Name Swap to Sherlock Was Simply Elementary

By way of saluting the centenary of Sherlock Holmes, we tracked down one of the celebrated sleuth’s only two California namesakes--a Mission Beach peephole-installer and aspiring success-motivation guru who color-coordinates his athletic attire with his deerstalker hats.

Sherlock Lee Holmes (no relation) happened upon his handle at an Oceanside swap meet one portentous day in 1983. Born Ricardo Lee Holmes of Little Rock, Ark., he was wandering through when he found himself drawn inexplicably to a black, second-hand deerstalker hat.

The 26-year-old one-time sushi chef and part-time student dropped 50 cents on the item and put it on. Then came an epiphany of sorts. For the first time in his life, strangers were recognizing him, waving, grinning, calling out: “Hey! What’s up, Sherlock?”

“I figured I never did like my first name, Ricardo,” Holmes, now 29, confessed recently. “And I figured I wanted to go into advertising and marketing. So I figured that once I had a product, I could change my name and use it for promotion.”

Now, Holmes presides over Sherlock Peephole Installer. (He has also sold vacuum cleaners, water purifiers and lingerie door to door.) He is the author of an as-yet-unpublished prose-poem on success motivation, “Sherlock Detects: The ABCs of Success Without Drugs.”

Holmes composed the opus two summers ago while living in a 1967 Dodge camper in the Food Basket parking lot in Pacific Beach. He ended up renting an apartment, selling T-shirts and doing short-order cooking. His ambition is to write and teach “about success and motivation.”

He has become a fixture in Mission Beach. He has seven deerstalkers, and friends wonder about his hair. He can be seen kite-jogging along the beach at dawn--a tall man, manipulating stunt kites and running, his head shaded from the sunrise by a double-billed hat.

As for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Holmes could not care less. “The Hound of the Baskervilles” left him cold. But his name he wouldn’t change back for the world.

“I feel like I can’t acquire the same attention without it,” confided Holmes, whose mother back in Arkansas now calls him Sherlock. “The hat makes me the real Sherlock Holmes. People don’t know me without it.”

Epicurean Dark Horse

When American Express polled New York City restaurant mavens recently, asking them to name their favorite restaurant, ballots poured in for Windows on the World, the glittering gastronomic penthouse atop the World Trade Center.

In St. Louis, the winner was Tony’s, one of Mobil’s elite five-star winners. Los Angeles voters endorsed Wolfgang Puck’s much-bruited bistro, Spago, where a well-placed diner can scarf down smoked duck pizza with a bird’s-eye view of Timothy Hutton.

And in San Diego? Would the winner be Gustaf Anders? Dobson’s? The Grant Grill? Anthony’s Star of the Sea?

Surprise! It’s The Boondocks.

The one in La Mesa . . .

“The what?” came a small chorus of restaurant critics this week, when informed of American Express’ vote tally. Even Ray Bordner, who has reviewed 150 or so eateries for The Daily Californian in neighboring El Cajon, said he had never heard of the place.

But owner Greg Pool (“as in swimming, not cess”) didn’t miss a beat.

“We’ve known for some time that we’re the best-kept secret in San Diego,” said Pool, whose Parkway Drive restaurant has been open seven years. There’s prime rib, steaks, lobster, and a piano bar, and, according to Pool, a dining room packed with regulars.

A word of consolation for the Fontainebleau Room at the Little America Westgate: Tracy Seretean, manager of public affairs for American Express, cautioned, “The promotion was not a scientific experiment by any stretch of the imagination.”

Cups for Cup Capsizes

Now that the Sail America Foundation has hit heavy weather in its quest to tap the city treasury to keep Dennis Conner in winch handles, it has put the squeeze on the San Diego Restaurant Assn. to cough up some lunch money for the cause.

The association leadership was eager to help, anticipating no small windfall for restaurateurs if the America’s Cup comes to San Diego. So it encouraged its 350 members to donate to a Sail America fund 10 cents for every cup of java sold in January.

A mere 20 restaurants have signed up.

Paul McIntyre, the association’s executive director, has accumulated a small list of proffered excuses: We helped the symphony and it folded anyway; yacht racing is just for the rich; the 1990 race won’t be in San Diego, and remember the 1972 Republican convention?

McIntyre notes that many of the area’s larger hotel companies with restaurants had already made big contributions to the foundation. But in an association unaccustomed to fund raising, McIntyre said, many smaller restaurants haven’t “caught the vision.”

McIntyre observed: “In reality, economically, this is like 10 Super Bowls to us, should the America’s Cup come here.”