For Mature Readers

Want a mini-course on gold? A list of popular bicycle trails? Or perhaps your reading tends to matters such as health care for the elderly.

Apparently, a lot of people want to know about all those things--enough to make Modern Maturity, published by the American Assn. of Retired Persons with editorial headquarters in Lakewood, the most widely circulated magazine in the country, according to the latest figures by the Audit Bureau of Circulations.

The bimonthly has vaulted past Reader’s Digest and TV Guide to gain its premier status. Just how many households get Modern Maturity? Some 17.9 million on average during the first half of 1988.

Actually, there’s a bit more to Modern Maturity’s sky-high circulation than its articles. The 28-million member AARP sends copies to members at no charge beyond the annual $5 membership fee. The magazine isn’t available on newsstands.

Box Seats With a Message

It’s an idea that could make people sit down and cheer.

That idea is Street Seat, a fold-up, portable chair made of corrugated cardboard that doubles as 9 square feet of advertising space. Jim Kelley of L.A. Display in Glendale thought up the concept a few years ago while standing for hours before a Tournament of Roses Parade. Well, this year he went back to the parade and sold 2,500 of the cardboard box seats. Each came decked with a 7-Up ad.

Now, he’s looking for more companies to purchase the seats, which sell for $1.98 each, with a minimum order of 10,000. The boxes, with bottoms dipped in a wax solution, can even hold up in rain. “You wouldn’t want to set them under a fire hose,” Kelley said, “but if it’s raining and you sit with an umbrella, you shouldn’t have any problems.”

Appetite for Scandal

The entrepreneurial imagination never rests. Last week, Brannan’s Bar & Grill in Sacramento introduced a new salad it calls “The Sting.” The dish, which consists of tossed greens and shrimp, pays homage to Gulf Shrimp Fisheries Inc., which FBI agents established in their sting operation against state legislators. Solons who frequent the place weren’t amused. The $7.75 salad “has not been a hot seller,” acknowledged chef Wade Fryman. “We’re a nonpartisan restaurant and were just trying to provide a little humor.”

Reach Out at 35,000 Feet

It used to be pretty exhausting to make a telephone call from an airplane. But all that has changed at least on America West aircraft. The Phoenix-based carrier is installing phones behind the seats of its seven Boeing 757s. All a passenger has to do is pick up the telephone in front of him. There are 10 phones in first class and 53 in coach.

First-class passengers will have complete privacy because there will be a Seatphone in each seat back. For coach passengers, it will be like having someone climb along into a phone booth with them: Only the middle seat of each row will have a phone for all three passengers to share.

One thing is for sure. The eavesdroppers’ trip will go much faster.

Case of the Missing Room

Tom Dokter, a merchandising executive for the Broadway, got a lesson in compulsive campaign behavior last week at the Biltmore, where the department store was holding a seminar for employees and vendors. A hotel employee asked Dokter whether she could show one of the Broadway’s hotel rooms to officials of the campaign team of Michael S. Dukakis, the Democratic presidential candidate. He agreed, with the proviso that he still needed to use the room. When Dokter went back to it half an hour later to claim some belongings, he found that the locks had already been changed. “Either the Secret Service or the hotel is a little overly efficient,” he quipped.