More driving and teaching and learning today in the ongoing journalism workshop. It seems that Hector is an amazing poet. He composes rhyming pieces in record time, and they’re quite moving. I’m not just saying it just to be complimentary, either. I should also mention that English is Hector’s second language; he also speaks Spanish and French.
After dropping off Hector and Nicole at Chicano Perk, an awesome coffeeshop in the Sherman Heights community of San Diego, I had about an hour and a half to kill. I found a wireless connection and did some work. And then I did some driving, getting lost in foreign parts of the city so I could learn more about the roads. You can never know too many shortcuts or back roads. While heading down Market Street, I stopped for a red light and looked twice at one sight. On the other side of the road, blocking traffic from behind, a red car and a police car were stopped next to one another. An odd place to stop, I thought. I studied the scene. The two policemen were talking to the scraggly man in the red car. Then my eyes widended when I saw the man’s leg in a cast, hanging over the side of the car. But he was sitting straight up! I watched him (without hearing) explain his situation to the cops. The driver of the squad car listened intently and his partner looked so, very confused. To top it off, even the man in the backseat, donning what appeared to be a beekeeper’s suit and handcuffs, looked baffled. I just squinted and looked ahead. The light turned green and in the rear view mirror I watched the cops follow the red car closely. A favorite quotation came to my mind, from my old friend Amanda: “I ain’t seen shit like that since LA!”

Back to KPBS. Today I was sent out to find John Moores, the owner of the Padres, at a meeting in the city’s council chambers. I had to get some tape about the Matt Bush story that’s brewing. (Bush is the 18-year-old Mission Bay High graduate who won a $3.15 million signing bonus with the Padres this month. On Sunday, he was arrested at an Arizona bar for underaged drinking and biting a bouncer during a scuffle. Now he’s suspended, and his contract is in jeopardy.) Russell told me I might run into a gaggle of reporters at the scene, but there were none. So I chased him down after he received a big award and probably didn’t feel like talking to the Media. But he was surprisingly warm and receptive.
I guess I should say now that I had some of the misconceptions about Moores that many others do. For some reason, people perceive him as crude or uncouth. I think it has something to do with his appearance. But I saw none of that today. He was decent and personable. Likeable. And I only spent three and a half minutes with the guy.
He was surrounded by Kevin Towers and some other Padres higher-ups, and, for some reason, Father Joe Carroll. I had another, now-familiar “Um, oh” moment when I saw the father. For the past few weeks, I have met some people whose images and voices are so ingrained into my mind that they don’t seem real. I promise that it’s not celebrity culture that gets me (quite the contrary), as I have met a lot of famous people to whom I don’t have any connection. But these are people I grew up watching in the local media and always formed my own, personal feelings about. To meet so many of them in such a short time, and to find out they are actually real, is a bit jarring, but only momentarily. When I looked up and suddenly made eye contact with Susan Taylor the other day, I thought, “Um, oh. There’s Susan Taylor.” And then kept moving.