Hot Line Netted More Than Calls About Beating Verdict

Look here.

* Tale of two cities.

While Los Angeles burned, San Diego set up a hot line so residents could vent their anger toward the Rodney King verdict and thus prevent looting and violence.

Some of the calls--hundreds of which were received the first night alone--went further than just venting.

One of the first was fielded by Mayor Maureen O’Connor from someone with a tip about a late-night rip off being planned at a shopping center.

“Here, you need to talk to the police chief,” said O’Connor, sending the call to Bob Burgreen.

When the burglars got to their target, police were waiting with open arms.

* An admiral’s aide, one of the women mauled by naval officers at the Las Vegas convention of the San Diego-based Tailhook Assn., told investigators:

“It would have been different if I had walked into a low-life biker bar in San Diego and gotten mugged . . . but these were my peers.”

The investigative report, released last week, also decries the use of “obscene drink dispensers” at the convention, specifically, a plastic rhinoceros with booze spouting from the penis.

* The general manager of the trendy Sfuzzi restaurant in the Gaslamp Quarter says it was a mistake that a young North County couple--both lawyers--were refused service because they were dressed in shorts and T-shirts.

Mark Bialock, the GM, says Sfuzzi has no such dress code.

Arriving just as Sfuzzi opened for dinner business, the lawyer-couple was archly redirected to the rowdy, anything-goes Dick’s Last Resort down the block.

Bialock says it must have been a “misinformed” new employee who did the deed; he promises no repeats.

* How dangerous is the abortion controversy?

To get Faye Wattleton, immediate past president of Planned Parenthood of America, to come to San Diego on May 29 to address the San Diego Lawyers Club, the group had to agree to supply a bodyguard.

It’s a standard part of Wattleton’s speaking contract (along with a $5,000 fee).

Purr-fectly Clear

Whirl without end.

* Vanity plate on a Jaguar driven by a blond and spotted in Del Mar: I PURR 2.

* How can you tell the four “major” candidates for San Diego mayor from the two “minor” ones?

The former support the continued the use of undercover cops on school campuses to catch drug users and sellers. The latter do not.

“I don’t think we should teach kids to narc on their friends or keep secrets and turn them over to Big Brother,” says magician-candidate Loch David Crane.

* Rep. Bill Lowery says he quit the congressional race against fellow Republican Rep. Randy Cunningham because he feared it would get dirty.

Maybe he was thinking of two adjacent signs in Escondido: A big Cunningham for Congress sign, next to a sign for The Dirt Connection, Import and Export.

As for Lowery’s aversion to hardball campaigning, Ed Millican, now a community college history teacher in San Bernardino, notes: “I wish he’d have made his conversion 15 years ago.”

When Lowery beat Millican in 1977 for the San Diego City Council, Millican’s campaign was hit by flyers distributed to church-goers proclaiming “Homosexuals Support Millican.”

* Troy X. Kelley, a Democratic hopeful in the 49th Congressional District, thinks he’ll ignore the fund-raising letter asking him and his wife to contribute $2,000 to Skip Cox.

After all, Cox is chasing the Republican nomination in the same district.

Tale of 2 Georges

J. B. Forman of San Diego writes me to answer the (never-asked) question: Is it possible for someone to have seen, in person, both George Washington and George Burns.

He writes: “Yes, provided that the person was born in 1799 and lived to be 97 years old. Washington died at age 67 in Dec. 1799. Burns was born in 1896.

“Said person--a year old when Washington was alive--would be 97 when Burns was a year old.”

There you have it.

Washington and Burns, yes. As for Millard Fillmore and Tony Danza, don’t count on it.