People and Events

Angry because of what he said was an earlier knockdown by a Rapid Transit District bus while he was walking across a street in Downey, a 23-year-old transient handcuffed himself to the side mirror of another RTD bus at the same intersection Friday.

Driver Kaiser Watts, 39, realized he was dragging anchor as he pulled away from Lakewood and Firestone boulevards, so he put on the brakes. Paul Woods was not hurt. “I’m really sorry to do this to you, man,” he apologized.

“Yeah, you gotta do what you gotta do, I guess,” Watts said philosophically.

Downey and RTD police arrived, persuading Woods to produce the key so they could unlock him. He said the first driver had not been nearly so polite, but had slammed the bus door in his face when he complained about being knocked down in a crosswalk.

Because he had not been injured in the earlier incident either, neither RTD nor police had taken his report, Woods said. Hence, the handcuff stunt.

It was the last straw, he said, because he was clipped in the head by the side mirror of an RTD bus in downtown Los Angeles several months ago.

RTD officials said they had no record of such a mishap.

Theresa Bush of Lomita could hardly bear to read about a 6-year-old hemophiliac boy in Belleville, Ill., who contracted AIDS through a blood transfusion. The child, known publicly only as “Johnny Doe,” has been barred from his school and shunned by other children.

Her reaction: “When the little boy said, ‘Is that the way I’m going to die, Mommy, all alone?’ I said, ‘No way.’ We’re talking about a 6-year-old kid. You can’t break his heart.”

So Bush, who has two children of her own and is parent sponsor of a Tiger Cub Scout den in Lomita, suggested to the other parents that Johnny Doe be invited to join. They were for it. So were the 6-year-old Tiger Cubs. They listened to Johnny’s story and “didn’t think it was fair,” Bush said.

The Cubs have written to Johnny, asking him to become part of their group, apparently planning to deal later with the problem of getting him to meetings.

“This a dead piece of paper,” Los Angeles City Councilman Michael Woo said Friday.

“Hollywood High School is not for sale,” added Los Angeles school board member Jackie Goldberg. “Not now, not ever.”

Woo, Goldberg and Community Redevelopment Agency head James M. Wood held a press conference at the 84-year-old school to publicly tear up a study made quietly last year after a developer showed interest in the property for a possible shopping mall.

The study was released this week under a court order. Wood said it had not been made public earlier because Hollywood slow-growth advocates are suing the agency. He insisted there has never been any intent to turn the school over to developers. The study was only made, he said, because “We had to examine all the pertinent issues to be prepared in case a developer followed up with a concrete plan.”

A couple of dozen students attending the press conference cheered. Tara Stivers, a junior, spoke for those who agreed that Hollywood High should not become a shopping center. “This is the most famous school in the whole entire world,” she maintained.

The developer, incidentally, has turned his attention elsewhere.

It started, says Bob Johnson of the Santa Monica design firm Archisis, when employee Carey Holland decided to do something about the “very ugly” sidewalk planter in front of the office where the city had plopped a tree.

Like other city trees planted along the 1900 block of Main Street, Johnson says, its base had become little more than a big ash tray. The lower part of Main has been jazzed up with nifty little shops and arty restaurants, but “our couple of blocks are kind of the leftovers near the Civic Center,” Johnson complains. “The city doesn’t even come to sweep up the bums sometimes.”

Holland replaced the soil, planted some flowers and began watering regularly.

The idea has caught on with others in a neighborhood Johnson says is semi-neglected by the city. Four or five more trees in the block are now being cared for by businesses or individuals. “It’s a great kind of personal garden for people who live in apartments and things,” Johnson notes, “to adopt a tree and look after it.”

He adds, “What we’re doing is probably totally illegal, but it makes a big difference in the way the sidewalk looks.”