An unexpected glitch may have set back the Fireworks Spectacular, but the delay was not enough to slow the momentum of Claremont’s 65th annual Fourth of July Celebration last week. The Ravelers kept the crowds dancing until the boom of the fireworks and explosion of color took over.
Claremont residents are serious about celebrating the red, white and blue, and hardly anything seems to get in the way.
In Brown v. Board of Education (1954), the US Supreme Court reversed a prior ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), which had maintained “separate but equal” racial segregation laws. By this action, the court did not merely interpret the law; it correctly intervened to do what was not only legally but morally just. Today such action could have been labeled as “judicial activism.” But isn’t this necessary when the political (legislative) remedy is missing partly due to the “tyranny of the majority”?
What does Claremont have in common with San Francisco? Each had major adaptive reuse projects, respective to their size, long before warehouses were turned into lofts and breweries into artist studios, long before the transformation of abandoned downtowns, neighborhoods and industrial centers. San Francisco was home to the first major adaptive reuse project in the United States in 1964, with Ghirardelli Square. In the 1970s, Claremont adaptively reused the Old School House and the Village Theatre as its first projects of this kind.
