A Psychic on Wheels Rolls Out the Answers
Marla Koosed is Horton Plaza’s maharajah of pushcarts--overseer of an expanding empire of 23 rolling shoplets hawking taffy, tax tips, puce popcorn, mirror shades and Polaroids of your mother with the President in jodhpurs.
With rents starting at just $150 a week in prime tourist territory, Koosed reviews pushcart proposals from all types: Dreamers, schemers, hucksters, visionaries and, as Koosed put it recently, “every fruitcake that ever walked.”
Not long ago, there was a plan for a beef jerky cart--Western theme, rope baskets and hanging jerky “for aesthetics.” Koosed, who liked the idea, inherited the bull horns after the jerky supplier inexplicably backed out, leaving the “Steak Sticks” scheme high and dry.
A papier-mache vegetables cart makes its debut on Mother’s Day. Popcorn Pete, who wore corn in his curls, has moved on to Vegas. Briefly, there was a tax-advice cart manned by accountants brandishing 1040s. One of the latest additions is a self-described psychic.
“As far as quality control, my gut feeling is she operates a professional business and I trust her,” said Koosed, when queried skeptically about consumer protection. “ . . . I’ve dealt with so many strange people, my gut feeling is I trust her to the Nth degree.”
Laugh a Day Department
Court Clerk Jack Boyd says critics should know it was his sense of humor that was reflected in cartoons on the bulletin board outside San Diego County Superior Court Judge Jack Levitt’s courtroom--not the judge’s.
The board of the Criminal Defense Bar Assn. had voted recently to ask the state Commission on Judicial Performance to rebuke Levitt for the postings. They took offense at cartoons such as one that showed two uniformed officers leading a manacled man to a cell. “He wants a lawyer,” one officer says to the other. “Which cell do we keep the lawyers in?”
Earlier this month, Levitt said the complaints about the cartoons were “ludicrous.” But Boyd wants it known that the cartoons that came under criticism were his choices.
“I posted them, not him,” Boyd said.
Not so for the batch that went up last week. Levitt selected the new cartoons, Boyd said, and their targets are court personnel, witnesses and jurors--not lawyers.
One even snipes at judges. A reporter is interviewing a jurist outside his chamber. Asks the reporter: “Your Honor, do you think the jury will act on your advice or use common sense?”
Spying a Good Idea
Rich Riel, one-time San Diego mayoral candidate and military academy grad, says he was sitting around with a few good Marine friends talking about “Death Before Dishonor” when his “Death to Spies” bumper sticker idea popped cheerily into his head.
The idea was to stir up a little discussion and support of the proposal by Sen. Robert Dole (R-Kan.) to make spying a capital offense--a proposal that, in light of recent espionage scandals, Riel believes makes capital sense.
“You can see the level of spies that we have: They’re all mercenaries,” Riel said this week, with disgust. “They have sold out for money. Because they know if they get caught, it is not a capital crime. . . . Instead of robbing a bank, they’re robbing our country.”
So Riel, 39, a real estate consultant, and a partner have distributed 1,000 of the stark stickers and are embarking upon a second thousand.
Riel, who simply wants spy-trial jurors to have the death sentence as an option, says his campaign has had a unanimously warm reception. He is convinced that capital punishment would serve as a deterrent, if only because “the recidivist rate after execution drops to zero.”
A Beary Good Idea
Bears have seized control of the principal’s office at Maie Ellis School in Fallbrook. They’re on the window ledges and bookcase. They’re holding up the lamp, rocking in chairs. There are 160 of them, at last count.
It began with the arrival four years ago of Principal Roberta DeLuca, who had been given a four-foot-high polar bear by a friend who owns a toy store in Irvine. The bear became the official dispenser of commendatory hugs, doled out to students for acts of such virtues as courtesy and kindness.
Children pad in and out of the office at all hours, tendering blue “hug coupons” awarded by teachers. The coupons are reimbursable with a hug from the polar bear and a card from DeLuca to the child’s parents identifying the good deed.
As a result, people started giving DeLuca bears. There’s a bear lamp from the PTA and a bear from a vacation in Yosemite. There’s a clay bear with a missing arm, soap bears, bear drawings and bears spilling out into the reception area.
“It’s just kind of gotten out of hand, perhaps,” DeLuca mused this week. Asked what she thought was their mysterious appeal, she said, “I think kids relate to bears, first of all. . . . And I think a lot of kids don’t get enough hugs, maybe, elsewhere.”
