June 12, 1985
By David Crowder
Times staff writer
The
temperature has pushed over the 102-degree mark for four of the past
five days, and some people are wondering if it’s getting to Mayor
Jonathan Rogers who, ever-armed with his trusty scissors, is escalating
his attack on ties.
“He’s gone on a binge,” West Central city Rep. Suzie Azar said Tuesday, referring to the mayor’s latest tie-chopping antics. “He used to ask permission, but lately he’s gone berserk.”
Rogers, who has gained nationwide notoriety for enforcing his ban on coats and ties at City Hall, insists he is fine and that the heat may be going to other people’s heads, but not his.
“Not me, he said, I’m cool and comfortable in my guayabera,” referring to the loose-hanging, Mexican-style sport shirts he wears.
Azar said people became noticeably nervous and started removing their ties when the guayabera-garbed mayor, scissors in hand, showed up Sunday at the victory party for El Pasoan Laura Martinez Herring, who recently was named Miss USA.
“There were people disrobing right and left,” Azar said. “I think he will settle down when the temperature drops.”
As a precaution, the dapper East Central city Rep. Orlando Fonseca, who rarely appears without a coat and tie, has issued a warning some might take as a dare.
“Cut my tie, get a black eye,” Fonseca said.
Rogers’ victims this week have included County Judge Pat O’Rourke, convention bureau Chairman John Folmer and Roy Zuloaga, an account executive with a Dallas advertising firm.
Zuloaga, who handles advertising for McDonalds’s, was fit to be French fried, Fonseca said, when Rogers snipped off the silk garment between the second and third button Monday.
“He said, ‘I don’t care what his policy is, that tie cost $30. It was my favorite yellow tie,’ ” Fonseca reported.
Rogers said he warned Zuloaga in advance.
“I told him what was going to happen if he wore one,” Rogers aid, adding that he had a good reason. “Ronald McDonald, the clown, told me to cut it off.”
Zuloaga, he said, accepted his tie’s fate and probably will show it as a business expense.
The question going now is, “Who will be next?”
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