Sun, Sand and Tans--Just Another Holiday in Paradise

Tom Boerum figured if he had to work on Monday, at least he pulled about the best assignment he could get.

Strolling along the boardwalk at Mission Beach, his trained eyes surveyed the beach like some cop, on the lookout for the good, the bad and the ugly--and the gorgeous. He admittedly let his gaze linger longer on the young women, some of them all but naked as they pranced, roller skated, bicycled and flirted up and down the beachfront sidewalk.

Boerum is a cop, a San Diego Police officer who normally works a downtown San Diego beat--”with long pants on so I fit in better with the business crowd.”

But the business at hand Monday at Mission Beach, as it was all over San Diego County, was holiday fun and Boerum didn’t mind at all putting on a pair of shorts that were anchored to his waist with a leather holster.

Things are quiet, he offered with a smile, as a tide of buffed humanity paraded in front of him, and others hoisted beers and leaned against the seawall like judges at some hybrid beauty and sports competition, mentally scoring everyone as they walked by.

“Here I am, getting paid extra money to work a holiday--and I get to look at these beautiful girls,” Boerum cooed. Yeah, it beats the Gaslamp Quarter at 3 in the morning.

And so it went Monday, as San Diego quietely and with varying degrees of style celebrated Labor Day in every fashion imaginable, from back-yard picnics and softball games at neighborhood parks to the normal every-day’s-a-holiday smorgasbord of activities at San Diego’s most popular side-by-side public playgrounds--Mission Beach and Mission Bay.

The blue sky was dotted with kites over the bay and para-sailors over the ocean. Along the sidewalks, bicyclists and joggers weaved among the walkers. On the grass, volleyball players and lawn dart tossers watched out for the hibachis. On the boardwalk, roller skaters wheeled alongside their cousins, the roller bladers--athletes on those newfangled ice skates-on-wheels.

Alongside Mission Bay’s grasslands, ice cream vendors hawked their confections to picnickers who huddled around spinnaker-decorated motor homes that were parked curbside like so many urban day-campers. Along the sand of Fiesta Island, jet skis were rented to a crowd that was decidedly more rough-and-ready.

“About the only place I’d rather be is the French Riviera. That’s how nice this is,” declared Laura Chamberlain, a 24-year-old student at Cuyamaca Community College who lives in Clairemont but who prefered Monday to bask in a lounge chair while friends jet skied off Fiesta Island.

“It’s a little windy but I guess if there wasn’t a breeze, then I’d be complaining about it being too hot,” she said.

Sigh. Another holiday in paradise.

Shelley Gorman of Carlsbad watched as her husband, Michael, took their two young boys into the water aboard his jet ski, a kind of aquatic dirt bike.

“He use to run in the motocross at the Carlsbad Raceway,” she said. “But he fell and broke his collar bone. If you’re gonna fall, the water’s a lot softer than the dirt. So here we are.”

Brad Edmondson celebrated his Labor Day off from a quality control inspector at General Dynamics by having fun without supervision at Mission Bay. “That’s the great thing about jet skiing, compared to, say, being in a boat when everyone’s hollering at you. When you’re out there on your own jet ski, there’s nobody who can tell you what to do.”

The problem, he noted, is that there are rules to follow, and not everyone does. There was the fellow, for instance, sitting backwards on his jet ski. Illegal. And the guy sitting on top of his handlebars. Illegal. And the guy who powered toward the beach and quickly turned away, showering sunbathers with his spray souvenir. Illegal. And the jet skiing father who dropped his young son off in the water, to wade the last 50 feet back to shore. Illegal.

Edmondson shook his head. “A few bad apples give this sport a bad name. People call jet skis death crafts. But they’re safer than, say, going out in a speedboat at 80 miles an hour with a beer in your hand. You can’t drive a jet ski and hold a beer at the same time.”

On the boardwalk, Darrell Esparza, the head lifeguard at Mission Beach, surveyed the crowd and tried to measure what was on tap for the Labor Day night.

As quiet as the crowd had been so far, Esparza said he had misgivings about what night would bring.

“There’s a bigger danger walking down the boardwalk than there is on the beach,” he said. “Look at all these people. They’re all running into each other. And look at all these people carrying 12-packs. It’s hot out. Throw in some crystal or crack and we’ve got a potential for trouble.”

It was 4:30 p.m., and young families packed up their baskets and chairs and belly boards and headed for their station wagons and vans, and were replaced with hotter and newer cars with younger adults and louder radios. One tide of humanform gave way to another. “We’re in a transition,” Esparza said, “from the young families to the low life-drinking derelicts and drug-selling scum.”

Gee, Darrell, how do you really feel?

“Tonight’s the last chance for people to cause trouble, without regard to others, before they head back to school. All it’s going to take is a little spark to ignite something--one guy bumping into another.”

There was a lot of bumping and screaming a hundred yards away--at the Big Dipper roller coaster, which on Sunday set a new record in its new, second life with 5,749 riders in one day. The Monday lines weren’t quite as long.

Among the thrill seekers were Mike and Rosemary Fleming of Phoenix, who were in San Diego for the weekend to celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary. “We just couldn’t pass this up,” he said. “As roller coasters go, this is one of the famous ones.”

But it hasn’t been all fast lane for the Flemings. Sunday night, they saw Hamlet at the Old Globe Theatre.

Indeed, up and down San Diego’s coastline there was relative quiet for the three-day holiday. Despite warm ocean temperatures, mostly clear skies and the lure of the traditional last summer get-away before the back-to-school blues, lifeguards reported quiet, well-behaved crowds and only a few dozen rescues as several riptides preyed annoyingly along the oceanfront.

One lifeguard at La Jolla Shores--where an alcohol ban is now in effect--characterized his beach on Monday as “La Jolla Snores.”

On Coronado, Silver Strand State Beach lifeguard Ben Spencer said among the eight rescues handled by his staff was that of two boys “who panicked and tried to climb on top of each other.”

Del Mar lifeguard John Schooler estimated the beach crowd at about 1,600--about half a normal holiday crowd.

One of the busiest places in the county was at the U.S.-Mexico border at San Ysidro, where returning motorists who spent a weekend relaxing south of the border spent three hours and sometimes longer in stalled traffic, waiting to pass customs for the return drive home.

Temperatures in San Diego County on Monday ranged from a high of 110 at Borrego Springs to a high of 71 at Oceanside. Other highs were 76 at Lindbergh Field, 85 in Escondido, 81 at Palomar Mountain, 90 in Ramona, 82 in Vista and 88 in El Cajon.

For those who have today off--or who need to dress the children for school this morning--figure on today’s weather being a copy of Monday’s.