I'm admittedly a novice but I don't find db(db.item.id==1).select() very difficult to understand.
(db.item.id==1).select() is kind of like ' '.join(li) that is so confusing to Python newbies. Can't you just explain to people that this is how you query the db: rows = db(db.item.id==1).select() How much is gained by dropping the "db"?