I live in a city called Concord, California, in the heart of the East Bay Area. It's a city stuck in the awkward phase between small town and shithole; trying desperately to expand into something noteworthy while desperately clinging to its fading charm. I love the city of Concord, like most people love the cities they were born in, but some of its stories haven't been heard by anyone from outside of Concord.
I decided to take some time to
provide you with some of Concord's less-than-awesome highlights. Here, without further ado, are some
Concord Classics®:
1] The Sun Valley Mall plane crash. The community has pretty much forgotten about this one,
probably because of the fact
Buchanan Airport
and Sun Valley Mall would prefer it be swept under the rug, but I haven't
forgotten. On December 23rd, 1985, a plane crash showered debris and burning
fuel into the shopping mall crowded with children waiting to see Santa Claus,
killing 7 people and injuring 88. The twin-engine plane, attempting to land at
Buchanan Airport nearby, rammed through the roof of a Macy's store at the Sun
Valley Mall.
A long line of children was waiting to give their Christmas
wishes to ol' Saint Nick when the plane crashed through the roof above
them.
"It was horrible," said the wet, soot-covered Santa, who identified himself only as Christopher. "I felt something explode behind me. Thank God I didn't have a child in my lap."
According to aviation site
Check-Six.com, "shoppers, store employees, and even security guards
changed into rescuers, ministering to the injured until additional help arrived.
On the ground floor, several burn victims were treated using the water from a
decorative fountain in the mall’s courtyard. Winter fashions were torn from
their mannequins and changed into stretchers, blankets, and bandages. And clerks
from the nearby Sears raided their refrigerators for ice to treat burn
sufferers."
"I saw a
person on fire, calling for help in the plane," said Vincent Amsden, 14 years
old, who saw the nose of the plane pushing through the roof. "He was on fire,
but he died and fell down."
The mall was almost
totally redesigned after that, and I think it lost a lot of its soul. You can
walk through the very same spot where those four people died and not have a clue
that if ever happened. No plaque, no tribute of any kind. Just a new
glass-walled elevator, a spiffy new entrance to Macy's, and yes, Santa Claus
visiting with children.
2] The
Waterworld disaster.
And no, I'm not talking about a Kevin Costner movie. The summer of 1997, at
Waterworld in Concord, some high school kids decided to go down one of the
waterslides at the same time. Unfortunately, this caused the whole ride to
collapse. One of the kids died in the fall and 30 people were injured, six of
them critically.
Witnesses
said people on the winding slide, called the Banzai Pipeline, crashed to the
ground when it collapsed. The pool of water below turned red with blood. I've
ridden that slide plenty of times and it's very high up, with only concrete and
decorative wood chippings underneath it. Trust me, you wouldn't want to fall off
of this bad boy.
Attorneys for fourteen of the victims eventually reached
a $4 million settlement with Premier Parks, the then-parent company of
Waterworld. The students' attorneys believed that the students should not be
held responsible for the accident, despite their reckless behavior. In an
attempt to shift the blame away from the students, attorneys blamed school and
park officials for failing to prevent what happened.
It really wasn't the
lifeguards' fault, of course, since there's pretty much no way to prevent 30
rowdy high school kids from pushing their way onto a waterslide. I used to do
the same thing with my brother and we'd flip off the lifeguards as we went down
the slide. Oh, and I worked at Waterworld at the time.
3]
The murder of Kathleen
Loreck. In May of 2003,
a few blocks from my grandfather's house, a lady named Kathleen Loreck was
beaten to death while walking on a bike trail. Semen was found on her body. Who
did they blame? The retarded guy, of course! 
A
mentally-handicapped man named John Kahler lived near that bike trail and had
committed suicide the day before (by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge), so
police figured he was the murderer and they leaked the info to the local media.
This completely ruined the poor retarded guy's reputation and left his family
shattered, of course.
One month
later, DNA results showed that the semen on Kathleen's body was not from
John Kahler, but did police issue a press release clearing his name? Hell no!
The retard did it whether it's his cum or not, damn it! I remember not
believing what I was reading when it broke in the news - "so, are the police
saying that John Kahler murdered her and left her there... and then somebody
else came along and masturbated on her body!?" It didn't make any fucking
sense. They didn't even bother testing the spit on cigarettes found at the crime
scene at first, since John Kahler didn't smoke. 
It wasn't until a drifter named Robert Frazier was arrested for drug
possession and battery in Indiana, and his DNA matched the semen on the body and
the spit on the finally-tested cigarettes, that they realized who the real
killer was. And did they bother issuing an apology to the Kahler family- who was
still grieving from their son's suicide, not to mention him being painted as a
killer? Hell no they didn't apologize! The police don't apologize, damn
it!
Asked if police owe David Kahler an apology, Concord Mayor Mark
Peterson, himself a county prosecutor, said, "They have nothing I see to
apologize for."
In response, John Kahler's father said, "It seems
as if police departments don't offer apologies. It is something they just can't
bring themselves to do."
Touché.
4] The B2K riot at Sun Valley
Mall. Remember the boy
band B2K? No? Well, they were a shitty group with one hit ("Bump, Bump, Bump")
and they showed up at Sun Valley Mall to sign autographs. Unfortunately, so did
1,500 of
their fans. The fans started fighting each other and the whole mall got shut
down.
Worst. Riot.
Ever.
"It was a
horrifying experience," said Concord resident Mary Kindrick, who brought her
teen-age daughter and three friends to the mall for autographs. "There were too
many kids. They were crammed in there like sardines. They were just not prepared
for them."
I remember my brother being really happy about it because he got off work early.
"The girls were screaming like somebody had died, so I left my position to go see what the commotion was about," my brother explained, "and a lady explained that B2K were signing autographs at Sam Goody. I was like, 'who the fuck are B2K?' But it was turned out cool because I got to go home early. I wish they would riot more often."
Some cities have
cool riots. Los Angeles, Chicago, and Cleveland come to mind. But
Concord? We get boy band riots.
5] The brothel across from the police station. Legacy Park Central is a fairly nice
apartment complex located directly across the street from the Concord Police
Department. What the police didn't know, however, was that it was also home to
one of the East Bay's best brothels. Maybe they should have just checked the
brothel's website. :doh:
Diablo Magazine
wrote:
The prostitution operation, which called itself A-1 Pleasures,
listed not only its hours of operation, but also links to nude photos of the
women who worked there, and to message boards where their services were rated.
A-1 Pleasures won raves. Self-professed clients hailing from all over the Bay
Area called it a “Reno-sized whorehouse” providing professional,
“get-what-you-pay-for services.” This was the kind of word-of-mouth buzz any
business craves. A quick scan of the photos revealed that these women didn’t
look like the beaten-down streetwalkers of popular stereotype, but were
confident, top-of-the line professionals: a statuesque “Italian bombshell;” a
Pamela Anderson body double; a fresh-faced young beauty willing to indulge a
mature man’s college-girl fantasy.
“I was shocked to see what was
regularly posted on the Internet,” Concord police officer Tom Parodi says. “I
learned to my utter surprise that prostitution is no longer that ‘seedy’ element
mostly associated with the ‘ghetto’ or large cities. It is
everywhere.”
The place was run by a chick named Debra Watts (whore name:
Leilani) who had been busted for doing the same thing in Benicia, California.
After the Benicia bust, she was brazen enough to relocate to Concord - right
across the street from the freakin' cops! No wonder Office Friendly was
always so friendly.
The guys who went to this place were rich, too.
The parking lot was routinely filled with Lexuses, Beemers, and Mercedes. When
police finally made the bust, the apartment was filled with the hookers and
their men of the moment - a real estate agent, a mortgage banker, and a doctor
from San Francisco.
My only regret is that nobody
told me there was a brothel in Concord. I was working at JC Penney's at the time
and I would've gladly saved five paychecks for a decent
handy.
