People and Events

In the tradition of such classic episodes as “The World’s Best Nude Beaches,” “Women of the Waves” and “Playmate Swimwear,” the “Eye on L.A.” television show is staging a beauty contest. About 1,000 bikini-clad women paraded about the Rose Bowl over the weekend during the first phase.

But Pasadena did not embrace the event like it has the Rose Queen competition.

Although the KABC Channel 7 show paid the city $5,000 for use of the Rose Bowl, Rick Cole of Pasadena’s Board of Directors wishes that the contract had never been signed. Cole criticized “Eye on L.A.” for habitually presenting a “crass and exploitative image of women . . . for the sake of television ratings.”

At his urging, the board Monday night agreed to donate the $5,000 fee to the city’s Commission on the Status of Women, where it can be put to a “more appropriate use.”

Jeff Androsky, a spokesman for “Eye on L.A.,” denied that the contest was crass, pointing out, “We use models on our show, and this is an opportunity for someone who wants to do something like this.”

Pasadena’s protests notwithstanding, the “Eye on L.A.” contest will go on, Androsky said, with the five finalists featured in an episode shot in Australia. They will be modeling bathing suits.

Humor is serious business to young Seth Cristol of Van Nuys. He recently wrote The Times:

Dear Mr. Editor,

My Daddy Reads Me the Comics every Sunday, but They are not funny. Can you make Your comics fuNNier !

Seth Cristol

age 6 1/2

Now, Seth isn’t one of those people who writes to a newspaper every week. Reached at home, Seth said this was his first such letter.

Asked to name all the comic strips he likes, Seth had a one-word answer:

“Garfield.”

With Halloween approaching, it seems like a good time to ask Eva Stoiser about her business, the Transylvania Market in Eagle Rock.

Does the name have anything to do with . . . ?

“I know who you’re going to say,” she said. “No, it doesn’t. I grew up in Transylvania,” referring to the province of Romania.

And her market?

“It’s exactly like a 7-Eleven,” she said.

And if someone asks her whether Count Dracula is the night manager?

“I tell them, ‘Only when the moon’s full,’ ” she said.

You think you’re confused over the four ballot initiatives on automobile insurance? The Board of Supervisors listened to the county’s Auto Liability Task Force recommend support for two rival measures--Propositions 101 and 104. Backers of Proposition 100 also made a pitch. Supervisor Kenneth Hahn threw his support behind Proposition 103. And critics who condemned all four measures also spoke.

When it came time for the board to make an endorsement, the winner was . . . .

None of the above.

Not only couldn’t the board make up its mind on that issue, but when board Chairman Deane Dana moved to “receive and file” the task force report, his proposal also failed.

The structure behaved “like a cross between a railroad semaphore and an alarm clock,” one account said. “As the arm moves from the ‘Go’ to ‘Stop,’ a bell jingles merrily in the crow’s nest.”

The subject of the 1920 newspaper article was the city’s first experiment in traffic signals, which were installed on Broadway.

Sixty-eight years ago this week, traffic officers boldly stepped aside to let “the things run traffic by themselves.”

The devices were effective, a Times story said, except in the case of “the inevitable fatheads who thought that the tinkering bells were part of our entertainment for tourists and proceeded on their way without looking. . . . “

The concept caught on, though it’s been updated a bit. Los Angeles now has 3,700 traffic signals. Somewhere back in the din of the signals’ early years, the idea of tinkering bells was dropped.