Everyone’s a bit nervous about gunfire in...

Everyone’s a bit nervous about gunfire in Los Angeles these days. Hence, the bulletin from a Los Angeles Police Department dispatcher informing all units that the Police Academy’s outdoor pistol range in Elysian Park would be closed Thursday.

The fusillades might have proven distracting to fans at the afternoon season opener in nearby Dodger Stadium--especially during the long, quiet periods of inaction in the low-scoring game.

Some drivers conduct business via a car phone or car fax machine. Others are more old-fashioned. A motorist in a small pickup, stalled in Dodger traffic on Sunset Boulevard, spotted a ticket scalper on foot. Wishing to peruse the goods for a few moments, the driver beckoned for the scalper to jump into the bed of the truck. After they had inched forward about half a block, the driver signaled that he would take the tickets. He handed the money out the window to the salesman, who happily bounded back onto the street.

It’s a different kind of lottery.

When fourteen abused pets are put up for adoption at noon today, potential owners will pick numbers--from the proverbial hat--to determine when they’ll be allowed inside to view the animals. The lowest numbers get in first to bid on the creatures, including 12 dogs (six of them rare fawn-and-blue Doberman puppies), one kitten and one cockateel. (The bird’s owner was jailed for making animal sacrifices.)

The recovered pets will be on display at the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals at 5026 W. Jefferson Blvd.

The unusual procedure of viewing them was adopted because 400 people showed up last year to claim 42 animals that had been taken from owners prosecuted for abuse or neglect.

“It’s like a personal statement,” said Sgt. Cori Whetstone, an SPCA field supervisor, “like someone saying, ‘I can’t stop (animal abuse), but if I can take one into my home I have done something about it.’ ”

The winning entry in the West Coast Gateway Competition--the controversial proposed monument across the Hollywood Freeway--is going on public display in. . . .

San Francisco.

Drawings and a scale model of the futuristic structure, called “Clouds of Steel” by its creators (and compared to the recently collapsed overpass on Firestone Boulevard by others), will star in an 8-week exhibition at a gallery there.

It’s a bold move. No doubt the very idea of a freeway artwork will elicit special attention from such Los Angeles-baiters as columnist Herb Caen, the Bard of Baghdad-by-the-Bay.

Caen, you may recall, paid tribute to Los Angeles’ smoggy car culture by dubbing the city “Lozangeles” and once described its average inhabitant as “a well-preserved, middle-aged, middle-class, two-door Chevrolet.” (That was before foreign cars became dominant.)

You know you’re in the Soap Opera capital when the ad for a local television news show features a wife telling her husband, “I woke up with someone new this morning”--meaning the station’s 6 a.m. broadcast.

The modest number of votes drawn by Tom Bradley in Los Angeles’ municipal election didn’t escape the notice of neighboring Burbank’s Johnny Carson. In his monologue the night after the election, Carson responded to the audience’s applause with the quip: “I just got a bigger mandate than the mayor of Los Angeles.” Noting that just 23% of the electorate voted, Carson added, “Chicago gets a bigger turnout from the dead.”

Another reason to obey the law: Due to a reported absence of water pressure, the plumbing broke down on at least five floors of the Los Angeles County Criminal Courts Building on Thursday.