Snapshots of life in the Golden State. : Volleyball Fans Would Spike People’s Park Plan

Berkeley protesters intent on preventing city and college officials from building volleyball courts at People’s Park appear to have some strong support in the unlikeliest of places--the volleyball community.

“I think volleyball has to take a back seat to the homeless,” said Bob Simpson, co-owner of Paradise Beach, a recently opened Sacramento theme bar featuring a full-size sand volleyball court.

“They shouldn’t step on anyone’s toes,” agreed Hoss Entezari, who runs Volleyball Cafe International, a Sacramento gym/bistro with three indoor courts.

Officials of the Assn. of Volleyball Professionals, which represents professional beach volleyball players, are less sure of the subject. “I don’t know anything about the protests,” AVP spokeswoman Jane Marks said.

Not that the AVP has been totally apolitical in the past. During the mid-’80s, members staged a strike on the weekend of a major tournament in Redondo Beach. Their demands: higher pay and softer volleyballs.

CAPITOL INSIDER

What gives: California lawmakers and their aides generally believe it’s wrong to give favored treatment to political contributors--but they acknowledge, in a new survey, that most members of the Legislature do exactly that.

Nearly 90% of the 122 state senators and Senate staffers who answered the study said they think that contributors expect to “have some special advantages” when they need a legislator’s help.

Moreover, in a companion survey of lobbyists, 67% said legislators often “effectively coerce” them into making campaign contributions--and only 3% say it almost never happens.

Michael Josephson, head of the Josephson Institute of Ethics, which conducted the surveys, said the results lay to rest the notion that contributors get nothing more than improved access. “The fact is that sophisticated legislative professionals believe that the givers expect something, and that sophisticated legislative professionals believe that they get something,” Josephson said.

THE DROUGHT

Water down under: Struck by the similarities in climate between Western Australia and California, a delegation from Down Under is touring the Golden State this week to peruse dams, aqueducts and water treatment plants.

Group leaders say that they are considering an 1,100-mile pipeline for redistributing water from the Aussie state’s comparatively moist north to the dryer, heavily populated Perth metropolitan area to the south.

Ernie Bridge, state minister of water resources, said he is interested in exporting California technological concepts, but not its lingering drought. Perth, he explained, is already parched.

“In fact,” Bridge said, “I once wrote a song about (it that begins): 200 years our people strived to open up this land. A nation’s progress held at bay by drought and desert sand.”

Divorced Californians

Data from the 1990 Census show that 9.4% of all Californians 15 years of age and older are divorced. But in some cities, the numbers are far higher. Below are the 10 communities with the highest percentage of divorced people. Also included are statistics for the state’s four largest cities.

Community and County Percent Divorced 1) Yountville (Napa) 22.9% 2) Marina Del Rey (L.A.) 20.6 3) Sausalito (Marin) 20.0 4) Monte Rio (Sonoma) 19.7 5) Sonora (Tuolumne) 18.0 6) Nevada City (Nevada) 17.2 7) Sand City (Monterey) 17.1 8) Ione (Amador) 16.9 9) Opal Cliffs (Santa Cruz) 16.9 10) Grass Valley (Nevada) 16.8

In the Four Largest Cities: 1) San Diego (San Diego): 10.2 2) San Francisco (San Fran.): 9.4 3) San Jose (Santa Clara): 9.2 4) Los Angeles (L.A.): 8.8

Source: U.S. Bureau of the Cenus

Compiled by Times Editorial Researcher Tracy Thomas

MEDIA WATCH

Listings: U.S. News & World Report declared this week that three of the nation’s top 10 hospitals are located in California. Citing a survey of 965 doctors, the spotlight shone on UCLA Medical Center, Stanford University Hospital and UC San Francisco Medical Center.

The American Lawyer, meanwhile, listed three California law firms--all based in Los Angeles--as among the top 10 gross revenue producers in the country: Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher (which took in $290 million last year), Latham & Watkins and O’Melveny & Myers.

So where does California rank in one of its more traditionally recognized categories of excellence--beaches? Nowhere. Conde Nast Traveler, citing a study directed by a University of Maryland geography professor, reports that absolutely none of the top 10 beaches in the nation are in the Golden State.

What’s more, the magazine adds that no Southern California beaches even ranked in the top 50. The beaches were criticized “for overcrowding, cool water temperatures, churning surf and swift, dangerous currents.”

Add lists: Less surprising is the failure of Walking Magazine to include Los Angeles among its top 10 cities for taking a stroll.

No. 1 on the list was that hill heaven to the north--San Francisco. “Not only can you experience its cosmopolitan flavor entirely on foot,” the periodical reports, “but every walk promises to be a fitness walk.”

If it’s any consolation to Los Angeles partisans, Car and Driver has yet to be heard from.

EXIT LINE

“Our staff has reflected Solomonic wisdom in determining that regular matzo, your full-size bread of affliction as mentioned in the Torah, is not a cracker, which is taxable. However, matzo miniatures have been determined to be crackers since there’s no evidence when the people of Israel left the land of Egypt that they were popping bite-size matzos into their mouths.”

--State Board of Equalization Chairman Brad Sherman, describing one of the myriad decisions confronting state taxing officials as they implement the nation’s new--and only--snack tax.

California Dateline appears every other Friday.