People and Events

Looks like the petition is mightier than the magnum.

Members of the Alliance for Survival--the folks who trade teddy bears for toy guns--took offense at a vast sign above a Venice boardwalk clothing store that shows a hooded man leveling a handgun of anti-aircraft caliber at a target that seems unsettlingly like whoever happens to be looking at the sign.

The sign at the Local Heroes shop struck alliance director Jerry Rubin as “a very violent and negative message . . . that if you wanna be a local hero, pick up a gun and start firing it.”

Someone had already taken up the challenge and played fast-draw, pocking the sign with bullet holes. “That proves my point,” says Rubin, “that violence begets violence.”

On Friday, Rubin evidently begot what he wanted: action. After the alliance began circulating petitions outside the store to have the sign modified, the owner agreed to “alter” it within a week. Says manager Molly Monjauze, “It will be toned down.”

Three or four decades ago, it was the stuff your mother swore you must have lost, when in fact she had just gotten tired of cleaning it up, and threw it away on the sly.

Today, it’s under glass at a new Melrose gallery, at prices that would make Mom drop her Electrolux: Jiminy Cricket bubble gum, a Captain Marvel tie clip, a Howdy Doody record player and Li’l Abner barrettes, all the ephemera of 60 years of cartoons and comics.

In short, Bernie Shine finally decided to clean his house.

The devoted “Mickeyologist” turned his private mania into the Shine Gallery, shelf and wall space for his 20 years of cartoon collectibles in every medium: chalk, plastic, paper, tin, Bakelite, ceramic.

Much opening-night chatter was the gnashing of teeth by people who had once owned “one of those” and cursed their housecleaning impulses. An Ingersoll “Three Little Pigs” watch, originally about $5, commanded more than $1,000, and a little 1922 Toonerville Trolley, the prize in a box of Cracker Jacks, was priced at $750. You could, however, snag a ceramic Bambi for as little as 40 bucks.

Ron and Nancy might have thought they were leaving politics behind when they moved to St. Cloud Road in Bel-Air.

Wrong-o.

Jack McGrath, running against his former colleague Zev Yaroslavsky in the 5th City Council District, played neighborly host and canny politician with a gift and a campaign pitch to the Reagans before the Reagans even got here.

Thwarted by security, McGrath was forced to mail what he wanted to hand-deliver: a couple of pine seedlings, a case of Stolichnaya vodka--now a politically correct beverage--and a letter that read in part:

“Welcome home to California and to the 5th Council District . . . I am from the Valley side of the district, the side chosen by Clark Gable and Carole Lombard, by Tom Selleck and Bob Hope. . . .Your interests are now my interests. As your councilman, I would work to see to it for instance that tour buses are kept off the streets where you and your neighbors live.”

McGrath is sure the Reagans would drink to that proposal--with or without Stolichnaya.