rstacruz/backbone-patterns — pull request #19 by david0178418 (2012-02-23 19:24:22+00:00)
Title: A minor update to the document to use the cached jQuery object "$el"

The recent updates to backbone include this cached version on the view object since $(this.el) was a common enough thing for developers to do.

http://backbonejs.org/#View-$el