As New Times inched closer to its 40th anniversary, the time came to revisit its earliest issues, all painstakingly bound together in six-month increments weighing roughly 10 pounds apiece.
Some names in the yellowed pages seemed more familiar than others, largely because they’re people who still live in San Luis Obispo County and contribute to its fabric.
New Times spoke with a few recurring voices about what the county was like during the paper’s infancy and what it’s grown to be since.
Dedicated discourse
San Luis Obispo resident Peg Pinard was once a City Council member, the mayor, and the county’s 3rd District supervisor before she stepped away from her political career to take care of her family.
One of Pinard’s earliest appearances in New Times was in the 1988 article, “The Los Angelesation of SLO County,” where the then City Councilmember said the people she most feared were those who move to the area with the same expectations they had in LA.
“We came from Long Beach,” Pinard, now in her 80s, said recently. “And we were like, ‘Oh, we need to make sure we don’t destroy [SLO County].’ Let’s face ourselves with the fact that this is a beautiful place. Do we have to have it look like LA just to meet whatever growth needs?”
The debate rages 40 years on. Often touted as the halfway point between San Francisco and LA, SLO nurtures a personality of its own, and so do each of the cities and community services districts within the larger county. Residents and visitors still compare SLO and LA. Cars around SLO County sometimes bear bumper stickers that proudly claim: “Not LA, not the Bay.”
One of the ways Pinard tried to maintain small-town charm was by implementing the downtown SLO trolley.
She credited the idea to Chad Noland of Noland’s Horse Drawn Carriages who planned on horse-drawn carriage rides as a public transportation option connecting uptown SLO to downtown. But limited insurance forced the city to switch gears.
“That’s where I came in and said, ‘You need to make it attractive for people,’” Pinard said. “We’re Californians, we’re not used to getting on public transit.”
It took some convincing because of local pushback, but the city eventually rented a trolley on a trial basis for six months.
The Old SLO Trolley still rolls on a 30-minute loop Thursday evenings throughout the year, connecting passengers to the Upper Monterey business district before returning downtown.
Some development makes Pinard long for the past. A SLO resident since 1971, she remembers a downtown that had “everything you needed,” with the Montgomery Ward department store, Corcoran’s Restaurant, hardware stores, and grocery stores within walking distance.
While she said she loves the current crop of restaurants downtown, Pinard added that the city center lost its mixed economic base.
“Well, at my age, I can certainly suffer from nostalgia,” she said. “I think when it was a cohesive and well-balanced environment, downtown was at its best. Right now, you have a preponderance of bars. It’s pretty much a singular emphasis.”
Pinard is still a resonant voice in the community. She actively champions keeping Emerson Park accessible, often writing to the City Council about her disagreement with its recent decisions.
Locals like her have scrutinized plans to renovate Emerson Park after neighbors worried that a proposed fenced dog park would eat away at its grassy space. Since then, the State Parks grant division approved a redesigned Emerson Park plan that left out the dog park.
Despite her frustrations with SLO, Pinard has no plans to move.
“I love it, I’m committed to it,” she said. “You will find my correspondence to the city and county consistently for over 50 years. Even after I’m out of office, that doesn’t mean I don’t care. If I can offer something that’s maybe helpful to whoever is making the decision, why would I stay quiet?”
Preserving history
SLO used to be home to a different Sunny Acres. The Bishop Street structure still exists, although it’s taken on new life.
Originally an orphanage in the 1930s on a prominent knoll, the 8,000-square-foot brick building called Sunny Acres became the county juvenile detention center to house wards of the court. It closed in 1974 once the county approved construction of new juvenile detention center.
The abandoned Sunny Acres building was marred by graffiti and notoriety, with the Raise the Stakes Project blog noting it was nicknamed Hell’s Acres.
But to Port San Luis Harbor District Commissioner Bob Vessely, Sunny Acres was worth saving.
“My interest was in historic preservation, and a large part of the battle was convincing people that the building had value over and above the simple square footage,” he said.
Vessely’s efforts to stop the county from demolishing Sunny Acres have made New Times pages since at least 1990.
His preservation interest was piqued when he discovered Sunny Acres was designed by William Mooser Company—the minds that fashioned the Santa Barbara Courthouse and San Francisco’s Ghirardelli Square and Maritime Museum building.
He also found that the name Sunny Acres resulted from a naming competition. “Sunny Acres” won because it was a nod to the building resting above fog level, making it radiant when other parts of SLO weren’t.
“There’s nothing like it [Sunny Acres] around here, and the other buildings that I know the Mooser family did are all quite different,” Vessely said.
With Vessely at the helm, a small movement grew in SLO to preserve the Sunny Acres building. A campaign comprising letters to newspapers, conversations with county leaders, and even “Save Sunny Acres” buttons resulted in the SLO County Board of Supervisors agreeing to leave the building standing.
Transitions-Mental Health Association now owns Sunny Acres. TMHA completely renovated the building and transformed it into Bishop Street Studios—a 33-unit supported housing project for adults living with mental illness. Bishop Street Studios is a collaboration with the Housing Authority of SLO.
“It didn’t matter to me so much as what it would be used for,” Vessely said. “Just that it would be used because historic structures oftentimes are real adaptable. … I’m very much interested in seeing our cultural resources preserved and the history of the town preserved.”
Having served as a harbor commissioner for a decade, Vessely continues his safeguarding mission. Beyond restoring his own home, his attention is on SLO’s oldest one: La Loma Adobe on Lizzie Street.
“I’m part of a board that’s working with the city, who actually owns the building, to stabilize the building,” he said. “I’ve done the plans for seismic stabilization, and we’re in the process of gathering funds to do that.”
What’s in a number?
“Mr. Brescia, are we ever going to use this stuff?”
That’s what an eighth-grade student asked SLO County Superintendent of Schools James Brescia, according to an opinion he penned for New Times in 1990, when he taught math at Flamson Middle School.
While the question had stumped Brescia in the moment, he had his answer later that day during a shopping trip and the cash register’s power failed. He handed the clerk a pencil and a piece of paper and walked him through the process of calculating the total cost of six packages of batteries, including the sales tax.
In 2026, with the addition of calculators on almost every possible digital device, Brescia still believes juggling numbers is a crucial skill.
“My concept on that article was, we should understand what we’re doing even if the computer is doing it for us,” he said. “At that point, [we had] low-performing calculators compared to our watches and our phones today. If anything, I think it’s more important that we have some sense of what we’re learning in addition to just trusting the machine or trusting theory.”
Brescia, who’s set to retire from county superintendent on Jan. 4, 2027, added that people sometimes still struggle with calculating the exact change they need to return. He added that he’s observed others believing they’ve run into a dead-end because they can’t access information online.
Technology is the biggest change he’s witnessed to the education system in SLO County, and it has its benefits.
“I used to call it sneaker mail: someone would write the messages that came from the phone on one of those little strips of NCR [no carbon required or carbonless copy paper] paper, and they would, in their sneakers or tennis shoes, go and deliver it in a mailbox,” Brescia said. “That’s how we received messages from parents and families in the ’80s, and it came to a central phone line in the school office. Nobody had mobile phones, nobody had email accounts. That was our communication.”
What does the county still need going forward? Housing stock for people from all backgrounds to work and continue to live in the area.
“I mean, we bought our house because we could afford it and raised two children here,” he said. “At one point, we had four generations living within a couple blocks of each other.”
In the ’80s and ’90s, Brescia’s answer would have been much different.
“I would have said, ‘It would be nice to have a gourmet coffee shop,’” he said with a laugh. “I still find the New Times in a coffee shop and sit there and read it as I did 40 years ago.” ∆
Reach Staff Writer Bulbul Rajagopal at brajagopal@newtimesslo.com.
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This article appears in 40th anniversary edition.
