After Floundering Around, Angler Snags Dream Catch
Frank Cerrito doesn’t go fishing just for the hell of it. He goes for the halibut, and he caught a big one at the Santa Monica Bay Halibut Derby.
“What’s funny is that I had a dream (the night before) that I was going to win the derby,” he said. “The dream seemed so real, I told my buddies about it. Then I went out and hooked up something big and I thought, ‘This is way too heavy to be a halibut.’ I thought it must be a shark or a bat ray, for sure.”
Instead, it turned out to be the mother of all flounders, or close to it. The 42 1/2-pound specimen was the longest, at 48 1/2 inches, and the second-heaviest in the nine-year history of the competition, which was held earlier this month.
In the course of a 10-minute standoff between man and fish, the flounder “ripped off about half my line on its first run,” said Cerrito, a Manhattan Beach accountant.
“When it finally came to the top, it was angled straight at us with its mouth open, but when it straightened out and laid flat I couldn’t believe its size. I knew it was the winner.” Indeed, Cerrito emerged victorious in the derby’s individual competition.
Almost 1,600 anglers turned out for the yearly event, which raises money for the Santa Monica Boys’ and Girls’ Club and to help fund halibut research and hatchery work done by the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History.
SPEAKING OF BIG ONES: The opening of a state-of-the-art book, music, magazine, computer software and coffee complex at the Wilshire end of the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica introduced shoppers to a new wrinkle in cultural consumerism--the maitre d’.
Well, not exactly a maitre d’ , more like a host. But he was wearing a well-cut suit and European accent to match, all part of efforts by the Barnes & Noble chain to put its best foot forward for the opening of its largest outlet west of the Hudson.
“In Santa Monica, you’re dealing with a customer who has a higher disposable income and who’s very well-educated,” said Susan Scherrard, manager of the 42,000-square-foot emporium.
“They’re either here to pass some recreational time or to get a specific book, and we’re here to serve them,” she said, boasting of a 125,000-strong title list front-loaded with entries from independent publishers and academic presses.
“We really want to step out for the customer,” she said.
Although the opening days were an “overwhelming, overwhelming, overwhelming” success, she said, with “thousands and thousands” of visitors, Scherrard didn’t want to give out any numbers: “After all, Borders is opening down the street in a few months.”
It is indeed, all of which makes the Promenade’s existing booksellers quake in their dust covers.
Scherrard said she will try to get along with stores like the nearby Midnight Special by referring customers rather than trying to match its eclectic title list.
But David Joslin, manager of Midnight Special, was not consoled.
“What the superstores are doing, not just in Santa Monica, is to move into a neighborhood . . . where independent bookstores have created a market, plunk themselves down in the middle and take the entire market,” he said. “We’re totally worried about it.”
With Barnes & Noble offering deep discounts and Borders offering an eclectic title list of its own, Joslin’s forecast is grim.
“It’ll end with five or six buyers in New York deciding for all of America what to buy . . . a narrow set of choices down the line. We’ve got a political mission here at Midnight Special, and we’ll do what it takes to keep it going, and that is to give everyone a voice, not to let it be dictated by corporate capital.”
