Running Late and Have a Run? Not to Worry
It’s a diaper service for baby-less baby boomers from the overworked Yuppie set: A panty-hose delivery service that goes door-to-door from one downtown San Diego office building to the next.
Nordstrom’s “shuttle hosiery service” will transport taupe tights to the tense stock trader or flaming fish nets for the femme fatale. Snag a nylon on the water cooler and just pick up the phone: Someone will be by with a replacement part.
“Say they are going from work to an after-five affair and they have a different hosiery need for, say, rhinestone black sheers,” explains Marie Joyce, sales promotion director for Nordstrom in San Diego. “ . . . We keep careful track of what they were interested in--say, if it were tummy-control or support.”
According to Joyce, the hosiery delivery club out of Nordstrom’s Horton Plaza store has more than 200 clients, scattered throughout most of the large downtown office towers and up into Hillcrest. Each is notified when her favorite brands go on sale and gets a call on regular delivery days, Tuesdays and Fridays.
Asked to explain the peculiar service’s success, Joyce theorized, “I think it’s the eighties. It’s a fast-paced life style.”
Museum Needs a Lift
Sometime in mid-October, the elevator in the Aerospace Museum jerked to a halt, stranding the volunteer work force of some 45 sexagenarians. Since then, the city has been unable to get it fixed--for reasons its own elevator czars are at a loss to explain.
The lift was installed in 1980 by a firm called Montgomery Elevator. It relies on the very latest microprocessor controls, said Ray Purtee, a city engineer in charge. But another company, Reliable, later took over city elevator maintenance and inherited the ornery lift.
At first, the problem seemed to stem from the absence of a wiring diagram for the elevator, Purtee said. So the city bought a new diagram from Montgomery. But Reliable was still unable to fix the elevator and concluded that two circuit boards needed replacing.
Then Montgomery wouldn’t sell parts to a competing firm. So again, the city had to order the boards itself. Again, said Purtee, Reliable could not fix the machine. Now Reliable needs a special tool for checking the microprocessor controls--a tool that must come from Montgomery.
So Purtee is talking with the city’s purchasing department to see if he might excise the museum’s elevator from Reliable’s contract. But there are 14 elevators in Reliable’s maintenance contract. It is unclear whether just one can be removed.
“I’ve spoken with our elevator consultant for the city and he’s maintained that this is completely out of hand,” said Purtee. “Maybe one week, two weeks at the most. But otherwise this elevator should not be out for--what are we going on now? Two months?”
“This no-elevator business is really working a hardship,” remarked museum director Ed McKellar, noting that the average age of his volunteer force is between 60 and 69. “ . . . After two months, I am getting a little fed up.”
2 Ways to Get Blasted
Rex Hinman presides over one of San Diego’s more bizarre hybrid enterprises, Hiram’s Guns and Spirits on West Main Street in El Cajon. He’s not sure how the union came about, but his establishment has been serving up shotguns and schnapps through seven owners and 40 years.
“There isn’t any mysterious reason why you would want to combine the two businesses,” Hinman said. “It happened once upon a time, and it worked well, so it continued. . . . But many people misunderstand how they’re related. We don’t have 12-gauge shotgun shells and Scotch whisky sitting on the counter side-by-side.”
In fact, there are two front entrances to Hiram’s. Inside, there’s a third doorway going from one side to the other. On one side, Hinman sells alcohol. On the other, “sporting firearms exclusively,” none of that paramilitary stuff.
“You could cut the building in two with a saw and move the two parts 10 miles apart,” says Hinman. “. . . It isn’t as scary as it sounds. It’s really very benign.”
But times are tough in the guns and booze biz, says Hinman. Everyone knows that liquor sales in California are way down. And though no one talks much about the firearm industry, Hinman says he can testify that that business, too, has seen better days.
So Hinman and his partner are getting out. They’ve found a buyer to be the eighth proud owner of Hiram’s. “I’m no spring chicken anymore,” Hinman explained. “Well, I’m only 67. But I’m going to retire.”
Hold the Mayo
It gets lonely out there on the high seas, in the blustery swells off Fremantle, Australia. And when the navigator for Dennis Conner’s Stars & Stripes gets to thinking of home these days, his heart turns to one thing:
Mayonnaise.
Janie Fetter of La Jolla, whose daughter J.J. is married to navigator Peter Isler, reports that her daughter’s latest care-package request is for American-style mayo. So Mrs. Fetter has been trying to persuade peripatetic friends to stow some in their luggage.
But no one is too eager.
“They said, ‘We can’t think of anything worse,’ ” said Fetter. “ ‘What if it squished?’ ”
