Who is Bump Diamond?
Graduate of the Mammoth School of Fish
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By Bump Diamond
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The New Scene
January 14, 2008
Egad what a snarl over at the old Chair 9 this past weekend, huh?
Skiers and snowboarders headed over to the new lift, "Cloud Nine Express," only to get caught on the 405 during the morning rush. Thank God for the lunch break and the San Diego Chargers.
By the time the Bolts kicked off at one o'clock, the whole ski hill more or less emptied, except for the women and children and the baffled Euros. At that point, Mammoth Mountain basically turned into California's largest bar. The Jagermeister people ought to give us an award.
Me? I caught the game in fits and starts, leaving wherever I was at the quarter breaks, play reviews and injury breaks. That gave me plenty off ski time, although it caused the usual confusion. What's L.T. doing on the sideline? Where is Rivers?
By the time the Good Guys had beaten down Indy the ski day was basically over but the evening turned out to be just great. The ski hill brought back its Festival off Lights fireworks show over at Canyon Lodge, and it was really fantastic.
Bear Gall Bladders
December 4, 2007
Who knew?
The illegal trafficking of gall bladders from California's black bears is such a lucrative business that it's arguably a bigger profit motive than heroin, all of which came to light this past week when a San Diego man was arrested in a sting conducted by the California Fish and Game.
Huong C. Tovan, 54, of San Diego, was busted up in Redding for attempting to buy purchase bear gall bladders from undercover game wardens.
"The illegal trade of bear parts is a serious violation of Fish and Game law," said the DFG chief of enforcement, Nancy Foley. "The lucrative profits derived from the illegal trade of bear products, most notably bear gall bladders, entice poachers who risk felony convictions."
Many bears are poached solely for their gall bladders and paws resulting in the wanton waste of the animal. "The awareness by most Californians of this illegal and disgraceful practice often aids in the
investigation and arrest of bear poachers," Foley said.
We're So Drunk
November 21, 2007
There's drunk, and then there's falling down, utterly shitfaced, unholy and deathly drunk.
Mammoth's cops came across the latter last week. Maybe the guy was bummed over the snow situation. Or the 13 percent bed tax. Or USC's season. Or he could have been one of those people in the lottery to get one of those 10 new liquor permits and just got tired of waiting. Who knows?
So this guy was staying at an motel that was not identified in the police report. He was so polluted he could not leave his room. The motel people freaked out, natch, and called Mammoth's Finest.
What they found was a dude whose blood alcohol was .57 percent -- a historic high for Mammoth, and that's really something.
Our Stupid Street
November 3, 2007
It's good to hear that Mammoth is about to do something about our big, stupid street. That would be Meridian Blvd., which isn't a "boulevard" in any real sense except that it's lined with trees.
Meridian, which runs from Old Mammoth Road up to Chair 15. is more like a runway. It has four traffic lanes, no sidewalks to speak of except up by the golf course, and it has a preposterous traffic light at Minaret Rd. It's a boulevard in the same sense that U.S. Hwy. 395 is a boulevard.
Meridian has a 40 miles-an-hour speed limit and no sidewalks, so the moms with their strollers, the dogs with their humans and the pedestrians with their sneaks have to dodge drivers who are often generous in their interpretation of 40 miles an hour.
In 2009, though, sanity might make a stand, right there at the corner of Meridian and Minaret.
Shame On DFG
October 30, 2007
The California Department of Fish and Game, using tactics akin to a John LeCarre spy novel, at one point assigned a warden to shadow Mammoth "Bear Man" Steve Searles, hoping that the department could somehow bust him and get him out of their hair.
In a report in Tuesday's Los Angeles Times, Al Zamudio, a former Fish and Game warden, said his supervisors assigned him to watch Searles.
"I spent a lot of nights following Steve," Zamudio said. "My lieutenant told me to keep an eye on him. If I caught him doing anything illegal, he said he'd buy me a steak dinner."
This ain't right. It's not right in Mammoth, it's not right for our sense of right and wrong, and it's not right for our town's policy of cohabitation with wildlife.
This stinks.
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