People and Events

Old (57) rock ‘n’ roller Bo Diddley may have been a little surprised when he was recognized on a Hollywood street by a 17-year-old boy. Diddley has not exactly hung up his guitar, but a lot of younger acts have come and gone since he made the rock scene more than 30 years ago.

Tuesday’s encounter was not just an approach by another young fan. The teen-ager was one of the 20 homeless kids being helped by the Los Angeles Youth Network, which provides shelter, counseling and job training in an old house on Highland Avenue.

The boy, said Luree Nicholson, who works with LAYN volunteers, just walked up to Diddley and said, “Hey, I’m in this program. Would you come in and meet the kids?”

Diddley went and spent a good part of the afternoon telling the youngsters, age 12 to 17, stories about the early years when he, Elvis Presley and Chuck Berry were among the biggest stars. He borrowed a guitar and did some of his old songs.

“They were enthralled,” said Nicholson, 45. “But most of them are too young to know him. I remember him, though. I was a teen-ager when he was popular.”

The president of the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation is in town trying to whip up enthusiasm for a drive to raise another $11 million to restore the historic immigrant entry station’s buildings and complete the Ellis Island Immigration Museum.

What Stephen A. Briganti is seeking is anyone willing to contribute at least $100 to include the name of an ancestor on the American Immigrant Wall of Honor--whether or not that ancestor was one of the more than 16 million people who entered the United States via the famed New York Harbor island between 1892 and 1945.

“We’ve got about 4,000 signed up so far,” Briganti said, adding with an apparent grasp of the mathematical reality, “That’s just the beginning.”

More than 100 million Americans can trace their roots to Ellis Island.

One 86-year-old Santa Monica man can do more than trace his roots. He was there. And, says Harry Canter’s son, Woodland Hills orthodontist Marvin Canter, the old gentleman can remember everything about it. “He is blessed with total recall.”

Indeed, the father is able to call up such detail about his hard journey from Russia and Poland with his mother and brothers that he can still tell about their first meal after their arrival at Ellis Island on Yom Kippur in 1919.

Harry Canter’s memory is so remarkable that he was one of 200 Americans selected to describe their experiences on tape so visitors to Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty can simply punch a name on a computer and hear first hand what it was like.

Marvin Canter said he thinks putting the names of those immigrants on a wall at Ellis Island “is really like saying thank you for their courage.”

There was no fire eating in the “Taste of Jamaica Gala” Tuesday at Citicorp Plaza in downtown Los Angeles. Sponsored by the Jamaica Tourist Board in conjunction with the Seventh Market Place mall, the five-day promotion includes limbo dancers and Miss Jamaica.

On Monday, the Afro-Caribbean Dance Revue was moving along nicely when the fire eater lit up. Spokeswoman Daina Petronis said a mall representative “freaked out” and called the attention of the performers to Los Angeles’ strict fire laws.

One tough-soled Jamaican continued to walk on nails and men in business suits got down to limbo, but the flame went out.

Editor-Publisher James Vowell of the Los Angeles Reader is looking over the mail in an effort to assess the impact of his decision to dump all sexually oriented “976” telephone service advertising from the free weekly newspaper.

In an open letter to readers and advertisers, Vowell noted that he had just returned to the publication he founded and that he would no longer accept the kind of ads that “pander” to the wrong audience. In addition, he wrote, “obscene and sexually explicit terminology” will be eliminated from the classified ad section.

He invited comment.

The writer of one letter he opened on Tuesday approved the moves and called for “some good articles on politics.”

Another called him “a typical liberal, two-faced hypocrite.” It was signed, “Love, Josh.”

Vowell estimated that questionable advertising has made up 15% to 20% of the paper’s revenue, which he thinks will be “quickly recovered” from less racy sources. His decision, he said, “is not an economically sensible thing to do, but it is an ethically sensible thing.”