Balboa May Wind Up Getting the Ax Again

First it was Christopher Columbus whose historic role was hotly debated: sainted explorer or cultural rapist?

Now it’s Vasco Nunez de Balboa (1475-1519), the Spaniard who “discovered” the Pacific Ocean and whose name adorns San Diego’s most revered park.

Two longtime San Diegans, Elizabeth and Gaye North, want to donate a $150,000 statue of Balboa for the park. The statue is being sculpted by a Tijuana artist.

But the city’s Commission for Arts and Culture last Friday voted, 4 to 2 (with two abstentions), to recommend against putting the Balboa statue in Balboa Park.

Some commissioners said celebrating Balboa would be tantamount to condoning the bloodshed that Balboa and his fellow adventurers wrought on the native tribes.

On the other hand, Alfonso de Bourbon, a Columbus researcher who lives in La Jolla, says that rejecting the statue could offend the Spanish government, which is sending replicas of the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria to San Diego next year for the Columbus celebration.

The decision is up to the City Council, starting today with the Public Facilities and Recreation Committee.

Councilwoman Judy McCarty, the committee chairwoman, remains 100% behind the statue. Reject it and you might as well change the park’s name, she says.

But Councilman John Hartley, whose district includes Balboa Park and whose support for the statue was thought solid, is now “reassessing.”

The issue also may come up Friday at a debate sponsored by the Coalition for Arts and Culture between Councilman Bruce Henderson and challenger Valerie Stallings.

Stallings says she has no position re Balboa. Henderson sees both sides of the question:

“I’m not ashamed of Balboa, Columbus or the Pilgrim fathers, but, in truth, the Indians had a beautiful culture, and it was destroyed, and that’s a shame.”

If he’s watching from conquistador heaven, this debate is nothing new to Balboa.

He was lured back to Spain in 1518 under false pretenses by his enemies and put on trial for treason and maltreatment of Indians. And beheaded in January, 1519.

Now, that’s practicing political correctness with a vengeance.

Playing Footsie at UCSD

Him and Her.

* Police at UC San Diego are investigating the Case of the Persistent Foot Fondler.

A young man (a non-student) was escorted off campus by UCSD cops after a woman accused him of crawling under a library table and fondling her feet.

Earlier, the woman had given him permission to sketch pictures of her feet while she studied.

When he started fondling, she told him to quit it; he returned later on hands and knees.

Two other women have also told cops that they have been approached by a man asking to draw their bare feet.

* Classified ad in the Daily Aztec, the student newspaper at San Diego State: “23-year-old male needs to get married. $20,000. Call Randy . . . “

Randy says he’s gotten about 40 phone calls and is holding “auditions.” He won’t explain further: “It’s a personal matter.”

* A note on the bulletin board at the San Diego Union provides Anita Hill’s address at the University of Oklahoma: in case anyone wants to send notes of support.

Scrawled beneath (in male-looking handwriting): “Please allow 10 yrs. for reply.”

Adding to the Don’t List

It says here.

* If nothing else, Supervisor Brian Bilbray likes to stay current.

After Anita Hill’s charges became public, Bilbray issued an order to his staff: Anyone indulging in sexual harassment will be fired.

Now, after the scuffle between an aide to Councilman Bruce Henderson and a 78-year-old anti-Henderson heckler, Bilbray has issued another staff directive:

Anyone assaulting senior citizens will be fired.

* Sheriff’s deputies came running when a call went out that an inmate was escaping down the side of the El Cajon Jail the other night. Even the helicopter circled above.

Yes, there was a man in overalls going down the side of the jail on a rope. A window washer doing his job.

* Newly established in San Diego: An atheist hot line.

In case you wake up in the middle of the night with the dread fear that maybe there is a God.