Good Times Roll Into ’89 At Bowl, Pub, Surf, Turf

Notes from a chilly New Year’s weekend.

Friday night, the 11th Annual Sea World Holiday Bowl, San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium.

Equal parts carnival and sporting contest. Jock love and civic boosterism. A 5 p.m. start to accommodate ESPN; businesses shut down early.

This is the party that San Diego throws for itself and a few out-of-town guests each winter. Don’t forget: San Diego is the town that turned party into a verb.

Oklahoma State and Wyoming. Stadium is packed, 60,718. Excitement but no anxiety. This is for fun, no titles at risk, sympathies shift with each play (“Go Cowboys”).

OSU yell-leaders in black and orange do somersaults across the field, like huge steroid-powered caterpillars gone ape. Fireworks and Mexican dancing at half time.

Service America lines are slow (an equation: one chili cheese dog and beer equals one Barry Sanders touchdown). Chocolate chip cookies are worth the wait.

“The Holiday Bowl is more fun than a playoff game where you’re disappointed if your team loses,” said Stuart Fulton, 27, a certified public accountant who moved from Colorado to Escondido two years ago.

“It’s more of a festival than just a football game. No wonder San Diego loves it.”

Saturday afternoon, the Del Mar Race Track.

Horseplayers are philosophic by nature and never more so than on the final day of racing for 1988. A small but gritty crowd of players has come to bet on Santa Anita by satellite, and watch their money rise or fall on television.

“To bet on horses, you’ve got to be ready to be lucky,” said Jesse Silva, 46, a bearded welder from Imperial Beach. “I’m here to give 1988 one more chance to be good to me. My union went on strike for six weeks, I didn’t have a single winner for two weeks at the Del Mar meet, and I voted for Dukakis.”

He puts $20 on Danawee Prospector in the 4th. It places third and pays $8.80, and Silva, wearing a T-shirt saying Native San Diegan, is happy.

“Maybe 1988 wasn’t so bad after all,” he says.

New Year’s Eve, Ireland’s Own, a pub in Old Encinitas on Highway 101.

It’s a neighborhood bar. It’s been a surfer bar, a rock ‘n’ roll bar, a biker bar, and since it was bought and renamed in 1983 by Sean McVicker and Tom Cashman, it has featured corned beef, Irish stew ($2 a bowl, $1 refill) thick malt and Irish folk singers.

On New Year’s Eve, it’s an eclectic crowd: college kids, unescorted ladies, off-duty sheriff’s deputies and their wives, older couples all dressed up, and people with heavy accents and a liking for Guinness and singing along with P.J. Lynch, who mixes Irish ballads and ‘50s oldies.

It’s a friendly and warm kind of crowd. Old Bushmills does that to a crowd.

A blond woman dressed in green implores At Large to dance. Her husband is playing darts (and winning). Generally, At Large has a rule: Never dance with a strange woman whose husband has something sharp in his hand.

She insists. She’s bouncy but a terrible liar. She says At Large is a good dancer.

It’s that kind of place, and it was that kind of New Year’s Eve.

New Year’s Day, Torrey Pines State Beach.

There is something symbolic about Jan. 1 that lures San Diegans to the beach. Not the 31st or the 2nd, but the 1st.

This is why we’re here, they seem to be saying. This is the trade-off for putting up with obscene mortgages, congested freeways and Ted Leitner.

Surfers brave the 52-degree water--risking, as one of their intrepid number puts it, “ice cream-headache-city.”

At midday, parents take to the beach to air out their young children. Joggers in Christmas sweat suits pass by. Couples walk parallel to the water line, heads down in intimate discussion.

Today, work-a-day resumes for another year.