Some Handy Directions on How to Get to City Hall

You hear such things, you see such things.

* Poway likes to brag that it offers country living in the city. I’m beginning to believe it.

Lost-and-found classified ad in the Poway Chieftain:

“LOST: Red white face calf. Weighs 275 lbs. Last seen behind K-Mart.”

* Tourist to local in downtown San Diego: “How do you get to City Hall?”

First you get some developers to give money, then you hire a political consultant . . .

* The Persian Gulf War is over, but tightened security remains at the downtown county courthouse.

Except for attorneys, cops and court employees, who have a special entrance, no waiting, no checking.

The theory is that no one who works at the courthouse or has official business there could ever, ever do something violent.

By the way: One of the more interesting upcoming trials is that of Larry Hansel.

He’s the former electronics company employee who allegedly returned to the Sorrento Valley plant and killed two former co-workers.

* Confidence.

The Baltimore Bagel Co. shop in San Carlos is advertising its “soon to be famous” whitefish salad.

* Betty Broderick delights in telling reporters that fellow inmates at the Las Colinas Jail for women regard her as a folk hero.

* Under the headline “Never Too Safe,” the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal finds it ironic that a slow-growth initiative is headed to the ballot in San Diego during a recession.

* Yes, that was an In Memoriam notice for Richard III in the classified section of The Times last week.

Placed by a society that thinks he got a bum rap from Shakespeare.

* Have you ever noticed that San Diego politics is an odd combination of informal/homely and cutthroat/nasty?

First, there was the Dump Ed Committee, which aimed at City Councilman Ed Struiksma a few years ago.

And now, the Committee to Ban the Bruce, which desires the scalp of Councilman Bruce Henderson.

Naked Came the Surfer

Nude dudes.

Add this to your file on small-time San Diego County cults: naked midnight surfing, preferably during a full moon.

Josh Beckman, 26, a Scripps Clinic researcher turned artist, says he and his buddies (and an occasional girlfriend) have been buff-surfing for several years.

Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it, he says.

“You’re out on the waves alone, bobbing up and down,” Beckman said. “The moon is glistening off the water, catching the phosphorescent qualities of the water like gold in the darkness.

“It’s almost spiritual.”

The whole thing began as an idea cooked up while imbibing one night at Bully’s restaurant and pub in Del Mar.

Beckman used to study blood disease at Scripps. Now he makes wood and metal furniture and sculptures, including surfboard sculptures.

Although Del Mar is the favorite spot, Beckman says he and the others have also tested the waters off Malibu and Baja.

Jim Lischer, a Del Mar lifeguard, says nighttime surfing is not all that uncommon, although he’s never seen any nude surfers:

“I’d have noticed that right away.”

Then again, Del Mar lifeguards go off duty at 8 p.m.

People do odd things on the surf, Lischer notes. Like the group that went out late at night and carried tiki torches as they rode the waves.

A rival cult, probably.

It’s Called Jailhouse Rock

Police blotter.

* Rock, roll and arrest.

A man in Solana Beach was arrested as a potential “danger to himself” for sitting in his truck and shouting menacingly to bystanders, “Led Zeppelin, Led Zeppelin!”

* Grand theft, nostalgia.

Two gunmen robbed the Baseball Card Company, a sports memorabilia store in Escondido.

The two grabbed 100 cards worth an estimated $3,400, including a Pete Rose rookie card, a 1964 Willie Mays, a Don Drysdale rookie and a 1952 Yogi Berra.