Photo by Sandy Huffaker, Jr.

Tijuana estuary. “Back then, business was booming. Potential was unbelievable. You had all that estuary down there, a boat marina coming in just tomorrow, for sure."

Looking at Imperial Beach today, there are two things to remember — make that three. First, after six decades of sewage hell, the end is in sight, ground has been broken. That’s right, buckaroo, phase 1 has begun: a 42-inch-diameter pipeline to be finished by December 1995. That line will return overflow sewage to the Tijuana sewer system. Next, a $338 million advanced primary treatment plant, capable of treating 25 million gallons of sewage a day. That’s supposed to go online in 1996. Then, in 1997, a secondary treatment plant. Finally, in 1998, a 3.5-mile sewage-discharge tunnel, pumping treated sewage far out into the ocean. Six, seven, eight years from now, IB’s polluted beaches will be bitter memory. There will be some inevitable delay; you can’t build anything big in this country without lawsuits, and some have already been filed on this project. Certainly, the project will go over budget, and there will be further delay grubbing for more money, but in the end, in the foreseeable future, the fix is on the way.

James Scheck: “My tenants are pretty much minimum-wage workers or welfare. The one-bedroom units are rented almost completely with entitlement programs."

The second thing to remember is that IB has a distorted reputation in regard to crime. According to the San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG), crime in Imperial Beach is below county average and well below Chula Vista and National City.

Year of Survey: 1991

• Violent Crime Rate (Willful homicide, forcible rape, robbery, aggravated assault)
• Victims (per 1000 residents)
• National City 16.7
• Chula Vista 11.0
• San Diego County Overall 9.7
• Imperial Beach 8.7
• Property Crime Rate (Burglary, larceny theft, and motor vehicle theft)
• Victims (per 1000 residents)
• National City 76.7
• Chula Vista 66.8
• San Diego County Overall 58.5
• Imperial Beach 42.9

"I just served notice on a guy with four kids up on Mendocino Street. He just don’t want to work."

The third thing to remember is that local politics in Imperial Beach is, frankly, quite insane. There is a viciousness, a personalization of issues that goes beyond the pale. There are two camps, each with a local publication behind them, roughly little-growth vs. growth, and both sides go for the throat, the belly, and the jugular. Interaction between the two factions is done by way of slander and innuendo. Civil discussion of public issues has, for some time, been impossible. Since most of us simply live in cities — we go to the store, we have friends over, send our kids to school, drop by the local pub, and have a life without ever interacting with city politicians — this unhappy situation should pose no particular problem for anyone considering living in IB. But if you have a taste for local politics, beware.

Alan Winkelman: “In 1972 the town was white, a few Hispanic but they lived further east, out near 13th and Imperial Beach Boulevard. There was a lot more military here then."

According to the 1990 census, the population of IB is 26,512, broken down to 59 percent Caucasian, 28 percent Hispanic, 7 percent Asian/Pacific Islands, 4 percent African-American. The average three-bedroom house sells for $165,000, rents for middle-class houses run from $795 to a $1000, apartments start at $350.

Blair King: “I would hope in five years that there have been some physical improvements along the bayfront area of Imperial Beach, some median landscaping."

Imperial Beach has not escaped the national trend, to wit: our country is getting poorer. One way that fact shows up is the percentage of owner-occupied housing units. From 1970 to 1990, owner-occupied housing units in Chula Vista dropped from just at 60 percent to just at 50 percent. National City went down from 45 percent to under 30 percent. Imperial Beach sank from 40 percent to 27 percent.

Steve Haskins: "Imperial Beach, in something like 435 cities in the state, we are the last, we are the 435th in per capita sales tax."

The way cities get a good portion of their money is through property taxes and retail sales. In 1970 IB had less than $1000 in per capita retail sales while National City and Chula Vista trapped a little more than $2000 in per capita retail sales. By 1990 Chula Vista had grown to $8000 per capita retail sales, and National City was above $16,000. Imperial Beach fell far behind, under $2000. Imperial Beach has had to fight to remain a city.

Alan Winkelman owns Ye Olde Plank Inn, founded in 1890. It’s a neighborhood beach bar located on the corner of Palm and Sea Coast, Imperial Beach. The ambiance outside is British pub, Midlands; inside it’s American, West Coast beach, employed.

We sat on his patio sipping coffee in the morning sun. Winkelman is past 60 years of age and stands tall, well over six feet. He has long, long, gray hair tied in a ponytail and an oval, clean-shaven pixie face, the kind that has a smile waiting to break through. He speaks in a soft, slightly slurred, sweet voice. I asked where he was born.

“I was born in Chicago. I was 20 when I came into the Navy for the first time. I retired in ’72, here in San Diego. My wife passed away in December of ’87. We had no kids.

“I bought this place in February of ’69. Then, the walls were painted flat black, the ceiling was Spanish blue enamel, the floor had old linoleum with concrete showing through. There was a small bar for eight people. Customers had written whatever they wanted to on the walls. It looked like graffiti paradise.

“Having been in the Navy for many years, and single much of that time, I spent a lot of nights and weekends in bars. After a couple of beers, I’d look around and redesign the bar in my mind’s eye. I’d think, ‘If I had this bar, I’d change this or I’d do this.’ So when I bought this place, I’d already remodeled a thousand bars.

“I bought this place on a Tuesday, put a temporary permit on the window, took over that same evening: 6:30 we had inventory, I paid for the stock on hand, and the register was mine. The next day I put in for leave and came down here and started cleaning. I knew I had to. There was no business and the place could not operate the way it was.

“Imperial Beach in 1972 was very similar to what it is now. There’s been very little construction. Further on down, south of Imperial Beach Boulevard, most of that is new, or half of it anyway. But from the Boulevard down to here, there’s very little that has changed.

“In 1972 the town was white, a few Hispanic but they lived further east, out near 13th and Imperial Beach Boulevard. There was a lot more military here then. I like the weather and location as far as the ocean and Mexico; the mountains, desert, the people. Most of the people here are wonderful people. People who live here do care about Imperial Beach. I love the town, but I try not to get involved in any politics. I think the political part of IB is the downfall of the town.

“There’s a couple hard-core groups, maybe 30 people in a group, 50 max in either group. So we have a maximum of a hundred people in this entire town that keeps everything in turmoil. They’ll try and get somebody in city hall, and in the process of getting them in, they’ll tell you any kind of lies you’ll listen to or believe.”

I stop and listen to the surf for a moment. I don’t know of another town anywhere along the beach in Southern California where you can walk in with 500 bucks and start from scratch. It’s frontier days, you are what you say you are until proven otherwise.

“When I first came here the building on the corner [of Sea Coast and Palm] used to be a restaurant, owned by a fella named Pete Collins. He was elected to the city council. There were some people on the city council that orchestrated a recall on him. So he was recalled. A couple years later the people that orchestrated that recall, they were recalled. There’s been recall after recall. Every couple years, come along a brand new face that’s going to do wonderful things for the city, eliminate all this arguing and fighting. And that person is elected and the next thing you know, they’re worse than the ones that they replaced. They’ll lie; there’s so many lies constantly.

“I try and stay out of it. The town itself is great. My best month out of the year to my worst month, say July and then January, there’s less then ten percent difference in my cash register tape. People in other places...” I hear a sweet chuckle “...think we are the sewer of the world. That’s okay by me. Once they come here and find out what it’s like, they like it. I’m glad they stay out, glad they have that negative attitude.”

I step through the barred door of a one-story duplex, one block north of Palm Avenue, home of T&S Tax Service. A woman calls out, “Your two o’clock is here.” Inside a cluttered office, a great, large man sits behind an overflowing desk speaking into a speaker phone. The man speaks in a fast, clipped, ironic tenor’s voice. Every syllable is crisply, clearly enunciated.

“I know what you’re talking about.”

Male voice whines from the phone’s speaker, “I’m not against it. You know one thing, Jim, religion has no place in politics, I don’t give a shit what they say. They have no fucking business in politics whatsoever.”

“Oh, I know.”

“The book teaches you that way.”

“I agree with you, but look, Gus, I’ve got an appointment just come in.”

“Okay, so are we going to survive this thing, Jim?”

“Oh yeah, I wouldn’t worry about that. It’s part of the torture you go through investing. The sharpest investor on Wall Street don’t make money three years in a row. But the long haul, you just buy, you hold, you ride it out, and you’ll make 10, 12, 15 percent over a period of time.”

“I just don’t want to lose my ass completely on the thing, you know?”

“No, no, hell no, they’re all bonds. They’re going to come back and pay what their face value is.”

“I got a pretty good set-up what I got set up, ain’t I?”

“Yes, yeah, you got no worry in the world. It’s gonna go down, it’s gonna go up. When it’s down you’re getting a higher yield. I wouldn’t panic over it.”

“Okay there, boss, you’re the warrior. I got to listen to whatever you say.”

“Well, if we both end up down in Haiti shoveling shit, what’s the difference? Good place to go to work.” The phone slams down.

This is James Scheck, 300-plus pounds, round face, thick round glasses, quick eyes, a quicker mind, speaks with barker’s enthusiasm in a high, almost falsetto voice. I ask what he does.

“I manage real estate and do taxes. I don’t do a whole lot of corporate or any of the big stuff, hell, to keep up to date, you’ve got to have a research staff. We manage about 50 units; if it’s a four-plex that counts for four units. A single-family house is one unit.”

I ask Scheck to tell me some things he likes about Imperial Beach.

“I liked Imperial Beach when I first saw it. I loved it. I was here in the late ’50s and then moved permanently in the early ’60s, ’61. I got right into the real estate. I looked at where to live for military. I was military then, stationed at North Island. I couldn’t afford Coronado. We didn’t have a bridge then; we had ferry boats. So here was Imperial Beach. Imperial Beach had military. And I couldn’t see any reason to move military out of San Diego, especially Navy.

“Back then, business was booming. Potential was unbelievable. You had all that estuary down there, a boat marina coming in just tomorrow, for sure. You had the channel, agreed, coming through Mexico going all the way to the ocean. Just a straight shot and all that sewage would go all the way out into the ocean. I looked at the Tijuana Valley, the greatest place in the world to put in oil refineries. Let those tankers come up out of Vera Cruz, unload their oil here, refine it, truck it back into Mexico. The place had everything. Then the environmentalists came and everything went to shit. From the ’60s on. They just kept picking at it. That’s when they were anti-Vietnam, and burning the country, and burning the flag, and running to Canada, and all this crap.

“In 1961 a two-bedroom house was right about $9000, $10,000. Three bedrooms, $11,950, something like that. Then it just gradually started creeping up. I was looking at rental property, I knew I wasn’t going to get into buying apartments or houses that rent for real big numbers. Stuff you could buy here then, the rent would carry the properties. You could buy a house and rent it at a market price that the Navy could afford.

“Your rule of thumb is that your rent should be 1 percent of value for residential. You can’t get that in a single-family dwelling anymore. A house is worth, say, $120,000, that means you should get $1200 rent. No way, Jose, you’re going to get about seven or eight hundred for that.”

Scheck shifts in his chair, “Now, we’ve lost military almost completely. They moved out to Chula Vista or moved into government housing. They make too much money to live here now. Military gets far more money than welfare. I don’t think the military likes this area. I feel they guide. It’s against the law; if I do it I go to jail. If I say, ‘Oh, you look black to me, you should live in this black area,’ then I’m guiding you or leading you and I go to jail and lose my license. I feel the Navy is doing that.

“There’s a lot of trouble in Imperial Beach, you got gangs and everything. Mar Vista High School is 65 percent Latino. Why should a young boy from Philly be put into this community, why not let him live in Chula Vista, out there in East Lake. You got a big housing project out there in East Lake for military, right at the foot of the hill coming up from the college. You got fantastic military housing right there in Coronado. People would pay $350,000 for those little cottages.”

A young teenager walks into the office, asks Scheck to pick up his clothes at the laundry. The boy is going to the city council meeting tonight, a class project. After a modest huff and puff Scheck agrees.

“My tenants are pretty much minimum-wage workers or welfare. The one-bedroom units are rented almost completely with entitlement programs. I had to talk to a woman today, she’s on SSI and has two sons on SSI living with her. Both her sons are over 30 but under 40, and they’re on social security.” Scheck’s voice reaches for a higher octave. “They’re disabled! In this area disabled means you’re a dope addict or you’re a drunk. Either one qualifies you for social security. I think they get $600 and something a month. The three of them get $1800. You can live on that.

“If I run an ad, my phone rings, they’ll say, ‘How many do you take?’ I’ll say, ‘How many do you have?’ ‘I have five kids.’ I’ll say, ‘Well, this is a one bedroom.’ That don’t faze them at all. The Mexicans don’t seem to care. If you rent to a husband and wife and one kid, the next week you go by and they have 12 kids there or something. You’ve got to constantly keep on them.

“We’re getting A-rabs pouring into the area. We’ve got one now we just rented to, had three kids, he said. The day he moved in he had two more kids. All of a sudden there were five. Then his brother and his wife showed up with two of their kids. We managed to get rid of those two, but we’ve had to do all this through translators. And what’s really funny, this man, I asked him where he was working. ‘Oh, I work, I work.’ And he shows me a list of his welfare payments. That’s a job, see, that sheet of paper, his welfare payment, is a job.” Scheck’s big, big round face jumps with laughter. “He really believed that.”

“If I had it to do over there’s no way in the world I’d be in this line of work. It’s just completely gotten out of hand. I mean, I’m in court on the 11th, throwing a guy out down here on 14th Street in a two bedroom. I just served notice on a guy with four kids up on Mendocino Street. He just don’t want to work, and he don’t want to pay rent, he don’t want to pay his utility. We had to put the trash in our name to get the trash picked up, because he was storing the trash there. And what does stored trash cause? Rats and smell.

“So the neighbors complain. I get a citation. Now he’s got a damn busted-down car sitting there and it’s a condo so you’re subject to condo rules. But who do they go to? They go to the owner, not the tenant.” A massive, round head wags left and then right. “So we got him going.

“And I just got possession of a place on Highland two months ago. A young kid, he lost his job but he was on unemployment, easy to pay the rent, the rent is only $395. And he had his girlfriend living there with him, she’s drawing $800 a month in welfare, she only had one kid. So between the two of them they’re making $2000 a month in entitlements, but they’re not going to pay their rent. He has a truck and two cars, though.

“I got a three-bedroom house rented to a single guy that works out at the college as a gardener. I do have a Navy guy in one unit here, but we’re waiting on his check from Navy relief again this month. The Navy relief has paid his rent at least four times since he’s been in there, and I don’t think he’s been there a year yet.

“I got a guy that’s in a nice two-bedroom on 14th, he’s an ex-Marine, he happens to be Mexican, a real wise-ass, he works for his dad’s company so he makes some money once in a while, and his girlfriend works, but they’re late on their rent two out of three months.

“No jobs in Imperial Beach, the military is leaving, and it’s all socialistic ideas. In California anybody can get money. Why work? I’ve got a girl who lives in a three-bedroom on Calla, but she never produced anything in her life but children. Never worked an hour. She drives a beautiful, big gray van, and she dresses nicely. She could probably hold down a job as a receptionist, bilingual. But she gets Section 8, the government subsidizes the rent on that house. And then she gets the maximum social security. She’s given birth to three kids since she moved in. If you total out all her money, her rent is, let’s say $800, she pays $200 and the government pays six. But her $200 comes out of the thousand she gets for welfare. If you really break it down, she’s making about $400 a week. Now, you’re a boss, you want to hire somebody. Are you going to hire somebody who never worked a day in their life at anything, can’t type, can’t write, can’t spell? Are you going to pay her $400 a week?”

Aye, bucko, in this world of sham and white lies it’s a pleasure to meet the real deal. I ask, “It sounds like she has a good gig? How do you survive?”

“I’m lucky I’ve been in so long. I got some of these properties free and clear. I’ve got an eight-unit complex over on Anita that’s all full, all Mexican, but it’s full. See, you’ve got an anti-business, anti-growth city council here that just won’t stop. These people think that anything over 27 feet high is the Empire State Building! My house is over 27 feet high. My next-door neighbor, one of the people that voted for them, he put a third story on his house, and I got to sit in my swimming pool and look up at that. It’s the ugliest goddamn house from my end of the street there is.

“I live on Fifth; I’m not wild about that. I say Imperial Beach is going backwards, it’s not going anywhere. They’ve wiped out any potential for anything. Who wants to come down here, they’ve got gangs on the beach and the pier and all that. ’Course, they got into the no-drinking, no-smoking, no this, no that, government-control stuff. I loved living here, I really did, but it’s just gotten completely out of hand. You don’t have anybody working is the biggest thing. These people don’t want to work. Would you give up a $400-a-week job on welfare to go to work for $150?”

Scheck leans forward, his massive torso overpowering his desk, his expression takes on a teacher’s look.

“Imperial Beach has got a limited land area. Let’s say you’re a farmer, okay, that’s a simple way to look at it, and you’ve got 100 acres of land. How many cows can you run on 100 acres of land? You can run 22 cows, right? It don’t matter what the hell you do, you can only run 22 cows. But now if I say, ‘Wait a minute, we’ll put 100 acres above the 100 acres.’ Now you can run 44 cows. Now you might be able to make a profit. This city has only got so much land. The only way to build it is up.

“We have a mayor who made an about-face once he got in there and realized what was going on. Of course he’s the one that caused a lot of this when he was coming in. He didn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground. He still doesn’t know anything about business, but I’m going to vote for Bixler [incumbent mayor Michael Bixler] because he’s learned in four years in office, he has learned something.

“You’ve got a few people that are completely anti-growth unless it’s something they want to grow. Something they want. It’s led to this constant bickering and fighting. There’s a lot of things we could have done over the years.

“I’ll take you down and show you a unit I manage. It’s down by the school.” Scheck and I walk outside to his parked Caddy. Now this is a Cadillac, early ’80s, back when they made them, big, long, and white. We head down Palm Avenue, putting slow and low, make a right by the ——. Scheck nods to his right, looking towards an ancient, one-story wooden structure. “This property is older than Moses. It’s called a ‘move on.’ That’s an old Navy barracks, that brown one. You’ll find them all over town. The total square footage of that goddamn building isn’t much over, what the hell do they run out at, 1100 or 1200 square feet, something like that for the whole damn building. It’s 20 feet by 50 feet, and it’s got two two-bedroom units.”

We crawl down the street. “Now this here has got 10-foot-high ceilings and everything else, but that’s been here, I don’t know how many hundred years. This lot happens to be 75 feet by 150 feet ’cause they deeded back 10 feet.” He points next door to what looks to be an abandoned duplex. “Now this was multiple zoned, so it’s an ideal lot; you could build a nice 20 units on it. What’s wrong with 20 units here? You’ve got the school right there. It’s a dead-end street, ideal. But oh no, now they’ve got it zoned back. If that burned down I don’t think you could rebuild it. But here’s your problem, there’s a back yard there. Every Mexican in the world, if he’s got any back yard he’s immediately got things going into it. Both those tenants are Mexican. It’s very low rent there, $250 and $300, something like that for each side.

“This is a constant battle. The minute I rent to a Mexican I got to come by the next day and stop him from collecting these cars. They want to live like they do in Mexico and run a business out of their house. So the minute they got a house, or any property, they’re running a business out of it. And of course they pay cash so no payroll, no benefit to the government. The tenant on one side has been there a long time. The old woman that owned the property lived on that other side. She finally died — it’s her daughter I manage the property for. They live up in Newport Beach. Now that sounds like a lot of money until I found out she’s broke. I had to send her money the other day to catch up on the property taxes.

“The city wants nothing but fees. No end to the fees. The sewage and water here is completely out of hand, the prices. They’re expensive everywhere in San Diego. Bixler, who’s the mayor, when he first got into this thing, what he was thinking, all these beautiful single-family houses can support the city. He couldn’t get it through his head that an 1100-square-foot house on a cement slab with a one-car carport and one bathroom is still an 1100-square-foot house. It’s never going to be selling for $300,000 unless inflation takes it up. But nothing else is going to.”

Scheck and I and the Caddy return to Palm Avenue, make a left. Two enormous hands begin to wave. “I like IB. I like the climate. I like it now, the thing that’s got to me is the business. Aw hell, we used to manage about 200 units and it was just writing receipts, people paid their rent. You’d get turnovers, but you could trust people. We used to give out four or five addresses and four or five keys when people walked in the door asking to see units. It was, ‘Oh, what’s your name?’ You’d write it down and that’s it. Now, we take complete identification from them, and a $20 key deposit. We even hold their driver’s license, ID cards, and hope they’ll bring the key back to us. And we give out one key at a time!

“I wrote a full-page letter to a woman the other day. She did not damage the apartment and paid her rent right up to the time when she gave notice she was moving. Lived there almost two years. But she never one time had wiped the cabinet top. So the cockroaches in there — from the old cockroach eggs you build up crust. You got to take putty knives and scrape this crap off and of course you know how heavy the roaches were. This woman left this apartment immaculate. I kicked her out because of her boyfriend, but she still left an immaculate apartment, I don’t know why. The exterminator today, he said he’s going to have to come back and spray again, said he’s never seen anything like it. But evidently the only time she cleaned the apartment was when she moved out.

“I sold a house on Tenth Street, this is years ago, the wife worked as a cook and he worked as a janitor in a movie theater down on Market. And they managed to save up a down payment. They were Mexican, but they went out of their way to speak in English knowing I didn’t speak Spanish. Their house was immaculate and their kids were always beautifully dressed. But this is no more. Now, I mean, it’s filth, it’s automobiles, ugh. Now, if you want to really get into rental properties and all that, the worst conditions you will ever get are whites. When it comes to being filthy, a white can live at a level that no black, no Mexican, no foreigner of any kind would live.”

The caddy pulls up to 636 Emory, we park, dismount, stand in the yard of T&S Tax Service, and enjoy the sun. Scheck explains, “We try and stay on top of the booze and drugs. But see, there’s another place where you’re handcuffed. I rent to this guy, he came with good references or the best you can check out. Now, all of a sudden he’s on drugs. It will take you two, three months to get him out of there. And the police are saying you got to get him out of there tomorrow. If you throw him out or violate any of his rights, he’s taking your apartment house away from you. If you don’t throw him out, the police are going to take your apartment house from you. You’ve got a no-win scenario.

“I had a guy on Donax, he’d collected a whole slew of automobiles and he was selling the parts off of them. I was mad about it, but what are you going to do? Then he decided he wasn’t going to pay the rent either. So I think, ‘Well, I’m a smart man, I’ll get this guy out of there.’ See, I know in California, to sell parts off of automobiles without a license is a $5000 fine and a year in jail. So, that’s what this guy is doing so I turn him in to the state. I figure I’m smart, they’ll get him. Right?

“They issued me a citation, gave me 24 hours to get the cars moved off the property. I owned the property. So I go in there with that letter, make a bunch of photocopies, got three tow companies to come in and tow all these cars based on that letter. My neck was so far out, the guillotine was quivering, because this guy could have sued me for stealing his automobiles. God knows what he could have done.

“You got the city council down here, Wednesday before last, when they were getting on that house on Ebony. Now Earl Bennett owns that. Earl Bennett used to be a city councilman here. Now, the tenant has destroyed that house, completely. The tenant built a storage shed and moved five cars in. Earl Bennett didn’t do this, the tenant did. Now the council’s trying to get through a deal to fine Earl $50 a day until he gets this corrected. His only recourse is the normal 30 days’ notice through the court to get this guy out, or a three-day for a non-payment of rent. If the guy really sits on him, it’s two months until you can get a marshal out here. Then all you get is possession. All the marshal does is put this guy and his wife outside the door of the house, you still got all the guy’s furniture, all the cars, everything else. Now you got to move all this stuff. Now you have to store it if it has a value of a hundred and some dollars. You’re going to have to store all this goddamn crap for months, run public sales on it. Now, his automobiles — that’s a world unto itself.

“I think about leaving, every damn day. I’d go to Vegas. In Vegas you’ve got a constant flow of people that speak English. To get there, they have to have some money. It’s really booming now.”

I’m in the city hall of Imperial Beach, in the office of city manager Blair King. Earlier today, King hosted an economic development meeting. One hundred citizens attended to discuss ways to improve the city.

King’s office is large, say, 24 feet by 12. We sit at an oval conference table, both of us nursing a cup of black coffee. He is 37 years old, five foot ten, short black hair and clean-shaven. His oval face is tanned, his body is compact, in shape. I ask what brought him to Imperial Beach.

“I came down because I believed in what Imperial Beach could do. I bought a house in the city, brought my family. I got married four years ago, have one three-year-old, one seven-month-old, both girls. Nancy is my wife’s name.

“I grew up in the central Sierras, around Yosemite, and I wanted to get away. Upper Illinois seemed far enough, so I went to Northwestern University for one year. I didn’t like the winters, and then I got a chance to work in Washington, D.C., during the 95th Congress. I had a job working in the Door Keeper’s office responding to the wacko mail. Wacko mail is, ‘Dear Congressman: When Neil Armstrong stood on the moon, a group of scientists implanted a memo greeter in my brain. This is a secret Nassau plot, you should do something about it.’ The Congressional office policy is that everybody gets a response, but you don’t want to spend any big bucks on it, so you give the wacko stuff to the lowest person on the totem pole, that was me. There was a lot of neighbor-complaining-about-neighbor stuff. If I ever got anything legitimate, it went to another staff person.

“It was fun. I was there two years. I was 19 at the time. It was fun on one hand, but I was definitely too young to be turned loose in Washington, D.C.

“Then I went to Fresno State. Started off as an undeclared major, got into public administration, earned a bachelor’s and master’s degree.”

I hear a phone ring in the other room, realize I’m hungry. I look over to King, make him for a smart, careful man, decide I’d never play poker with him.

“I was born in Korea. I’m an adopted, naturalized citizen. Patriotism is important, especially if you’re a naturalized citizen. At first, I thought I might go into international development stuff. That was the attraction in going to Washington, D.C. I think either people get Potomac fever pretty bad or end up like me, turned off to it. Luckily, I realized that there’s a whole other level of government that you might find more important.

“I think the typical career track for a city manager — and mine isn’t the typical career track — but the typical career track probably would be, you get a master’s in public administration, go to work as an administrative analyst for a city, you get promoted to administrative analyst II or senior analyst, and then you get promoted to assistant to the city manager, go on to deputy city manager, and then, city manager.

“I started off working in economic development for a group of central California Indian reservations. Then, I went to the city of Eureka and worked in redevelopment for the assistant director of public works. Next, I became assistant city manager in the city of Coalinga, the city manager of Soledad, then came here.

“Each city is different. Public administration, from my perspective, is a missionary calling. I want to have a good time in the job I’m doing, but I want to contribute to the community. I’d like some form of stability, but the job is a political environment.

“The hammer can drop at any time. Some city managers may have worked 5 or 6 years in the community, some may have worked 20 years in the community, but the element is always there that the hammer can drop at any time.

“If you’re doing your job right as a city manager, somewhere along the line you’ll be telling people no for the good of the community, because that’s what you’re hired to do. You tell enough people no, then you’ll go. Another way I think of it is every city manager walks into every job with a satchel full of rabbit bullets and three elephant bullets. And every day you have rabbits charging you and elephants charging you. The key to survival is to use an elephant bullet on the elephant. If you’re wise in using your elephant bullets, you’ll use three elephant bullets on three elephant problems and then the fourth elephant will kill you. But on the other hand, if you don’t use an elephant bullet on an elephant problem, but use it on a rabbit problem, you’ll use up your elephant bullets too soon and the second or third elephant will kill you. Or you won’t use an elephant bullet when you need to and you’ll still be dead.”

I reach into my coat pocket for a cigarette, remember where I am, wonder how long King will last in Imperial Beach. Figure three years max; politics here are that crazy. What the hell, he’s smart enough and young enough to make it a good three years.

“This job becomes a part of the political world. City managers shouldn’t get out in front of the community, in front of the council, and so you have to be adroit at making sure that everyone can be a part, everyone understands, and you help the council build community consensus.

“I like Imperial Beach. I’ve worked in a coastal community before, and I wanted to come to a coastal community. Imperial Beach is a diverse community; it’s ethnically diverse, it’s diverse in terms of income level. I like being by the beach, living with people of other skin colors, other cultures, being able to interact with them. You have a sense of living in a smaller community. You can become very familiar with this community quickly. At the same time you have two million people living in the region, with all the benefits of being close to a large metropolitan area.

“I’ve been in some tough political towns. This one is tough. You try to stay focused on treating everyone with respect. Everyone’s viewpoint is valid. I try to adopt the kewpie-doll mentality of when you get knocked down, bounce back up, maintain a positive personal approach. I’ve enjoyed the people I’ve met here, they are good people.”

That’s been my experience. The civilians I’ve met in Imperial Beach have been warm, open, very pleasant, very accessible. There are times I’d swear I was visiting a small town in the Midwest. The only thing missing is a feed store. Imperial Beach is a functioning, traditional, small town tucked inside the shadow of downtown San Diego. It is amazing. I ask King, “What would you like to see in five years?”

“I would hope in five years that there have been some physical improvements along the bayfront area of Imperial Beach, some median landscaping, that there would be some definition to people when they come into Imperial Beach, a certain sense that they’re here. I would hope the sales tax numbers would go up, some rehabilitation efforts to storefronts. Statistically I think we’d like to see some home ownership increase. I’d like to see a little bit more activity among businesses themselves promoting the sea coast district of Imperial Beach. The score sheet a city manager keeps is per capita retail sales trapped and increases in property valuation.

“I think there is a consensus that something needs to be done with the sea coast area, it’s underutilized. There’s an awful lot of finger pointing for why it is like that. Because of the finger pointing, you never get into how best we can get things done. I think if there was more of an environment to have reasonable discussions in Imperial Beach, more progress could be done.

“When I was working in Eureka, a lot of our work was put into the bay area in Eureka. With all that work, the bread and butter of the city was the inland area. We’ve got 60,000 vehicles a day going down Palm Avenue; I think we probably should put some more focus on Palm Avenue, because ocean-front property is a finite resource and eventually will take care of itself.

“One of the things I’m looking forward to is going to be after the election, when the trust element will go up a little bit higher. I don’t want people to focus strictly on the politics. Imperial Beach is more than just city politics. Imperial Beach is a community that doesn’t get the credit it deserves.”

If you live in a major American city, it’s probably been years since the police department sent a live cop out to your neighborhood to take a report on a stolen car. You phone it in, partner. Simple burglaries, theft, loud party next door, the ordinary rum-dum of life, one calls the police and takes a number. Questions: Do you know the name of your beat cop? Do you have a beat cop? Do you know anybody who does?

The San Diego Sheriff’s Department is under contract to the city of Imperial Beach. They provide police protection. Because Imperial Beach is so small, the level of service given to IB residents reminds one of another age, say, the age of Ozzie and Harriet Nelson and Roy Rogers. If you live in Imperial Beach and call the police, they actually come, right now. Dog barking, no problem. Door ajar in an empty house, no problem. Somebody swiped your car’s license plate tags, no problem, the patrol car is on the way.

It’s 2:30 on a weekday afternoon. Deputies at the sheriff’s substation, next door to city hall, are in the middle of a shift change. I’m escorted into the back room. Six men are sitting at a cafeteria table listening to the day’s assignments. I’m introduced to my deputy, Robert Pe, 5´8˝, 160 pounds, Filipino descent, perhaps 30 years old. We shake hands, exchange pleasantries, walk outside to a four-wheel-drive Ford Bronco that has seen better days. I ask Pe how he got here.

“I’m married, no kids, my wife works in a law office. I’ve been in the sheriff’s department six and a half years, on patrol out here for almost two years. I like Imperial Beach a lot. I worked four and a half years in the jail waiting to get out here.” Sheriff deputies graduate from the academy, are sent to the downtown jail, and wait for an opening in the field. Imperial Beach is considered a treasured assignment.

“The main thing I like about IB is that it’s a small station. I don’t know of any deputy here who does not like working this city. I feel comfortable with the area, I feel comfortable with the deputies I work with. We’ve got a small station, everybody gets along really well, no internal problems with us.”

We drive west on Imperial Beach Boulevard towards the beach; I ask what kinds of crimes are most typical in IB.

“We get calls about suspicious persons, and a lot of times that will turn out to be illegal aliens running through yards or hiding in yards. I don’t see them causing a lot of criminal activity out here.

“We have a lot of vehicle accidents, a lot of injuries go with it. And sometimes they come in spurts, like car burglaries, residential burglaries, different types of drug activity, mostly with methamphetamine. There are some areas where you have less criminal activity than others. I see a lot more happening towards the beach area and the north side of the city.

“For the most part, people in Imperial Beach are accepting and friendly of us. It takes about ten minutes to circle the entire city. All the streets basically run north, south, east, and west. The thing that makes it a little bit confusing is that almost every street has an alley.

“There’s a lot of bars and liquor stores here in Imperial Beach, but I don’t think it makes it any better or any worse than any other city. I haven’t gone on a lot of bar calls or bar brawls.

“We keep the patrol random, mix it up. Here’s Sea Coast Drive.” Pe makes a right turn, slows down to an idle across from the municipal fishing pier. “This is where you have a lot more pedestrian and vehicle activity. You get a lot of people that come through here, and for the most part it’s a pretty nice area to take a stroll. As the day wears on, usually when the sun goes down, you start getting more activity, more radio calls.

“Most of the people here are very polite. We usually have one or two vehicles per shift operated by senior volunteers. They work during the day. They do vacation checks on houses, welfare checks on the elderly people. I believe all of them are residents of Imperial Beach, and they spend their own time to come out here and give us a hand. Another pair of eyes and ears for us.

“I personally haven’t had a major crime scene out here. If we have something like a homicide, we’ll call out detectives. If we have a possible arson fire, the arson unit would be called out. If it’s child abuse or child neglect or child molest, we’ll get the guidance from our child-abuse unit.”

Pe makes a U-turn, drives to the south end of Sea Coast Drive. We wave at another Bronco, this one driven by Border Patrol. “We only have one high school here, which is Mar Vista High School. On occasion we will get calls from there, a lot of times because the principal or teachers catch kids with some pot or something, carrying a knife or something like that. It’s like any other city, there’s gang activity out here, and some of those gangs are students.

“We’ve got one group that are called the Imperials. The Imps, they call themselves. From what I’ve seen, I think they’re wanna-bes, but I’d rather leave that to our gang detective.

“We don’t have a rash of problems with businesses being broken into. There’s quite a bit of graffiti around the area, but for the most part I think most of the businesses don’t have too many problems.”

We double back, turn right on Palm heading toward I-5. Pe explains, “During the afternoons, we try to stay off Palm Avenue. This is the biggest thoroughway getting in and out of North Island, so I usually try and stay on the side streets until it calms down, maybe 6:30.

“All my buddies at the jail keep asking me, ‘How is it, how’s it going out there?’ Like I said, I wouldn’t trade this for anything in the world right now. I like being on the street, I like talking to people, you know, and making a good arrest when they’re there. I’m still learning a lot. What I learned at the jail, from the prisoners, was that people are going to treat you the way you treat them. If you show respect, you get respect. That carries out here, too.”

Sitting across the dining room table from me is Steve Haskins, Imperial Beach city councilmember and mayoral candidate. Haskins has a dark, thick, trim goatee and wide mustache. Add to that a mostly bald but perfectly round head and the effect is that of an earnest and well-meaning Satan explaining municipal revenue streams. I ask how he got to Imperial Beach.

“I came to Imperial Beach in 1990. I’m a real estate lawyer, which means I do contracts. I’m not a litigator or anything like that. I bought a house in IB, probably paid 50 percent less for the same house than I would have in other areas of the county. I live in a very nice neighborhood that is almost all owner-occupied homes, and everybody keeps their house up. I live about six blocks from the beach. Imperial Beach is an affordable place. The town is pedestrian-oriented, a good place to ride a bike.

“My wife is from Belgium, and she recently took over the Imperial Beach Art Center. It’s kind of a funky place where people come to do pottery, learn ballet, be tutored — an eclectic assortment of stuff going on.

“When I first ran for city council, there was another person that was supposed to run. He was a Caltrans engineer and got transferred to L.A., so I was asked to run in his place at the last minute. We pretty much creamed the opposition. This was 1992.”

I’m not having a good day. My throat feels like a blast furnace, feels like the flu. State Farm wants another 400 bucks for car insurance. I dropped two big ones on Kansas City, can still here my bookie’s nasal whine, “They won but they didn’t cover.” Nothing in this apartment to sell or hock. Why don’t I know one goddamn rich person?

“I’ve learned you have to get the business people involved in what the city is doing, so we’re trying to make peace with the business people. In the past, businessmen building high-rises, businessmen renting apartments, renting houses, meant making Imperial Beach a cash cow for people that don’t live here. Unfortunately, a lot of them live in Coronado, and they wouldn’t put their children in some of the rentals that they force other people to live in.

“So we’re trying to develop a town that has meant fewer renters, more families who are looking to buy their first home and live there and stay there and get involved in the community. The comparison between Coronado and Imperial Beach is a lot like the comparison of the U.S. and Mexico, or San Diego and Tijuana. There is a border between Coronado and Imperial Beach. Most people in Coronado think Imperial Beach is a slum and most people in Imperial Beach think Coronado people are pretty snotty and don’t care about Imperial Beach. And by and large my experience is that they don’t. I’m surprised how many people in Coronado own rentals in Imperial Beach. I’m surprised how poorly they maintain them. We’re getting a new code-enforcement officer who will crack down on these slumlords.”

Coronado slumlords, that has a ring. I lean back in my chair and drift a bit, begin to think about my VW van and why that son-of-a-bitchin’ starter went out on me again. For the last month I’ve had to push that ugly beast down the street, jump in, and pop the clutch to get that disloyal whore started. I need staff. I need full-time staff.

“I have two opponents in this election, but my real opponent is the incumbent, Mike Bixler. Mike Bixler is a conservative Republican stockbroker. He was recently married, he has no children. He’s about 51 or 52. They live in a big house out on the beach, and they’ve had a lot of connections to Coronado. They were on the Coronado Hospital Board, and he owns property all over San Diego. He owns a bunch of houses out in Point Loma and some condos or something over in San Diego. He may be one of the wealthiest people who actually lives in Imperial Beach.

“Recently he has turned against his earlier supporters, the people that supported him in 1990, which included me. And he has fallen in with the realtor/developer group. Over the last ten years we’ve had a lot of recalls; almost all the recalls are related to one of two things. One is redevelopment. You know, redevelopment was originally created in California for the purpose of helping cities deal with blight, and that’s real blight, and it’s commercial or residential, but real blighted areas.

“Cities have taken advantage of redevelopment, which reorients where our sales tax money goes, to build things that you would never think had anything to do with reducing blight. I think all of the city of Coronado is a redevelopment area, if that gives you an idea. Will you show me where the blight is in Coronado? None of Imperial Beach is a redevelopment area, and the reason is, every time redevelopment was brought up it was always the entire beach front, and it was always to build a giant hotel of three or four hundred rooms, and it always required eminent domain.

“If you use eminent domain, you’re setting up people who spent their entire life savings and their dream is to live on the beach in their house. Now, they’re going to be forced out in order to build a giant hotel for tourists from out of town, owned by an out-of-town franchise, who’d take all the money out of the city. People don’t like that. People are very rugged individualists in Imperial Beach, and they saw that redevelopment was not being used for blight, it was being used to hammer homeowners.”

I wonder what I could get for my van? A ’71 VW, tricked out with fridge, sink, stereo, and two deep-cycle marine batteries. Body and glass is good. If I parked the bastard on a hill, when people came over I could just casually climb in and say, “Why, hell, Roy, let’s go for a ride.” Damn it, no hills around here. “Roy, can you believe what just happened, by golly...”

“The state government of California, over the past four or five years, has been taking a huge amount of money from the property taxes that cities get. Cities and counties used to operate on their share of the property taxes. Now it’s getting to be that property taxes are less than half a city’s income; much more of their income comes from sales tax. Imperial Beach, in something like 435 cities in the state, we are the last, we are the 435th in per capita sales tax. So we’re screwed. We have very inexpensive housing, so we already have low property taxes.

“There is one bright spot for cities and that’s hotels. That’s one reason why Coronado does so well, because of TOT, the Transient Occupancy Tax on hotels. It’s a cash cow for cities along the beach, especially a small city like Coronado, which doesn’t have an underclass to take care of, doesn’t have a lot of kids, so it doesn’t have to provide a lot of recreational services. The TOT is 10 percent usually, it can be more. Well, if you’re getting 10 percent of what Larry Lawrence is getting, you’re doing pretty well. So that’s what those realtors and developers in Imperial Beach saw. Here’s a way we can get a cash cow to bring money into city government and then we can use that money to back up our development proposals. Their development proposals are to go into these single-family neighborhoods, demolish the houses, and build four-story, four-unit condo buildings.

“So the opposition felt that by increasing the density and forcing out people who would normally be living in these homes, then they would be able to increase property taxes and get more money and improve things. Once you get that going, you buy a lot with a run-down house on it for $100,000; you build four condo units on that lot, and each of those goes for $120,000. That’s how you’re going to make the money.

“I could see right away, when I arrived during the 1990 campaign, that there was a serious problem with the overdevelopment and the condos and the high-rises. That was the year of the big high-rise battle. Bixler was against the high-rises at that time. After the ’90 election, I started working with Imperial Beach Concerned Citizens — it’s the group that basically got Bixler elected. It’s a neighborhood group that was formed to fight the high-rises. Then I was elected in 1992 to a four-year term as councilman.

“After I was elected, we continued to battle with the city council majority, who were still allowing all these high-rises. Proposition P was something I put together, and we went out and got the signatures for it and it passed by 73 percent. Seventy-three percent is a pretty amazing vote. What Proposition P said was, ‘You cannot build a building over 30 feet tall,’ and it helped define what 30 feet meant. And we reduced the density, too. You used to be able to put four units on a little 4700-square-foot lot. We reduced that to two units.

“We all know each other, you know. That’s the other thing about Imperial Beach, it’s small enough that you know everyone.”

A distinct chill crawls up my neck.

“Mike Bixler has a brochure that he’s handing out. It’s a picture of him with his suit on. This is interesting: Bixler hired a lawyer who sent me a threatening letter. Mike Bixler tried to stop a friend of mine — lives out by the beach — who wanted to build a gazebo, by saying my friend needed a coastal development permit because it was a substantial structure. And that guy got so mad when he discovered that Bixler had built a two-story addition to his house, without a coastal development permit, that he came into a city council meeting and gave a little speech about it. Well, there is a privilege for speaking before a legislative body where you can’t be sued for defamation, so Bixler had his lawyer send all the city councilmembers a letter from his attorney, saying that you’re not allowed to repeat what we heard from this guy, and if you do we’re going to sue you for defamation. Clearly, in my opinion, Bixler’s addition is illegal, but I don’t care. It’s not really, to me, a campaign issue. I don’t care what he built on his lot. That’s between those two guys. But I don’t like him hiring lawyers and sending me letters. I had nothing to do with it, I’m just running against him, I don’t need his threats.

“One thing you’ve got to know about him, he’s hired a full-time campaign manager, he has outside consultants, and he has couriers putting out campaign signs. We’re an all-volunteer operation, and you can tell, if you ever see one of our functions. What he’s saying is: ‘I have saved the city financially, I’ve got this money, I got this, I got that.’ He doesn’t have any other issues but money and finances. This is all Mike has talked about, his money. He hasn’t really...”

The van stays. If things go to shit that’s still home. I’ll just cut out the luxury items first, like food and rent. Why, hell boy, this is California. Why, we got oranges and avocados just a-hanging from the trees, a climate so healthful a man don’t need no doctoring, don’t need to be thinking about no bills!

In the November elections, Haskins was defeated for mayor. He still retains a council seat.