Claremont COURIER/Friday, January 20, 2017

Claremonts David Allen gets

started chronicling his career

es been at it nearly 20 years, but Inland Valley Daily Bulletin columnist David Allen is just getting start-

ed.

The Claremont writers first chronological collection

of columns was released earlier this week through local
imprint Pelekinesis. It features dozens of articles penned
for the Bulletin from 1997 through 2000 and is available
locally at Rhino Records and Barbara Cheatleys.
The book, Getting Started, is rife with humor of every
ilk, from anecdotal to satiric and from deadpan to gallows.
Take a column written during a September 2000 heat wave
that had brow-mopping grumps complaining it was hotter than Hades.
Wondering how people can, in all good conscience,
bandy that phrase about when they had no clue what the
actual temperature of hell is, he goes straight to the source,
traveling via hand-basket.
As they chat, a stones throw from the Lake of Fire,
the devil marvels that Mr. Allen hasnt even broken a
sweat. Any denizen of the region can appreciate Mr.
Allens response on a pore-deep level.
Well, I live and work in the Inland Valley. I dont have
air conditioning at home or in my car. And Ive spent the
last few days baking under the sun at the LA County Fair
in Pomona.
Its one of Mr. Allens greatest gifts: blending wit with
regional reportage.
In an April 1999 column, he reported on one of
Pomonas best-kept secrets. The long-shuttered Fox Theater had begun showcasing lucha libre matches. The effect is a little sad, a little comical, Mr. Allen writes of
seeing Mexican freestyle wrestling in a once-glittering
movie palace. But at least the Fox is open again.
He then describes the exploits of actor-athletes like
Amenaza Blanca (White Threat) whonaked except
for white shorts, boots, kneepads and the requisite
headwearlooked like he rolled out of bed in his underwear, put on his mask and came down for action.
The Fox has since been renovated by the Tessier family, and now welcomes world-class music acts. Much else
has changed since Mr. Allens salad days at the Bulletin,
when Clinton was in his second term and the word twitter conjured bird chatter rather than a social media site
where he boasts 1600 followers.

Photo by Tom Zasadzinski

Mr. Allen poses as a space-age commuter for a
photo accompanying a 2000 piece he wrote on the
workplace of the future. The shot, taken at the Claremont Metrolink station, is included in his new book
Getting Started.

Still, Getting Started holds up well.

Theres a puckish piece, published on April 19, 2000,
called Going for Broke, Upland Spares No Expense on
Its Way to the Poorhouse.
While the City of Gracious Living is getting its bearings, it has experienced years of financial travail since the
columns publication. Notably, the former city manager and mayor were arrested for financial malfeasance in
2012.
Back then, however, Upland was just beginning to edge
toward bankruptcy through overspending. Mr. Allen responded to the crisis by personifying the town as a shopaholic, charting its movements through a blotter. In the first
entry, he reports the city was seen coming home with four
new pairs of shoes.
Rather than come through the front door as usual, the
city approached stealthily through
the back door on tiptoes, Nordstrom shopping bags tucked under
its arm, Mr. Allen quips. When
confronted by taxpayers, the city
explained, it had had a bad day
and shopping gives it a lift.
The City of Trees also plays its
part in Getting Started. Theres a
column about comedian Mort Sahl
performing at the Athenaeum, and
a less flattering piece about an outbreak of foodborne illness at Pomona Colleges Frary Dining Hall.
Another column documents an embarrassing photo
shoot, undertaken to accompany a piece on the workplace
of the future, involving Mr. Allen on the Claremont
Metrolink platform, holding a briefcase and wearing a
space suit.
Mr. Allen is a great fit for Pelekinesis, according to the
Claremont-based publishing companys founder Mark
Givens.
Davids observational humor is interesting because
its not always laugh-out-loud funny, its much more subtle, he said. Hes a newspaperman in a very archetypal way, observing and documenting. When you talk to him,
you can tell hes listening. Thats interesting to me.
In 2014 Mr. Givens published David Allens literary
debut Pomona A-Z, a collection of columns providing
an alphabetical guide to Claremonts easterly city. The
book sold 800 copies, brisk business for a local release.
Though hes shyer in person than behind the keyboard,
the Claremont writer found it gratifying to do book-signings.
Most readers of newspapers you never meet, so to have
people actually seek me outcome to an event and hand
me a $20 billis a very tangible way of letting me know
they appreciate what I do, Mr. Allen said.
With Mr. Givens receptive to a second book, the columnist dug out his early clips and reread them. Some I remembered fairly well, others I had forgotten. Some were
difficult to make direct eye contact with, Mr. Allen said.
About one of every four made him laughThe guy
who wrote these has a very similar sense of humor to me,
Mr. Allen jokedand those ended up in the book.
Getting a start
Like many humorists, Mr. Allen has a penchant for selfdeprecation, from his self-professed lack of game with
the fairer sex to a musculature indicative of a sedentary
profession.
In a column about helping a friend move, he talks about
how wrecked he was after a day of heavy lifting: Im
a journalist, which means my main form of physical activity is arching an eyebrow.
Dont let the grown-up Charlie Brown persona fool you,
though. In many ways, hes living the dream.
Mr. Allen has a dedicated following, both throughout
the region and in Claremont, where hes lived since 1999.
People feel comfortable coming up to me at Starbucks,

COURIERphoto/Steven Felschundneff
Longtime Claremont resident and local columnist
David Allen has released a new book chronicling the
early years of his writing about the Inland Empire.

at restaurants, in the street. They feel like they know me,

he said.
Hes also attained his lifelong goal of being a writer.
By third grade, young David was writing and illustrating
little mystery novels. He was on his high school newspaper and wrote a humor column for The Daily Illini while
at the University of Illinois.
Mr. Allen put in time at newspapers in northern California, then landed a gig at the Victor Valley Daily Press.
He moved south in 1997 when he got a job at the Bulletin, with Fontana as his initial beat. He began filing an
occasional guest column and, by summer of 1998, his column was appearing twice a week.
This split-personality life ended in 2001 when I became a full-time columnist, and the more universal approach to humor gradually faded as my columns became
more about local journalism than whimsy, he writes in
the forward of Getting Started.
Mr. Allen plans to release a new chronological collection
of his Bulletin columns every year.
I kind of wish it happened 10 years ago, Mr. Allen
said of his book-publishing career. Theres lots of catching up to do.
Along with Rhino and Barbara Cheatleys, Getting
Started is available at the Ebell Museum of History in
Pomona as well as at Pelekinesis.com and Amazon.com.
A launch party will be held Saturday, February 4, from
6 to 9 p.m. at Sonja Stump Photography, coinciding with
the First Saturday Art Walk. Mr. Allen will also hold a
talk and book-signing at Rhino Records in Claremont on
February 19 from 1 to 2:30 p.m.
Sarah Torribio
storribio@claremont-courier.com