Stress Specialists Rub Big Business the Right Way

This is the season to be stressed. But never fear, a trio of stress busters from Solana Beach makes office calls to massage away that end-of-the-year tension.

Business Alive, which specializes in stress management for the management class, is on-call for the knotted-up executive who needs help in the downtown area, La Jolla or the Golden Triangle.

For a minimum fee of $10 for 10 minutes, a physical therapist, right in the semi-privacy of your office, will provide a seated, fully-clothed massage of your head, neck, shoulders, arms and back. For $136 a month, a therapist will provide 40 minutes per week.

“Our service is for people who know the value of an integrated body, of not over-stressing, of learning to pace themselves and taking time to re-center themselves,” said therapist Donna Simondes.

“We offer a whole body approach in a non-threatening, non-sexual manner,” she said. “Being touched is a basic human need. We want to make the workplace a more human place to be.”

Business Alive does not advertise, but word-of-mouth has kept the trio busy, particularly in the downtown towers of the city’s financial moguls.

“We do a lot of financial planners, executives, real estate brokers, and other management personnel,” Simondes said. “When the stock market crashed, we started getting a lot of calls from stockbrokers.”

Just Horsing Around

Ever wonder whether Eugene V. Klein, the squire of Rancho Santa Fe, misses the thrill of victory and, of late, the agony of defeat associated with owning the San Diego Chargers?

We went to his horse digs in the Lower San Dieguito River Valley to ask him if he has any regrets.

“Not at all,” he laughed, looking every bit the 6-foot-5, 66-year-old multimillionaire. “I don’t miss the grief and the stress. I haven’t been to a game since I sold the team three years ago. I do miss the football part, those three hours every Sunday, but I don’t miss the strikes, the players’ union, the agents, the drug problems, renegotiating contracts and all those other headaches.”

He much prefers jockeys to football players. They’re smaller and don’t have long-term contracts.

In fact, Klein also prefers horses over football players. “There is no horses’ union to object to urinalysis tests,” he explained.

Klein’s sporting love these days is thoroughbred racing, and he keeps upward of 200 horses at his stables. He’s also developing Del Ray Downs and Del Ray Estates--upscale housing in the lower valley.

The San Dieguito River Valley, he predicts, “is going to be the Bel-Air of San Diego County”--an assessment sure to send chills through North County environmentalists.

Traffic Stopper

As if traffic wasn’t bad enough on California 78, commuters now report slowdowns as drivers gawk at the new billboard between San Marcos and Escondido advertising condoms. Maybe they’re trying to write down nonoxynol-9.

So far, no similar phenomenon is reported along Highway 101 in Leucadia where a full-sized billboard provides the location of every F Street (X-rated) Bookstore in the county.

Start Your Dragons

Mark your calendar: The First Annual Dragon Run is set for Feb. 13 in Balboa Park, organized by the San Diego Chinese Community Church, with proceeds benefiting civic programs in the Chinese community.

Main event is a 5-kilometer romp through the park; starting time 7:30 a.m. There is also a 1-mile fun wok. That’s what the flyer said anyway.

The Best of Bilbray

Supervisor Brian Bilbray made few friends in his recent foray to Fallbrook as chairman of the Local Agency Formation Commission, which held a night meeting to consider the red-hot issue of incorporation.

Maybe it was when he introduced himself as “chairman of San Diego County.” Or when he lectured restive audience members that, “The price of freedom of speech is listening to others.”

Or when he gaveled down speakers or told townsfolk he could treat them any way he wanted because he never has to run for election in North County. Or when he exchanged in-jokes with attorney Mike McDade about only being able to find Fallbrook because Roger Hedgecock left behind a trail of cookie crumbs.

For whatever reason, Bilbray left a residue of anger among the avocado groves.

Beyond Bilbray’s manner, pro-incorporation forces feel the LAFCO-approved incorporation plan is a bad financial deal and will be hard to sell to voters.

“As a Missouri redneck,” Charley Folk, board president of the Fallbrook utility district, told the (Fallbrook) Enterprise, “I personally resent this urban cowboy coming up here and telling us how to run the town.”