Five years ago today, I posted the first entry to Che Underground: The Blog. I’d been talking to some old friends about a place where we could share sounds and images from our musical youth in San Diego, and this turned out to be the handiest solution.

Soon Rockin’ Dog Dave Ellison created our striking design, and contributors including Ray Brandes, Kristen Tobiason, Paul Kaufman, David Fleminger and so many others enriched the site beyond anything I could have hoped. 

And my, how we grew! Hundreds of stories … Tens of thousands of comments and visitors. This little corner of the Web let so many revisit so much and introduced a whole new audience to the things we created back at the dawn of the ’80s.

The earth has made five solar revolutions since then, and most of us are still here on it. Looking back, I think we’ve moved in good directions, and I’m proud of any part this place played in bringing us back together.

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A quick one, while he’s away: I’m blogging from the Hilton in San Diego’s Gaslamp Quarter, where I’ve arrived for a very short conference. In all my years of business travel, this is my first event in San Diego … And I do believe this is my first time in this part of SD since moving away in February 1987!

Thanks to Kristen Tobiason’s documentary efforts via her “Then and Now” series, we’ve virtually revisited sites of past glories before this neighborhood was cleaned up and relabeled the Gaslamp: the Zebra Club/Saigon Palace, Greenwich Village West, Studio 517, Funland …

My time is short and packed with grown-up business, but I’m hoping for a few minutes to stroll the old ‘hood. What do you think I’d see, if I could walk away from me?

(High time! Che Underground documentarian Kristen Tobiason revisits the spot that gave the blog its name.)

The first time I landed on the surface of the Che Café was at an early-evening soundcheck for the Wallflowers (not the Jakob Dylan pansy MTV sensation, but the raw & funky, OG Wallflowers), who were opening that night for Noise 292.

Arriving and styling in Paul Howland’s parents’ green station wagon, we unloaded a couple pieces of equipment, and then proceeded to hang out in the woodsy picnic areas surrounding the venue, creating a smoky haze amidst talk of music and the humor of Tom and Paul’s use of ordinary soap as an alternative to dime-store hair gel.

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(Kristen Tobiason rolls out the red carpet for Che Games for May.)

With the reunion happening at the end of this month, many of you will be trekking back to your original stomping grounds after many years of estrangement. Much like the sweetheart you were squeezing 25 years ago, time has changed the landscape.

I vividly remember the car ride to the grand opening of the Wild Animal Park in 1972. The drive north to Escondido was unfettered with the suburban sprawl that congests it today. There were cows grazing, clusters of eucalyptus trees, a checkered water tower. For years we looked to the north as Los Angeles spread like a virus, choking the groves of Orange County with highways and strip malls. “Thank god for Camp Pendleton,” we’d say.

The government-owned coastal stretch from Oceanside to San Clemente seemed like a fortress, like a desert between Sodom and Paradise. But with the real-estate Gold Rush of the ’90s, we were no longer an oasis. San Diego’s population skyrocketed to over 3 million. Those cows are long gone, and in their place, a Target, a Starbucks and many Olive Garden-type feeding troughs.

So when you come back to San Diego, you may notice some big changes:

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(Kristen Tobiason remembers when books came in stores, not chains.)

In my back pages, I spent a lot of time perusing used paperbacks and the dusty corridors of Wahrenbrock’s and Blue Door Bookstore. What I was reading was just as influential as the music I was listening to.

Literature was an influential element, a hot, voluptuous topic of conversation among our group, passionate, fueling argument or forging agreement. Who was reading what? Can I borrow that?

Fiction and poetry colored our expression, our ideas and our character. I remember loitering at the Florida Street apartment for hours listening to Pat and Jerry discuss pre-revolutionary Russian literature or the Illuminati chronicles. Or Eric Bacher smoking and reading a book by Bukowski or Celine. Jeff Lucas quoting Rimbaud. Borrowing Michael Moorcock from David Rinck. A thrift-store mission for H.P. Lovecraft titles with my boyfriend. The gloating happiness of having scored a stack of titles for a couple of dollars.

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(Roving correspondent Kristen Tobiason revisits the scenes of our past glories. Today, we find out where the bodies are buried — or not.)

“You moved the headstones, but you didn’t move the bodies!” In the Stephen Spielberg film “Poltergeist,” a suburban family is attacked by malevolent spirits provoked by a relocated graveyard.

Calvary Cemetery, a k a “Pioneer Park,” (1501 Washington Place in Mission Hills) shares a similar history (tho’ the only spirits I’ve heard of there are those of the bottled variety). Historically, the area served as a Catholic graveyard “between 1875 and 1919, with burials continuing up until 1960.” In 1970 the cemetery was converted into a public park, and “the grave markers (but not the people) were removed. A group of some of the gravestones were clustered together and a central memorial was placed in the southeast corner of the park. The exact number of people buried there isn’t known, but research alludes to possibly 4,000 burials which have occured there.”

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(Roving correspondent Kristen Tobiason revisits the scenes of our past glories. Today, we take a cup of — non-alcoholic — kindness yet for auld lang syne.)

Making a list and checking it twice. … It’s that time again. Time to make the list we never keep — Empty promises to our inner selves: To get on the wagon; quit smoking; lose 10 pounds; leave the ball and chain; or finally quit the job at the factory and become a rock star, for real this time!

Having already quit smoking, I am finding that my resolutions this year are not groundbreaking attempts at reform but just some small quality-life tweakings. It’s pretty tame.

Here’s what my current list looks like:
1. Return to 5x/week yoga.
2. Get the turntable fixed.
3. Write more and maybe even get out the drawing pencils.
4. Remember to send out b’day cards and thank-you notes.
5. Quit freaking out about getting older.
6. Meditate regularly.

I can imagine what my resolutions would have been when I was younger! (Yipes.)
Maybe something like this:

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(Roving correspondent/photographer Kristen Tobiason revisits the scenes of our past glories. Today, the Zebra Club/Saigon Palace becomes a meat market.)

I’d never gone to the Zebra Club, later Saigon Palace, at 560 Fifth Avenue in San Diego. I look forward to hearing others’ tales of it.

One time, after a Wallflowers gig (two doors down at Greenwich Village West), we stopped by so [Wallflowers vocalist] Dave Rinck could pop in and visit so-and-so, who I don’t recall. But I do remember hearing a rumor that Tom Waits played there.

[Editor's note: While no one else has mentioned Tom Waits, many of our colleagues remember the club's plumbing. "The Saigon Palace was a very small, dive bar in downtown San Diego with sewage problems and sleazy cocktail waitresses," writes Dave Ellison. And Ray Brandes recalls, "The Town Criers had their debut at the Saigon Palace in 1987, summer. What I remember most is that there was a leaky sewer pipe that ran across the length of the bar, and it smelled awful."]

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(Sweet bird of youth! Roving correspondent/photographer Kristen Tobiason revisits the scenes of our past glories. Today, the Chicken Pie Shop still serves the salt of the earth.)

The Chicken Pie Shop, known for its geriatric-variety comfort food, large portions and low prices. I recall scraping the bottom of my handbag for a couple of bucks in change and receiving an all-inclusive, starch-based feast: a chicken pie smothered in gravy; whipped potatoes; a “vegetable”; a roll with butter; and then, if you really felt like stuffing yourself, dessert (which was some kind of pie).

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(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.

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