“Steel Cloud,” the architectural design contest winner...

“Steel Cloud,” the architectural design contest winner that was billed as Los Angeles’ version of the Statue of Liberty, has garnered another distinction--Lemon of the Year.

The Downtown Breakfast Club, a group of executives who promote orderly city growth, give out annual awards to the worst and best elements of downtown.

The lemon recipient had previously won an international contest inspired by Mayor Tom Bradley’s quest for a monument to honor the city’s immigrants. Architect Hani Rashid’s design depicts a sprawling complex of restaurants and gardens above the Hollywood Freeway between Alameda Street and Broadway.

The Breakfast Club also lauded the Home Savings Tower for blending well into a site at 7th and Figueroa streets; Engine Co. 28, for restoration of a historic fire station into a restaurant and office, and Charo/LA City Child Development Center, for its imaginative approach to day care for children of Civil Service workers. But the Breakfast Club left its most vivid comments for Steel Cloud. “It indicates that its creators are totally out of touch with downtown values,” said interior designer Howard Riebeck, who announced the award. “It is bordering on the grotesque.”

Besides lemons, there was other food for thought in L.A. this last week.

The California Avocado Commission held The Great Guacamole Contest to find the tastiest green glop around. Maria Guadalupe Olea, 38, feverishly chopped, mashed and grated her way into first place over nine other finalists. Her dish was an old family recipe from Guadalajara, Mexico. She mashes garlic with home-grown peppers, chops and grills the tomatoes and then adds onion, lemon juice, spices and a bit of a Cotija cheese to the mashed avocados. She plans to take a vacation to Mexico with her $1,000 winnings.

The 350 students and 14 teachers at Ivanhoe Elementary School made short work of a long sheet cake Friday to celebrate the school’s 100th birthday. The century-old Silver Lake school, 2828 Herkimer St., has undergone four reconstructions over the years. The first school was a two-story wooden farmhouse with one teacher and 40 students. But there are others older among the 413 schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Among them are the Griffin Avenue School at 2025 Griffin Ave. (built in 1882) and Castelar School at 850 Yale Street (built in 1882).

Science fairs aren’t what they used to be. No more papier mache volcanoes, plastic models of the human body, or encyclopedia reports on the inner ear. The recent countywide school science fair attracted 658 entries, including that of Tessa Walters of San Gabriel High School, who won best in the Senior Division. Her project, “Inhibitions of Angiotensin Coverting Enzyme by Synthetic B. Jararaca Venom Peptide” involved studying proteins in snake venom.

Mark Thompson of Crozier Middle School in Inglewood won the Junior Division with “Chemical, Biological and Physical Control of Culex Pipiens and Culex Pens.” The project studied the effects of natural and synthetic insecticides on mosquitoes.