It’s What Many Would Call a Real Lemon

The Horton Plaza people promise that help is on the way in making their parking structure user-friendly by clarifying the vegetable and fruit coding, so you can spend more time shopping and less time trying to find your car afterward.

Architects call the garage’s design an inverted double helix--meaning the levels are themselves tilted ramps to maximize parking spaces.

Life in an inverted double helix can go something like this:

You can park your car on Strawberry Level 5 and when you find your way into the interior of Horton Plaza, you’re on Plaza Level 2 North. C’mon, give us a break!

Pineapple Level 4 gets you into Horton Plaza’s Level 1 North. You can park on Grape Level 1, but don’t count on getting into Horton Plaza Level 1 from there; you’re actually parked on Minus Three and to escape you’ve got to climb up to Pineapple Level 4 to get to Plaza Level 1. On the other hand, if you park on Cherry 6, you have to go down to Strawberry 5, but if you park on Lemon 7, you can enter Horton Level 3 North. Help!

If your mother-in-law is coming to town and you treasure her absence, then tell her to park in the vegetable garage (avocados, corn, that stuff), where some folks get even more confused. Not everyone realizes, says Horton Plaza manager Bob Dobson, that you can park in the vegetables and get into the plaza via the fruits.

In any event, Dobson said architect Jon Jerde and graphics artist Debra Sussman (the same pair who brought us the sign graphics for the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles) are busy trying to clean up the garage’s signs and graphics to help out shoppers. Whatever they come up with should be ready by Memorial Day.

But Is There a Fire Pole?

That house for sale on Valencia Drive in Escondido has some nice selling points, including a giant, remodeled kitchen with walk-in pantry and floor-to-ceiling cupboards for plenty of storage.

But the real kicker: a monstrous, 13-foot-high garage door--big enough, say, for a fire truck.

Indeed. The Rincon del Diablo Municipal Water District is selling a one-time fire station on the southeast side of town. It merged its fire department a couple of years ago with the Escondido Fire Department and no longer needs the three-man station that housed a 4-wheel-drive brush fire and rescue rig.

Asking price for the 1,843-square-foot, three-bedroom home is $145,000. There’s plenty of space on the half-acre to store a recreational vehicle. But for that matter, says Coldwell Banker’s Molly Lueken, you could just as well park it in the garage.

Last-Minute Gift Ideas

In our humble Christmas Buyer’s at Large Catalogue, we pass on this deal from the Lemon Grove Old Time Days Assn.: a bronze or pewter belt buckle, for $20, or a silver or gold buckle, for $100. The buckles depict two local scenes: the Lemon Grove trolley station and one of the town’s oldest churches.

Only a thousand buckles will be made, and each one will have its own certificate and registration number (sounds like a Cabbage Patch doll).

The city sold 100 of them a few years ago, and they sold out. If you wear suspenders, no problem; you can hang yours on a plaque for display.

If $20 is too rich for your blood, try a Lemon Grove baseball cap, $5. But they’re not quite as exclusive.

An Expensive Sport

Speaking of Christmas gifts, Steve Garvey & Friends were busy auctioning an assortment of sports and recreation-related gifts Sunday night at Neiman-Marcus to raise money for his Professional Athletes Career Enterprises, a nonprofit career guidance outfit for athletes making the transition from the ballfield to the briefcase.

The evening’s prize catch--one of Willie Mays’ 12 Gold Gloves for fielding prowess--fetched $5,000 from Lou Costanzo, a sports memorabilia collector from San Gabriel who said later that he would gladly have paid $10,000 for it. Mays’ 11 Gold Gloves are in museums.

The auction made an interesting statement on relative value. There was lunch with Garvey ($300), compared to an evening in the broadcast booth with Jerry Coleman ($105) or breakfast with radio clowns Mac Hudson and Joe Bauer ($50). Lunch and a zoo tour with Rolf Benirschke went for $160, compared to a weekend of spring training with the Padres--including two nights’ accommodations, two games against the Angels and dinner with two Padres and their wives--all for $155.

A soccer clinic with Juli Veee brought $101; a batting clinic with Tony Gwynn, and four tickets to a Padres game, went for $300.

And who’s the most popular--or artistic--professional sports team in town? Christmas ornaments decorated by the Sockers and the Chargers went for $25; the ones decorated by the Padres got $45.

Among the more bizarre gifts for the person who has everything, almost: a pair of Larry Bird’s size 14 1/2 shoes ($151) and a set of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s protective eye goggles ($110).