A Familiar Message
David Rutkoski’s complaint (Saturday Letters, Oct. 23) about a Blue Line schedule that had the last train leaving Staples Center minutes before the concert ended echoes an anonymous complaint from Pasadena in The Times of March 23, 1887:
“To the Editor of The Times--Will you please mention in your paper that the ‘so-called theater train’ left on Tuesday evening not only before the theater was over, but even before schedule time? Brush them up a little for Pasadena’s sake.”
The similarities between now and the 1880s don’t end with transportation. Ticket scalping, poor acoustics, inconsiderate audiences and incompetent reviewers were frequent topics of “Letters From the People,” The Times’ letters column of that era.
My anthology of letters to The Times, 1881-89, is at www.csupomona.edu/~reshaffer.
RALPH E. SHAFFER
Professor Emeritus, History
Cal Poly Pomona
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