What a Long, Strange Snip It’s Been for Tom Hayden

Hair today, gone tomorrow.

State Sen. Tom Hayden’s hair has always been a good indicator of his persona del politico.

Wild and tousled in his to-the-ramparts years as a founding member of the 1960s generation. Fashionably longish during his early public-office period, and, during his losing run for mayor of Los Angeles, nicely coiffed, with silver streaks amid a handsome profusion of dark gray.

Now the Democratic legislator has returned from a family vacation with a new hairdo, described by an aide as a “no-do do.”

While he and his wife were visiting her family in Canada, Hayden decided to hack his hair down to the barest stubble. His wife, a niece and a nephew decided to do the same.

Hayden said that he wanted the cooling influence of a bare head while playing baseball in the summer sun. His wife, Canadian actress Barbara Williams, figured the cut would make her look like Sinead O’Connor.

Hayden, who retained his facial hair, insists that his self-shearing has no political symbolism and that he is not shifting his views, say, to those of the clean-pated Jesse Ventura.

“I will go to sleep tonight with a clear conscience, knowing I have told you the entire truth,” Hayden said.

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Community journalism: Anyone who thinks American newspapers have gone soft hasn’t been reading the weekly Calexico Chronicle in recent years.

The Chronicle (circulation 3,000) did its best to print the news and raise hell in the Imperial Valley town just this side of the U.S.-Mexico border. Not everyone was pleased as publisher Lupe Acuna and editor Hildy Carrillo-Rivera turned a skeptical eye toward civic business.

One aggrieved local hospital official sued. There were mutterings of an advertising boycott. The school superintendent booted the paper off campus, and the manager of the Greyhound station was sore offended by the review of his depot.

Now an eight-year run has come to an end. Carrillo-Rivera took a job with the Chamber of Commerce and Acuna has sold the Chronicle to Steve Larson, publisher of the Holtville Tribune.

Larson has retained the Chronicle staff--Rosa Nogueda, Lupe Rodriguez and Consuelo Cuen--and promises no change in the paper’s no-fear approach to journalism.

“When I’ve got something to say, I say it,” Larson said. “I’m pretty good at stirring up trouble.”

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Lid lifters: If you’re at a party and stuck for conversation openers, try one of these:

* The Serra Mortuary in Daly City in Northern California throws in a free turkey for the grieving family: 1,200 last year.

Morticians will even have the bird cooked and home-delivered. One catch: no turkey for families who choose cremation and no service.

* The tiny panda born Saturday at the San Diego Zoo is making a squawking sound like a parrot. That’s a healthy sign.

* There have been no arrests yet despite an appeal from the San Diego Police Department for public assistance in finding the fellow who used a gun to rob an X-rated bookstore of a “sexual aid item.”

Police suspect the robbery was a prank inspired by Austin Powers movies. But when a gun is involved, cops have no sense of humor.

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One-offs: A federal judge in San Diego has ruled in favor of practitioners of African hairbraiding who said it is unfair that the state requires them to get a cosmetologist’s license. The time and cost of getting such a license has prevented many braiders from going public. . . . Seen on the San Diego Freeway, a Lexus with the bumper sticker “Earth First. We’ll Ruin The Other Planets Later.” . . . In San Francisco, pro-marijuana billboards are popping up: “Honk If You Inhale” and “A Pot Smoker Is Busted Every 45 Seconds--and You Wonder Why We’re Paranoid.”

EXIT LINE

“[Bleep] Netanyahu and Pinochet.”

--Sign placed in a window of his UC San Diego dormitory by Ben Shapiro of Hidden Hills in protest of Pinochet’s rule of Chile and Netanyahu’s alleged support of biological weapons. For violating the campus ban on “fighting words,” officials sentenced Shapiro to three hours of community service. The punishment was dropped after the ACLU filed suit claiming violation of Shapiro’s 1st Amendment rights.

California Dateline appears every other Tuesday.

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Hate Crime in California

More hate crimes occur in private residences than in any other type of location.

The 1,750 hate crimes cataloged in California last year, broken down by the 10 most common locations:

* Although these crimes include murder, rape and robbery, most are assault, intimidation and vandalism.

Source: State Department of Justice; researched by TRACY THOMAS/L.A. Times