Our Busy Bank Bandit Now Celebrated in Song

Perhaps it was inevitable: “The Ballad of the A’s Bandit.”

Hank Garfield, 33, reporter for the Vista Voice and would-be crime chronicler, has recorded a paean to the San Diego bank robber whose trademark is a sweet demeanor and an Oakland A’s baseball cap.

“Bank robbers are kind of populist heroes,” Garfield said. “Look at Bonnie and Clyde.”

Garfield sings and plays the guitar, not so bad either. He sounds a bit like Raffi, the popular sing-songster for children:

He’s hit 25 banks in San Diego

Two dozen notches on his fielder’s glove

He never raises his voice or shows his gun

He’s got a style you just gotta love

He acts like he’s never in a hurry

He shows a lot of patience at the plate.

And always the refrain:

He’s the mild-mannered bank robber

Proving every day that crime pays

In his button-down shirt and his Topsider sneakers

And the emblem of the Oakland A’s.

As with all elegies, there is a certain sadness as cruel fate looms:

Some day some man in a uniform will force him to hang up his sneakers

And I guess he’ll spend some time in the slammer

And I guess the press will learn his name

He’ll be disgraced, laid low, held out as an example

But I bet he’ll make the Robber Hall of Fame.

Garfield is trying to interest local radio stations in his creation. Robbing a bank is easy compared to breaking into the music business.

FBI Agent Jack Kelly hopes the ballad doesn’t make people feel sympathy for the bandit.

But Garfield sees it simply as a competency thing:

“This guy is so successful. If you’re that successful in anything, there’s a certain amount of admiration.”

Champion of Fans Gives Up

Frankly speaking.

He wrestled the National Football League to the ground over scrambling of televised games.

But he couldn’t beat his landlord, lack of parking, hassles with street people and gung-ho meter maids ticketing his customers.

So hotdog impresario Norm Lebovitz has closed his Sluggo’s outlet in Hillcrest after 14 struggling months. A sad day for San Diegans who love a Polish sausage, a beer and fries smothered in cheese.

Expenses outpaced revenue: “I couldn’t see charging $5 for a hotdog.”

Lebovitz, 53, will keep his smaller locations in La Jolla and University Towne Centre, and open one at Grossmont Center in La Mesa.

It was the spacious two-story Hillcrest outlet where he rallied other sports-bar owners to defy the mighty NFL. With some political nudging, the league backed down on plans to scramble broadcast signals so private satellite owners couldn’t watch out-of-town games.

Now Lebovitz is talking with Ralph Nader about starting an Assn. for Sports Fans Rights to stick up for Joe Fan in things like pay-for-view TV and ticket prices:

“I live and die by sports. Hotdogs are just a means for me to watch sporting events.”

Camels Didn’t Like It Either

Less art, more matter.

* Troops returning from Operation Desert Storm swear that even camels, which have a reputation for eating anything, refused to eat the military’s Meals Ready to Eat.

* A local group, the Victims Action League, will give “awards” this morning to two San Diego judges, as yet unidentified, who are said to be insensitive to the rights of crime victims.

Each judge will have a “Crime Victims Doormat” placed in front of his or her courtroom. Last year the group gave similar treatment to a criminal defense attorney and the ACLU.

* Jack Orr, the no-holds-barred political consultant who helped mastermind the recall of Linda Bernhardt, says he’ll run an independent campaign against the reelection of Councilman Bob Filner next year. Regardless of who Filner’s opponent is.

* East County bumper sticker: “Real Men Eat Their Road Kill.”