Only in L.A. People and Events

In some countries, an upside-down flag can mean that the military is in revolt.

But at the Los Angeles Police Department’s Northeast Station, it just means business as usual.

The California Bear was hung by its feet, acrobat-like, on both Wednesday and Thursday before the mistake was noticed.

“We got a lot of calls,” admitted Officer Johnny Wilson. “It’s the guys in the morning (shift). I’ll have to leave those guys a nasty note.”

Then there was the period earlier this fall when the station’s flags hung at half-staff for three straight weeks.

A reporter asked the officers if there was an exceptionally long mourning period. No, they told her, the flags just wouldn’t go up any farther.

At least they were right-side up.

Like a good bridegroom, Jonathan Flier picked up his fiancee’s wedding gown from the seamstress and drove it to her house in the Hollywood Hills. He left it in the car for a moment and went inside. He returned to find his car window smashed and the dress gone.

The bride, Rosanne Keynan, said neighborhood security officers told her the thief “might have been a man who wanted to wear a dress.”

Or, taking note of the fact that it was last week when the gown ganef struck, they speculated: “It might have been a Halloween thing.”

The question of motivation was certainly interesting--as it could only be in Hollywood--but Keynan still had a problem, the wedding being less than four days off.

Friends put her in touch with Adella Farmar, the costumer for the television show “227.”

“She told me, ‘Don’t worry, honey. This is Hollywood--we do magic,’ ” Keynan said.

Farmar took her to a shop that rents costumes to the studios and found a gown that even Joan Collins might have approved of.

“It was gorgeous,” Keynan said. “It even had a veil, something I hadn’t planned to wear. She sewed me into the thing. She was wonderful.”

Meanwhile, there’s still a hot wedding dress out there somewhere.

A lot of mysterious things happen inside City Hall, but usually those transpire behind closed doors of the City Council members.

Not so the other day, when a painter found a dust-covered briefcase in an air-conditioning duct above the 10th-floor cafeteria.

Quickly the story spread. The briefcase contained credit cards that were 2 or more years old, as well as $10,000 in cash, a few kilos of cocaine and two sets of keys for late-model cars.

That was the story.

“People like to think things are like they show on ‘Miami Vice,’ ” commented John Cotti, assistant general manager of the city’s General Services Department.

Actually, Cotti said, the briefcase held $18.

A coming Forum show held a public audition for talented canines, with the winner promised a role in the production for a night. Only four pooches showed up, one for every two camera crews. Guess it’s tough to get a dog interested in the Ice Capades.

A history of the state’s “wackiest” dispensers of justice is lovingly recounted in the November issue of California magazine. But it’s a shame that an incident starring Judge William G. Dryden in the wild and woolly Los Angeles of the 1850s went unmentioned.

Dryden, recounts author W.W. Robinson in the book “Lawyers of Los Angeles,” heard a case involving a gang of horse thieves, the leader of which turned out to be the sheriff’s brother-in-law.

Dryden was prevailed upon to go easy on the in-law. He was found guilty but the judge declared clemency and set him free.

“You may go about your business,” Dryden said.

A spectator in the courtroom shouted out: “What is his business?”

Without hesitation, Dryden shouted back: “Horse-stealing, sir! Horse-stealing! “