Charitable Attempt at a World Record

Joan Pattison is getting ready to line up a little game of musical chairs.

For 6,000 players.

It’s both a fund-raiser for San Dieguito for Drug-Free Youth and an attempt to break the existing world record, set in 1985 at the University of Notre Dame with 5,151 scrambling participants.

Pattison’s event will be held March 6 (It must take a while to line up all the chairs.) at the Del Mar Fairgrounds.

She hopes to recruit 6,000 players, especially from the ranks of local schools, in which case she’ll put out 5,900 chairs for the first round. At the end of each musical interlude, she and friends will take out 100 chairs. By the time the game is down to the last 500 players, 50 and then 25 chairs at a time will be eliminated until there are only 25 or so remaining players. It should take about three hours to get to that point.

She doesn’t want the game played down to the last two players for fear that it could get nasty.

The registration fee for those wanting to sit in on a world’s record attempt is $12.50 per person, which is where the fund-raising comes in.

Call it musical chairity.

Oath Goes Double

The Ramona Municipal Water District has been traumatized by administrative upheavals, political mudslinging and grand jury investigations. So ugly is the politics that newly elected board members are either recalled, resign in frustration before their terms are up, or are too disillusioned to seek reelection.

Now the district gets word that its board of directors doesn’t even exist, technically.

Turns out that two of the directors were given their oaths of office by someone who wasn’t an official notary public and therefore was not eligible to swear in new board members. The errors were discovered later by county officials.

Plus, three other directors didn’t have their official paper work forwarded to the county clerk’s office, so there’s no official record of them having been seated.

The errors are being corrected after-the-fact. The directors say that, mistakes notwithstanding, they have complied with the intent of the law.

Cop Cars for Cash

A couple of Chevrolet Corvettes confiscated by Escondido police in drug raids aren’t exactly dogs--and that’s what the cops want.

So on Saturday, the Escondido Police Department is going to put the two ‘Vettes--along with three not-so-racy vehicles taken in drug arrests--on the auction block to generate bucks to fight the drug trade.

Lt. Earl Callander says some of the proceeds will be used to buy and train another police dog, giving the department its fourth, and allowing virtually round-the-clock canine protection.

While the department has the option of keeping confiscated vehicles for its own uses, some cars, like Corvettes, are just too obvious to keep around, especially if the bad guys know you’re driving one. Dogs, on the other hand, are good for sniffing around when their masters are on the narcotics trail.

So now Escondido will get a narc with a bark.

Tourists vs. Freeloaders

From the San Diego Convention & Visitors Bureau, some statistics you might find interesting:

The median income of the tourists and visitors to San Diego this past spring was 14% higher than their counterparts of a year earlier.

They spent less time here--four nights per visit--than the previous year, when the average stay was 5.3 nights.

But they spent more money each day--$101, compared with $89 per day that tourists spent in the spring of ’86.

More than 60% of those questioned by ConVis said they planned to return within two years. And 17% said they plan not to return, ever.

Fewer visitors to San Diego came from Northern California and the mountain states; more came from the Southern states.

Maybe the most interesting finding: a quarter of all visitors stayed with friends or relatives. ConVis calls them tourists boosting the local economy. The rest of us call them freeloaders, and it means we’ve gotta change the sheets in the spare room.