Tuesday, June 6, 2006 | 7:14 a.m.
No one has ever accused Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman of being two-faced.
But 11-faced - now you're on to something.
While pro sports players and rock stars are lucky to get a bobblehead or two in their honor, Hizzoner is well on his way to becoming king of the bobblehead world with 11, count 'em, 11, minifigures showing Goodman at work and at play - and all the while being the happiest mayor in the world. Just five more bobbleheads, and Goodman will be the Sybil of mayors.
Tom Barry, with San Diego-based bobblehead-maker Pro Specialties Group Inc., said Goodman's 11 figures make the mayor one of the most bobbleheaded people in any field.
"Eleven puts him there in total depictions, but there's got to be a baseball player with more," Barry said.
The Goodman bobblehead universe grew by more than half last week when he had four new ones made for the roughly 300 mayors in town for the U.S. Conference of Mayors meetings.
Although each mayor will be heading home with multiple mini-Oscars in his or her suitcase, one of the attendees, Dubuque, Iowa, Mayor Roy Buol, wished they also had received "bobbleheads of the showgirls."
Buol said he has space on a shelf at home for the Goodman bobbleheads, right next to a bobblehead of his son-in-law Eric Munson, a catcher with the Houston Astros.
The bobblehead craze is rooted in baseball, where teams periodically treat fans to a free bobblehead of a player. Goodman's bobbleheads got their start with a baseball promotion for the Las Vegas 51s.
Pittsburgh Mayor Bob O'Connor said he will give one to his nephew, who owns a bar on Tropicana Avenue, and take another home.
"My son has bobbleheads from baseball players. So I think he'll like this one," he said.
Goodman's mug was omnipresent among the knickknacks handed out at the conference.
In addition to the bobbleheads, commemorative U.S. Conference of Mayors poker chips featured a drawing of the mayor holding a martini. The same blue-suited martini-toting depiction also was on a conference pin supplied by the city employees' union. And then there was a cutout of Goodman's face glued to a stick.
But the bobbleheads clearly were the memento of choice among Goodman's fellow mayors.
"Everyone's coming up and talking about the bobbleheads," Goodman said. "If you ask people, they can't wait to go home and put them on their desk."
An informal poll of the visiting mayors Monday showed that the new Goodman as Elvis (dressed in a white Elvis costume with black sideburns coming down from gray hair) was the reigning king of the bobbleheads. Of course, that was before the mayors got a look at the grass-skirted, Hawaiian-theme doll handed out Monday.
The bobbleheads have come at a cost, but so far it hasn't been one borne by the city.
A total of 5,680 bobbleheads were made to give away at the mayors' conference, which ends after breakfast this morning.
The dolls cost $43,282, of which $32,740 was paid by sponsors Sprint, the Fremont Street Experience and Downtown Resorts.
And even though the mayor claims to be notoriously cheap, he shelled out the remaining $10,000-plus to make sure the mayors would get their full complement of Goodman dolls.
Sometimes, a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do - so his fellow mayors can see him wearing a hula skirt.
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