San Diego Magazine / April 2000 / We Get Letters...

 Email  Print  Feed

We Get Letters...

THE seX-FILES: “Interactive” is one of the great buzzwords of Y2K. Actually, it’s sort of a leftover from Y1.999K. But we still believe being interactive with our readers is a good thing. That’s why San Diego Magazine has a Web site. That’s why we like letters to the editor. That’s why we publish our e-mail addresses. And that’s why we occasionally conduct reader polls. Like our annual “Best of San Diego” and “Best Restaurant” polls. And February’s poll on the Sexiest San Diegans. That got us a heaping helping of interactive.

We also do surveys, whenever possible. Like our March salary survey. We weren’t really expecting it, but that turned out to be interactive, too. Mostly we heard from folks embarrassed about having their salaries published—because they were so low. (TV reporter Mark Matthews told us our salary figure for him—obtained from his 1999 KGTV retirement statement—was way low, because it was based on his pay in the early ’90s, when the account was opened. He really makes much more than $65,000 a year, he says. But he’s not volunteering how much more.) But we also heard from a sports figure who feared a backlash from fans because “given our most recent competitive performances, many people already believe I’m overpaid.”

But let’s get back to the matter of sexy—which, for some people, turns out to be a very touchy subject (you should excuse the expression). Some of you don’t think sexy has any place in San Diego Magazine. You prefer editorial copy to be chaste. And we know who you are. We have your letters.

The trigger in all this, it appears, was our January cover, with a handsome pair of models enjoying New Year’s breakfast in bed. Actually, the male model was sort of ignoring the tantalizing breakfast, preferring a playful nibble on the female model’s ear. (Both models, incidentally, were up to their armpits in sheets; she was even wearing a wedding ring.) We thought this was all good, clean fun.

A few of you disagreed. Rather adamantly. One reader, expressing her “outrage,” compared us to Penthouse magazine. Really. She wouldn’t allow the magazine on her coffee table over the holidays, in order to protect young family members. Another canceled his subscription out of a “moral obligation to my family and society in general.”

Then our February cover hit the fan. That’s the one that featured NBC 7/39’s Lauren Krause, in a chic, backless red dress, to illustrate our readers’ survey story on the “Sexiest San Diegans.” And the angry-reader meter ticked up another couple of notches. “I don’t subscribe to sex magazines,” one wrote. Another launched into an attack of the “barely bikini-clad blonde woman” on our subscription cards.

Ah, but then came my favorite kind of interactive: readers coming to our defense. First to the front was Robin Van Heertum of North Park, who found it “troubling that so many Americans are so incredibly uncomfortable with sexuality and the human body.” The comparison to Penthouse was “a joke,” she wrote.

Then there was La Jolla’s Sara Michell, who thought our breakfast-in-bed cover portrayed a “happy, healthy, yet sexy San Diego mood.”

But my favorite interactive reader is Nile Kelly, who saw fit to defend our subscription insert cards. He found the whole “Sex and the San Diego Magazine” episode laughable. In fact, he wrote, “The only reason I subscribe is for the bikini-clad insert cards, spank you very much.”

WE GET ITEMS, TOO: Betty McElfresh, on planning for her 56th El Centro High reunion: “We were going to wait for our 60th, but too many of us were either dying or in jail.” ... In a Vista forum, right-winger Mark Dornan, the losing candidate for Congress, spoke out on prayer in the classroom: “The federal government has been so busy strip-searching students for God, they missed the guns.” ... And at the Hotel-Motel Association’s annual dinner, emcee Ron Reina said the Padres believe they’ve found a place in the new ballpark project for obstructionist Bruce Henderson. “They’re gonna bury him in a time capsule under home plate.”

FOR THE DEFENSE: San Diego’s Joe Wambaugh, the great author and ex-cop, is one of the few to defend the LAPD in the wake of the Rampart Division scandal and sentencing of rogue cop Rafael Perez to five years for stealing cocaine. Writes Wambaugh: “Guess who caught Mr. Perez? The LAPD, that’s who. And guess who immediately turned on the afterburners and sent 50 investigators to just about every prison in California and beyond to check out the allegations? You guessed it. Yet if you read the headlines, you might think the LAPD is awash in corruption and out of control, à la L.A. Confidential.”

THAT’S OKAY, I’LL WALK: The Internet can be a nifty way to book travel—or as much a nightmare as the telephone. When Southwest Airlines announced an Internet sale recently, Ron Donoho went straight to his computer. After an hour, he still couldn’t get into the airline’s Web site. When he did get in, most flights were booked. But Donoho did find one way to get to Baltimore—on the advertised “$99 Coast to Coast” special: San Diego to Oakland; Oakland to Reno; Reno to Salt Lake City; and Salt Lake City to Baltimore. Total travel time: 12 hours.

Listen for Tom Blair’s weekday radio reports on KOGO (600 AM), mornings at 7:25. And look for his column on the Internet at sandiego-online.com. Items for the radio or magazine column may be e-mailed to tblair@sandiegomag.com.