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Heart to Heart
Parking and Paperbacks

San Diego Jewish Times, February 10, 2006

By Gert Thaler

SAN DIEGO, Calif.-- This ‘n That:

          I experienced a Gaslamp Quarter Farewell Party last Saturday night.

          Maybe I’m too old for what is known as “Downtown Night Life.” For sure I am too economically tuned in to paying $15 for valet parking!

          Having dinner at one of my favorite Gaslamp Quarter restaurants is pricey, but the food is usually so good and host Sal Vitale so cordial (and with someone hosting the dinner check) that I don’t mind the 30-minute drive from Del Mar plus the gas output. But to shell out $15 for lack of parking spaces hurts me as much in my heart as in my pocketbook. My friend said I was lucky we weren’t in Philadelphia, where it costs double the $15 (or more).

          Harrison Levin had to listen to all this because he was our gracious escort and not only picked up the dinner tab but had to plunk out his own $15 to a valet as well as me.

          My answer to Rosie Silberman was, “But I’m not in Philadelphia. I am in San Diego. I grew up several blocks south of here on the waterfront, where my dad’s pipe and supply company sold heavy-duty commercial pipe to the city and where I used to dangle a pole with a piece of string tied around a safety pin with my father, convincing me that I was a fisherman. Nu?

          And where my dad gave the ferry captain a nickel (ferry fare) to let me ride back and forth to Coronado as much as I wanted (and a quarter tip). There was a regular set of Jewish kids that enjoyed the same privileges. Now gone are the ferries, my dad’s Shelley Pipe and Supply and lots of free parking downtown.

          It will be that famous cold day in August when I shell out another $15 and then have to wait 15 minutes to have my car returned to me, pushing my way through the slowly ambling crowds in the Gaslamp district to retrieve my car at curbside. Plenty of places to eat closer to home, where a $2 tip brings me my car.

          With that off my abundant chest, let’s move on.

          Rochelle Krich and I have been friends for about four years when we first met as I listened in fascination to her presentation of the book selected by the Jewish Book Fair committee, which she had just written. Krich captured my interest and we became friends and have remained so to this day.

          Her latest book, Now You See Me, is another who-done-it, which features one of her fans’ favorite characters, Molly Blume, an Orthodox Jewess/crime reporter. Sprinkled throughout the suspense-filled pages are Krich’s reference to Jewish ritual, foods and mamaloshen, all of which add up to a delicious tale of intrigue.

          She was here a couple of weeks ago at Barnes & Noble bookstore speaking to a group of Krich followers, and during the evening found herself touching more on the deeply disturbing subject upon which the book evolves than giving excerpts from the 311 pages of the paperback edition. Mao Shillman and I were enraptured listeners, maybe Mao more so than me since she has two young sons on the brink of entering their teens.

          A former schoolteacher, Krich offers her readers an end-of-story curricula titled “A Reading Group Guide” in which she analyzes this latest book’s theme, “Teens at Risk,” which covers such subjects as teens and the Internet, teens and chat room predators, teens who mutilate and those that have eating disorders, plus the risk of suicide by taking antidepressants, as well as teens who cheat in school aptitude tests and other related subjects.

          Now You See Me concerns the initial disappearance of a rabbi’s daughter following her fascination with a chat room “soul mate” and the subsequent effects that this relationship has upon the family and the community.

          As Krich cites in her Guide for Groups, “This story explores the challenges faced by young people on the verge of adulthood who are eager to establish their own identities but are frightened as well as confused and may feel disenfranchised, isolated, burdened with their parents’ expectations and their own feelings of inadequacy, pressured by their peers and desperate to fit in.”

          While the author has enjoyed much success having published 13 other books, Now You See Me puts another jewel in her crown as well as rewards Molly Blume with a fictionalized kiss on her kepaleh.

          Not content to simply end her story, Rochelle offers her true-life daughter’s recipe for Butternut Squash Quiche (another reason to get the book) and tops everything off with a six-page glossary of Hebrew and Yiddish words that are scattered throughout the tale of mystery and intrigue.

          Read it! For fun and an eye opening experience into the world of teenagers.

          And, like I said in the opening sentences of today’s column, “Maybe I’m too old for downtown night life,” but I know now that no one is too old to look into the world that is described in Krich’s newest novel.

          The author is the recipient of an Anthony Award for her first of 13 novels, Where’s Mommy Now?, which was adapted as a TV movie. She lives in Los Angeles with her charming husband, Hershie, and their children.