Talk Isn't Cheap. . .

TIME IS MONEY: Some 300 friends and colleagues gathered at the Bahia Hotel on Mission Bay to honor Chuck Abdelnour, who retired this summer after nearly 30 years as San Diego’s city clerk. And two dozen prominent citizens took to the dais to share reminiscences about the City Hall legend. The common theme: verbosity. “Chuck could have a 20-minute conversation with a stopwatch,” one old friend cracked. Which recalls a favorite Abdelnour item that appeared in my daily newspaper column a few years back. Just home from a Washington, D.C., visit, Chuck was strolling up C Street near his office when he was accosted by a panhandler who asked for a quarter. Chuck was instantly engaged. “Have you ever been to our nation’s capital?” he asked the beggar. “Yes,” the fellow replied. “Well, I’m just back from there,” Chuck said. “What a beautiful city. Incredible number of panhandlers in Washington. Way more than San Diego. They’re particularly thick out in front of the FBI and IRS offices,” he went on. At which point the exasperated panhandler cut in. “Listen,” he said. “I can’t afford to stand here and talk to you for a quarter. I’m gonna need a dollar for this.”

SAN DIEGO SHUFFLE: Full speed ahead: The USS Midway Aircraft Carrier Museum, branded as folly by opponents, more than doubled first-year attendance projections with 880,000 visitors. And last month, it logged its millionth visitor. Of more than 100 historic ship museums in the U.S., the Midway logged twice as many visitors than the next-closest competitor . . . San Diego Councilman Brian Maienschein, who opted out of the mayor’s race this year amid turmoil at City Hall, has revealed his long-range political strategy to friends. With the resignations under fire of Mayor Dick Murphy and Councilmembers Michael Zucchet and Ralph Inzunza, Maienschein quips: “My strategy for being mayor is just to be the last man standing.” . . . Fifth & Hawthorn, the long-lived neighborhood restaurant popular with the theater crowd, is being pushed out of its Balboa Park neighborhood by new development. But surviving partner Dave Witt carries on. He plans to reopen early next year in the refurbished North Park Theatre complex. That’s at 29th and University, so he may want to consider a name change for Fifth & Hawthorn.

POLITICAL FAT: Okay, it’s not Strippergate, but radio’s Cliff Albert was involved in his own bit of city council influence-peddling last month. Opposed to a new Home Depot project in his east El Cajon neighborhood, Albert saw an upcoming council meeting as an opportunity. With testimony expected to stretch over several hours, Albert had two dozen Krispy Kreme donuts delivered to El Cajon Mayor Mark Lewis and the council for sustenance. At that night’s meeting, Lewis fully disclosed Albert’s “gift” and then, just before midnight, made the motion to approve the dreaded project. But later that week, Albert had the last word. Along with his business card, he sent the mayor a box of Ding-Dongs.

ENTRE NEWS: Political consultants estimate Steve Francis may have spent up to $3 million of his own pocket change on his doomed bid for the mayor’s job. With a final tally of about 57,000 votes, that puts Francis’ cost at more than half a buck a vote. By contrast, Jerry Sanders, who beat Francis to make the November runoff, spent about 7 cents a vote, his handlers say . . . World’s pickiest mates: A biologist at UCSD made the August issue of the journal Animal Behavior with the results of her study on fiddler crabs. According to Catherine de Rivera’s research, female fiddler crabs may check out 100 or more male fiddler crabs before finally deciding on a mate. “As far as I know, no other species has been observed sampling nearly as many candidates as the California fiddler crab,” says de Rivera, who may never have met Paris Hilton . . . One small symptom of the boondoggle that is the city of San Diego’s pension system: Bruce Herring, who quit last month after 30 years as a bureaucrat in the city manager’s office, will collect more than 86 percent of his peak salary, retiring on $144,000 a year.

QUOTEWORTHY: When Jeanne “Dear Abby” Phillips spoke at a luncheon here sponsored by the Vista Hill Foundation and the local Alzheimer’s Association, it was the first time she’d appeared before a large audience to talk about the Alzheimer’s that has afflicted her mother, Pauline, the creator of the Dear Abby column. And she spoke lovingly and humorously about how the disease has affected her relationship with her mother, who’s in the middle stage of Alzheimer’s. On her mother’s capacity for sharing, she quipped, “My mother lovingly addicted me to chocolate as a child. Then, as her disease progressed, she lost her taste for chocolate. I felt abandoned.” And on her fear that family genetics might put her at higher risk of getting the disease: “I do crossword puzzles. I don’t know if that’s going to keep me from getting Alzheimer’s one day—but at least I can chart my decline.”

Listen for Tom Blair’s Friday reports on KOGO News Radio (600 AM) at 7:25 a.m. You can also click here to listen to his column.

Items for the magazine or radio may be e-mailed to tblair@sandiegomag.com.

© 2006 San Diego Magazine

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