1990: South Pasadena secedes while Alhambra considers declaring war

New Year’s Eve is traditionally the time to look back on the past year and remember the important events.

In the news business, we like to arrange events neatly in perspective, using the intelligence we’ve gained simply by having lived through them. It allows us a feeling of superiority, however fleeting, to have figured things out, even if we do so in hindsight.

From national news magazines to the front page of The Times to the front of this section, readers have been force-fed these musings in past weeks, multiplied in number and length because 1989 ends not just a year but a decade.

(If you think this is something, wait till 10 years from now, when we take on the millennium. Imagine the Top 10,000 News Stories, a list where William the Conqueror and Christopher Columbus share space with Jim and Tammy Bakker.)

Well, enough of that backward stuff. With the Reagans back in California, the astrology business is booming, and a few stargazers who shall remain nameless were willing to make some predictions for 1990 in the San Gabriel Valley.

February: Not to be outdone by those who looked beyond mere issues of freedom from economic, political and religious oppression and saw instead a rare marketing opportunity in the fall of the Berlin Wall (“Own a piece of the wall for just $10.95.”), the Diamond Bar City Council comes up with unique way to solve the new city’s newer money problems.

City workers armed with wire cutters hunch for days over giant rolls of chain link to produce individual snippets of the famed Diamond Bar fence. Before political agreements for its removal, you’ll remember, the fence stretched across Grand Avenue, blocking San Bernardino traffic from taking a shortcut through Diamond Bar.

Los Angeles County Supervisor Pete Schabarum, who made the brave stand at Grand Avenue, ceremoniously buys the first piece of Freedom Fence. In liberated Chino Hills, it becomes chic to hang a piece of fence from the rear-view mirror of one’s Volvo.

May: Pasadena Heritage, led by Generalissimo Claire Bogaard, takes over City Hall in a bloodless coup. Bogaard immediately declares martial law and outlaws any building erected after 1890. The Mauve Guard, young radical preservationists, move through Pasadena on battering buggies, ramming new buildings and cars.

Meanwhile, a rebel band of developers is rumored to be massing in La Canada Flintridge, planning an assault on Gamble House.

July: New CBS Entertainment President Jeff Sagansky announces he’s going to turn prime-time programming on its head to boost the No. 3 network’s Nielsen ratings. He’ll take fresh ideas from anywhere, he says, and to prove it, he points to a new idea CBS has planned for the fall-- television verite . Eventually there will be a whole lineup of television verite shows on CBS, but to begin with, programmers are working on a concept for a show loosely based on the Pomona City Council meetings, which have been such a hit on cable.

Working titles include “Majority Knows Best,” in which the three votes prove themselves right in heartwarming ways; “That Mayor!” in which a career-girl chief executive gets herself in and out of amusing jams; and “Leave it to Tomas,” a not-fully-thought-out family-concept show.

October: Spurned by the Los Angeles Raiders, despite their increasingly lucrative offers of big bucks and civic concessions, Irwindale city officials finally give up. They decide instead to go after the Montreal Canadiens and put together a package that includes $500 million in cash and the world’s biggest outdoor ice hockey stadium, which they plan to build by super-refrigerating a gravel pit pond.

December: Tired of fighting Caltrans bureaucrats who, officials say, want to bulldoze half the town to make way for the Long Beach Freeway, South Pasadena secedes from California, declaring itself the Republic of Craftsmania in honor of its historic architecture.

The Craftsmaniac flag consists of a portrait of the Greene Brothers superimposed on a big brown house. President Samuel G. Knowles, the former mayor of South Pasadena, holds a summit with San Marino Mayor Paul C. Crowley about joining the republic.

Meanwhile, all borders are sealed, including the Pasadena Freeway and Huntington Drive, further exacerbating rush-hour congestion all through the western end of the San Gabriel Valley and prompting Alhambra to consider a declaration of war.

Gov. Deukmejian calls out the National Guard, who line up on Fair Oaks Avenue, causing even more traffic tie-ups. The year ends with an edgy standoff.