Police Took Thief’s Fashion Statement After Brief Encounter

Dressed for success (not).

County marshals and San Diego cops went to arrest a teen-ager in North Park on a no-bail felony warrant for auto theft Tuesday about mid-morning.

But the fellow took flight and began running several blocks, apparently hoping to lose himself in the neighborhood crowd. That’s often a good tactic in such cases.

Not this time. The men in uniform had no trouble spotting the fugitive amid all the neighbors and bystanders.

He was the one dressed only in white underpants.

Now he’s in County Jail, where he’s been given a complete outfit.

* Bumper sticker on a battered VW in North County: “Give Me Veggies or Give Me Death.”

* Peter Navarro suspects the Susan Golding camp of planting hecklers and agents provocateur at mayoral campaign events in an effort to get him to lose his cool and cause a (media-worthy) scene.

After a forum Tuesday hosted by the Adams Avenue Business Assn., a man in the mid-30s got in Navarro’s face and rudely gave him what-for, politically speaking.

When Navarro told him to go away, the man whipped out a tiny tape recorder and crowed that he had captured the whole contretemps on tape. Navarro smells ambush:

“This is the kind of stuff Gorton must have done in high school.”

(That’s a reference to George Gorton, the Golding campaign strategist who was a minor Watergate figure and rates a few pages in the Woodward-Bernstein book “All the President’s Men.”)

Dan McAllister, Golding’s campaign manager, says the man at the forum was not a Golding plant. He adds that Navarro is off base in his suspicion:

“He has a very active and many times almost paranoid imagination.”

* Now making the (underground) rounds at San Diego State University: Very large and green Day Dollars.

Facsimile dollar bills with a scowling President Thomas Day in place of George Washington.

On the flip side, the motto: “Day’s Magic Money. Now You See It. Now You Don’t.”

Laying All Cards on the Table

Winners and losers.

* When to hold ‘em, when to fold ‘em.

Roger Hedgecock did not appear at the City Council meeting Monday afternoon to defend the casino proposal that the council was in the process of killing.

But he was at City Hall talking casino business.

After meeting with City Clerk Chuck Abdelnour, Hedgecock filed a form saying he’s a lobbyist for the Commerce Club casino operation, something he had denied previously.

In filing the form, Hedgecock swore he hasn’t spent any money or received any money but conceded trying to sway public officials through private meetings.

Abdelnour had sent Hedgecock a letter after a story in The Times detailed his behind-the-scenes efforts.

“We were very clear that he has to file as a lobbyist,” Abdelnour said of the meeting, which took place just minutes after the council’s 8-0 vote.

* Sign on Highway 101 in Solana Beach: “Frogs Parking Only.”

No, not amphibians in BMWs. A new exercise club.

* Libertarians are tired of not being heard.

Dick Rider, president emeritus of the San Diego group, is holding twice-monthly sessions to teach members how to write punchy letters to the editor.

* Both the San Diego City Council and the Board of Supervisors are pleading with the Navy to rethink the demotion and censure of Vice Adm. John Fetterman.

Fetterman, now stationed in Florida, was punished for his supposed lax handling of a sexual harassment case.

The council and board both remember Fetterman as cooperative on military-civilian issues when he was the commander in San Diego. Supervisor George Bailey says Fetterman’s punishment “seems patently unfair.”

We Wood Love to Come

The Quayle school of spelling.

San Diego Councilman John Hartley is hosting a big bash today in Old Town for friends, political supporters, civic activists, etc.

In big letters on the front of the invitation (mailed out to several hundred folks) is the councilman’s cheery greeting: “YOUR INVITED.”