San Diego history | The Che Underground

Finds and resurrections

July 3, 2011November 12, 2010 by Mmrothenberg

Going on three years since the launch of this blog, we’ve come a long way: We’ve posted all kinds of wonderful treasures from our musical youth, reunited with hundreds of old friends, started new collaborations — and in October alone, drew more than 15,000 visitors here.

That means we’re in a great position to locate just about any surviving sounds, images and accounts from our past … or to re-create anything we want to revisit.

So where do you want to dig next? What recordings, flyers, photos, bands, events and people have you missed all these years? Working together, there’s a great chance we can find them.

Then and now: Off the Record

January 1, 2011September 17, 2008 by Mmrothenberg

(Roving correspondent/photographer Kristen Tobiason revisits the scenes of our youth. Today, Off the Record’s original location is roadkill.)

It takes my breath away that the candy store of my youth has been diminished to something as unsavory as a used-tire store. Off the Record has had a history, migrating from its origin on 6130 El Cajon Blvd. to the heart of the Hillcrest shopping district, where a much larger store thrived in the ’90s and early 21st century with San Diego’s indie rock scene and the DJ phemenon. The in-store concerts were memorable and yielded huge turnouts for bands such as The Misfits, Husker Du, Mudhoney and Nirvana. (Check out Nirvana at OTR in October 1991.)

After the original owner Phil Galloway sold the store, it downsized its stock considerably and in 2005 moved to a small storefront on University Avenue in North Park. The end of an era: Music stores can’t compete nowadays with the instant accessibility of MP3s and shareware. Record stores are reserved for the discriminating vinyl collectors who will never sell out completely to technology, no matter how clever those gizmos are!

Records will always be cooler.

Then and now: The Ken Cinema

January 1, 2011September 3, 2008 by Mmrothenberg

(Roving correspondent/ photographer Kristen Tobiason revisits and documents the scenes of our youth. Today, the Ken Cinema keeps it real!)

The Ken is the last of its kind. Most neighborhood theaters couldn’t cut the mustard as costs to run a neighborhood movie house skyrocketed in the early ’90s with the encroachment of digital projection and a hostile takeover by corporate multiplex theaters.

“The Ken opened in 1912,” the Cinema Treasures Web site tells us. “The theater was remodeled in 1947 by S. Charles Lee in Art Moderne style, and was restored in 1975 after being taken over by the Landmark chain as a showcase for foreign features.”

The first time I saw a film at the Ken (4061 Adams Ave.) was in 1981. In those years, the format was free-form and eclectic, serving foreign-language enthusiasts and cult-film buffs alike. The feature changed frequently, every day or so, from “8 1/2” to “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” to “Rear Window.” The Ken gave me my cinematic education and formed my tastes and preferences in film. Often it was like a big party, rowdy and interactive — I remember the row of scooters parked out front for “Quadrophenia.”