The Volcano in Ventura

On the heels of last week’s post, “The Ghosts of Garden Street,” I have the following: another old report of Santa Barbara goings-on that made it into print in the L.A. Times and that also hinges around something that could potentially draw tourists to the area. Kind of gives you an idea of what Santa Barbara’s significance was to the rest of California. Not sure that’s changed, really.

This article comes from the September 29, 1883, issue and details an apparent feud between the editor of the Santa Barbara Independent and the ownership of a volcano that apparently resided in Ventura County at the time.

For context’s sake, the immediately following article was about a murder-suicide in New Jerusalem, a Ventura County settlement that apparently doesn’t exist anymore. As for the volcano, I don’t have a clue where it might be. A Google search turned up little of interest, save for a relatively recent article in the Ventura County Star about a small patch of land in Little Sespe Canyon, near Fillmore, that had been mysteriously smoldering for a while and may still be doing so. I feel like if it was doing so back in 1883 and making people worry back then that they were neighbors with a nascent volcano, it should be better-known today. Or it should be, you know, a fucking volcano. Why the Independent editor would be getting the county lines redrawn to include Fillmore is completely beyond me.

The Ghosts of Garden Street

I could say little to better introduce the following news article other than to note that it is a report that ran in the May 19, 1888, edition of the L.A. Times about repeated ghost sightings fairly close to where I live now. The report was drawn from an incarnation of the Santa Barbara Independent, which happens to be the name of the paper for which I now work.

Not sure what to love more — the concluding sentence, the overall dumbness of the whole article or the fact that in spite of this dumbness the author still pointedly noted that the alleged street corner haunting could be a profitable tourist draw. I feel that if anyone at my paper is ever accused of writing something that does not measure up to the journalistic standards mandated by the Independent’s history, they need only to recall this article.

Ghosts, previously:

• Encyclopedia Drew and the Case of the Haunted Clock
• The Doom Bus
• Hello, My Name Is Ghost
• Blinky, Pinky, Inky and Clyde: Smarter Than You Think(y)
• The Ghost Tree of Malaysia

Sweetheart, Curves Can Kill

Sometimes the news itself writes itself in such away that the reporter can employ not even the slightest bit of creatvity in the writing in order to make it interesting. The following lede, for example:

A jazz musician was injured Friday after jumping from a burning motor home driven by a one-time roller skating stripper from Lodi.

Spencer sent me this bit, which originally appeared in the Lodi News-Sentinel. You can read the full article if you like. Bonus points: The stripper is male.

Neon Yellow Journalism

Reminding me of the world of difference between British, one-step-above-Weekly World News tabloid journalism and its American counterpart, the headline for the story containing the photos of the assuredly dead Uday and Qudsay Hussein: "REST IN PIECES"