Barbecue-Grill Rustlers Headed Off at the Pass

Beware, ye barbecue grill thieves of Del Mar! Roland Burt is watching.

It started one recent rainy night about 1 a.m. Burt was returning home and spotted “two college kids” loading his neighbor’s barbecue grill into the back of their Fiat Spider. Not just an ordinary barbecue grill, but a Weber kettle, the BMW of barbecue grills.

Burt, 39, the owner of a computer software firm, was suspicious. Even in Del Mar--where the civic passions are barbecue, beach volleyball and closing escrow--it is unusual to see someone putting a barbecue grill into a convertible with the top down on a rainy night.

Burt yelled at the two. “Hey, why are you putting a barbecue grill into a convertible with the top down on a rainy night?” Or words to that effect.

The Fiat Spider sped off. Burt and his Honda Prelude gave chase. The Fiat Spider took a corner on two tires and the Weber Kettle flew out and went rolling down the street. The two cars came to a stop.

The grill-snatchers talked to Burt with conviction. “Listen, you inquisitive person, allow us to proceed unhindered or something uncomfortable could happen to you.” Or words to that effect.

The snatchers fled, sans grill. In the days that followed, Burt determined the identity of the two and filed a complaint with the Sheriff’s Department.

“It may be a barbecue grill to you, but it’s my neighborhood to me,” Burt said. He came to Del Mar a year ago to live a quiet life and wants to keep it that way.

He used to live on St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands, where he worked in hotel marketing and things got so “hairy” he had to carry a gun. But that’s another story.

Voices From WWII

An At Large item about a Belgian writer seeking information about Joseph Norman Gates, a San Diegan killed in World War II, brought many calls from people who knew Gates from San Diego High School, class of 1938, and later at San Diego State College.

Classmates like San Diego Magazine co-publisher/editor Gloria Self, retired educator Emma Leisure, retired Navy Chief Warrant Officer John Cash and oceanography professor Douglas Inman remember Gates as a quiet, artistic youth from a modest upbringing, who rode the streetcar to school and was bashful around girls. He belonged to ROTC, the glee club and a campus Roman Catholic group.

Several of Gates’ classmates will be in touch with Dominique van den Broucke, the historian and journalist who is writing a book about American airmen downed in Belgium and France.

Just Another White Male

We all know that no man is a hero to his valet. There is also a lesser-known corollary: no man is anything but a male to a headline writer.

Take the case of Daniel Larsen, the contractor, and William Rick, the engineer. Pillars of the Chamber of Commerce, decades of volunteer public service, etc.

The San Diego City Council this week voted 8 to 1 to reappoint the pair to the Board of Port Commissioners. One councilman made a pitch for putting minorities and women on the board.

The headline in the San Diego Union read: “2 white males reappointed to port panel.” One now can await a headline for the Bush inaugural: “Skinny WASP gets govt. job.”

No Edge in Skin Business

The San Diego city attorney has triumphed over the Les Girls nightspot to uphold an ordinance restricting nude dancing in public. Victory over the Body Shop is close at hand.

A judge rejected an argument by the Les Girls attorney that dancing naked within 6 feet of a bunch of bug-eyed businessmen is “communicative speech” protected by the First Amendment. The city wants the dancers to cover up or back off, and for Les Girls and the Body Shop to be ordered closed for 30 days.

Still, the city has a sense of fair play. Deputy City Atty. Grant Telfor asked the judge to order the closures to run concurrently so that neither establishment gets a competitive advantage, presumably on the theory that one month in the skin business might be more lucrative than another.