Ah, romance and road hazards

It was a lovers’ triangle, so I guess trouble among the hot-blooded individuals was inevitable.

A woman told Carpinteria police that her ex-boyfriend’s new love had been harassing her and even tried to hit her with a car in the middle of the road. The complainant said she was walking in the middle of the road because she didn’t want to pass close to her ex-boyfriend’s apartment.

The Coastal View News said that police investigated and theorized that one reason for the near-accident could be visual problems on the part of the new girlfriend. After all, she is 82 -- as is the boyfriend. The complainant is 57.

Unreal estate: If housing prices are declining, wonders Shan of Hacienda Heights, how come someone’s asking $3.7 million for a place with an unclean kitchen? (see accompanying).

Dirty kitchen (cont.): Actually, that’s the term for a secondary kitchen, often used by Filipinos. As one reader explained to me: “We Filipinos have a small cooking area outside the house where we fry our fish, cook anchovies, etc. -- all that smelly stuff. . . . Filipinos love to cook, but we don’t want the smell and splatters in the real kitchen.”

Cleaning up: Kay Hopkins of Palmdale noticed a banner for a car wash that will bathe your car -- and you (see photo).

Unclear on the concept: Gerri Allan of Rancho Santa Margarita saw an offer that would more properly belong in the movie “Back to the Future” (see accompanying).

Now for some trashy poetry: An anonymous wit wrote to the Palisadian-Post:

Woke up on Tuesday

But still wanted to snooze

Three trucks a bangin’

Hate the Garbage Truck blues.

Easy for her to say: An L.A.-area woman, attempting to convince a traffic investigator that a collision was not her fault, wrote:

“I think back on the day this took place and call to mind that I without a doubt declared that at the end of the collision I looked up at the light to find out it was yellow. Signification that while the impact was occurring my light had to be green.”

miscelLAny: As for the craigslist.org posting by a company that supposedly wants to start a panhandlers’ union in L.A., Ron Erin writes: “There were beggars unions, if you could call them that, in the Middle Ages. Novelized in Victor Hugo’s ‘The Hunchback of Notre Dame,’ the unions had classes in pick-pocketing and acting blind (kind of like today’s politicians).”

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Steve Harvey can be reached at (800) LATIMES, Ext. 77083, by fax at (213) 237-4712, by mail at Metro, L.A. Times, 202 W. 1st Street, L.A. 90012, and by e-mail at steve.harvey@latimes.com