Tina Delgado is Alive! Alive! and Other Local LA Times Stories

If you were a kid in LA in the late 50's and early 60's you can hear in your head "Tina Delgado is Alive! Alive!" It was played over and over in between top 40 hits. I certainly could hear it as I read "Talking big and talking back on AM radio" which gives a little history of AM rock stations in LA.

Over at KHJ, the mantra of the "Real Don Steele" was a recorded woman's voice that cried, "Tina Delgado is alive, alive!" The mysterious Steele died in 1997, never having divulged its meaning.

[UPDATE Feb 3, 2011 - when I first posted this I couldn't find any audio for this, but I continue to get hits from people looking for "Tina Delgado is Alive Alive" so I thought I'd check again. There's one TDIAA at the beginning, but hang on for the end to hear the real thing.]



[UPDATE, Aug. 1, 2011:  A reader emailed this link to a KHJ blog with a Tina Delgado is Alive button and another version of the audio.  Thanks GB.]


Another story should resonate with Alaskans. It's about Sunset Beach, a community of 1,200 people resisting being gobbled up by nearby Huntington Beach.

Told by Orange County officials that they will have to become part of Huntington Beach, residents are resisting. They want to keep their distance from the city of nearly 200,000 they've branded a "behemoth" and form their own government.

"Most people want to be left alone and keep the identity of a place that's off the radar," said Conan Moats, 35, a high school history teacher. "People live here because they don't want hype."

Ruben Vives writes about the opening of a new skateboard park on the beach at Venice where skateboarding - at least fancy skateboarding - began:

Set on the beach, the 16,000-square-foot park near Windward Avenue and Ocean Front Walk offers a splendid view of the ocean. It also contains ramps, steps, rails and bowls that resemble the empty swimming pools where many of the Z-Boys -- Venice's hometown Zephyr skateboard team -- reinvented skateboarding in the Santa Monica and Venice areas in the 1970s.

The $3.4-million skate park was paid for by the sale of surplus city property in Venice and development fees, and did not draw from the general fund. It will be named after legendary Z-Boy skater Dennis "Polar Bear" Agnew, who died about five years ago, said Ger-I Lewis, the skate park coordinator and executive director of the Venice Surf and Skateboard Assn.

Among the park's features, city engineer Gary Lee Moore touted the "Deep Pool."

"It's 9 feet deep. It has no rails for you to use to get out," he said. "Once you're in, you have to skate your way out."

It's not far, so maybe I can post some pictures of it while we're here.

Both Turkish-Americans and Armenian-Americans are both protesting against the establishment of diplomatic ties between Turkey and Armenia. This came to a head, locally in LA, when Armenia's President was in town Sunday.

Upset over an agreement that would establish diplomatic ties between Armenia and Turkey and reopen their common borders, members of the Los Angeles Armenian community plan to rally in Beverly Hills today.

Organizers of the demonstration say they will call on Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan to refrain from signing protocols with Turkey that they believe would threaten Armenia's interests and security. . .


"Turkey is giving too much and getting too little in return," said Ergun Kirlikovali, West Coast director of the Assembly of Turkish American Assns.

Some believe the Turkish government is selling out Azerbaijan by reconciling with Armenia before the dispute over Nagorno-Karabakh has been settled. Others fear Turkey might be forced to give back land.

And Gov. Schwartzenegger says environmentalism and economic development can go hand-in-hand:

"When I came into office there was this kind of belief that you can only protect the environment or the economy, you have to choose between one or the other," the governor said at an event staged to accept $26.5 million in federal clean air grants. He dismissed the argument bluntly: "We don't have to accept that."

Republican candidate for governor, Meg Whitman, though, disagrees:

"I reject environmental policies that do little for the environment and wreak havoc on California's economic future," she told delegates at the party convention, where her fliers featured bright blue sky and green grass. "You know what? Liberal environmentalists may not like jobs or people, but California needs both."