People and Events

The Chinese have a saying for it: “Put your money where your mouth is.”

Well, perhaps that came from somebody else. But it’s good enough for the Chinatown Merchants Assn., which has mounted a couple of small signs at the familiar wishing well that the organization relies on to help pay for Chinatown maintenance, beautification and security.

The red, white and blue sign on the left reads DUKAKIS FOR PRESIDENT. The one on the right reads BUSH FOR PRESIDENT.

Restaurant and gift shop owner Walter Soo Hoo says people are “crowding around and dropping coins. It’s getting a lot of attention.” The amounts thrown in each’s candidate’s part of the pool will be recorded every few days.

There are polls, and there are polls.

The mailing looks official enough. Enclosed is a questionnaire as well as a brochure issued by the South Coast Air Quality Management District, which is charged with cleaning up the air around here in the hope that people will be able to breathe safely some day.

Also in the envelope, however, is an invoice for a $12.75 “voluntary contribution” to the “Environmental Pollution Control Agency (EPCA) of Southern California.”

The trouble is, AQMD officials say they never heard of any legitimate agency called the EPCA. They are warning businesses to be on the lookout for the solicitations, which list only a post office box in Santa Ana.

Tom Eichhorn of the AQMD said the box apparently was rented by a Mission Viejo outfit without a listed telephone. The matter has been turned over to postal investigators.

The AQMD has also been hearing other complaints--from motorists using the recently installed 800-CUT SMOG phone number to report cars, buses, trucks and any other vehicles they see belching out too much smoke.

More than 13,000 calls have come in since the number was established two months ago, Eichhorn said. Because a citation can’t be issued on the basis of exhaust an officer did not see, the AQMD simply sends a letter advising an alleged offender that he apparently needs to clean up his act.

“Most people are receptive to that,” Eichhorn said. “We’ve even had some letters thanking us for calling it to their attention.”

Then he admitted, “Of course we’ve had some letters of the other variety as well.”

Several of her friends in the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra almost dropped their instruments Friday morning when Suzy Henney took the podium at rehearsal to lead them in “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

She will conduct the number tonight in the Hollywood Bowl.

Henney, associate director of alumni and development for the UCLA Graduate School of Management, bought the baton-wielding right during an auction at the LA Alive! fund-raising party for the Los Angeles Music Center on June 10.

Henney, a long-time supporter of the Philharmonic and Music Center, actually was more interested in purchasing a stage appearance for her daughter, Catherine, with Placido Domingo in the opera “Otello” here next March. Catherine, a UC Berkeley junior, probably will play a flower girl, Henney said. “She is studying Italian, but she can’t sing.”

That’s all right. Henney can’t read music.

“The Bag Lady” was headed back for New Jersey on Friday after making trouble for grocery stores hereabouts.

Jeanne Bakelar, 39, didn’t really know what she was starting when she wrote to her grocer in Sparta, N.J., thanking him for making biodegradable paper bags available to those who didn’t want plastic.

Bakelar, 39, a real estate agent, soon had members of her women’s club leaning on their markets to give them a choice. Needless to say, it got her some attention. The General Federation of Women’s Clubs heard about it and turned it into a national project.

Now the federation has asked her to help launch a more extensive “environmental packaging” campaign for the use of paper coffee cups, paper egg cartons, paper meat trays and other items that won’t simply overflow the nation’s landfills like indestructible plastic does.

She came to the Los Angeles area to get a lot of women’s club around here stirred up about it.

In the meantime, she says her 14-year-old daughter is getting used to her being called “The Bag Lady.” As for her husband: “I don’t know if he ever will.”