Socializing on the Streets of Los Angeles

You never know where you’re going to run into somebody interesting in Southern California. Meg Bookout was leaving a store in Palmdale when she saw an accident in a parking lot.

“A woman backed out without looking, and a car came around the corner and smashed into her car,” Bookout said.

“The male driver got out to examine the damage, and she got out. The woman passenger in the guy’s car got out and ran around to the front of the car.” At this point, the woman passenger screamed.

She then “threw up her arms and hugged the woman driver,” Bookout related. “The two women were good friends who had lost touch.”

Bookout adds that the old buddies “exchanged phone numbers--presumably not for insurance reasons. . . .”

L.A.--YOU CAN’T ESCAPE IT! The movie “In & Out” is set in a small town in Indiana and when a gay tabloid reporter (played by Tom Selleck) plants a smooch on the lips of a teacher (Kevin Kline) on a street, the latter is horrified. “This is not Los Angeles,” the teacher says.

MALE, FEMALE AND UNDECIDED? Winfield Wilson sent along a section of the Los Angeles County Code that seems to indicate there are three genders. (see excerpt)

Of course, this is Los Angeles.

FLIGHT OF FANCY: says, “I had to smile at your story on the messengers of peace/havoc that were released at the Sunday ceremony of the new Roman Catholic cathedral,” says Manuel Gutierrez of Studio City.

By “peace/havoc,” he was referring to the fact that the 300 winged messengers were identified as doves--seen by Christians as symbolic of the Holy Spirit--but were, in truth, pigeons.

Anyway, Gutierrez goes on to say that he witnessed the spectacle.

The birds “flew over the Board of Education building, separated into two groups, reunited, then flew back directly over the site of the new cathedral and headed east. I thought they were on their way to Rome but you tell me that instead they went to Norwalk. Oh, well . . . I thought I had witnessed a miracle.”

ANOTHER PROBLEM WE WERE UNAWARE OF: Phil Proctor of Beverly Hills noticed a sign at the Equestrian Center in Burbank that set out strict guidelines for the scaling of fences (see photo).

I forgot to ask Proctor if there’s also a similar sign about who the feed bins are for.

NOTHING LIKE A VITAMIN C SIGALERT TO START THE DAY: On the 210 freeway, near the 605, there was a sea of juice the other morning after motorists flattened a spilled load of oranges.

miscelLAny

La Canada Flintridge, which has been trying to persuade the world that the Jet Propulsion Laboratory is in that city--not Pasadena, as is often reported--must be more frustrated.

A new commercial praises JPL’s part in the Mars mission and then ends with the line, “It’s amazing what grows in Los Angeles.” Especially with all those genders.

*

Steve Harvey can be reached by phone at (213) 237-7083, by fax at (213) 237-4712, by e-mail at [email protected] and by mail at Metro, L.A. Times, Times Mirror Square, L.A. 90053.