It sounds like a Kurt Vonnegut subplot: The killjoys at PETA compete with the chicken cookers at KFC for what is essentially the naming rights to Egg Town?s nest-sized potholes.
Wednesday, the cast grew larger in the drama that will determine who will garner some publicity in return for cash donations to fill some of the infamous craters on Petaluma?s streets.
Remember Pierre Miremont? He?s the mirthful Petaluma businessman and anti-pothole crusader who, along with Tim ?Animal? Sullivan, furtively painted bright yellow and red circles about Petaluma potholes years ago.
Miremont wrote Petaluma Mayor Pam Torliatt on Wednesday and offered to sweeten the pothole pot in the wake of the offers by Kentucky Fried Chicken and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.
Torliatt has welcomed KFC?s plan to donate $3,000 and paint a temporary company logo on one filled pothole. The mayor?s shown no appetite for PETA?s offer to give the city $6,000 and paint a fixed pothole with a logo portraying Colonel Sanders as a torturer of chickens.
Miremont?s offer: He and Sullivan would pony up $5,000 for pothole repair. In return, Petaluma would allow each fixed pothole to be permanently stenciled with ?Pothole Capital? or similar wording.
Miremont also seeks a promise that for each pothole fixed, an unfilled pothole will be ringed in yellow warning paint.
Mayor Torliatt?s initial response was thanks, anyway. She told Miremont in an email, ?Your offer is clearly one that would create confusion and a distraction for motorists on the road.?
The world waits.
GRANDMA? I NEED HELP: This is despicable and it keeps happening.
The phone rang days ago at the Penngrove home of a low-income 78-year-old woman. A distressed-sounding man identified himself, by name, as her grandson and said he was in a bind.
He said was in Houston for a wedding and he?d crashed his rental car and needed cash to cover the damage. ?I thought it was really my grandson,? said his elderly prey.
She went to the Western Union counter at a Petaluma market and wired $2,500 to Texas. The man then phoned again and said he needed another $2,500. She wired that too.
A virtually identical scam robbed an 88-year-old Santa Rosa woman of $6,500 only two months ago.
Seniors need to hang up on these creeps. Spread the word.
PICKY, PICKY: Creative genius Scott Weaver of Rohnert Park has oh so carefully trucked to San Francisco his astounding toothpick sculpture of the City by the Bay.
?I was nervous because it hasn?t gone that far before," he said. His 9-foot-tall piece of toothpick art will be on exhibit until April 25 at the educational Root Division art gallery (www.rootdivision.org) on 17th Street at South Van Ness.
Scott?s sculpture attracted more admirers at last year?s Sonoma County Fair than the calves drew flies. He?ll transport it gingerly to the State Fair in Sacramento in August, and he?s talking to Ripley?s about a possible longterm lease of the masterpiece to the Believe It or Not Museum at Fisherman?s Wharf.
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