1977 San Diego guide to places likely to eject you

There are places in San Diego to which you should not go wearing a pinwheel hat. This is not an insightful or new piece of knowledge to some, but rather just a tire-somely simple old dogma which they have understood instinctively since diapers. At the same time, however, there are those San Diegans to whom the “pinwheel rule” is as vague and inscrutable a concept as the whole of Euclidean geometry. When it comes time to decide whether or not that propellered beanie is the correct accoutrement for this or that occasion, such people are in deep trouble. And while there-exists no specific social precept, legal statute, or moral maxim which one may cite in support of the pinwheel rule, it is a rule nonetheless.

So it is to those befuddled and Chaplinesque few, and not to the jaded cognoscenti, that the following slices of advice are offered. The culturally inept will appreciate and cradle to their collective bosom this localized list of socially embarrassing pit-falls. Being ushered out of places by your collar gets really old after a while.

1) Avoid “mooning” in the jacuzzi at the Scripps Ranch Recreation Club.

2) Pick someplace other than the Wednesday evening crafts class at the Encanto Senior Citizens’ Activities Building to make your first entrepreneurial pitch about the lush future awaiting hard workers in the plastic sun-visor business.

3) Don’t set your well-chewed three-stick wad of Carefree gum on the edge of the billiard table at the University Club while you chalk up and say, “Now don’t anybody swipe that while I’m shooting.”

4) Never make little, wet, intersecting ring-patterns with a perspiring can of Lite on the coffee table of Lieutenant General and Mrs. Victor H. Krulak.

5) It’s unwise to go to the Palomar Mountain Observatory and attempt to locate Tug’s Tavern, or the yellow van you almost bought, through the 200-inch telescope.

6) Repress the urge to truck out to Camp Pendleton with your girlfriend, a chilled half-gallon of La Mesa Burgundy, and plans to “get to know some of our fighting men.”

7) Do not talk your friends into “burying” you beach-style, just for yuks, in a sand trap by the sixth hole at Whispering Palms Country Club.

8) Try not to raise your voice to shriek “What a ripoff!” when the nice old lady at the San Diego Historical Society informs you that they do not stock TV Guide.

9) It is not considered “casual” to hit the Tambo de Oro Club and ask if it’s okay for you and your friend to play frisbee while waiting for a table.

10) Forget about showing up at the Navy Wives Club of America No. 3’s bake sale with a warm pan of your upstairs neighbor’s special “Berkeley Brownies.”

11) Don’t prance into Lubach’s with a jug of “Mad Dog” (Mogen-David 20-20) under your arm, and ask the maitre d’ if there will be a corkage fee, since your bottle has no cork.

12) You are not advised to schlep into the downtown Chartered Bank of London in a wetsuit and inquire, “Hey, now that England’s lunched out, how many pounds can I get for a dollar?”

13) Make no attempts to impress the older couple at the table next to you at Anthony’s Star of the Sea Room with your “really hilarious and flipped out” impression of Charlie the Tuna drowning.

14) It would not be a good idea for you and your pet beagle Durante, who sniffs everything, to shuffle into Bruce Swinford Interiors to ask how much for an upholstered beach chair made of “fine Corinthian leather.”

15) Nix on storming the tennis courts at La Costa in your Alpha-Beta deck shoes, armed with the semi-stringed Wilson you grabbed for three bucks at the swap meet, and demanding a “blood match” with Pancho Segura, the resident pro.

16) The Sky Room of the La Valencia Hotel is no place to bring a box kite and a pair of nephews, both of whom have red hair, freckles, and the new Star Wars water zappers.

lV) Do not go to David of California for a “quote” on your Bullwinkle watch, which you “hate to part with, but could let go if the price were right.”

18) Try not to collapse in front of the Prince Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church with a feverish look and a dogeared Thomas Brothers mapbook, asking would someone please direct you to Doctor Schweitzer’s hut.

19) Under no circumstances should you approach the Jewish Community Center in a burnoose.

20) As always, one shouldn’t attempt the dining experience at the Fontainebleau Room of the Westgate Plaza Hotel in one’s swimfins.