Choking Planet • Net

It was the first store I remember going to in San Bernardino, and it seems that we lived around it for a good chunk of the time until it closed. I think the store on Baseline was the main one, but I’ll always consider the Del Rosa store as the real Sage’s.

Until we found a house to buy, we lived in an apartment complex just a block away from Del Rosa and Highland, the corner where the Sage’s complex was. I vividly remember the first time I went through the front door of Sage’s with my parents. There were some candy/gumball machines and one or two mechanical rides by the front door. There was also the smell of comfort food that hit you, because just inside, to the right, was a coffee shop—the Copper Cupboard. I seem to remember the food tasting good, but I won’t trust my judgment back then because I also thought McDonald’s tasted good.

We found a house, what seems to me fairly quickly, and it was just across the street from Sage’s, on 21st Street. Our new neighbor’s, both husband and wife, worked for Sage’s—which I remember thinking was really cool. It was here, when I was allowed to go to Sage’s on my own, that I developed an almost daily habit. Sage’s had a toy and comic book store, separate from the main building—a precursor to the Toys-R-Us concept, but smaller. Still, I’d never seen so much space dedicated just to toys, and being that it was just across the street, I was a frequent visitor. I was a huge Lost in Space fan and that Christmas found the ultimate gift at Sage’s to beg for, it was a replica of the robot. (I’ve since learned what that exact toy robot now sells for and it’s depressing that mine probably ended up in some landfill.)

We moved to Tippecanoe, putting Sage’s out of my independent daily routine. But we still did our shopping there; it feels like we bought almost everything at Sage’s. Behind the Copper Cupboard they sold household goods, across the aisle on the left was the grocery store, at the hardware and garden shop was at the back. We bought our first swamp cooler there: a darn good investment for the San Bernardino sun.

Eventually we moved back to Del Rosa, this time to a house on East Eighteenth Street. Once or twice a year a small section of a carnival would set up in the back parking lot at Sage’s. A few rides, games and even a couple of freak show style exhibits; giant rats, or a doll in a jar made to look nothing like conjoined twins. I’ve always liked carnivals, but there’s something special about one being built in your backyard.

It was somewhere around there that Sage’s went bankrupt. The reasons rumored included internal theft and embezzlement, over-expansion, or even labor costs. Too bad, it had a business model similar to another little chain at the time, called Wal-Mart. On the other hand, I doubt that I’d ever be nostalgic about Sage’s if it had become Wal-Mart.

I suppose everyone has strange places that they’re nostalgic for, and kids nowadays will have their own (although for the life of me I can’t imagine what those will be). For me, it’s the places doing business in San Bernardino at a time when the country was in major transition: Sage’s, Wheelin’ ‘n’ Dealin’, Two Guys, and White Front, are some names I remember. But it’s Sage’s that I remember best.

The people who say the Ramones played only one song that night either weren’t there, or weren’t Ramones fans at the time. Whoever it was that decided to have the Ramones open for Black Sabbath must not have thought it through, and that became pretty obvious. As far as I know, the only time that the Rolling Stones were booed off of a stage was at the San Bernardino Swing Auditorium in the sixties, so what chance did a band playing that new “punk” music stand?

The crowd was what you’d expect in 1978 at a Sabbath concert. Except for a few punky kids in the front—so new was punk to California that most of them were dressed like Brit punks instead of the more appropriate New York state of mind—the audience was a mass of long hair, long coats, steel-tipped boots and metal attitude that was still suffering growing pains but hadn’t reached the ridiculous glam rock stage.

They sold beer at the Swing—in bottles. I’m not sure, but this may have been the last time. Black Sabbath fans would drink beer if Jack Daniels wasn’t around, or if they’d finished what they’d snuck in with them, so there were plenty of bottles in the crowd when the Ramones came on stage.

I was there for both sets. I liked Sabbath, and I’d a Ramones fan since I discovered their first release on the advice the cute punk girl working at Licorice Pizza in Riverside. (That was pre-Musicland, pre_Sam Goody; the real Licorice Pizza.) But even I didn’t have much hope for the Ramones debut to a San Bernardino crowd. The poor little punks in the front didn’t seem to realize—well, maybe they were in from LA or Orange County.

At this point it’s worth noting that the tough-punk didn’t really exist yet; it was mostly clothes but you wouldn’t be afraid of getting in a fight with a Ramones fan. It was just a little trendy. And where the Black Sabbath fans all seemed over six feet tall and at least 200 pounds, the punks were kinda small—kinda really small.

Well that was it. The Ramones hit the stage playing, in the way the way everyone is used to Green Day doing it now, but nobody started with that much energy back then. Before the Ramones were twenty seconds into the first song the booing started, the green-haired kids in the front didn’t catch on—neither did Joey Ramone.

Other than noise, there wasn’t anything being hurled to the stage to start—maybe someone spit or something because they’d heard that’s what punks do—but by the middle of the second song (probably three minutes into the whole show, if you know the Ramones) the bottles started. Lucky for them the crowd was well stoned and had terrible aim, but by minute five—ten seconds into the third song—a bottle hit Johnny.

Joey, bless his heart, actually tried to talk to this mad crowd of cranked up alcoholics, and reason with them. But for Johnny it was enough; he pulled the plug from his guitar and walked—followed closely by the rest.

When I looked down to the front, where I expected the punks to be, it was packed with black. Whether the Sabbath fans had just stepped on top of the Ramones fans—who were now under boot—or the punks caught on seconds before Joey did and made their escape before the crowd noticed them, I’ll never know. I do know that the Ramones went on to better things and became quite famous in America. It’s even likely that some of the bottle-throwers in the audience now brag about having gone to an early Ramones concert.

I also know that the Ramones were on stage for well over five minutes because I’d smoked a whole cigarette. This clearly means that they had to have played more than one song. Five minutes was certainly enough for the Ramones to finish two and start a third; which is what happened. If you check this out on Wikipedia it’ll say 1 song, but I’m telling you it was 2.3 songs.

The Swing? Well, it stayed open for a number of years after that, but eventually someone flew a plane into it and closed it down forever. I guess that’s how it goes.