The City Council chamber in Hawaiian Gardens...

The City Council chamber in Hawaiian Gardens was not exactly overflowing with love when the lawmakers met on Valentine’s Day night. The five council members were served notice that they were the targets of recall campaigns.

“Some people have called it the ‘St. Valentine Day’s Massacre,’ ” said Kathleen Navejas, mayor of the financially troubled city.

Actually, there isn’t unanimity on which council members should be given the heave-ho. One group wants Navejas and colleagues Rosalie Sher and Venn Furgeson out. A pro-Navejas faction wants to give Don Schultze and Helen Wagner the hook.

Some of the hostility on the council may date from an order by Navejas in December that all council members turn in their city credit cards because of the interest and late fees that they had allowed to pile up.

Lately, Navejas said, the political infighting has become so vicious that when a new video store opened in the city recently, the Chamber of Commerce snubbed her and invited only Schultze and Wagner to the ribbon-cutting.

In case you’d forgotten that Southern California is the home of laid-back, please be informed that signs on some local mailboxes now offer an “early-bird . . . pick-up”--at noon.

Hard to believe that Valentine’s Day would fall on a week that’s seen so many fun couples splitting: Robin Givens and Mike Tyson obtained a divorce, actress Cybill Shepherd and chiropractor Bruce Oppenheim filed for divorce and Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden announced their separation.

Was anybody happy on Valentine’s Day around here? Yes, Southern California Edison.

The utility had beseeched lovers who buy metallic balloons to keep them inside so they wouldn’t drift across power lines and cause power outages. And Southern California obediently escaped without a mishap Tuesday, unless you count the one heart-shaped balloon that briefly turned out some lights in Santa Barbara.

The very idea . . .

The Los Angeles City Council has voted to allow a branch of the posh Beverly Hills restaurant Bistro Garden to open in a shopping center in Studio City, dismissing suggestions by some opponents from the surrounding neighborhood that wealthy diners would leave behind litter and urinate on lawns.

Today marks the 10th anniversary of the fall of The Rock That Terrorized Malibu. Workers threw a steel net over the 116-ton sandstone monster and pulled it off its 200-foot perch above Pacific Coast Highway, where it had been making threatening gestures. When the Malibu Rock landed, the 200 spectators broke into applause.

Naturally, the rock then entered show business. Sculptor Brett-Livingston Strong sculpted a 12 1/2-ton chip of it into a likeness of John Wayne’s head. The rock had an engagement in the forecourt of Mann’s Chinese Theatre, then was sold to an Arizona businessman for a reported $1 million.

But a projected tour of the Orient fell through, and the sculpture was still in storage when last heard from, another forgotten rock star.