Obstacles Going Up for Jaywalkers

Once Horton Plaza opens in August, nobody’s going to pay much attention to all those decorative pavers being installed on the nearby streets and crosswalks. But right now this street-improvement effort has emerged as the Great Downtown Obstacle to Pedestrian and Vehicular Ease--or, more bureaucratically, the GDOPVE.

From Front Street to 5th Avenue along Broadway, big chunks of pavement are being unearthed and decoratively refilled, forcing a two-lane shutdown that has cars, trucks and buses snarled as if to foreshadow the congested metropolis San Diego may become if all goes well with downtown redevelopment. The GDOPVE also has pedestrians more or less jumping through hoops to cross Broadway at these points, thus inspiring new dimensions in jaywalking.

Is it, for example, still jaywalking to defy the “Don’t Walk” sign for half the journey across Broadway when the two lanes of traffic that would normally roll over you have been shut down completely? The authorities answer yes to that one, but there’s no question that downtown enforcement of the jaywalking laws has fallen off lately. The latent jaywalker in all of us is talking advantage of the GDOPVE. And the San Diego Police Department is not amused.

“Recently, we sent a directive to our officers to step up their enforcement on pedestrian violations, especially since the 1984 figures on traffic fatalities involving pedestrians have increased citywide--they’re up 40% over the last year,” said Sgt. Ed Smith of the department’s Traffic Services Division. Smith also acknowledged that downtown officers have been “probably sporadic” in enforcing jaywalking laws these days--in part because pedestrians don’t figure very much, statistically, in downtown traffic accidents.

That’s comforting, but don’t get too comfortable when it comes to illegal ambulations around the GDOPVE. According to Smith, full-time officers will be assigned to oversee the traffic flow in downtown construction areas--beginning June 17.

Noise Over Suit

A Vista lawyer has filed suit against the physical-fitness center next to his offices, claiming that the sounds of foot stomping, hand clapping and loud rock music--however beneficial they may be to exercisers--are injurious to his and his clients’ well-being.

Thus, Joseph Chirra is seeking unspecified general damages and $20,000 in punitive damages from the Total Workout, an aerobics studio that has occupied space in the same Santa Fe Avenue building as Chirra’s law firm since February, 1984. (Chirra’s firm has been there three years.) Chirra’s suit seeks to have the studio declared a nuisance and requests an order banning “such loud music, foot stomping and clapping.”

“We work with people whose freedom is at stake, who could go to jail,” said Michael S. Johnson, the fellow attorney who is representing Chirra in the dispute. “The constant thumping, emanating from a common wall between the two businesses, makes concentration virtually impossible.”

Kathy Hilz, a co-owner of the Total Workout, countered that she has made numerous attempts to accommodate the attorneys by moving the studio’s stereo speakers to various spots, even suspending them from the ceiling. According to Hilz, the building’s landlord has installed an acoustical ceiling and hired an acoustics specialist who confirmed that the studio noise is below the legal limit. Hilz noted that the law firm had twice filed complaints charging Total Workout with disturbing the peace, but that both complaints were thrown out.

So far, no one has suggested a compromise--that the studio hold its workouts to up-tempo Mozart instead of the usual throbbing disco-rock sound track, but it’s a thought. Might even start a trend.

What’s Your Sign, Doll?

An Escondido firm called Dragon’s Lair is offering individual horoscopes for dolls, teddy bears and similar inanimates. Priced at $49.95, the charts are completed by one Astarte Minikin, who reputedly “speaks ‘Bearnese,’ an obscure Bear tongue found only in the Northern Woods of the Iberian Peninsula, and ‘Brussel,’ an equally obscure Gypsy doll dialect, now considered by many to be extinct.”

Don’t wait ‘til Christmas, eh?