When I was a kid, in the eighties, living in Upland, there was one place to get the best pizza in town, Barro's Pizza. I still remember my dad and I driving home with a large pepperoni and me poking open one of the vent holes on the pizza box just to get a smell of that perfect pie.
Located on 16th and Mountain (another location on Baseline and Archibald), Barro's really had no competition for the best pizza in town. At some point, Barro's was sold to John Barbee, who changed the name to...duh, Barbee's. No big deal, pizza was the same and the name was close.
Everything was moving along swimmingly for Upland and Barbee's Pizza. I would frequently see John Barbee around town, in the store, or towing his boat. Things were great, in fact, he expanded. He bought the corner unit and built Loco Gringo. Still everything is cool...or so it seemed.
Then boom, Friday morning, July 10, 2004 the following happens...
Pizza Joint Busted (Ed. note: Nice headline Daily Bulletin)
UPLAND - The herb sold to certain customers by a local pizza restaurant over the past several months wasn't oregano, according to the Upland Police Department.
Officers from the Upland/Ontario Narcotics Task Force arrested John Barbee, 39, and Shaun Stacy, 19, both of Upland, and Andre Dennis, 25, of Hawthorne early Friday morning for selling marijuana out of a restaurant owned by Barbee.
Barbee owns Barbee's Pizza, 1667 N. Mountain Ave., and Loco Gringo, a nearby Mexican restaurant, Upland police said.
The narcotics task force began their investigation into possible marijuana sales out of the pizza business in March. Undercover narcotics officers made several marijuana purchases over the...
The website I found this at wants $200 to show me the rest of the article. No deal.
Anyway, I heard through the grapevine that the arrest went down "Cops style" and Barbee went running out the backdoor of his restaurant to evade police...allegedly.
I can't find out anything else about this story so if any of you have any other details let me know.
There is now another Pizza place there but I haven't tried it yet.
For more stories concerning Upland, see the Topic links over on the right---->
1 comments:
You might want to go to http://170.164.31.10/openaccess/ this site reports civil and criminal court activity in the San Bernardino County Courts. There's a record there for John Barbee. You call also look-up your friends and neighbors for records of local traffic violations and other local violations (i.e. DUI). Some records go back over 15 years. Very entertaining. If you've got a legal history in San Bernardino County it might be there as well.
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