People and Events

At Cal State Northridge, where only a few weeks ago civil engineering students were building concrete canoes, mechanical engineering majors on Friday rolled out their entry in the Society of Automotive Engineers Super Mileage Vehicle Contest.

They’re hoping to get 3,500 miles to a gallon of gas.

Before brushing that off as just another car lot sales pitch, one should note that last year’s CSUN model placed second in the national competition with 1,328.83 miles per gallon.

That’s the claim, at least.

The two dozen students who have been working all year on the project think they have improved their latest model with an “inertia flywheel” that, according to engineering Prof. Tim Fox, “gathers energy” while the 98-pound vehicle is running.

Fox says that allows the driver to turn off the ignition and still keep going with the impetus from the flywheel. Every time the flywheel energy fades, the engine must be restarted.

It seems clear enough to Fox and his students.

The car is constructed of composite materials like those used in the Voyager aircraft. It is powered by a two-piston lawn mower-size engine and, says CSUN spokeswoman Gloria Welles, does indeed sound like a lawn mower.

But it’s not being driven to the June 4 and 5 national competition around a 40-mile course in Marshall, Mich.

It’s being hauled there in a van.

Students in another part of town were getting some attention, too--for simply trying to survive.

Sonya Holt is the 15-year-old Audubon Junior High School girl who sent a letter to Principal Gene McCallum in the aftermath of a gang shooting that left a classmate dead. “I want to die a gray-haired old lady, a great-grandmother, not a 15-year-old ninth-grader,” she wrote.

Sonya and her Crenshaw-area school were honored by the Los Angeles City Council Friday for starting an anti-gang youth group that Councilwoman Ruth Galanter referred to as “a gang of good guys . . . who decided not to wait for adults to tell them how to do it.”

More than 150 students have signed up in Join Concerned Students About Gangs.

Galanter said she was donating $2,500 from her discretionary council funds so the group will have some seed money.

What will they do with the money?

The students were not yet sure. Suggestions ranged from an anti-gang parade down Crenshaw Boulevard, to a dance, to a trip to Magic Mountain.

About 70 senior citizens seemed to enjoy themselves Friday at the Watts Labor Community Action Committee Center, where the swinging, rocking, stomping Locke High School band put on a free concert as part of the buildup to next month’s Playboy Jazz Festival.

Folks started dancing. A certain Willie Wright, 100, was having “the best time of anybody,” according to Playboy spokeswoman Regina Davis.

In fact, she said, it got to the point where “the people running the center wondered whether the paramedics might be needed.”

El Monte police might be forgiven if they were sounding a little weary of the whole thing. First there was the apartment on Kerrwood Street where an apparent trick of inside night lighting threw what appeared to be a vague, luminous cross on a bathroom window.

Crowds collected outside for several nights and days--until the residents took out the glass and replaced it.

Then someone noticed a similar phenomenon in a window in the 4000 block of Cedar Avenue, a few blocks away. By Thursday night, said Officer David Darrow, there were 200 to 250 people standing in front of that one.

So far the latter window has not been removed.

A county Fire Department hazardous materials team was dispatched when some sort of sticky substance was found spilled across one northbound lane of the Golden State Freeway in the Castaic area early Friday.

The lane was closed for several hours and Caltrans workers spread sand on the stuff, which turned out to be sweet and sugary. Syrup, perhaps.

“Not hazardous unless you ate it over a lifetime,” said California Highway Patrol spokesman Monty Keifer.