What Goes Up Is Coming Down the Mountain

Robert Chang says he’s scaling Mt. Everest this month because it’s there--the trash left behind by generations of climbers.

Chang is one of several Bay Area men paying their own way to climb clean up the world’s tallest mountain, to spend two months collecting junk discarded on the slopes. Among the tons of litter are empty oxygen tanks, beer and wine bottles, food packages, shreds of tents and clothes--the detritus of more than a quarter-million climbers.

Said Chang, of Santa Clara: “People might have laughed at us 25 years ago to hear we are going to climb Mt. Everest just to clean up garbage. But we hope to demonstrate that it takes a tremendous amount of effort to clean up our environment once it’s been badly trashed.”

“It’s an incredible eyesore,” pointed out fellow climber Douglas Marsh, “especially when you consider that it’s piling up in such a beautiful setting.”

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King Congress Mother Jones, the anti-institutional San Francisco-based magazine, has issued its “Diddly Awards” to “our do-nothing Congress,” and California’s delegation ranks high.

Finalist for Best Prop in a Congressional Performance: diminutive Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer, whose campaign Web site sold “Boxer Shorts.”

Finalist for “Letitia Baldrige Award for Etiquette”: Randy “Duke” Cunningham (R-San Diego), discussing his prostate cancer operation at a public event, characterizing it as “just not natural, unless maybe you’re Barney Frank”--the gay Massachusetts congressman.

Winner of “Most Gracious Assistance Provided by a Constituent Award”: actor/director Dennis Hopper, lamenting the retirement of Newt Gingrich and pledging: “When you want to run for president, I will be there.”

And winning the “Billy Carter Award for Most Amusing Political Relative”: Rep. Mary Bono (R-Palm Springs), who said of her decision to keep her children in California with a nanny: “My effectiveness as a human being will be a lot greater as a member of Congress than car-pooling.”

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Boot-up camp New graduates of the Marine Corps’ two boot camps, in San Diego and North Carolina, may one day soon be issued two items that prove they’re full-fledged warriors: an M-16 and a laptop. A Department of Defense request is in to Congress to give every successful recruit a cyber-weapon, allowing them to train online and e-mail home each week to Mom.

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Words’ worth The ballad of Surfside Cafe has been sung, and Marc Gorin is the man who wrote the winning words.

John Alonge and Larry Broughton made the Carpinteria restaurant a success, and decided that rather than sell it outright, they preferred to turn it over to the right person.

They launched a competition: For $100 and the winning essay of 400 words or fewer about the dream of owning the Surfside Cafe, the place would be yours. From thousands of entries, the partners have turned the keys over to Marc Gorin, a hotel school graduate from South Africa. His essay began, “In my youth, I had a dream, which as I grew, became a scheme, to find a seaside, special nook, where I could wait, serve and cook.”

The old owners wouldn’t say exactly how many $100 essay entries they received, but 10% of the proceeds will go to the nonprofit Clean Water Action environmental group.

“We were flooded with entries,” Alonge said, “and you wanted to give a piece of the restaurant to everyone.”

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One-offs Phoenix, the San Jose dog whose owner tied him to a car and dragged him for 10 blocks because he wouldn’t behave, is recovering nicely. . . . After banning mercury thermometers as a health hazard, San Francisco begins a swap program to exchange old thermometers for free new digital ones. . . . The $500,000 house is free to a charity, but the hitch in entrepreneur Ali Moghaddam’s gift is that the taker has to have a lot to put it on, and land in Silicon Valley is at a premium.

EXIT LINE

“He would laugh, he would love it.”

--Karyn Hunt, of her former co-worker, the late San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen. Caen’s FBI files, obtained by APBnews.com, characterize him as a “nit-wit . . . a liar, no good, and a gossipmonger, who constantly ridicules the United States government.” “He thrives on secondhand information written to suit his own personal distorted sense of humor,” an agent wrote in a 1958 memo.

California Dateline appears every other Tuesday.

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Artichokes Aplenty

Springtime is the peak artichoke production time in California, which grows more than 90% of the nations supply of the thistlelike plant. Here are the tons produced and the value to growers during the last eight seasons:

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VALUE YEAR TONS (in millions) 1992 55,200 $43.5 1993 50,600 $51.5 1994 59,800 $67.5 1995 40,950 $62.0 1996 44,500 $65.4 1997 46,500 $74.0 1998 43,650 $61.6 1999 56,250 $63.7

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Source: California Agricultural Statistics Service

Researched by TRACY THOMAS/Los Angeles Times