My Kinda Town...

WINNERS: Okay, let’s see, the city of San Diego is a billion or two in debt to its pensioners. Up against a $25 million budget deficit, and counting. Can’t issue bonds. Two city councilmen are in federal court on corruption charges. The SEC is investigating them and all the rest of our councilmembers. The city attorney is bouncing off the walls of City Hall, threatening to sue anybody who gets in his way. The city manager says at year’s end he’s hitting the road, where our potholes are the size of manholes. The mayor just resigned. And Inc. magazine says we’re one of the “Top U.S. Cities for Doing Business.” In fact, out of 274 cities, we made the top 25—in at No. 22. San Diego, the magazine says, is making impressive economic strides. Incidentally, Inc.’s key barometer of a city’s economic vitality isn’t stability at City Hall; it’s job availability. And we’ve got that. Anybody wanna be mayor or city manager?

THE GROUNDED EAR: In fact, somebody does want to be mayor. Former San Diego Police Chief Jerry Sanders has formally announced for the special election. And his credentials certainly are sound. What do we need more than a cop at City Hall? Now, if he’d just name a prosecutor as his chief of staff . . . Ron Roberts, who wanted to be mayor but bowed out with grace, has a better idea to widen the myopic focus of our district-elected councilmembers. “You can probably never go back to citywide elections,” Roberts concedes. “But adding three at-large seats to the council would go a long way toward cultivating a regional view of San Diego.” . . . The boom in San Diego’s residential real estate market hasn’t spread nearly so fast in the commercial and retail market. In the University Towne Centre area, office space that was leasing for $205 per square foot way back in 1982 is now languishing around $215 per square foot.

SCIENTIFIC FACT: A new study out of San Diego State University (conducted jointly with Florida State and Florida Atlantic universities) was published this spring in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. It says people who are excluded by social groups are less likely to drink healthy beverages, and they give up more quickly on challenging tasks, exhibit aggressive behavior and are less able to self-regulate their behavior. Sounds like City Hall again, doesn’t it?

SAN DIEGO SEEN: The four tiny cottages built back in the 1940s on La Jolla’s Hillside Drive by famed architect Cliff May became known, affectionately, as the Munchkin Houses. John Brice figures even the Munchkins would be pleased with the whimsical home taking shape where the cottages once stood. With lots of circular shapes and nontraditional angles, he says, it has all the curb appeal of a Frank Gehry–designed Walt Disney Concert Hall . . . At the University of California, San Diego, where our future brain trust is collectively cogitating, quiet no longer cuts it. The eighth floor of the Geisel Library is now designated “Super Quiet.” (Originated last quarter, when some students complained of too much chatter amid the book stacks.) . . . The winter’s near-record rains have brought a near-record bloom to the flowers of Anza-Borrego Desert. And that’s brought near-record media coverage, with features in The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today and up and down the West Coast.

QUOTEWORTHY: “School superintendents are a lot like baseball managers. They are unsuccessful in one place, and they pop up elsewhere.”—California Senate leader Don Peralta of Oakland, on Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s appointment of San Diego schools superintendent Alan Bersin as state education secretary.

NAME’S SAKE: Musical-theater legend Ben Vereen, pushing 60 and going like 30, has adopted San Diego as his new hometown. But no time to settle in, just yet. Vereen, who performed here last month in a benefit concert for San Diego Youth & Community Services, took off for New York the next day, where he’s starring on Broadway as the Wizard in Wicked, the latest incarnation of the Oz tale.

SHOW BIZ: Despite city budget cuts that have severely squeezed its own budget, San Diego’s Film Commission is soaring. New TV series, theatrical films and commercial shoots have nearly doubled the bureau’s economic impact—from $45 million to $86 million this year. Point Pleasant was abruptly canceled this spring, but Veronica Mars is scheduled for 22 more episodes here, and new pilots are lined up for the Disney Channel and network television. Two are so-called “reality TV” shows with police and fire themes. And film commissioner Cathy Anderson has ideas for a third. She’s thinking a reality show called The Apprentice Meets American Idol: “Ten San Diego mayoral hopefuls work to straighten out City Hall week by week, as we, the people, kick off one contestant each week until we get a mayor.” Hey, I’d watch.

LAST WORD: Dueling bumper stickers on an aging Mercedes station wagon parked outside La Jolla Elementary School: “WELCOME TO AMERICA—NOW SPEAK ENGLISH OR LEAVE” —and, en espanol, “VIVA BUSH.”

Listen for Tom Blair’s Friday reports on KOGO News Radio (600 AM) at 7:25 a.m. You can also hear his radio column at sandiegomag.com. Items for the magazine or radio may be e-mailed to tblair@sandiegomag.com.

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