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Tom Blair is an SDNN columnist.

PLAY BALL: Summer isn’t even a week old, and already we’re teeming with Zonies. The latest to make reservations for San Diego: the Phoenix Suns, who’ve decided to move their basketball training camp to the University of San Diego gym this fall. Why San Diego? “It’s not uncommon for a team to train away from home,” says coach Alvin Gentry, “and San Diego presents an opportunity to focus on the task at hand.” Right, nothing in SD to distract them. Or maybe they were thinking South Dakota?

LIFE IN THE CITY: Sometimes it’s not so much about how well you’re doing as it is about how poorly things are going for somebody else. Take Forbes magazine’s new ranking of “America’s best cities to buy a home.” San Diego came in at No. 4, after Denver, Phoenix and Boston. “While the majority of the nation’s housing markets are still working toward a bottom, some cities are boasting fundamentals that make them a good place to buy a home now,” Forbes says. The rankings are based on price per square foot, frequency of sales, and how evenly distributed home-sales activity is in the metro area. At the bottom of the list, as you might expect: Detroit . . . The current movie mega-hit, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, isn’t exactly in the category of travelogue, but it features some pretty stunning scenes that show off San Diego. The most-spectacular: a CH-53 Marine helicopter flying up and down our city’s waterfront hauling a Saturn sedan suspended by cable in mid-air. . . For the record: Old Town business legend Diane Powers’ restaurant at Grossmont Center is Casa de Pico. Her new restaurant opening Tuesday at The Forum in Carlsbad is Casa de Bandini.

More from Tom Blair: The frosting on the cake… ^[2] | Waiting for the Second Act… ^[3] | On going out in style… ^[4]

SAN DIEGANS’ INK: The heroics of Chris Van Gorder, the ex-cop and current CEO of Scripps Health, are well-known in San Diego. But the outside world is paying attention, too. Van Gorder, who’s also a deputy county sheriff and emergency medical technician, was honored this month with B’nai B’rith’s national humanitarian award . . . San Diego’s Brice & Associates has won a top marketing award from the California Travel & Tourism Commission for its work with the Anza-Borrego Foundation. Actually, it was second place, says owner John Brice. “But we’re okay with that. First place went to a marketing effort for the California Academy of Science that was 10 years in the making with a budget of $500 million.”

REMEMBRANCE: Jim Bowers, the dean of San Diego’s fund-raising community, lost a friend of nearly half a century this week when Ed McMahon died at 86. “Do men still have drinking buddies?” asks Bowers. “I never hear that expression anymore. But Ed and I were drinking buddies. The McMahons and the Bowerses had summer homes on the South Jersey shore. Ed and I had a favorite saloon in Avalon, where we and a dozen others would meet from time to time for a scotch. He was one of the most gracious and most fun ex-Marines I ever called a friend. He was 30 years with Johnny Carson, and I missed very few of those shows-even, occasionally, attended in person. I will miss him, as, of course, will so many.”

THE LAST WORD: Jake Billingsley, an old-fashioned kid of guy, shares word of the La Jolla stockbroker who’s about to marry his live-in girlfriend after 11 years. “For the honeymoon,” he says, “they’re taking separate vacations.”

Tom Blair is an SDNN columnist.