Sandusky, Ohio, Edges Out San Diego as Resort Site

It isn’t hard to picture the American tourist’s favorite summer vacation spot. It has warm, white-sand beaches . . . a bay for boating . . . a good fishin’ hole . . . amusement parks for the kids . . . candlelight dining at sunset for mom and dad.

So when the family packs up the car and heads for the interstate, its destination is San Diego, right?

Wrong. Its destination, more likely, is Sandusky, Ohio.

According to a survey released last week by Holiday Inns, the hotel chain, San Diego is America’s seventh most popular summer tourist locale. Sandusky, on the shores of Lake Erie, is No. 5.

Joan Van Offeren, director of the Erie County Tourist Bureau, wasn’t surprised by the survey findings. Sandusky, after all, is home to the 364-acre Cedar Point Amusement Park, where 3 million people each year thrill to 54 rides, live musical entertainment, and dolphin and sea lion shows when they’re not lying on the mile of clean, sandy beach.

Unique, huh?

Sandusky (pop. 32,000 and falling) is also the jumping off point for visits to the famed Lake Erie Islands. “Within an 18-minute ride on a boat, you can be on an island,” Van Offeren said, sweltering in the 92-degree heat as she spoke on the phone.

And don’t forget the wineries. There are seven in Erie County, vintners of Ohio’s finest potables.

And the fish. Oh boy, the fish.

“I’ll tell you what,” Van Offeren said. “This area is considered the walleye fishing capital of the world!”

That’s not to mention the winter ice fishing on the lake--a pastime where Sandusky has it all over San Diego.

Holiday Inn, which bases its rankings on bookings and interviews with reservation clerks, says Orlando, Fla., is America’s favorite city to visit in summer, and Disneyworld/Epcot Center the single most popular tourist attraction.

After Orlando, other Top Ten destination cities, in order, are: San Francisco; Washington; Los Angeles; Sandusky; Myrtle Beach, S.C.; San Diego; Chicago; St. Louis, and Anaheim.

Just Too, Too Nice

Perhaps the explanation for San Diego’s competitive plight regarding tourism can be derived from another source. According to an article in the current issue of Rolling Stone, America’s Finest City is simply too nice a place to live.

The story, by sports writer Peter Richmond of the Miami Herald, explores the question of why world-class volleyball has been unable to garner an audience in the sports-mad United States, despite the American national team’s reign as Olympic champion.

Richmond’s thesis: Volleyball won’t play in the heartland (Sandusky, perhaps?) because it’s associated in the public’s mind with San Diego, where the national team is based.

San Diego, writes the former San Diego newsman, is “a city that prides itself on being out of this world.” It is a place that “takes Sunday brunch seriously.” Waves here “break impossibly clean, as if computer enhanced.”

Richmond seemingly hated his visit to interview Olympic star Karch Kiraly at his Pacific Beach home. He described one day when the sun glowed golden, warming a morning volleyball game at the beach, as “the 311th consecutive nice day in this platinum paradise.” Downtown San Diego, he wrote, was “going about its workday in characteristic fashion, with the energy of a snail on Quaaludes.”

At Large tried to reach Richmond at the Herald, only to learn that he now works out of the newspaper’s office in New York City (America’s 16th most popular summer tourism destination, according to Holiday Inns.)

Which explained everything.

Skating to Rad Fame

What’s the most rad public school in San Diego?

To the consternation of Principal Josephine Wraith, Jerabek Elementary School in Scripps Ranch has been so dubbed by no less than the editors of Transworld Skateboarding, the ad-packed mag that delivers insider scoops monthly to skateboard enthusiasts.

Well, actually, they have anointed Jerabek as “the most happening spot to come along in quite a while.” And they didn’t come out and name Jerabek in the article, instead referring to it as “School W” or “Chaka.”

But the skateboarding grapevine has spread the word that “W” is Jerabek. And the year-round campus has been deluged with skateboarders.

Who, after all, could resist this description: “There are excellent walls for wall plants and kickturns, plenty of flat area for slides and street plants, a knee-high railing perfect for ollie board slides, and an incredible bank.”

Wraith’s wrath was not lessened by the etiquette note offered by TS’s editors. “If somehow you do come across School W,” they wrote, “it would do the place good for you to know that your litter and spray-paint are certainly not welcome.”

Maybe the principal will come to appreciate Jerabek’s new-found fame, though. Last week, the teaching staff presented Wraith with a red-wheeled, yellow-trimmed skateboard.