If a New Yorker had seen it,...

If a New Yorker had seen it, he would have thought he had died and gone to heaven. There they were, at least 200 cabs without passengers driving through downtown Los Angeles during rush hour Thursday morning.

The independent cab drivers circled the streets around City Hall, honking for almost an hour to protest the city’s proposal to levy stiff fines against drivers who are discourteous, overcharge passengers or otherwise provide bad service.

Groused Yuri Gizersky, a 10-year veteran of the road, “They want to take food out of my family’s mouth because I have a little dust on my cab or maybe a tiny scratch. So maybe they should all walk.”

Even as the cabbies protested, Councilman Joel Wachs was proposing still more rules. Wachs wants a dress code outlawing tank tops, wants taxi drivers to attend training programs that stress “importance of courteous behavior” and he wants drivers to hand out “courtesy cards” to solicit rider comments.

Wachs said he developed the proposal after receiving complaints from the public. When pressed on just where these complaints were coming from, Wachs said, “My mother.”

There’s something about an Aqua Velva man.

Just ask Suellen Governale, who has been spending spare time searching what seems by now to be every drug store, shopping mall and grocery store in Los Angeles, looking for Aqua Velva’s menthol mist shaving lotion for her husband, Chuck.

Chuck, a 50-year-old computer magazine writer, even put an ad in the newspaper offering to pay $4 a bottle. You see, Beecham Products of Pittsburgh is discontinuing the menthol line. He even called the company, begging them to keep making it. But they told him that it is not a “big mover.” They suggested calling distributors. Distributors told him they were sold out.

If Governale sounds a bit desperate, it’s because he’s been using the lotion for more than 30 years. “I don’t even like Aqua Velva Blue, and I hate all the new lotions. They smell too strong. Musk, yech!”

So far he’s gotten three bottles to stockpile. So what’s he going to do after he uses the last bottles?

“I am seriously thinking of growing a beard,” he said.

It was almost like in the movies. The runaway train boxcar was barreling down the tracks and the lawman maneuvered his trusty steed next to it, hopped on and saved the day by applying the breaks.

Except this happened in real life to Sgt. Andrew Blodgett. The LAPD motorcycle officer was on duty when he heard the radio call about a lumber-filled boxcar out of control on tracks in South-Central Los Angeles near Western and Slauson avenues. The sergeant saw the car and sped into action. Because he had ridden freight trains as a kid and is still a train buff, he knew where the brakes would be--on the back, halfway down the side. But, he added, it wasn’t quite as romantic as it sounded. “I’m stuck with what really happened,” he said, explaining that he didn’t just jump from his motorcycle to the train ala Tom Mix. “I followed the boxcar and when it slowed down going up a rise, I parked my motorcycle and then climbed on.”

So who says all California kids know how to surf?

The Los Angeles County Department of Beaches and Harbors is holding Surf Camps to teach kids ages 12 to 17 how to ride the curl, repair surfboards and be safe in the ocean. The sessions, which cost $105, are scheduled from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Aug. 14-18 and Aug. 21-25. Enrollment is first-come, first-served. Jim Cole, spokesman for the beaches department, admitting that he had never learned how to surf, said wistfully, “I wish they’d had this when I was a kid.”