A former Palmer Canyon resident wrote in with some recollections about living in the area. The note includes some observations about some past events involving Claremont and Claremonters, past and present:
Thanks Claremont Insider for exposing Claremont's dirty secrets. I am a former homeowner of Palmer Canyon who lost my home to the rand Prix/Padua Wildfire. Long before the fire got us we had a long & acrimonious relationship w/ city officials. We simply did not fit into the master plan of North East Claremont - w/ it's half acre parcels, five & six thousand sq. ft. pretentious monstrosities whose motto should be consume more & more. I worked as a contractor for many years when I lived in Claremont.
I had the extreme misfortune of working for [a local home builder], who during this period in the late eighties had gotten his third DUI conviction that would result in Claremont's Chief of Police losing his job & Peter Popoff, who had just moved to the Blaisdell development after filing for Bankruptcy protection from his exposed televangelist scam. (One of his cronies actually bought it for him.) Blaisdell, of course, one of Claremont's first attempts at large scale development has seen highly criticized for it's total lack of any kind of architectural continuity. It was a typical Southern California land grab w/ all the avarice mixed in. Twenty thousand sq. ft. lots that sold for $80,000 in the mid eighties were going for $400,000 & up by the end of the decade.
It goes on & on - Snoop Dogg lived just down the street. He was up on a Murder One charge but had Johnnie Cochran for legal council & was acquitted. Just down the street DEA John Jackson was popped for selling drugs w/ two cohorts. A dermatologist got in trouble for taking porno pictures of his kids. The guy who owns the Toyota dealership in Claremont has a cozy relationship w/ a land broker selling the last large chunk of land on Padua buys it flips it & makes a huge profit in the course of weeks. There is some truly evil stuff going-just scratch that very thin veneer of civility to reveal it.
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