—Tony Perry, L.A Times’ San Diego bureau chief, on KPBS’ Editors Roundtable

And here we have yet another example of ye olde “For the Children” fallacy.

If you’ve read this column before, you probably know there are few things in this universe I loathe more than when somebody argues from the “For the Children” (FTC) position. And though it seems—given that the Children’s Pool was donated to kids—that this debate might be one of the rare instances when it’s reasonable to make the FTC argument, it most certainly is not.

For one thing, what does, “for the children” even mean? Can there ever be consensus on what’s best for kids? Unless you’re arguing to legalize the farming of infants to sell their body parts as soup ingredients (baby-marrow bisque, anyone?) the truth is, anybody can use the FTC argument to support their position and, therefore, nobody should.

I have nothing against kids (especially in my soup); it’s just that, if everything was designed to benefit the young, wouldn’t that actually be bad for the young? For one reason, children eventually grow up. Then what? They’ll have nothing to do but watch the new batch of kids having a blast at their expense. Furthermore, isn’t it good for children to be surrounded by healthy, happy adults?

The point is, what is best for the children is almost always debatable.

Take the La Jolla harbor-seal controversy. An argument could easily be made that the pro-seal side is actually more for-the-children than the pro-children side is for the children. One could easily argue that kids benefit in a myriad of ways from being able to observe—up close and personal—a large group of wild animals, un-caged and behaving as they normally behave, unconcerned that humans are nearby. This is a rare opportunity for a child, especially at a time when, all across the planet, humans are destroying entire habitats with a couple of swipes from our massive, mechanical hands.

Right now, there are exactly 807* locations for children to swim in the San Diego area and only one marine-mammal habitat. If we evict the seals, then the children will have 808 places to swim and zero harbor-seal rookeries.

It seems to me that a child with options is better off than a child without options. Besides, are our kids so spoiled that 807 places to swim are not enough? Wanna know what else might be good “for the children”? How about not spoiling them? How about for once telling them, “No, dears, you can swim at any other beach besides this one.”

What is it about this beach, anyway? We live in San Diego, fer crissake! As in, hello, California! We have 70 miles of coastline. See that enormous, green wet thing over there? That’s called the Pacific Ocean. It’s an ocean! It’s not as though your family spent 10-grand on a new swimming pool and the raccoons took over the shallow end. It’s an ocean!

Tony Perry said, “It’s tourism versus the children,” implying, I think, that children are more important than tourists. He may have been playing devil’s advocate, but either way, it’s nonsense because tourism and children are not mutually exclusive. Tourism, as it turns out, is good for children—especially in this economy. Tourism means more monies for more daddies and more mommies, which means, for most kids, maybe an extra gift on Christmas morning; for others, it means shoes on feet, roofs over heads, foods on plates—all of which, experts say, are extremely beneficial to the well-being of the youth.

“For the children” is for the birds. It’s an emotional buzz-phrase that pushes people’s buttons. And the pathetic truth is, by focusing on that angle, the FTC people have neglected the soundest argument for ousting the pinnipeds, an argument that would give any free-thinking environmentalist a reason to reconsider.

It’s the argument that states that the unnatural concentration of seals at Children’s Pool is harmful to the ecosystem and a burden on other species in the area, specifically:

1. Smaller fish, which are now being predated upon by the seals at a much higher, man-manipulated rate.

2. Seal predators, namely white sharks, can’t feed on the seals as easily because they have been unnaturally protected by the breakwater wall. And while seals are far more cuddly than sharks, it’s sharks—which are being massacred for their fins—that need a stimulus-package bailout, not seals.

3. Small organisms, which live in and around the Children’s Pool, are being destroyed by a high concentration of seal waste, the loss of which could be catastrophic to the health of the ecosystem.

And if none of this was convincing to the more stubborn seal-huggers of your group, you could also argue (if you would just get over that urge to jump up and down and repeatedly shout, “But the children, the children!”) is that, history has shown, when man interferes with and / or favors one animal species over others, it usually ends with an ecological meltdown, and the most devastated victims of the meltdown are almost always the animals we were trying to protect in the first place.

What I’m trying to say is, fuck the children! We’ve got some serious and complicated shit (pun intended) to consider here. For once, could we please make it about the science, the facts and the solutions instead of emotions and buzzwords? That’s what’s best for the children, in the end, after all.

* Actually, I have no idea how many places to swim there are in San Diego, but I’m guessing a bunch.

Ed Decker
08.05.09

I just got off the phone with Ralph Collier of the International Shark Committee and am utterly blown away. My knees are weak. My brain is in a haze. And now I’m looking at the blank screen that will become this column thinking, Where on Earth do I begin?

In 1994, a “friend” of mine was killed by a “shark” in the waters off Ocean Beach, San Diego. I put quotes around the word “friend” because Michelle von Emster wasn’t a friend-friend, nor was she a girlfriend. She was a young woman whom I fancied for several months, whom I eventually asked out on a date and who accepted.

We went out to Winston’s, a bar in Ocean Beach, watched bands and drank liquor. At about midnight, we left Winston’s, bought some beer and cigarettes, returned to my pad and sat on the couch, where we talked and flirted all night. At one point, she let me take off her shirt so I could see the large butterfly tattoo on her right shoulder blade, after which we kissed and fondled each other until well past dawn.

I was crazy about Michelle and was looking forward to seeing her again, and again, and again. But late the next night, Michelle went skinny-dipping off Sunset Cliffs and was attacked and killed by a “shark.”

I put the word “shark” in quotes because now (thanks in part to phone my conversation with Collier) I don’t believe that’s what killed her.

Here’s your backstory:

Remember the shark attack in Solana Beach (just north of San Diego) in April, 2008, when Dr. David Martin was killed by a great white? Well, that incident put Michelle’s name back in the news, having been one of only three people killed by a shark in the San Diego area, Dr. Martin being the third.

However, I noticed something peculiar about the reporting. Not every news outlet cited the same statistic. In fact, some of the reports listed Dr. Martin’s death as only the second shark fatality in the area, such as ABC News, which reported that “the last fatal shark attack in Southern California was in 1959.” And Surfline.com reported the same thing. Even the Union-Tribune (North County edition) reported back in April, “The only fatal shark attack in San Diego County listed by the International Shark Attack File… is the 1959 death of Robert Pamperin at Alligator Head in La Jolla.”

I was very confused. Michelle was killed by a shark in 1994. The police said it, the media said it and the county Medical Examiner confirmed it. So why was Michelle being ignored by so many news organizations?

Rush to judgment

At the time of Michelle’s death, journalist Neal Matthews wrote a controversial story, published in Boating magazine, called “Who Killed Michelle von Emster?” In the article, he chronicled the reasons why it may not have been a shark that killed Michelle and that there may have been a rush to judgment by the police (who passed the case off to the coroner without batting an eye), the coroner (who neither performed a sexual-assault examination nor took her liver temperature to determine an accurate time of death) and the media (which didn’t do it’s job as professional skeptics).

It was Matthews who told me that the reason for the conflicting stats is because the International Shark File (ISAF)–the world’s leading authority of all known shark attacks–did not list Michelle as a confirmed shark fatality based on a lack of evidence.

So why the rush to judgment when the shark experts said otherwise?

The manner in which I learned Michelle had been killed by a “shark” was brutal. It was three days after our dream date, and I was watching television. I was depressed because she had not called, assuming she was not as impressed by me as I thought she was.

I remember sitting on the couch, sullen, watching a local news channel, when a live, on-the-scene report came on about a dead woman who’d just been pulled from the water. They didn’t know who she was yet, but the field reporter mentioned an identifying mark on her right shoulder blade. It was half of a large butterfly tattoo, apparently just the wing. The rest of the butterfly, it was surmised, was bitten off by a shark.

It can’t be her, I thought.

I don’t remember much else about that day, except that, from the first utterance of the word “shark,” the snowball started rolling down the mountain, increasing in size, momentum and ferocity. The verdict was in long before the autopsy. The harbor police said “shark,” the lifeguards said “shark,” the coroner said “shark,” the media said “shark,” most of the public said “shark”–so I believed shark. But the shark experts, unbeknownst to me, all said, “Um, no people, probably not shark.”

A plea for due diligence

Shortly after he contacted me last June, I met Matthews for coffee. It was a productive meeting; we decided that there’s enough evidence to justify a request to reopen the case. We knew it was a long shot, but we concluded that it was one worth taking, especially since a new chief medical examiner had taken office. His name is Dr. Glenn N. Wagner, and we sent him a formal request, by post:

“Dear Dr. Wagner, We are writing to ask you to take another look at the accidental death finding in the case of Michelle von Emster…. We are writers with special interests in the von Emster case. One of us dated Michelle briefly before her death, and the other investigated the case for a story published in Boating magazine in 1994. We believe Dr. Brian Blackbourne’s [the previous coroner] conclusions may have been biased because others in the community rushed to judgment about this being a white shark attack.

Sincerely,
Neal Matthews
Edwin Decker”

Dr. Wagner responded by post about a week later. The gist was that there did seem to be some questionable evidence, or lack of, but not enough to amend her death certificate, and he closed his letter by saying that “any case can and will be reopened if additional validated information surfaces.”

So what of this questionable or missing evidence? Before we begin, it should be noted that smaller, blue sharks did feed on Michelle’s body post-mortem. It’s whether she was killed by a shark that Matthews and I question.

Here’s why:

1. The Severed Leg Problem: Michelle’s leg was cut clean off–not particularly splintered or sheared, as you would expect in a great white attack. In Matthew’s 1994 story, George Burgess of the ISAF says he never saw a cut like that in a shark attack. Furthermore, large sharks leave distinctive tooth scrapes and bite marks on bone, yet the leg stump had no such markings.

2. Blunt Force Injuries: Michelle’s autopsy revealed that she had a broken pelvis, broken neck and bruised and broken ribs. The coroner said this probably happened when the shark took Michelle’s body down to the bottom and collided with the ocean floor. Only problem is, every shark expert I, and Matthews, spoke with has said they never saw a case where this has happened. White sharks are known to bite and back off. Even Wagner, the current coroner, in his response to our June 7 letter, said that these injuries were “atypical for shark injuries.”

3. Clothes Never Found: Michelle’s body was discovered nude; her clothes were never found. So where did her clothes go?

4. Conspicuous Purse: Michelle’s purse was found the next day by the seawall, out in the open, its contents–$27, cigarettes, driver’s license and makeup–seemingly undisturbed. Question: If you’re going to go skinny-dipping late at night, would you leave your purse in such a conspicuous location? And wouldn’t you keep your clothes and your purse together, in one spot?

5. Conditions: It was a midnight swim, in April, when the water was still quite cold–60 degrees, to be exact, which is not a pleasant swimming temperature, especially without a wetsuit, which she owned and kept in her apartment a few blocks away but, for some reason, did not use.

6. Improbability: In 1994, not counting Michelle, there had been only one shark attack in San Diego, and that was nearly 40 years prior. The sheer improbability of it should’ve been enough to make investigators thoroughly scrutinize her case. At the very least, they should’ve questioned me. I was one of the last people to see her. And, I went on a date with her. Everybody knows that when you have a suspicious death, you look at the romantic interests: the husband, the boyfriend or, in this case, the suitors. It just seemed like nobody wanted to be bothered, that the snowball had already rolled down the hill, and the snowball said “Shark.”

Enter Ralph Collier

Collier, president and founder of the Shark Research Committee (SRC), is a consultant to all medical examiners along the Pacific Coast of North America. He has published more articles on great white shark attacks than any other ichthyologist in the world. He wrote a book called Shark Attacks of the Twentieth Century, which details every shark bite on the Pacific Coast. Collier reviewed Michelle’s case in 1994 and re-reviewed it in 2003. Today, Monday, July 7, 2008, I spoke with him on the phone.

Collier offered many scenarios. He said the blunt force trauma could’ve happened from a fall off the cliffs. He said her leg could have been cut off by a passing motorboat’s propeller. He said she could’ve run into some bad people who did something terrible to her and dumped her in the water. He said there were a thousand possibilities as to what might have happened to Michelle–except being killed by a shark.

“Michelle von Emster,” he said, “was unequivocally not killed by a shark.”

He also said I was wasting my time trying to get the case reopened, that there’s nothing anyone can do, unless a witness comes forward, which brings me to the reason for this column.

After our conversation, I couldn’t get the “what if” scenario out of my mind. What if somebody hurt her? What if her killer is still out there? What if there is somebody reading this right now who knows something. I know it’s probably futile, but maybe that person is ready to come forward with some information that might provoke the coroner to reopen this case. So, are you out there? Come out, come out wherever you are.

Ed Decker
07/23/08

Here is the original article about my date with Michelle
Here is the letter from the coroner
Here is Neal Matthew’s article Who Killed Michelle Von Emster2.doc (open with Word)

“Of all the bands who came through here says Doug Schultz, the former Director of Operations at 4th and B. “It was the guys in Ratt who had the biggest egos.”

Schultz, also known as “Dutch” is the only employee who has worked at 4th and B from its very first concert (Crosby, Stills and Nash) until it was recently acquired by House of Blues in August.

“I was first hired as a security guard. My job was the artist dressing room door. One year later I became Assistant Manager to Billy Bob (Bill Buhrkuhl). When Billy would go out on doctor related leaves, I would run the club . . . . Eventually I became responsible for all aspects of the business during the events.”

4th and B opened for business in 1995. They hosted approximately 1900 shows and almost 2 million people walked through those doors. Through it all there was Dutch. He gave me the rundown of the best and worst of the people, bands and events that rolled through there:

Coolest Artists (Ringo Starr, BB King, Eddie Money, Berlin, Cheech Marin, The Cult, and Tommy Lee): “Tommy Lee showed up a few hours prior to his DJ club night. He was very polite in asking me for a drink and we had a great conversation. Throughout the evening he was very accommodating to meeting people and signing autographs to those who requested with no attitude whatsoever. He even joked about the fact that he was not the best DJ.”

Biggest Disappointments (Quiet Riot, Vince Neil of Motley Crue, The Amazing Kreskin): “Kreskin’s mind reading was way off and his show became embarrassing. He did one skit where someone wrote a number on a piece of paper and he predicted the wrong number. There were no oohhs and aahhs that you would expect, just silence, and some laughs when his predictions and answers were not correct. Most of the audience left before the end of the show.”

Biggest Egos (Don Dokken, Vanilla Ice, Dio, Bon Jovi, Dwight Yokum, and the aforementioned Ratt): “During sound checks, Ratt tried to bully the opening act, a local band called Cage. For instance, as the two bands crossed paths at the back door, Ratt expected the guys in Cage to stand aside and let them walk out. They ended up bumping into one another which almost caused a fight in the parking lot. Ratt demanded that the opening band be scratched after both bands had already sound checked.”

Biggest Asshole (Zack Wylde – Ozzy Osbourne’s former guitarist):
“Zack came into the office along with his band and some of his crew with open beer bottles yelling at Billy Bob about the venue being 21-and-up. He kept threatening Billy that he wanted his younger fans to come to the show. He didn’t ask or anything, he just came in and shouted, ‘Hey motherfucker don’t you know my fans are under 21,’ and ‘What do you think Ozzy is gonna say about this? You wouldn’t tell Ozzy he couldn’t have his younger fans in here.’

I was at my desk at the far end of the office. I finally stood up and approached Zack and yelled, ‘Who the fuck do you think you’re shouting at? This is a 21-and-up venue and there is nothing we can do about it. You’re just pissed because of low ticket sales! . . . ‘ He continued to be difficult to work with throughout the night.”

Biggest Entourage (Too Short): “He must have had about 50 or 60 people with him. They all just pulled up in an entourage of SUV’s. Everyone expected to get in the back door and when they couldn’t, they forced their way in.”

Most Lascivious Raves (Gay Pride): “Every year, during Gay Pride weekend, we catch about half a dozen patrons having illegal sexual contact, usually oral, in the upper part of the Mezzanine or in the restroom stalls. We generally just kick them out. When the event is over we find dozens and dozens of used condoms on the floor.”

Most Paranoid Performer (Greg Allman): “From the first time he played there, he acted paranoid. He said that someone was trying to kill him. We tried to find out what he was talking about but he wasn’t making any sense. The second time he came, he told me there was a woman in the crowd who was stalking him. ‘She’s been following me all over the country,’ he said. He had a good description of her though, so I went into the crowd and found her. I went up to her and asked who she was and she said she was his daughter. I asked to see her driver’s license and sure enough her last name was Allman.”

Most Out-of-It Performers (Eddie Griffin, Courtney Love, Leon Russell): “Leon Russell was a total burn out, totally unable to carry on a conversation, just mumbled. He fell asleep in his car for five hours and had to be woken up to do his show.”

Most Weed Smokers in Audience (George Clinton):
“Everyone who comes thinks it’s part of the show to light up a bomber. It’s a ritual when you see George. He plays for 3 or 4 hours so the smoke builds up so much you can’t even see the stage.”

Most Drug Overdoses (Club Rubber):
“About 8 years ago, the after hours exotic club scene was peaking in San Diego. The king of all clubs back then was Club Rubber. . . This was a time when designer club drugs were new [on the scene] and information regarding them and their interaction with alcohol and other drugs was not well known. At our first of several Club Rubbers [we had] four overdoses. [The girls] were found either passed out or lying on the floor, their bodies twitching. They were young leggy girls with very short skirts. Each time it happened, an ambulance, fire truck, and police car would arrive and treat the victim. . . . After the fourth call, a SDPD detective told me, ‘One more overdose and this event is done.’ At the next Club Rubber the SDPD vice conducted a sting operation. They had a command post set-up down the street with an operative wearing a wire who would solicit patrons for drugs. When a buy would go down, several of the officers would run in through the back door and arrest the person selling the drugs.”

Weirdest Acts (Boy George, Dr. Michael Dean, Gwar, The Cramps): “Dr. Michael Dean is a famous hypnotist with a large ego and onset of Alzheimer’s. Boy George was a gay cross-dresser who came on to our male staff. Gwar had skits involving famous people being beheaded, testicles being cut off, hearts being pulled out, and fake blood squirting into the crowd. Their show consisted of 4, fifty gallon drums of fake blood and guts which squirted out from the bodies of different characters during the show. The clean-up was enormous. It involved 6 janitors and took 3 hours with large Wet Vacs and mops. At least they covered the walls with plastic and moved the couches out of range.”

Most Surreal Undercover Operation (Whiplash Bash): “We rented the venue to someone who put on a fetish event called, “Whiplash Bash.” About 350 people from all over the world paid $50 each. They all came dressed in leather and fetish attire. There was a fashion show and booths with photographers and people selling fetish items. An undercover sting was taking place with the SDPD. They had two undercover officers present. One was a female officer with high heels and a leather leash attached to a collar around the neck of a male officer who was dressed with an all leather and spiked outfit. Toward the end of the show the event was raided by several plain clothed police officers who issued citations to 2 female patrons, one for having her breasts exposed and the other for engaging in sexual contact with another patron. 4TH & B ended up closing for a two week period as a result.”

Scariest Moment (Tony Yayo, Super Bowl Party): “The Super Bowl party was in January 2003, when the Raiders played the Buccaneers in San Diego. 50 Cent was the biggest name playing. People rushed the back entrance. Some people who appeared to be in his entourage pulled automatic weapons to try to get into the club and VIP area. When they couldn’t get in they started throwing bottles at those who were inside. Fights erupted. SDPD surrounded the venue with 75 officers with riot sticks. They closed down the street, and had helicopters flying overhead.

“Another scary moment was during gangster rapper Tony Yayo’s show. Yayo was a member of the Crips. SDPD told me [after the fact] that San Diego is more of a Blood city. 50 Cent came onstage flashing his signs and wearing his colors. We had an all out riot and some patrons were hurt. The bar staff were scared, some to the point of crying. Some hid behind their bars. It was an ugly scene that cost Wayne Reynolds [in house urban promoter] his job.”

Shortest Performance (Big Pun – 20 minutes).

Highest Paid (Crosby, Stills and Nash, Kenny Loggins, Ringo Starr, The Doobie Brothers).

Stupidest/Weirdest Customer Complaints: “The person who wanted their money back after the show because it was too loud, or the one who wanted me to stop the show to find the person who pushed them. Another good one was when a woman and her friend stole somebody’s seats. When they returned they asked the woman and her friend to move. The woman called for management and I came over and told her to relinquish the seat.

‘Then I want my money back,’ she said.

‘let me see your tickets,’ I asked.

She showed me the tickets and I saw they were comped so I told her, ‘OK, no problem, just return these tickets to your point of purchase.’ That seemed to satisfy her.”

Ed Decker
11/03/06

At first, the funeral was authorized by Immaculata officials and license granted. But after a local, anti-gay/anti porn Christian conservative named James Hartline alerted Bishop Robert Brom to the type of bars he owned, the Bishop revoked the McCusker’s license.

Hard to believe a Bishop would actually tell a grieving Catholic family that their application to bury their boy with the other Catholics Has. Been. Revoked! As if there were a sign on the cemetery gate that says, “Sorry, but we cannot accept dead queers here.” As if dead queers were hazardous waste or something. As if they might contaminate the graves of all those thousands of perfect, sinless Catholics.

As if.

After the announcement came from the Bishop, Leaders of the Gay Community (LGC) called a meeting so they could compose an official response to Bishop Brom’s decision. That meeting has already happened, but I remember when I read about it. The first thing I thought was, “Oh Christ, I really hope they finally say good riddance to the Catholic Church instead of some whiny, pansy-ass statement begging the Church to take them in, to be more inclusive, and would Bishop Brom please, please, please reconsider his position on this funeral thing, and Jesus’ pipes man when are you people gonna get it?”

He’s just not that into you.

Bishop Robert Brom is the leader of his club and he doesn’t want you as a member. It’s even in the bylaws of their Club Manifesto: “If a man also lie with mankind as he lieth with a woman . . . they should surely be put to death.”

See what I mean? They’re just not that into you. That’s what I was thinking anyway until, to my astonishment, the Bishop apologized. Yes, he revoked his position on the revocation of the original funeral license. Which was such good news to the gay community, they considered the matter closed. And they never issued that official response they were working on. Which kinda sucks because it turns out Brom’s apology was but a barrow-full of bullshit.

Because when the aforementioned gay activist (and former gay himself) James Hartline heard of about the Bishop’s turnaround, he rallied his base against him, which freaked out the Bishop.

As reported By Alex Roth of the San Diego Union-Tribune, the desperate voice of Bishop Brom can be heard on Hartline’s answering machine as he tries in vain to back peddle out of his mess:

Message 1: “James, please take my call. I have to explain how it’s all wrong and how I was done in . . . Please call me back immediately.”

Message 2: This is Bishop Brom begging you to call me back. I did not cave in. I stood for our position and I still do, but I need to explain, and I need your help.”

God I love that. He revoked the revoking of his original revocation. And I love all the begging he’s doing. What a turd. I keep reading it over and over with glee. Hartline must have loved it also. Hartline was so outraged about Brom’s reversal on the funeral thing, he just handed the tapes over to the reporter.

Which brings me to why I’m writing this.

I’m guessing that the Leaders of the Gay Community are wishing they had released that official response to Bishop Brom after all. Brom’s apology was clearly a political maneuver to keep them from issuing that response and, oh boy what a hassle it’ll be getting everyone together again to have a meeting about something they just had a meeting about. So I was thinking I might be able to write something official for you.

Maybe it’s wrong of me to think the GLBT community would ever allow a straight man to speak for them. I’m sure the Gay Manifesto has some sort of bylaw against that. But in my defense, I do have some gay tendencies. I once had a dream in which a naked man appeared. And I’m all for anonymous sex with strangers in public places. And I have written many articles in which I howled against gay bashing, which at the very least makes me a queer-lover.

So it is in the spirit of my respect for your trials, O’ Grand and Embattled Leaders of the Gay Community, that I’d like you to consider the following as the official position of San Diego queers — and queers all across this great nation — with regards to the words and deeds of Bishop Robert Brom. I hope you like it.

“Dear Bishop Brom, We the gays, lesbians, transgenders and naked-men-dreamers of the land can not believe what a holy fantastic turd you are. And what a tiny-minded, turd-like view of the Supreme Being you must have if you believe that the most powerful force in the universe just happens to have the exact same petty, un-divine bigotries as you have.

Funny how that worked out in your favor.

And while we detest your exclusionary position on homosexuality, we detest your revocations of your positions ever more. You obviously believe the Church should not embrace homosexuality, but you changed that position to appease the public — which only goes to show that you are nothing more than a poser who is more concerned with retaining the illusion of your importantness than you are concerned with what is righteous or divine — which pretty much sums up our opinion of the Catholic Church in general. Good Riddance pal. Send the Pope our love.

Sincerely,
Queer Nation

EJD
05/05/05

(Originally published in the San Diego Reader 06/07/01)

“He turned a little rat hole into one of the most popular clubs in San Diego,” says sound engineer Brad Engstrom about Bill Winston, his former boss. Winston is the notorious entrepreneur who conceived, owned, and operated Winston’s Beach Club
in Ocean Beach. His other notable achievements include: Winston’s East (a now defunct club in Santee), Rumors (a coffee house/music venue on the corner of Newport Ave. and Bacon Street, The Sunset Cliffs Wellness Center , and furnished a respectable underdog candidacy for Congress in 1992.

In the early hours of April 4 — just after Winston was released from a two-week stint in jail — he headed directly to the nearest fix he could find. Despite all his hard work and good fortune, Bill Winston died of a heroin overdose at the age of 45.

Winston’s is a live music club located on the corner of Newport Avenue and Bacon Street. It is the eye of the San Diego arts and entertainment community. Bill Winston opened it in the early 1980s, and operated it for over a decade. Then he sold his club in 1992 to the owners of Blind Melons. Winston’s remains a popular attraction.

“We used to have Reggae cover bands six nights a week, and Blues on Sunday,” reminisced Engstrom, who worked at Winston’s as a sound engineer for all but nine months of its existence. “When Reggae died, he concentrated on original bands. Bill never wanted Winston’s to be a top-40 club.”

Winston embraced Southern California reggae long before Southern California did. He gambled on an unproven style of music and nurtured dozens of then unknown names — like Common Sense, The Cardiff Reefers, The Gnarly Braus, and Quino (Big Mountain) — into popular, lucrative and (in some cases) nationally recognizable bands.

I worked at Winston’s for five years. It was a top shelf bartending gig. We made a ton of money, saw an incredible influx of talent, and enjoyed bountiful perks. Then it all fell apart.

More on that later.

Jimmy Lewis of Superunloader) graces the
Winston’s stage on Halloween, 1996

“There is a lot of arguing around the community about whether Bill was a good guy or a bad guy,” said Eddie Elias, a former employee and close friend to Bill. “There is so much good and bad about him, just like every other guy I know. Bottom line: Bill was a legend.

“He worked for five years in Saudi Arabia as a buyer for Hughes Aircraft Company. It was there that he saved the money to buy his club. Every six months, he would take four weeks off from work and visit Thailand. He loved Thailand. . . . If you
want to see ancient art, it’s there. If you want to party  in a bordello all night, Thailand’s got that too. It speaks volumes about how he lived and died.”

In Thailand Bill fell in love with a woman named Ranu. According to Bill, Ranu was a Thai escort. Escorts are young woman for hire who will act as your travel guide and your paramour. Ranu toured him through Thailand for a month until he had to go back to work in Saudi Arabia. When he returned to Thailand six months later, Bill discovered that Ranu was pregnant. He married her and brought their son, DJ, to America.

They had two more children, Sulee and Crystal, and when Bill and Ranu divorced, he was granted custody of all three children.

“He had to pay Ranu a quarter of a million dollars in alimony,” Winston told Elias. “After the divorce was final, Bill said, ‘Well she got the money, but I got the
wealth.’ You should have seen that house. It was a palace for the kids. There were toys and games everywhere. He had dogs running all over the place too. . . .”

If his home was a palace to his children, Winston’s Beach Club was a palace for the child in him. Bill was a partier. Most of his employees were partiers too. We were a crew of functioning alcoholics striving toward a common goal: to blur the line between business and pleasure. We cherished the trying. But it wasn’t always that way. Winston’s had tenuous beginnings.

“The bar used to be called McDic’s,” Elias recalled.

“It was a biker’s dive in OB — the last white ghetto of San Diego. The bikers hated Bill because he was changing McDic’s into a reggae club and they were like, ‘How could you bring those people into our neighborhood?’”

The Bikers responded in typical biker fashion and Bill literally had to fight for his club. It was a real turf war, to which Bill won the spoils.

“Ocean Beach was hard core,” continues Elias. “It wasn’t until Winston’s brought in this whole new crowd, that people realized how beautiful Ocean Beach really was. And everybody that came through that club — all those bands, every
customer, all his employees — were a part of that change.”

Employees and friends remember Bill Winston:

Ted Wigler (Bartender): “Sometimes Bill would pay the band a percentage of the bar sales. If a band was getting paid a percentage of the bar, he would come in and drink. He’d order shots for himself, his friends, and sometimes strangers and pay full price with cash from his pocket. He did this so the bands would make more money on the ring. ”

Jolene Andersen (girlfriend, waitress, booking agent,
and nanny): “I filled an application and he called that day from his car and said he needed somebody to work that night. I didn’t have a car, so he took a detour to downtown and picked me up. According to Bill, the moment he saw me walk
down the sidewalk, it was love at first sight. Then he dropped me off at the bar. From that moment, I knew that this was the best boss I was ever going to work for. It was all love love peace.

Bill and Jolene enjoy a moment at Bill’s
backyard birthday party circa 1996

“When I told Bill I was going to have to find another full time job he said, ‘Well, I’m hiring a nanny.’ “And I said, ‘Well, I hate kids.’ “And he said, ‘Wait till you meet my kids.’”

Bill took Jolene to his million dollar home to meet his children.

“‘This guy is fantastic’” Jolene thought. “I could live in this beautiful house overlooking Sunset Cliffs with these beautiful kids. . . . What a great way to live
life for a while. . . . In two weeks, we were in love and nothing else mattered to us.”

Ted Wigler, Ed Decker, Sandy Fimbres

Sandy Fimbres (Bartender) : “Bill would have traded out liquor for anything. . . . [Once] Winston’s had a small sewer rat infestation. Bill had the bright idea to
enlist a local boozer [named Mike] to sit in the bar after-hours with a pellet rifle and shoot the rats. His payment, instead of money, would be an open bar all night.”

While two hundred drunken customers were spilling out into the street at the end of a busy Saturday night, Boozer Mike comes strolling in with his orange hunting cap, checkered hunting jacket, a rifle, and an Igloo cooler. I didn’t know what to think. The doormen didn’t know what to think. Bill never warned
us.

Mike explained that Bill asked him to shoot the rats, and — knowing what we know about Bill’s eccentricities — we figured Mike was telling the truth. So we locked up and went home, leaving Mike sitting at the bar with a whiskey and seven on his
right, the Igloo on his left, and the rifle in his lap.

Edwin Decker (Bartender, General Manager): I always liked the story of when Bill was arrested for the heinous crime of dancing: Bill always fought diligently for his right to party. One time he was dancing to a band at Rumors. However, since we live in a place where you need a license to dance, and Bill couldn’t get that license for Rumors, the cops raided and ordered everyone to stop dancing. Everyone stopped but Bill.

He had a very silly dance move too. It was part: Deadhead-elbow-swirl, part Chicken-head-bob, part Testosterone-strut. The police threatened to shut him down — he kept dancing. They threatened to arrest him — he kept dancing. He danced until they handcuffed him to a bike rack in front of Rumors; left him shackled in front of all his customers until the officers felt he had been sufficiently
humiliated, then was whisked away to jail.

* * * *
Arguably, the downfall of Bill Winston began when he fired his GM (General Manager) under questionable pretenses. She returned volley by suing him for several causes of action: Breach of Contract, Violation of the Fair Employment Act, Hostile Work Environment, Wrongful Demotion, Wrongful Termination. and Sexual Harassment.

“I could see that his alcoholism was destroying his rational decision making,” wrote S. (The GM) in her email to me yesterday. “He began to abuse me and other employees at a new level. He fired people to make job opportunities for girls he wanted to date. . . . He demoted me and refused to give a reason. He was getting out of control. . . .”

“But did he sexually harass you?” I wrote back. “If
so, when and how?”

“You, like everyone else, seem to zero in on the words, ‘Sexual harassment,’ when it involved so much more. Note: I did not run to an attorney and say, ‘This man is
sexually harassing me’ . . . Only [After] speaking with an attorney and discussing . . . the many questionable business practices that Bill was fond of, I was informed that, legally speaking, Bill had been sexually harassing many of his female employees . . . You ask me when and how Bill sexually harassed me and to that I say, ‘Bill is dead, he’s no longer here to defend himself.’”

If working at Winston’s was like being a member of a large, rambunctious family, then the family was shattered when mommy and daddy divorced. Their respective lawyers scrambled to have us spill dirt about their opposition. I remember the day Bill took me to meet with his attorneys. They brought me into a conference
room and asked all the questions they believed S’s lawyer would ask:

“Did you ever see Bill sexually harass S?”

“No.”

“Do you think Bill sexually harassed S.? ”

“No.”

“Has Bill sexually harassed any other employees?”

“Well, yeah,” I replied, and told them about dozens of raunchy, predatory incidents that I had either seen or heard about.

“Bill was an insatiable lecher,” said bartender Sandy Fimbres. “On my first week behind the bar, I was standing up on the sink changing the radio station, and he walked up behind me and goosed me. . . . I saw him grab another bartender’s
breasts too. Alcohol was always involved.”

After our meeting with his lawyers Bill and I had the terrible row that ended our friendship. Bill asked why I said all those incriminating things to his lawyer. I said, ‘Because it is the truth.’ Bill argued that friendship was more important than truth. I argued, truth is where friendship begins.

He fired me shortly after.

Eventually, the litigants settled out of court. Bill agreed to pay an undisclosed monthly stipend. But he wouldn’t, or couldn’t, make payments on time. One day the marshals barged in during business hours and took what was owed. It was an embarrassment for Bill and the club.

“It was a very exciting time for me,” wrote S. “Finally I got to publicly say, ‘Fuck you Bill.’”

It was a terrible time for Bill Winston though. He was going round and round on the judicial ferris wheel. He was on his third DUI and still drinking heavily. And S’s lawsuit was only the beginning of a string of legal actions; including when Bartender Donna Buckholtz — also a close friend to Bill — sued after she twisted her knee on the job. The reason? She couldn’t collect Workman’s Comp Insurance. Bill had neglected to pay it for over a year.

“I didn’t even want to get a lawyer,” said Donna. “But when Bill learned I was seriously injured, he tried to get me to fake the injury after he reinstated the insurance. My doctor said, ‘Do not commit insurance fraud! Get yourself a lawyer, now.’”

Bill and Donna enjoy a limousine moment

Disgusted, broken, and racking up lawsuits and DUIs like empty cans of cheap beer, Winston vowed to abandon the bar business that he claimed was ruining his life. He sold Winston’s Beach Club in September of 1998 to the proprietors of Blind Melon’s, who own it still.

* * * *
Within a year of selling Winston’s, Bill opened an alphabiotics joint called the Sunset Cliff’s Wellness Center.

The Skeptic’s Dictionary (skepdic.com) defines alphabiotics as such: “An alternative medical practice based on the notion that, ‘All disease is the result of an imbalance and lack of life energy’ . . . Since this energy is outside the bounds of scientific control or study, only spiritual healers can unblock . . . . this energy.”

I was not in the least bit surprised to learn that Bill started experimenting with opium and heroin while he operated the Wellness Center. Consider Bill’s life’s choices: he wanted family life, yet he married a prostitute. He was a romantic, yet a sexual predator. He was a great, fun-loving boss, yet he manufactured reasons to fire you. He operated a wellness center, yet he was on drugs. This dichotomy is exactly why there is, as Eddie Elias said earlier, “A lot of arguing around the community about whether Bill Winston was a good guy or a bad guy.”

About this time last year he opened The Vortex (formerly called Patches). Bill tried in vain to repeat the old Winston’s magic. Perhaps it is no coincidence, that — around the same time he operated The Vortex – his mind and body were reeling
from a vortex of their own.

“I could tell Bill was becoming hooked,” said Jolene. I could see it in his eyes. They would just glaze over from time to time. He was hiding it from me too. He was going down a bad road. . . .”

Shortly after opening The Vortex, Jolene moved to Los Angeles to pursue an acting career. When Bill’s drug problem worsened, Jolene dropped her life in Los Angeles and returned for the summer to care for her- ex-boyfriend.”

“When summer ended and I needed to go back to L.A. . . ” Jolene sadly remembered. “I still talked to him a couple of times a week to make sure he was ok. . . . Then, a little before the holidays, he called again and said. . . . ‘I really need to talk to you, it’s really huge. So I immediately dropped the phone and drove to San Diego . . . . When I got down there he said, ‘Can you handle this?’ and I said, ‘Handle what? You’re scaring me.’

“So we went into his bedroom. He had the crack pipe and the whole fucking rig in there. Then he admitted he got another DUI and was going to be under house arrest.” He said, ‘When I get high everything feels so blissful’ and I said, ‘Duh! How old are you? Of course it feels that way!’

He said, ‘You gotta help me get off this stuff. I can’t do it alone.’

I told him I’d quit my job, miss classes, and come live with him for two weeks. But that he had to fucking promise that he would get his life together after this.’”

For two weeks, Jolene fed, bathed, massaged, and held him. She cleaned his sweat, cared for the kids, and cared for business until he was clean again. In the interim he was fitted with an ankle monitor as a condition of his house arrest. Thinking that
he was going to be fine and that house arrest would do him good, she went back home for the holidays.

“A week later. . . .” continues Jolene, “he was right back on the drugs again. . . . He just couldn’t handle it when we were apart. I’m not sure when he started using needles, but he tested dirty when he was on house arrest.”

As a result of a positive drug test, Bill was incarcerated for two weeks.

“People always talk about how you can’t mix in jail,” said Jolene. “Whites can’t talk to Mexicans or the blacks. But he just waltzed right in and sat with the gang bangers. Bill was like that, he had no fear. He was a peace loving hippy that got along with everybody.”

Bill was probably sober for the two weeks he was in prison. He told his sister that he was sorry for not being a better brother. He apologized to his mother for not being a better son, and promised that he was going to be a better father to his kids.

But when Donna, the most recent nanny, picked him up from prison around 2 a.m. on Wednesday, Bill asked her to pull over to a convenience store so he could use a pay phone. Then he had her stop at an ATM. When they got home he drank a couple of beers, ate a couple of pills, and, around 4 a.m., told Donna he was going outside for some air. She saw a white truck pull up, interact with Bill, and then drive away.

A neighbor, out for a morning walk, found him in the alley around 6 a.m.

The coroner’s office reported that he died of accidental heroin overdose. “I can’t tell you how many guys get out of prison and are dead that weekend,” the toxicologist
told me over the phone. “When they’re in jail their tolerance drops. When they get released, they can’t handle the same doses.”

* * * *

The stereo whispers a Neil Young tune inside the Point Loma Methodist Church while we wait for the memorial service to begin.

Bill was a Neil Young fan. I wonder how many times he must have listened to The Needle and the Damage Done and how he could have missed the song’s somber warning.

Like Bill’s night club, the church is standing room only — packed full of band members, family members, business associates, local boozers, former employees, and former lovers. Afterward, the crowd split: family and friends convened to his house to have a reception proper; while the rest of us converged upon Winston’s
bar to say goodbye — in our own way– to the ornery, loveable, disturbed, horny, brilliant, dark, fun-loving, alcoholic prick that brought us all together.

“I danced myself out of the womb
is it strange to dance so soon?
I danced myself into the tomb
Is it strange to dance so soon?
Is it wrong to understand
the fear that dwells inside a man?”

T-Rex — “Cosmic Dancer”

Winston’s Circa 1999: Band members, promoters, employees, and boozers
hang out at Winston’s notorious “Horeshoe.” Also known as “Murderers Row,”
The Horeshoe has shed it’s share of blood, sweat, tears, vomit, and odors

Reed Stewart, Dave Carano, and Field Marshal Scott drink tequila shots
at the horeshoe inside Winston’s after the funeral

EJD
06/07/02

OK, so it’s Easter Sunday morning, and I’m flipping through the dial desperately searching for something interesting to watch that doesn’t involve creepy old papabiles gesticulating their hands over golden artifacts while chanting something in mumbo-jumbonese. That’s when I tune to the KUSI Morning Show just in time to see journalist Doug Curlee reporting on Easter service at the Cabrillo Monument.
“The message was a simple one,” Curlee said about the Pastor’s sermon. “God’s love is always there waiting for us. We don’t even have to work that hard for it. Just think about that fact.”

Uh oh. Did he really just call God’s love a fact? I had to rewind my DVR to double-check, and, sure as shit don’t shop at Tiffany’s, there was Doug Curlee, a 40-year news veteran confirming the actual, factual existence of Thy Lord, Thy God and also, as matter of actual fact, confirming that Thy Lord, Thy God loves everybody.

How anyone could ever presume to know what is inside God’s mind is, to me, one of the higher mysteries of humanity. But to report this hocus pocus as fact, on a television news program, in the 21st freaking century, a good 30 years after Sidney Lumet gave us Network, and hundreds of years after, you know, reason was invented–well, holy crap, I never realized how pathetic the KUSI news division actually is.

Is it KUSI or CBN fer crissake? God is not a fact. God is the opposite of fact. God is faith. Faith and fact are about as compatible as shaved chocolate on ballpark hotdogs. I always thought the word “fact” had to do with logic and evidence and proof and stuff. Doug Curlee thinks a fact is something he read in book that was written more than 3,500 years ago by people who believed an invisible man in the sky was talking to them.

Now, it’s possible that saying “fact” was just a figure of his speech. Well, if I had any doubt that Doug Curlee intended to identify the existence of God as fact, what he said next surely smothered it. He said verbatim, “Easter is the day, of course, that Christ was resurrected.”

Here again Curlee , who looks like a priest, with his white hair, wire glasses, and snug white collar, is stating Christian dogma as fact. He may not have used the word “fact” this time, but he certainly affirmed the resurrection. A better journalist would’ve said, “Easter is the day Christians believe Christ was resurrected.” Curlee even added the phrase “of course” to the sentence. His exact quote was: “This is the day, of course, that Christ was resurrected.” Well, of course “of course.” How could anyone question that story? The Bible is a perfectly legitimate news source, and the witnesses to the resurrection were just sooo credible. It’s not like rising from the dead isn’t an easy parlor trick that any mediocre magician could pull off. It’s not like people back then weren’t stupider, desperater, easier-to-manipulatier than now. It’s not like the folks who witnessed Christ’s resurrection didn’t have a reason to stage it, or lie about it or want to believe it. Oh please! That’s enough right there to question the veracity of The Bible’s account of Jesus’ resurrection. Then there’s the problem of how ancient it is and how often it was rewritten and, Jesus Cronkite Curlee, even the Weekly World News is a more reliable source than the goddamn Bible.

By the way, this religious drivel didn’t end with Doug Curlee. Others on the broadcast were behaving similarly: Dave Scott the weatherman gave his props to The Lord also. After Curlee, Scott gave a weather report from the site of another Easter service on Mount Helix. He reported about the crappy weather, then mentioned how the Helix Easter service was over and that he was alone on the mountain. “Well, the Big Man is always with us,” he told anchor Dave Davis, to which Davis added a hearty, “Well yeah.” As if to say, “Well, duh! Of course the Big Man is with us–what do you think, I’m agnostic?”

Maybe I just never noticed, but I don’t recall ever hearing a news team display such overt religious preference like this. Oh sure, the overall grotesque, super, extra-hyper media over-coverage of our Judeo-Christian holidays is a gnarly bias in itself. But at least the reporting was once-removed. Even Fox News does that.

However, watching this Easter broadcast, it’s as if KUSI identified itself as a Christian news station, something a real news organization would never allow. Revealing partiality toward any religion is a conflict of interest, especially when reporting on anything remotely faith-based. And, knowing what we know about the institution of religion in general, that bias would surely seep into everything else it reports–like the war, or local politics, even the weather. I mean, Dave Scott might as well just have come out and said, “Yup, it’s very cloudy at Mt. Helix today–must be God’s mad at us about something.”

It’s the same as when Fox News displayed the American flag under its logo in the days following 9/11. Doing so pretty much identified the network as having a bias, in this case a geopolitical one. Of course, a real news division would never fly any flag, or covet any religion, because any news organization worth half a tick on its ticker-tape machine has a predisposition only to truth. Not the truth as Americans want it, or as Christians want it, but the real true truth, which is, of course, the greater cause of course, of course, of course.

Come on, KUSI, don’t you see? Separation of church and media is as important as separation of church and state. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not suggesting you don’t have the right to embrace and present whatever hocus pocus you got duped into believing. And I am certainly not calling for the firing of Curlee or Scott or Davis, offensive though they be. No, what I’m going to do is either stop watching KUSI news altogether or, more likely, continue to watch it in the manner in which I watch O’Reilly, or Hannity or Reno 911–as a zany comedy show with kooky idiot-clown characters who say and do outrageous things, like broadcasting news reports on an invisible man who lives in the sky. I find it’s much better when you view it that way.

EJD
04/14/07