People and Events

The Los Angeles Lakers, of course, play in Inglewood. The Detroit Pistons play in Pontiac, Mich. So the mayors of Inglewood and Pontiac have a bet.

Inglewood Mayor Edward Vincent says that if Pontiac wins the NBA championship series, he will fly back there and present Pontiac Mayor Walter Moore and the Pontiac City Council with a videotape of the Lakers doing their “Just Say No” anti-drug rap.

Vincent says he will also throw in a basket of California fruit.

Moore says that if the Lakers take the championship, he will donate enough Everlite light bulbs (manufactured in Pontiac) to illuminate the entire nine-story Inglewood Civic Center.

Inglewood’s Vincent says Moore also promised to lend him a new Pontiac Grand Prix for two weeks.

“I look forward to riding around with the Lakers in that Grand Prix,” says Vincent. “I plan to stay in Inglewood and supervise the installation of all those new light bulbs.”

At tip-off, there was no word of any bet between Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley and Detroit Mayor Coleman Young. But, then, the teams don’t play in their cities.

For the better part of the last few days, a crew shooting scenes for a movie called “Hunchback” in and around Los Angeles City Hall drew only moderate attention from Civic Center habitues, who have become inured to such goings-on.

That includes those who seem to have no place to go but the City Hall lawn.

Allan Katz, 47, who wrote the script and has the title role of the scruffily dressed, wild-haired hunchback who lives in a university tower, was all over the place. But he didn’t seem to attract much notice either.

“Unfortunately,” he said, “there are so many homeless people downtown, so many people who are really . . . forced to dress this way, that it doesn’t get much of a second glance. I think people are very used to seeing characters who look like this and making a very courteous circle around them.”

Long Beach car dealer Cal Worthington says his dog Spot knocked him off his bicycle, causing a facial cut that required more than a dozen stitches.

It was really a dog, he insists.

Worthington, who also owns a large dealership in Sacramento, said the incident happened on his Glenn County ranch when he was pedaling along with his Rottweiler trotting on one side and another dog named Spot on the other.

“I have eight dogs,” Worthington said, “all named Spot.”

The Rottweiler suddenly cut across in front of him to get at the other dog, the car dealer explained. “The next thing I knew, I was on my face in the gravel. It really wrecked my face.”

He called it embarrassing because “I ride motorcycles. I handle exotic animals. I don’t get hurt. But that darned dog nearly killed me.”

Long gone are most of the old-timers who hung around the Greater Los Angeles Press Club in the late 1940s when it was headquartered in the Case Hotel on Broadway. There were a bunch of big city dailies then: the Examiner, The Times, the Herald-Express, the Mirror, the Daily News and the Hollywood Citizen.

The club grew and moved to the Ambassador Hotel in 1951. Then, in 1960, it took over the old Theatre Mart at 600 N. Vermont Ave., where for years audiences had booed the villain in nightly performances of “The Drunkard.”

Now the Press Club moves on again--this time because the membership list has shrunk. The place has been sold and will become a Korean cultural center and restaurant. As of the end of this week, the GLAPC will shuffle off to take up quarters at the Los Angeles Equestrian Center adjoining Griffith Park.

Horses, it is presumed, will not be allowed in the bar.

This Saturday and Sunday, from noon to 5 p.m., the club is auctioning off a lot of stuff at the Vermont Avenue place--a pool table, kitchen gear, dishes, patio furniture, plants, 2,000 books. . . .

The leftover liquor already has been sold at cost to the people who bought the building, said club manager Jim Foy.

There wasn’t that much left, apparently.