Not Running on Empty: Vice President Dan...

Not Running on Empty: Vice President Dan Quayle rarely goes hungry on his trips outside Washington. Quayle made a surprise stop late last week at a grocery store in North Little Rock, Ark., on his way from a local Air Force base. He visited with shoppers and ate a doughnut from the store’s bakery. “Now we can make it through the day,” Quayle said. The vice president “gets a list of all the places along the route--restaurants, grocery stores and that sort of thing--then he usually goes over the list on the plane and decides where he wants to stop,” said an aide.

Wedding Gift: U.S. Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), 61, and his wife of one month have become parents. Monica Ann Esters, 25, gave birth to a son Thursday at Grace Hospital in Detroit. The mother and baby were in good condition Friday, a hospital spokeswoman said. The June 4 marriage was the first for Conyers, who is seeking his 14th term and has no Democratic challengers. He was unavailable for comment late last week.

Unguarded Moments: Former New York Mayor Ed Koch was incensed recently when he was unceremoniously stripped of his police bodyguards. Koch first heard of the plan when the guards advised him that his city-provided security was ending that night. Koch left office Jan. 1 but still had a six-member police detail. Mayor David Dinkins called Koch on Thursday to apologize for the handling of the incident. The security detail cost the city more than $180,000.

Trump Triumph: Good news for Donald Trump. The cash-starved developer won a real estate tax fight with New York City and saved $1.2 million on his 1989 taxes. Trump saved the money on his 56-acre waterfront property on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, assessed by the city at $44 million. But that savings went right back to the city late last week, when Trump made a multimillion-dollar semiannual property tax payment of $2.2 million for his undeveloped West Side property, $1 million for Trump Tower and $900,000 for the Trump Parc condominiums.