Why don't you ask Santa Claus for a new NFL stadium?
Matt Valenti, San Diego Free Press
When traffic in the right lane of Route 163 South slows to a crawl for two miles between the 805 merge and Friars Road, it must be Christmastime in San Diego.
I found myself suffering through this traffic last weekend for my daughters’ obligatory annual photo op with Santa Claus at Fashion Valley Mall.
I expected the traffic, of course, and expected it would take me at least an hour of circling through the parking lot looking for a spot, after dropping my wife and girls off outside of Nordstrom’s.
But what I didn’t expect when I finally caught up with them was just how little progress they’d made towards the promised land of Santa’s capacious lap.
Instead of being within sight of the billowing white masses of polyester batting and enormous electric candy canes of Santa’s Village, they were waiting in the far off, desolate reaches of J.C. Penny’s Window Coverings department. If Santa’s Village was the North Pole, they were somewhere in the tip of Argentina. And their festive holiday spirit was waning. Considerably. To say the least.
I found them poised in a sort of interlocking, modern art sculpture. My wife appeared to be engaged in a game of tug-of-war, both hands clutching desperately to one empty sleeve of my daughter Alexandra’s “Peace on Earth” sweater, while Alexandra’s own hands were deeply entwined in the hair of her little sister Elsie, who was inexplicably hanging upside down from a bronze curtain rod mounted to the wall six feet off the ground. All three of them were screaming at the top of their lungs, and not the lyrics to “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.”
When I first approached this scene I tried ducking behind a leopard-print shower curtain, but it was too late. They saw me.
“What on earth is taking them so long?” my wife fumed as she let go of Alexandra’s sweater, sending her tumbling to the tiled floor just as her sister plummeted down on top of her.
I was about to relate how much trouble I’d endured finding a parking spot, but thought better of it and merely shrugged stupidly.
“Well why don’t you go find out?” she said, “This line hasn’t moved an inch in nearly an hour!”
I nodded hastily (and, need I say, gratefully) and scurried off on my mission before she could change her mind and decide to station me with the girls, who by now were busying themselves trying to push each other down the escalator.
On my way to Santa’s Village I stopped at the food court for a slice of pizza and a beer –which I considered a necessary refueling operation – and felt revived and ready for anything. That’s more than I could say for the children and their haggard looking parents waiting near the end of the line to see Santa. At the rate the line was moving some of these kids would reach puberty before they reached Santa’s Village.
Surely he must be taking his lunch break, I thought to myself, and shuddered at the likelihood – this being California – that he was a Union Santa. Even the elves were no doubt making at least minimum wage, and expecting a couple of ten minute paid breaks a day on top of it.
But no, union thugs weren’t to blame for this delay; Santa was in fact on duty, and hard at work.
It was the boy perched on his knee that was holding everything up. And he wasn’t actually a boy. He was a full-grown man, in a well-tailored suit, with a jewel-encrusted yellow and blue thunderbolt pinned to his lapel.
“Ho! Ho! Ho!” bellowed Santa. “You’re going to have to speak a little louder, Dan. Santa’s hearing is not what it used to be, you know. Now what did you say you wanted for Christmas?”
The man with the thunderbolt pin smiled broadly and blushed, and seemed unable to speak from the excitement.
That’s when I saw another man step forward. He too was dressed in a suit, and with a chipper, handsome face and full head of silver hair looked reminiscent of Phil Donahue, only with slightly less bushy eyebrows. “His name’s not Dan, Mr. Claus,” said the man. “It’s Dean. And I’m Mark, his lawyer.”
The Donahue look-alike deftly tucked a business card into Santa’s gloved hand and smiled.
Santa looked somewhat confused but accepted the card with grace, giving it a polite look through his wire glasses. “Okay then, Dean,” he said, turning his attention back towards the man sitting on his lap, “What would you like for Christmas?”
Dean continued to blush, and seemed too bashful to speak for himself, so his lawyer chimed in. “He wants a new stadium for his football team, Mr. Claus.”
. . .
http://sandiegofreepress.org/2013/12/santa-claus-comes-to-friars-road/
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The new San Diego Central Library must haunt Dean Spanos' nightmares. In his dreams it is a gigantic ATAT variant piloted by the gay mayor... chasing him back to Stockton... or at least Chula Vista.
