In what appeared to number at least 2,000 people spilling out of El Centro City Council chambers, into the courtyard and streets surrounding City Hall on Tuesday night, impassioned pleas from religious leaders and members of the community to not allow abortions in Imperial County mixed with sometimes angry rebukes of the City Council and staff.

Scores of Imperial Valley residents poured into City Hall via farm labor buses while others sang in groups and prayed. All were there to lend support to a variety of religious leaders sitting before the council to have their collective concerns heard over an agreement between Planned Parenthood of the Pacific Southwest and El Centro Regional Medical Center that would clear the way for abortions services to occur at Planned Parenthood’s expanded clinic under construction on Fourth Street.

The transfer agreement issue was not on Tuesday’s...

By ALEJANDRO DAVILA and RICHARD MONTENEGRO BROWN

Despite ongoing opposition from religious groups, Planned Parenthood and El Centro Regional Medical Center announced Wednesday that they will be signing a key agreement for abortions to occur at a clinic set to open in the spring.

For the past few months Planned Parenthood has been building a health center on Fourth Street in El Centro. Meanwhile, they’ve been providing basic services like education outreach from an office located at the Valley Plaza.

As the agency’s plans have moved forward, so has a growing and coordinated opposition by religious and community leaders. By some estimates, about 1,500 people showed up to Tuesday night’s meeting near the hospital campus.

However, most protesters dispersed under the impression that since the transfer agreement did not appear on the meeting agenda, no action would occur.

Hospital...

By RICHARD MONTENEGRO BROWN and ALEJANDRO DAVILA

Religious leaders, hundreds of community members and an attorney who has fought on behalf of high-profile faith-based issues of constitutional law will look to the El Centro City Council tonight for answers on an agreement clearing the way for an abortion clinic to operate in the city.

At issue is how the execution of a transfer agreement between El Centro Regional Medical Center and Planned Parenthood of the Pacific Southwest to conduct abortion and other procedures at Planned Parenthood’s clinic went from an information-only item at a hospital board meeting in January, to an issue that moved into closed session last week, ended with an agreement already underway and a dead-locked “poll” of hospital trustees.

The transfer agreement between the hospital and Planned Parenthood is mandated by state health and safety codes in the...

OCOTILLO — The only sign of movement on the long-disabled Desert Line is the absence of any movement at all — most notably, the rusted-out rail cars visible from Interstate 8 near Coyote Wells that stand as a reminder to unfulfilled promises of restoring rail service from the west.

Imperial County officials have been in the dark on the state of the railroad for what could be as long as a decade, hearing next to nothing from representatives of the Desert Line, except for a few drop-ins to hear about big plans that went nowhere.

Jack Terrazas, Imperial County supervisor for the western desert regions of the county, where the line sits dormant, might have been the last county official to sit down with anyone representing the railway.

“We haven’t heard a thing down here for years,” Terrazas said Monday upon learning about allegations of fraud and financial mismanagement with the line’s...

Eric Sciaky first played the fair in 2009, sitting behind the drum kit for three bands. He played country in one, blues rock in the other and a hybrid of alternative metal in the third.

Twenty-three years old then, Sciaky is 29 now, the closest thing the Valley has to what could be considered a working musician — he’s making a living pounding the skins for numerous bands as both a permanent and rotating fixture in addition to his gig teaching drums at Clark Baker Music.

In that way Sciaky is an anomaly, but in every other way, the Brawley resident is what local music at the fair is all about — getting that chance to perform in front of family, friends, fans and … farm animals?

Well, yes; that is, if a local band or musician gets a chance to play on the Rabobank Center Stage, smack dab in front of the livestock barns, the beer garden and adjacent to the midway, a prime traffic area...

There’s really nothing quite like being on stage. As bad as the nerves can be, tying knots in your gut, the thrill of playing music you love and having even just a handful of people signal some sort of appreciation is pure adrenaline.

It makes the sweaty palms worth it, the bleeding calluses on your fingers pain-free, the high-pitched squeal in your ear from standing next to an amp the sweetest sound you’ve ever heard.

It’s live music, and to perform is not quite something you can explain to someone who’s never done it.

Writing today’s fair feature on local bands really got me nostalgic for the three times I had to chance to play there as a teen and in my early 20s. In retrospect, it probably wasn’t all that great, but at a time when I had stars in my eyes and a glimmer of moving away and hitting the road, it was as good as gold.

The fair and local bands are like rock singers and...

It’s crazy to think that six months ago Victor Bosc was playing his guitar and singing his songs in front of a grocery store in El Centro.

It’s even crazier to think that he has begun to hook up with national touring acts as an opener, warming up eclectic punk and garage shows and gaining quite the YouTube following with his high-energy acoustic sets after a fateful meeting between the curb and the shopping carts.

“I was with my daughter, Mykah, at Food 4 Less and I see him playing outside, and I was tripping out that it was really good music and stuff that I enjoy,” said Ernie Quintero, owner of Strangers bar in El Centro and all-around punk rock Renaissance man.

“I dropped a tip in his guitar case and asked, ‘Hey man, want to play my bar?’”

It’s the classic story of original musicians helping other original musicians, a small but supportive community in the Imperial Valley where...

Ernie Quintero is Strangers. And Strangers is Ernie Quintero.

Anybody who knows the 34-year-old Imperial man will tell you he has a knack for making friends and leaving an impression on, fittingly, strangers, an overwhelming mix of musicians, artists and people on fringes of the counterculture.

From budding documentarian, self-taught musician and self-styled tour manager for two of the country’s biggest underground punk bands, The Spits and Black Lips, Quintero has become a successful entrepreneur as owner of beer bar and live original music venue Strangers, a cramped, dark, hole-in-the-wall off downtown El Centro’s main drag.

As businessman, Quintero has matured into respectability … but not entirely.

His passion and experience and punk rock ethic in doing it your way at all costs — going big or going home — has made Strangers the Valley’s best-kept secret, growing quickly in...

“I got chills, they’re multiplyin’”

(It’s probably the norepinephrine, Danny.)

“And I’m losing control”

(Seratonin, maybe, causing that temporary insanity?)

‘“Cause the power you’re supplyin’, it’s electrifyin’”

(My guess would be that’s the dopamine, amping Mr. Zuko like a rail of coke or a hit of crack.)

“You better shape up, ‘cause I need a man/And my heart is set on you”

(Sandy, that big bold statement could be attributed to any one of the neuro-transmitting monomines.)

“Better shape up, you better understand/To my heart I must be true”

(There she goes. I’m hearing commitment; expressing the vasopressin)

“Nothing left, nothing left for me to do”

(Zuko’s a goner. Already a slave to the testosterone surge, it’s just a matter of time before the oxytocin does him in.)

Some guy nerdier than I has theorized that as many as 100 trillion chemical reactions occur in the body every...

Convincing a group of high school students that there is value in a fishing expedition is not simple.

Internet fame, YouTube celebrities and the cult of personality comes to mind in this context when one high school student I am working with as an intern suggested a fun little feature story on the video blogger phenomenon, who gets the “hits” and why we think they’re cool.

“But why stop there?” I suggested. “Why not go for some motivation?”

I think she wanted a cigar just to be a cigar, and while I agree to some extent, and the circle of interns convened around a table in our newspaper’s conference room seemed to agree, I countered that to take the deeper dive and look for some subtext would be fun and teach how to arrive at some unconventional connections.

There’s nothing wrong with flexing a little brain power now and then by looking for the foundations of the frivolous pursuits...