The first outing of Downtown Pedal Power...

The first outing of Downtown Pedal Power started off with a bang Thursday from bicyclist Mike Massell’s front tire.

“It must have been glass,” said the unperturbed Massell, 82, who thinks nothing of cycling 40 miles in a day.

After a quick inner-tube change, he set off from Pershing Square on a lunch-time jaunt with two dozen other members of the club, which is trying to spread the radical gospel of human-powered transportation in the central city.

Festooned with balloons--Philip Clarke wore a bow tie--the pedalers passed out leaflets extolling the joys of bicycling to the foot-powered traffic.

About half of the Pedal Power members commute to work on two wheels, including organizer Marcia Powell, a legal secretary who lives a half-hour ride away in Silver Lake.

“We want to show people that they can bicycle to work--especially women,” said Powell, 46.

“I put curlers in my hair before I leave. There’s no shower at work, but I find I don’t need one. I just do a total strip in the restroom, wash up and put on my makeup. And I keep an extra pair of shoes under my desk.”

Woody Lewellyn, 42, who pedals 16 miles between San Gabriel and downtown, said his jaunt takes about an hour in each direction.

“And,” he added, “I’m relaxed all the way.”

Architect Frank Lloyd Wright once remarked that if the country was ever tilted, everything would spill into Los Angeles.

An exaggeration, of course.

On the other hand, the tome, “The Address Book: How to Reach Anyone Who Is Anyone,” lists the headquarters of the National Hobo Assn. as a post office box in the World Way Postal Center, Los Angeles, Calif.

Despite the fact that Southern California has never been credited with a great literary tradition, some pretty fair writers have also spilled into this area. This Sunday’s Monrovia Home Tour serves as a partial reminder.

One of the highlights of the San Gabriel Valley town’s annual showing is the Upton Sinclair House at 464 N. Myrtle Ave., Sinclair. The Pulitzer Prize-winning author, moved there in the 1940s, after Pasadena became too congested for him.

Author Lionel Rolfe notes in “Literary L.A.” that Southern California’s brush with phrase-makers may extend as far back as Mark Twain, who reportedly spent a night in the 1860s at the Lyon’s Station stagecoach stop in what is now Newhall. Rolfe cites one rumor that Twain may also have visited a long-gone bawdy house at 330 N. Broadway in Los Angeles.

Among other early artists, Jack London drank here. Theodore Dreiser (“Am American Tragedy”) lived in flats on Alvarado Street and Sunset Boulevard, though, like Twain and London, he didn’t produce his best work in Los Angeles.

F. Scott Fitzgerald spent his last years in an apartment at 1403 N. Laurel Avenue in West Hollywood. “To economize we shared the same maid,” wrote Sheilah Graham, his lover and neighbor.

William Faulkner, during his stormy stay as a screenwriter for Columbia Studios, lived in Whitley Terrace above Hollywood. One day, Faulkner is said to have announced that he was leaving early “to work at home.” He couldn’t be found for days.

It was only later that the studio learned that by “home,” Faulkner meant Oxford, Miss.

Further evidence that the wild, boozing “Front Page” era of newspaper days has disappeared:

The latest financial report of the Greater Los Angeles Press Club shows that its bar took in a total of $447.87 last year.

Executive Director Jim Foy notes that the thirstiest performance by the scribes in the club’s new headquarters in the Burbank Equestrian Center occurred at a press conference dealing with legislation to regulate assault weapons.

“They drank five pots of coffee,” said Foy.

Free coffee.