DATE: Sunday, March 9, 1997                 TAG: 9703060523

SECTION: COMMENTARY              PAGE: J1   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Opinion

SOURCE: DAVE ADDIS

                                            LENGTH:   54 lines

``CRISCO CITY'' NOT THE IMAGE NORFOLK WAS HOPING FOR

Well, it was a rough week for the home team.

Just days after ``Hampton Roads'' was told we are too obscure to merit a National Hockey League franchise, Norfolk burst into the national spotlight as - trumpets, please - ``the second-fattest city in the United States.''

This is hardly the image that our city fathers and mothers were hoping to sell to America. But it might be the fault of that blasted ``Rhino'' logo they've been waving everywhere.

Why wouldn't we look like America's second-fattest city if we're sailing under the flag of one of nature's widest animals?

Actually, you could argue that we are the fattest ``real'' city in America. New Orleans took top honors, with 37.5 percent of its residents overweight, compared to our 33.9 percent.

But New Orleans, like Miami, San Francisco and New York, is not a genuine American city. Like those others, New Orleans is an anomaly, a hedonistic Disneyville, dedicated to overindulgence.

In New Orleans, the restaurants will dip anything in boiling lard. They'll fry your coffee, your appetizers, your entree and your dessert. When you're done, they'll fry your wallet.

In New Orleans, a ``5K race'' is not a fitness event: It is two waiters struggling down the aisle to get 11 pounds of bubbling meat onto your table before the Crisco congeals.

I haven't been to New Orleans in three years, but in honor of my last visit, I still refer to the part of me that hangs over my belt as ``the French Quarter.''

This alleged fatness study, like many of its kind, is not based on anything approaching science. It was concocted by a food-nag outfit in Washington, D.C., and was designed to get its name and agenda into the press. It worked. There we were, Tuesday night, watching Peter Jennings smirk to an ABC News audience as the name ``Norfolk'' sat just one tick below the top of the list.

But there are two things interesting about the study:

1.) Of the 33 fattest-cities surveyed, ``Norfolk'' is the only one that does not have a major-league sports franchise.

2.) They're still calling us ``Norfolk,'' not ``Hampton Roads,'' even though the study covered the entire region.

What this means is that despite 20 years of lectures from the local patroons, ``Hampton Roads'' is not even a blip on the national radar screen. We will never take our rightful spot among fat-city sports towns until we have a name that people can recognize.

If we can't settle on the only logical choice - Norfolk/Virginia Beach - then we should dump ``Hampton Roads'' and come up with a new regional name that represents our best-known attributes: the ocean, and, now, blubber.

``Whaleyville'' would be perfect. But it's already taken. MEMO: Dave Addis is the editor of Commentary. Reach him at 446-2726, or

addis(AT)worldnet.att.net.

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