[TonyinLA]

To the rest of the country, the Riverside-San Bernardino area is like an armpit after a work-out. Hot, smelly and wet. No-one really wants to live there and its a good 1-1/2 to 2 hour commute, one way, to get to downtown. This is not a sign of recovery. It’s where people who used to be able to afford a home near LA have to move because the real estate is so out of reach anywhere nearby. And they’ll pay in many ways not related to their salary - 1/2 your worday spent on the freeway, higher crime, dirty and gang infested neighborhoods, and the friggin’ heat!

[Fiji Hill]

I recall when the San Bernardino-Riverside area was mostly agricultural. In 1967, I stood behind my grandfather's home on Etiwanda Ave. just north of Highland Ave., in Etiwanda, a wide spot in the road located northeast of Cucamonga, a somewhat larger wide spot in the road. Looking west out to the horizon, one could only see a handful of structures, mostly farm buildings. I wondered at the time if tract housing developments of the sort that swallowed up Orange County in the 1950s would make it that far east.

Today, the place where I stood is in the middle of a housing tract and is about a mile from Bass Pro Shops and the Mainstreet Rancho Cucamonga Mall. The eucalyptus trees that lined Etiwanda Ave. are still there, but otherwise, it's a totally different galaxy.