one look 10 pounds heavier, and I have three TV’s.
So yes, I shot my scale, but they were blanks. You might resort to violence as well if your scale hid every morning.
Related subject: I am currently in peace negotiations between my mind and my body for a lasting thinness. We are meeting in the kitchen.
Lately, I’ve been pondering and meaning to ask this community: Is your smartphone smarter than you? Mine too!
There’s a gal named Siri living in mine, and she claimed to be my secretary. Until we went for couple’s counseling, we did not get along. Currently, however, she goes beyond what an executive position requires. And I’ve told her so. She is now hinting about a clothing allowance and a coffee maker as a Christmas bonus, and you know what? She deserves it.
Because I once ran a Progressive Single’s club here, I am constantly asked the secret about where seniors can find romance. I suggest a local pharmacy. Peek in a cutie pie’s cart. Does he have Gas X just like you have? Or the same brand of denture soak?
See? You already have common interests – which is the first pathway to romance, or at least an unusual one-night stand.
Do you know why bald men are sexy? It has to do with electricity having no place to go except … oops, I have said too much. Unless you show me your ID, I cannot give that information away.
To all of you, continue to dance with life and contribute to the world in so many ways with scars that are not always visible but remain nevertheless. I salute you all.
Bad day? Want to feel good instantly? Remember a time in your life when you were on top of the world filled with unending happiness. Picture that, each and every detail.
If you are having difficulties at this time, perhaps in the future, just by imagining or remembering a joyful place for a moment and even a chuckle – this will help in lightening up.
Humorist Jan Marshall is a Laguna Woods Village resident. Contact her at [email protected].
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Is the sudden discovery by campus leaders of political neutrality and freedom of speech for real?
- October 22, 2023
In the wake of Hamas’ terrorist attacks on Israel, many colleges and universities seem to have suddenly rediscovered the value of free speech and academic freedom.
After a terrible free-speech track record over the last decade, schools like Stanford, Harvard, and the University of Florida have now issued statements defending free expression. They have even proposed political neutrality as advocated by the University of Chicago’s Kalven Report, which notes that “the university is the home and sponsor of critics; it is not itself the critic.”
I, along with my organization, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), applaud those statements and principles. But it’s hard to believe many of these universities will stand behind them. Unfortunately, these look more like positions of political convenience rather than principle.
Forgive my cynicism, but I’ve seen this all before. I started working at FIRE a couple of weeks after the September 11 attacks, and spent my first few years defending the more than a dozen college professors targeted for their 9/11-related speech. University of Colorado Professor Ward Churchill was targeted for saying 9/11 victims were “little Eichmanns” who had it coming. University of New Mexico Professor Richard Berthold was disciplined for saying, “Anyone who can blow up the Pentagon has my vote.” The speech was understandably unpopular, but it was protected — so we defended it.
These calls for punishment generally came from off-campus organizations, alumni, and donors of all political stripes. In response to this external threat, universities found the backbone — or more likely, the self-interest — to defend free speech and academic freedom, which led to a brief moment of renewed appreciation for free expression on campus. Realizing you could still run afoul of speech codes despite being on “the right side of history” will do that.
But this commitment proved to be short-lived, as schools soon returned to being embarrassingly permissive of censorship.
Over the last ten years the state of campus free speech, viewpoint diversity, and groupthink have all gotten much worse. As I detail in my new book, “The Canceling of the American Mind,” co-authored with Gen-Z journalist Rikki Schlott, more than 1,000 campaigns to get professors punished for their speech have occurred since 2013, and nearly 200 professors ended up being fired or forced out as a result.
In recent years, we’ve seen NCAA swimmer Riley Gaines being shouted down and chased through the hallways by angry students at San Francisco State University; violent protests disrupting a talk by conservative commentator Charlie Kirk at University of California, Davis; Dr. Carole Hooven targeted by administrators at Harvard for asserting that biological sex is real; and Ilya Shapiro suspended and investigated at Georgetown for a controversial tweet about President Biden’s Supreme Court nominee.
Those are just a few examples, and they don’t inspire much confidence in American universities’ sudden recommitment to free expression.
A good case in point is Harvard. Despite President Claudine Gay’s recent statements affirming the value of tolerance and free speech, the university scored dead last in FIRE’s 2024 campus free-speech ranking due to its speech codes, student opinion on the campus free speech climate, and its treatment of dissenting professors, students, and speakers. This means simple nods to free expression won’t be enough. Gay and other college administrators will have to walk the talk if they expect anyone to take them seriously.
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Given the events on campus the last two weeks, it seems clear that some university leaders — as well as students and faculty — were too afraid to disagree with professor and student activists who take for granted that the pro-Palestinian position, and even the pro-Hamas position, is the only acceptable one. Given the number of vociferous past statements regarding issues like Black Lives Matter or the war in Ukraine, the sudden silence of university presidents and professors who may be sympathetic to Israel as well as the seeming certainty of student activists that everyone should agree with their anti-Israel opinions, is itself the product of years of cancel culture and fear.
Despite my skepticism, I would love to see universities commit to political neutrality, defend academic freedom, and promote freedom of speech. If they encouraged tolerance for differing viewpoints, listening to people, giving the benefit of the doubt, maintaining an open mind, and acknowledging the possibility of being wrong, it would represent a significant and welcome shift from the recent past — especially at elite colleges
While I appreciate and encourage their newfound emphasis on freedom of speech, it will take years for universities to demonstrate a genuine change, given their history of inconsistency. Given what I’ve seen in my two decades doing this work, I suspect that they might contradict themselves again in just a few months. I truly hope to be proven wrong.
Greg Lukianoff is the president and CEO of FIRE and the co-author of The Canceling of the American Mind: Cancel Culture Undermines Trust and Threatens Us All—But There Is a Solution
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Pac-12 rewind: Washington and Utah escape while Oregon and UCLA roll
- October 22, 2023
Recapping the best and worst of the Pac-12 in Week 8 …
Theme of the week I: CFP scenarios
No two-loss team has ever made the College Football Playoff, so the Pac-12 was guaranteed to lose a contender with the USC-Utah duel matching one-loss teams. The result? It’s Oct. 22, and the Trojans (6-2) are out of the playoff race, but the Pac-12 is not: Four teams have fewer than two defeats. How does that compare? The SEC also has four, while the Big Ten and ACC have three and the Big 12 has two.
Theme of the week II: Quiet quartet
Four teams were idle in Week 8, creating a relatively light lineup of four games. But we can say bye-bye to the byes: Every team is in action for the next four weeks. The only remaining week off belongs to USC on Thanksgiving weekend.
News of the week: Utah
After the victory at USC, coach Kyle Whittingham went public with the worst-kept secret in the conference: Quarterback Cam Rising and tight end Brant Kuithe have been shut down for the rest of the season. They will take medical redshirts, allowing for the possibility that both could play for Utah next season. We won’t begin to guess their intentions, but the circle would come full for Rising, whose career began in the Big 12 (with Texas) and could conclude there.
Game of the week: Utah 34, USC 32
Another thriller between the former South division rivals was also their last scheduled meeting. And we suspect the Trojans won’t agree to a non-conference matchup so long as Whittingham’s in charge in Salt Lake City. The Utes led 28-14, but USC rallied for a 32-31 advantage with help from a Pick Six (by Calen Bullock). The Utes had the ball last and made the most of it as Cole Becker kicked the game-winning field goal with no time remaining.
Team of the week: Utah
The two-time defending champs sent a message that, despite their early loss to Oregon State and long list of injuries, they cannot be counted out in the race for a berth in the conference title game. The victory at USC was all about the pillars of Whittingham’s program: resilience, resolve, accountability and mental and physical toughness. And the schedule offers a golden opportunity to impact the race: Utah has a home date with Oregon and visits Washington.
Coach of the week: Arizona State’s Kenny Dillingham
The first-year boss convinced his players they had a chance to beat Washington, and the Sun Devils nearly pulled off what would have been the upset of the year in college football. ASU held the Huskies’ high-octane offense to just one touchdown in a 15-7 loss. Despite the bowl ban, the Devils are playing with maximum effort every week.
Coach of the Year: Utah’s Kyle Whittingham
He just beat USC for the third time in 13 months and did it with a backup quarterback, Bryson Barnes, who wasn’t even on scholarship until this summer and a tailback, Sione Vaki, who usually plays safety. After the game, Whittingham announced another major injury: star linebacker Lander Barton is out for the rest of the season. Anyone else think that only makes the Utes more dangerous?
Offensive player of the week: Utah QB Bryson Barnes
The former walk-on was not intimidated by the environment in the L.A. Coliseum or going head-to-head with Heisman Trophy winner Caleb Williams. Barnes completed 14 of 23 passes for three touchdowns and one interception (a Pick Six in the fourth quarter). He also made the play of the game, a 26-yard run with 16 seconds left that put Utah in field goal range.
Defensive player of the week: Washington CB Mishael Powell
The junior from Seattle helped save his hometown team from a major upset with an 89-yard Pick Six that propelled UW to a 15-7 victory over Arizona State. Powell stepped in front of a fourth-down pass by Trenton Bourguet midway through the fourth quarter and dashed down the left sideline for the score that gave UW the lead.
Hangover of the year: Washington
By our count, UW’s post-Oregon hangover lasted seven days, six hours and about 15 minutes. It wasn’t until late in the third quarter of the surprisingly tight matchup against Arizona State that the Huskies mustered enough urgency and efficiency to put away the Sun Devils and preserve their undefeated record. Had that sloppy performance (four turnovers) come against any other opponent, UW would have suffered its first loss.
Switch of the week: UCLA
The Bruins benched freshman quarterback Dante Moore, who had struggled on the road, and went back to Ethan Garbers, their Week 1 starter. He responded well against a porous Stanford defense, completing 20 of 28 passes. Next up for Garbers: Colorado’s turnstile defense.
Stat of the week: Stanford
The Cardinal converted 1 of 11 third downs and whiffed on all four conversion attempts on fourth down for a total of … wait for it … 1 of 15 conversions. It was just one negative nugget in the 42-7 loss to UCLA.
Stat of the month: Washington State
The Cougars have scored four offensive touchdowns in three October games. Their ongoing issues and mounting losses have conspired to narrow WSU’s path into the postseason. That said, the schedule is favorable with ASU, Stanford, Cal and Colorado before the finale against Washington.
Stat of the century: Washington
The Huskies had scored at least 31 points in their first six games but managed just 15 against ASU — and their only touchdown came on a Pick Six by the defense. It marked the first time since 2001 that Washington won a regular-season game without scoring an offensive touchdown.
Stat of forever: Oregon QB Bo Nix
The former Auburn transfer set an NCAA record by recording his 54th career start, exceeding by one the previous record held jointly by Boise State’s Kellen Moore and Texas’ Colt McCoy. Fittingly, Nix was highly efficient in the victory over Washington State, completing 64 percent of his passes for 293 yards and two touchdowns (and rushing for a third score).
Game of next week: Oregon at Utah
The showdowns just keep coming. One week after the Utes’ 34-32 victory at USC and two weeks after the Ducks’ 36-33 defeat at Washington, the one-loss teams collide in a playoff elimination game. The winner will have the crucial head-to-head advantage in any Pac-12 tiebreaker scenario. Kickoff is 12:30 p.m. on FOX, and ESPN ‘College GameDay’ will broadcast live from Salt Lake City — its third trip to Pac-12 country this season.
*** Send suggestions, comments and tips (confidentiality guaranteed) to [email protected] or call 408-920-5716
*** Follow me on Twitter: @WilnerHotline
*** Pac-12 Hotline is not endorsed or sponsored by the Pac-12 Conference, and the views expressed herein do not necessarily reflect the views of the Conference.
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Justin Herbert, Chargers live updates vs. Kansas City Chiefs
- October 22, 2023
Follow along for live updates from Chargers reporter Elliott Teaford before, during and after the Chargers’ game against the Kansas City Chiefs.
Viewing on a mobile device? Click here
Tweets by ElliottTeaford https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Chargers face Chiefs’ Patrick Mahomes, prepared for anything and everything https://t.co/swMYkSfcqJ
— O.C. Register (@ocregister) October 21, 2023
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Matthew Stafford, Rams live updates vs. Pittsburgh Steelers
- October 22, 2023
Follow along for live updates from Rams reporter Adam Grosbard before, during and after the Rams’ game against the Pittsburgh Steelers.
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The Rams have placed running back Kyren Williams on injured reserve with his sprained left ankle. Williams, who was seen in a cast this week, will miss the Rams next four games at minimum, meaning the earliest he can return is Week 12 at Arizona
— Adam Grosbard (@AdamGrosbard) October 21, 2023
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Will lower mortgage rates revive Los Angeles County’s housing market?
- October 22, 2023
Can falling mortgage rates – whenever that happens – revive homebuying in Los Angeles County?
Just how slow is the market? Well, consider that in the 12 months ending in August, just 65,140 Los Angeles County homes were sold, according to CoreLogic data. That’s 37% below the homebuying pace of two years earlier.
This drop can be linked to drastically falling affordability in the pandemic era.
August’s median price of $830,000 – the sixth-highest ever – is up 34% since February 2020. Meanwhile, mortgage rates went from 3.5% to 7.1%. A typical Los Angeles buyer saw house payments surge 100% to $4,462 monthly, assuming a 20% downpayment.
My trusty spreadsheet reviewed how homebuying moved with big rate swings dating back to 1988. This 416-month span was sliced into thirds – ranking the results by one-year moves in the average 30-year fixed mortgage rate from Freddie Mac.
We contrasted the periods when rates surged the fastest vs. times when mortgages tumbled the most. Both groupings averaged 1 percentage-point moves over 35 years.
The swings
Ponder how LA homebuying gyrates during these rate-swing extremes.
Start with pricing. When mortgages were in their steepest jumps, home values in LA averaged 7.6% one-year gains.
Yet when mortgages were in their steepest drops, median home prices in LA had 1.6% gains.
By the way, the local median price has appreciated 4.7% since 1988.
So cheaper financing for house hunters could mean softer pricing, too.
And falling rates modestly boost the LA sales pace, historically speaking.
The largest rate drops came with 2.1% one-year gains in the number of closed transactions.
When rates increased rapidly, however, the sales pace fell – averaging 5.3% one-year losses.
The secret sauce
There’s a catch to lower rates – housing’s three magic words: “Jobs, jobs, jobs.”
Rates are usually rising when the overall economy is strong – even too strong – and hiring is plentiful. Remember, you need a solid paycheck to be a successful house hunter.
Yet rates tend to dip when the economy is sour, and that’s not a great backdrop for a major purchase such as a home. So, let’s peek at California’s job market since 1988.
When rates surged over the past 35 years, California employment grew at a 2.7%-a-year pace. But jobs shrank at a 0.7% annual pace when rates tumbled.
Bottom line
This isn’t just some local housing quirk. Falling rates come with pricing weakness in many places.
Across the six-county Southern California region, the sharpest rate jumps were in step with 8% average one-year price gains. The largest rate drops came with 2% average price gains.
And nationally, soaring rates meant an average 7.5% one-year gain in the Case-Shiller US index vs. 2% appreciation when rates were cascading.
History is not a forecast. And maybe it’ll be different this time. But 35 years is a good guide to what’s possible.
Jonathan Lansner is the business columnist for the Southern California News Group. He can be reached at [email protected]
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Senior Moments: Some early lessons in prejudice and bigotry
- October 22, 2023
“Girl Jews are not as bad as boy Jews,” he told me in a knowing tone.
I was in the fourth grade at Willard Elementary School in Norfolk, Virginia, when a classmate uttered this. He had only just learned that I was Jewish. Jews were a small minority in my suburban town in the 1950s, and even smaller at my school. I was the only one in my class.
My mother, a New York transplant, had kept me home from school for Yom Kippur. She had been shocked to learn that the schools were not closed for the Jewish holidays as they had always been in New York.
It was my absence on that day that signaled my ethnic affiliation to my schoolmates – neither my name nor my physical appearance had up until then made me a target of the derogatory words often directed at Jewish people.
But when I returned to school after the holiday antisemitism hit me squarely in the face. Only I didn’t realize it at the time.The sobering power of my classmate’s words put me immediately on the defensive. My first reaction was relief that he still wanted to be friends because I was, in his estimation, “not that bad.“
I didn’t understand yet that what seemed like a simple phrase was actually a big sign that read, “You’re not one of us.” Ergo, you are not good enough to be one of us.
And so I learned at an early age, how it felt not to be included. At an age when I so desperately wanted to be included that, for a brief moment, I was grateful just to be tolerated.
That I could even have such a thought taught me how prejudice seeks to diminish the people on the receiving end. I saw firsthand how it can sow seeds of doubt. One minute I was perfectly fine, and the next I was “not that bad.”
It was about a 20-minute walk home from my school through a grassy field with lots of trees, sort of a mini forest. Most of the time I walked with friends. But on this day I had stayed after school for a Brownie meeting. I was likely the only Jewish girl in my Brownie troop though I never thought about it at the time.
So I was walking alone when I saw an older boy who I recognized as someone who acted strangely but none of us knew why. We tended to quicken our steps when he was about.
I didn’t know the term ‘developmental disability’ and would not until I was an adult. I never knew his name, why he didn’t go to our school or why he walked the woods alone.
I only knew that I was afraid of him because he was different.
He never talked to me or approached me. After that, I would take a different route home if I was alone. Thus, I found myself on the other side of prejudice, being the perpetrator as ignorance manifested into fear.
Perspective is one of the great benefits of growing older.Email [email protected]. Follow her on X @patriciabunin and patriciabunin.com
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