It’s Now a Buyer’s Market at Once Mighty J. David & Co.
The last cache of booty from the fall of J. David & Co. goes on the auction block Saturday afternoon at Buckingham Galleries Ltd. on Aero Drive near Montgomery Field.
The sports cars, the gilded bedroom furniture, the artwork, and the opulent bric-a-brac that adorned the La Jolla office and Rancho Santa Fe love nest have long since been sold to repay investors and feed the maw of an insatiable army of attorneys and accountants.
Not much remains from the glittery days when J. David (Jerry) Dominelli and Nancy Hoover were performing feats of magic: making $100 million disappear and turning a mayor into a felon.
What’s left is mostly office equipment, furniture and supplies: the forlorn detritus of any failed business.
Plus some Christmas decorations, a framed certificate of appreciation from the San Diego Symphony, and pillows shaped like race cars.
Chester J. Whalen, the auctioneer, hopes to sell the office material in one lot, except for the safe. He figures bidding to be spirited:
“The stuff is pretty good, and it has a lot of curiosity value.”
Also available is the official J. David library--several hundred books about the pursuit of money. Among them:
“See You at the Top,” “Guide to Intelligent Investing,” “Think Like a Tycoon,” “Get Rich on the Obvious,” “Contrarian Investment Strategy,” “The Fleecing of America” and “A Better Way to Make Money.”
Some of the books were inscribed to Hoover: “Women on Top” and “Beating Men at Their Own Game: A Woman’s Guide to Successful Selling in Industry.”
If you prefer to buy in bulk, there are 1,000 unsold copies of a slim volume by J. David partner and accused co-conspirator Mark Robert Yarry, “The Fastest Game in Town: Commodities.”
Yarry is pretty fast himself. He went to live in Great Britain before he could be brought to trial in San Diego.
Word for Word
The business of news.
* Say what?
The Betty Broderick murder trial is full of tapes of Broderick spewing four-letter words at her ex-husband.
Most newspapers are dealing with the tapes in the usual evasive fashion: euphemism and ellipsis. But the San Diego Daily Transcript decided to print The Real Words.
Editor Martin Kruming says he figured that his readership, largely attorneys and downtown business employees, could take the straight stuff. So far, no complaints.
* The classified advertising section of the (Oceanside) Blade-Citizen is full of plaintive notes from Camp Pendleton Marines stationed in Saudi Arabia looking for female pen pals.
Says one: “I’m not your average Marine.”
* Hair and money.
The Blade-Citizen used the Freedom of Information Act to flush out documents showing that a North County cosmetology school bought a Mercedes-Benz for one of its executives while defaulting on $500,000 in tuition refunds owed to disgruntled students.
* The (North County) Beach News is striking back at deadbeats by publishing a list of local firms that haven’t paid their advertising bills.
Among those being publicly dunned: a Tarot card reader and a store selling X-rated lingerie, plastic novelties and spicy books.
Sharp Lesson
Take a look.
* A Marine private at Camp Pendleton has been sentenced to 75 days in the brig and a bad-conduct discharge. His crime: Unauthorized possession of a sword.
* Portland police say it cost $300,000 in overtime pay to provide security during the Tom Metzger trial. Metzger got 20 death threats a day.
* North County bumper sticker: “Protect Your Pets, Vote No on C.”
Proposition C asks whether voters approve of using pound animals for medical research.
* South Bay bestseller: T-shirts showing Bart Simpson strangling Saddam Hussein.
