Without the Blue Haze, Boxing as an Art Goes Down the Tubes

You and I go to a boxing match, and we see two pugs furiously using their fists on each other’s bodies like meat tenderizers.

Steven Brezzo, director of the San Diego Museum of Art, goes to a boxing match and sees the stuff of art: a physical and symbolic struggle that has captivated the muse ever since the ancients.

“It was the Greeks who had the perception that man was the master of his own fate,” Brezzo said, “that even though the Gods were against him, he could challenge them if he had enough guts and hubris , he could wrap his fists with leather and fight.”

Not for nothing, Brezzo notes, does Homer include a lengthy account of a prizefight, this about 3,000 years before Don King.

Brezzo, 47, has written for Ring magazine on boxing and art. He has lectured on Jack Johnson.

Now he’s provided an essay for “The Artist at Ringside,” a book of boxing art published by an Ohio gallery and the National Art Museum of Sport in Indianapolis.

The book includes 83 works (line drawings, painting, sculpture, acrylic), from illustrations in Harper’s Weekly in the 1890s to the work of George Bellows, Thomas Hart Benton, Clifford Odets and Andy Warhol.

Writes Brezzo:

“When anonymous, the rendered fighter assumes the aura of everyman. Ecce homo , one against the many. He cuts, bleeds, gasps, rises light-headed from the canvas and struggles against the onslaught of his opponent and the ever-present clock.”

Like a lot of us, some of Brezzo’s earliest father-son memories from the 1950s are watching the Friday night fights on TV, a small screen but classic battles.

As a Philadelphian, he frequented the Blue Horizon, an arena of great renown and indifferent maintenance. Arriving in San Diego in the 1970s, he haunted the downtown Coliseum and is still among its mourners.

Now he goes to the monthly cards at the more-antiseptic San Diego Sports Arena, but something is missing:

“To see boxing in an arena without smoke is like watching a wedding on television. You need that blue haze, that saturated sense of the club atmosphere, the cultural spectacle. That’s what it’s all about.”

Kolender Plays Coy Again

It all depends.

* Along with failed mayoral candidates Tom Carter and Councilman Ron Roberts, one of those being talked about for the top job at the San Diego Chamber of Commerce is Bill Kolender, the former San Diego police chief now in Sacramento as boss of the California Youth Authority.

Says Kolender: “I’m not even looking at it. I like what I’m doing. Nobody has talked to me about it. I’m happy where I am.”

Then again, in the past, Kolender’s not been the most reliable source of information on employment matters.

On his two job switches since 1988--from chief to Union-Tribune executive, from U-T exec to CYA boss--he denied any move was in the offing--right up until the day the announcement was made.

* Raoul Lowery Contreras, the San Diego-based syndicated columnist, calls to report what he sees as a cultural contradiction: a car with bumper stickers espousing abortion rights and animal rights.

* Objectivity is such a bore.

Headline in Encinitas Coast Dispatch: “State Looks to Steal $2 Million From City.”

Getting Attention of Police

An older man in the Muirlands section of La Jolla is mowing his lawn when he sees something unusual among the greenery.

He picks it up and puts it aside. Maybe he’ll take it to the cops when he has time.

Two days later he’s on his way to play golf so he decides to drop the mysterious thing off at the Police Department’s Northern Division station.

He strolls in and drops the thing ker-plunk on the counter. “Do with it what you will,” he says.

The cops, having some knowledge of such things, make hasty exits. “We had cops scattering in 40 directions,” said Lt. Dan Johnson.

The station is evacuated, the man is detained (gently) in the parking lot, and the Fire Department’s Explosive Device Team is called.

The thing is hauled off gingerly and diagnosed as the remnants of an exploded pipe bomb.

“The fellow was very casual about it,” Johnson said.