Bike Thief Decides Banishment to Desert Beats Prison Jungle

Law and order in San Diego.

* Steal a bike, go to Yemen.

Everyone talks about finding alternatives to putting more prisoners in San Diego’s crowded jails. But nobody does anything about it.

At least not until Thursday, when Municipal Judge Frank Brown was faced with sentencing a 27-year-old man for misdemeanor grand theft stemming from a tussle in Kearny Mesa over a 10-speed.

The defendant’s relatives begged Brown to let them take him back to their ancestral home.

So Brown gave Mohamad Alkazan a choice: a year in County Jail or a year in Yemen. It didn’t take Alkazan long to decide.

He leaves for his native land today. If he’s spotted in San Diego or anywhere else in the United States in the next year, he goes directly to jail, with no traveling privileges.

* The San Diego Chess Club is being decimated by the theft and burglary of members’ cars during its Wednesday night meetings in the senior citizens’ center on the 6th Avenue side of Balboa Park.

Membership has dropped from 300 to 75.

“The main thing driving people away is the danger to their cars,” President Jack Miller said. “One club member had his car broken into three times in a year. I don’t blame him for not coming back.”

The park is a magnet for car crime, averaging a theft and burglary every day of the year.

Miller says one officer advised members to leave their cars unlocked so thieves don’t have to break a window to discover there’s nothing worth stealing inside.

However, Steve Tiplitsky, the Police Department’s community relations officer for Balboa Park, says that is not an officially sanctioned idea. He says leaving your car unlocked could encourage its use as a sleeping spot by transients--another problem plaguing the park.

Of Fish, Furniture and Fund Raising

One thing after another.

* Pete Wilson, who was never close to President Reagan, is similarly on the outs with President Bush, according to Washington columnists Roland Evans and Bob Novak.

Evans and Novak quote a “Republican insider” as saying, “Pete is a cold fish, and that doesn’t appeal to the President.”

* New Council Members Linda Bernhardt and John Hartley have ordered extensive remodeling jobs for their 10th-floor offices at City Hall. At public expense, naturally.

* Local magicians will do tricks Saturday at the San Diego Blood Bank on Upas Street and the North County Donor Center in Escondido as part of the theme “Perform a Miracle, Be a Blood Donor.”

Among them will be Loch David Crane, magician and political candidate. He ran for mayor a few years back; after that, he disappeared.

* That satellite TV dish in the movie “She-Devil,” being used by Meryl Streep’s son to watch pro wrestling, was provided by VideoCipher Corp. of Sorrento Valley.

VideoCipher provides scrambling technology for cable TV, but the chance to go Hollywood was irresistible.

The Seats of Power

As men who have served close to the seats of power, their own seats deserve respect.

So it was decided that the nine presidential press secretaries from six administrations who are participating in today’s symposium at UC San Diego on “The Presidency, the Press and the People” deserved a decent place to sit. Organizers began hunting for fancy chairs.

Finally, a deal was struck with the 4th District Court of Appeal for the loan of red leather chairs used by the justices. All are reportedly quite comfy on the human backside.

You can admire the chairs at 9 tonight on KPBS-TV (Channel 15) when the symposium is broadcast on tape-delay.

But don’t bother calling the station to ask whether you can talk to the chair maker about getting some for your den. The chairs were made by inmates at San Quentin.