Fiesta, Tour Raise Additional Funds for New Diocesan Homeless Center

Friday, the smell of fresh paint still permeated the upper floors of the St. Vincent de Paul Joan Kroc Center, the new downtown shelter that soon will be called home by hundreds of the city’s homeless.

In one of the many groups that toured the block-square structure during the fiesta given in anticipation of Monday’s dedication ceremonies was a well-dressed, elderly man who turned to his wife and complained that the odor was “making his nose fuzzy.”

His wife, who appeared not at all eager to abridge her tour, replied, “Can it, dear. That’s the smell of hope.”

Hope, indeed, did seem to be the central theme of “Mi Casa Su Casa,” which drew 350 shelter benefactors for an evening of Mexican entertainment, dinner and dancing. Although planned more as a thank you for major supporters than as a fund-raiser, the event did raise about $30,000, a sum that party chairman Norma Assam viewed from a very businesslike perspective.

“This is our fiesta, our time to celebrate the fact that the shelter is finally ready to serve the community,” she said. “But we’ll take every nickel we can get.” (Guests paid $150 per person to attend. There was to have been a higher-priced ticket, at $1,000 per couple, that included the privilege of staying in one of the center’s bedrooms. But the center was not quite ready to accept overnight guests, paying or otherwise.)

The Mexican theme gave St. Vincent de Paul Director Father Joe Carroll an excuse to pull a pale blue guayabera over his clerical collar and to hold court in the building’s handsome hacienda-style courtyard, a cool, spacious area highlighted by a fountain and by lush grass that soon will feel the feet of dozens of children at play.

The big smile that walked in with Carroll stayed planted on the Bronx-born priest’s face throughout the night. “Did we do OK?” he asked, waving around at what some guests called “the house that Joe built.” “Is this place conducive to partying, or what?”

“It’s gorgeous,” he said. “Usually when you have a dream, if just 50% of it comes true, you’re happy. But when you get 120% of your dream fulfilled, you don’t even know how to express how fortunate and happy you feel.”

Carroll added that the center will attempt to serve more than the physical needs of its residents. “One idea that we have with Father Nick Reveles (head of the department of music at the University of San Diego) is to build a stage in the courtyard and put on concerts, poetry readings and other arts performances for the homeless,” Carroll said. “Mercedes McCambridge (the Academy Award-winning actress who now resides in San Diego) will be part of our arts program.”

Thus the evening’s entertainment was perhaps a preview. Mariachis preceded Mexican folklore dancers, which in turn was followed by a flamenco group and finally a regular old American dance band that helped those guests so inclined burn off the meal of various Mexican specialties.

Benefactress Joan Kroc, whose $3-million donation helped build the center, was out of town the night of the fiesta. However, the guest list did include another of the shelter’s special friends, Manuela Pieritta, a 90-year-old widow of modest circumstances who over the years has presented Carroll with sacks of coins saved from her household expenses. It was her special privilege to share with Kroc the duties of cutting the ribbon at Monday’s dedication ceremony.

Among other guests were Carleton Lichty, grand opening overall chairman, and his wife, Jan; Mel and Linda Katz; Al and Mim Sally; Jorge and Yolanda Walther-Meade; John and Eleanor Rippo; Sam Assam; Mike and Jan Madigan; Janay Kruger with Jim Bleisner; Author and Marge Hughes; Jack Berkman; Larry and Junko Cushman; Amy Fike with Don McVay; Phil and Catherine Blair, and Rita and Joe Neeper.

LA JOLLA--Being treated like a human doughnut is one way to cool off on a hot afternoon.

Being dunked means having the great thrill of dropping into a tank of none-too-warm water each time some ace pitcher manages to hit a lever with a well-aimed ball.

First up in the dunking booth at Sunday’s fifth annual Off The Wall Street Dance was restaurateur George Hauer, who, when finally relieved by La Jolla High School Principal J. Tarvin, climbed out of the tank and muttered: “Boy, that was fun.”

In other words, it was high jinks as usual at this spiffy, yearly frolic and romp on La Jolla’s two-block-long Wall Street, usually the scene of sedate shopping and financial transactions. The street is traditionally transformed into a carnival of major dimensions on the last Sunday of August.

With 33 food booths, 16 drink stalls, a dozen game booths, five bands and a host of other entertainers, it was quite possible to eat, drink, play and dance oneself silly, a state of being that many of the 6,000 attendees did their best to achieve. Meant as an inexpensive outing for the community and largely underwritten by booth sponsors (including many of the neighborhood’s toniest restaurants) and other La Jolla businesses, the street dance was given for the benefit of the UC San Diego School of Medicine and Medical Center and was expected to raise more than $110,000.

Off The Wall General Chairman Bette Biddulph, repeating the role she played last year, said that the event was intended to be unlike any other held in the course of the year.

“There are so many formal balls in La Jolla, but this is meant to be very casual and just for fun,” she said. “The best thing about it is the fun people have.”

Having fun wasn’t the problem for most of the participants, but deciding just what to do next was a difficulty. For those tempted solely by the pleasures of the flesh, the course of action was obvious: One simply bought a large supply of tickets and then ate oneself through a smorgasbord of offerings that ran from pork and chicken in a Mayan Indian barbecue sauce to pickled herring, seafood pasta, crepes suzette, muffins, bread pudding, popcorn, guacamole, chili, hamburgers, hot dogs and so forth. A booth selling antacids might have been a useful addition.

Games ranged from the good old-fashioned nail pound, in which one simply drives a nail straight into a board in three strikes (harder than it sounds), to a new game invented by staffers at the La Jolla Merrill Lynch brokerage office. Called “the bulls and the bears,” this dice game demanded that players anticipate whether the market would turn up or down, then roll the dice accordingly. “The dice are leveraged, but not weighted,” explained one of the booth’s staffers. Prizes included plastic kazoos and Frisbees, all adorned with the Off The Wall footprint logo.

The music and entertainment, spread among three main bandstands, catered to the older set, the younger set and every set in between, but the older folks generally congregated at the eastern end of the street, where Joe Cool & The Rumblers churned out classic rock ‘n’ roll. Gilded youth headed for the opposite end of the block and the high-voltage new-wave sounds of Cat Tracks. Among other performers were Army of Love, Moving Violations, the Quicksilver Cloggers and Frisbee champion Stacy Anderson.

UCSD Medical School Associate Dean Jack Farris served as honorary Off The Wall chairman; others on the committee were co-chairs Neely Swanson and RayLeen Liebhardt, Bruce Sinykin, Robin Kellogg, Rudy Rehm, Jean Johnson, Deirdre Dooling, Lisa Hill, Jan Schultz, Dotti Howe, Martha Ehringer, Nancy Hester, Mimi Morris, Alice Mitchell, Lee Ryan, Carol Mayo, Will Herring and Paula Erd.