San Diego Receives Another Blow to an Already Soured Self-Esteem

Pretty is as pretty smells. Or: the offal truth.

Stinky stuff is exiting rapidly from a large pipe off Point Loma, and boosterish burghers are dearly worried.

No doubt about it, the sewage spill is downright bad for the civic image. Like an explosively juicy cold sore on your upper lip the night of the junior prom.

One TV reporter converts the 180 million gallons a day into so-many San Diego Jack Murphy Stadiums filled to the brim. (Thanks a lot. I’ll never be able to attend another Padres game without thinking of that.)

Enough already of this excremental vision of America’s Finest City. There is an even more immediate outrage: “The Time Travel Companion: Your All-In-One Guide To America’s Top Cities and Resorts.”

Time magazine (circulation 4.1 million) provides the guide (192 pages, full-color, super slick) to its re-enlistment customers. Printed long before the spill, copies are just now arriving in the mail.

You might as well hear it from a friend: San Diego Is Not Listed!!

No Hotel del Coronado, La Valencia, Rancho Santa Fe Inn or Sheraton Grande Torrey Pines. Not even the Dolphin Motel in Point Loma, which offers hot tubs, hotter movies and a three-hour rate for $20.50.

Those tourist paradises of Detroit, Houston, Pittsburgh and St. Louis are given copious coverage, along with the usual suspects: Seattle, San Francisco, New York, etc. Twenty cities in all, but no San Diego.

A spokesman for Time-Warner in New York--who swears he loves San Diego and vacationed here as a kid--says the magazine meant no offense. Sure, buddy. Of such slights are Newsweek readers born.

Al Reese of the Convention & Visitors Bureau promises a “what-for” letter to Peter Finkbeiner-Zellmann, the German travel writer hired to put out the guide. Reese suspects he’s never been here.

“We will invite him to visit San Diego,” Reese says, “before he puts out another edition of this little gem.”

Merrill Harrison, 74, of North Park, who was among those San Diegans alerting me to the “Companion” insult, suggests that San Diego, tourist-wise, has too much effluent these days to attract the affluent.

But you’ve probably heard enough of that kind of disloyal humor recently.

The Hard Way to Get a Story

They said it.

* A reporter I know is still vexed by the response of a receptionist for a North County surgeon.

Turned down for an interview with the doctor (for a totally upbeat story), the reporter asked if there was any way he could get even a few minutes with him.

The receptionist replied icily that, yes, the reporter could suffer a major trauma and be taken to the emergency room where the doc occasionally works.

* Insiders say Rep. Bill Lowery (R-San Diego) and Gov. Wilson’s chief of staff, Bob White, played key roles in getting $10 million from the state and federal governments to help repair the ripped sewage pipe.

* Humble beginnings.

San Diego lawyer Byron Georgiou announced his candidacy Tuesday for the Democratic nomination in the 49th Congressional District.

His announcement speech attracted more spies (two) from a rival campaign than it did reporters (one).

* Life imitates surfing.

Part of the sewage-fouled area off Point Loma is a spot that surfers have long called Garbage, because of choppy waves. Now there’s a second reason.

* Hilary Clinton, wife of Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, comes to San Diego Feb. 25 to speak to a fund-raiser for her husband’s presidential campaign.

* “Right Stuff” hero Chuck Yeager hosts a fund-raiser for Duke Cunningham next Monday in Mission Valley.

* San Diego Police Chief Bob Burgreen has dropped the department ban on male officers wearing earrings while off-duty and on police premises.

* Two men peering in the window at Victoria’s Secret, the naughty lingerie store at Fashion Valley.

One then says: “I don’t have to marry to hide my sexual insecurity.” Go figure.

Thursday’s His Lucky Day

Russ T. Nailz, 91X disc jockey and Pacific Beach Improv comedian, has just been named San Diego’s “Best Local Media Eccentric” by First Thursday magazine.

He’s also been on the Third Thursday television show:

“Two more Thursdays, and I’ll have a complete set.”