Category: About Us

My cab driver was a young man named Cornelius. He has a wife and already five kids, and lives in a patched together sheet metal shack on the wrong side of Ushanda’s perimeter beltway. Like lots of Ushandans he steals government electricity from a bootleg transformer and an extension cord. He showed me a photo of his family standing in front of their ramshackle house. He seemed eager to talk. Especially about Country Western music.

He wore a pink shirt and said he loved Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson. And Kristofferson.  Cornelius sang a soulful rendition of Sunday Mornin’ Coming Down as we zig-zagged our way along Mombazi Boulevard, past the foreign embassies, some now empty, and into the downtown district. He wasn’t bad. He does karaoke two nights a week in a Ushandan club.

We entered the curved and cracked asphalt driveway of the Ushanda Hilton at about 3 PM. The sunlight now slanted through the decorative palms, but the heat and humidity had become even more oppressive. Cornelius said that modern Country was just overproduced pop music now. I agreed and paid him. He seemed very happy to get American cash. Tanzanyishan paper dollars are virtually worthless.

Like the once gleaming buildings of the business district, the hotel is a reminder of better days – when foreign investment was still seen as a plausibility, and also a shabby symbol of lost hope. It is air conditioned, barely, although this God-sent amenity often relies upon a diesel generator rather than Ushanda’s over-taxed, and unpredictable power grid.

At the lobby desk some problem was not getting solved. Africa.

A well-fed, but obviously frazzled American, wearing a crumpled white linen suit and white shoes, with a wild shock of white hair, was arguing volubly with the desk clerk. A high-pitched Southern twang held forth. Nearby stood a sad, starched, yet wilting woman of indeterminate age, all too familiar with the script.

Ah have a reservation, dammit! I am sorry sir, but we do not have it here. Well you better look again, son,  Ah’m from Texas, and Ah’m a doctor! Sorry sir, but I cannot find a reservation for you.

Reservation? The place was damn-near deserted. I figured out pretty quickly what was going on. Ugly American Doctor was getting jerked around by a Third World hotel clerk. He would get his room all right, but not right away. I was enjoying the performance, but I was becoming damn thirsty, too. Peeking meekly around Doctor Phogbound I gave the clerk a quick wink of approval and asked if  I could check in. I had a reservation. Marlowe. Yes, sir!

In need of something cold I headed across the lobby to the hotel bar, leaving the dreadful Phogbound in drawlful fulmination.

Ah’m a colonel. By Golly, Ah’m important! Ah know a congressman!

I had an uneasy feeling our paths would cross again.

Loyal friends, we keep inviting Fullerton’s decision makers to come to our blog to give their side of the story when they perpetrate what we feel is a particularly egregious screw-up. None have yet taken up the gauntlet and we really can’t blame them. Who wants to be swarmed by an angry squadron of Friends after a public policy fiasco? Responding directly to the public is ever so much more difficult than reading a script.

Yet our site has been visited, and visited often, by an individual who styles him/herself Chamber Star. We’re not sure what this handle means, precisely, and whether this person is actually even affiliated with Fullerton’s Chamber of Commerce. But since we have unloaded many rounds into the Chamber’s fleshy leadership tissue, we feel pretty confident in assuming that Chamber Star holds some position of authority in that organization. But we could be wrong.

We like Chamber Star because Star’s is the voice of unquestioning support that the City of Fullerton has come to expect from their friends in the Chamber leadership cadre. So much so, in fact, that the Chamber has actually come to embrace the anti-business Redevelopment proposal.

A while back we invited Chamber Star to write a post for our blog so that his/her attitudes and beliefs could be shared with the Friends in order to present a rounder view of life and times in Fullerton. We reproduce Chamber Star’s essay verbatim, below:

First, let me thank FFFF for giving me an opportunity to tell a different side of the story, a different view point, if you will. I hope that when people have read this they will understand a little bit more about the way I feel about Fullerton.

We should all be on the same team: Team Fullerton. We should all want what’s best for our great City and all work for the same goals. We cannot do this if we are pulling in different directions. That’s why the Chamber leaders have taken up a consistent and rather courageous position of supporting the people at City Hall who are always working hard to make Fullerton a great place.

It is very easy to criticize the City staff because their jobs are both difficult and have to be carried out under the critical and often unfair light of public perception. Their skill sets are highly developed to perform complex missions that none of us could do in a hundred years. And yes, the atmosphere can be hostile as is evidenced by this very blog!

Redevelopment in particular is an area that demands great skills of a wide variety. And if mistakes happen (nobody is perfect, including the operators of this blog), we have to remember that redevelopment staff are taking risks for all of us. So I wholeheartedly support Redevelopment in Fullerton and wish to see it expand. If possible we should have it throughout the City. Again, it’s easy for Monday morning quarterbacks to take shots at our fine staff, but not very fair. These are top flight professionals who deserve our respect and support. These folks are helping to develop new business in Fullerton, and raise sales tax receipts so we can afford to hire and keep the very best public servants in the State. And that’s why the Chamber of Commerce supports City staff and Redevelopment. You can’t have all the things you want like municipal auditoriums and graffiti removal and mandated affordable housing without the all-important Redevelopment funds.

And finally I would like to say that I have a lot of confidence in our elected officials. I believe in democracy and believe that we will elect good people who have good judgement. I support them and have confidence in their judgement because if they didn’t have it they probably wouldn’t have gotten elected in the first place. Time and time again they have shown how consistent their judgement and wisdom really is. And our leaders know that they have to work closely with their staff to get what’s best for all of the City. I would also say that many times it is necessary for the City Council to do its business behind closed doors to keep important facts secret. And that’s really for the good of everybody, too.

Thanks again FFFF for letting me share my views. And remember: look forward to the future and not backwards! Fullerton’s best days are still ahead!

Thank you Chamber Star for sharing your views.

Termed-out OC 4th District Supervisor Republican Chris Norby has announced his intention to run for the possibly soon-to-be vacant County Clerk job currently held by Democrat Tom Daly. But the road could be rocky as Norby now has two credible candidates challenging him: Hugh Nguyen of the Board Clerk’s office, and Buena Park’s own grandfather figure, Art Brown. Rumors on the street suggest that Daly and fellow Democrat Brown have decided to swap endorsements since Daly has previously announced that he is running for Norby’s job.

It is also rumored that Norby is becoming anxious about his future employment prospects. So much so, in fact, that he was recently seen handing out his business cards to prospective employers in his office. While we can’t verify this, we have discovered this photo on his own website: