The bleachers, barricades and rubberized guard rails...

The bleachers, barricades and rubberized guard rails have been set up along the course of this weekend’s Grand Prix race through Long Beach.

Now, if someone can just remember to take down those 35 m.p.h. speed-limit signs on Shoreline Drive.

Secessionist talk is spreading through L.A.

Wilmington, whose dissidents have formed the New Wilmington Committee, is the latest province threatening to revolt.

Like some malcontents in neighboring San Pedro, the Wilmingtonites claim their once-independent territory virtually was seized by L.A. earlier this century so that the city’s harbor could be built.

Other satellites speaking of declaring their independence include Westchester, Venice and Van Nuys. A Venice Town Council member said earlier this year that “Venice is a potential Poland” that could spark the revolt by the others.

Perhaps, in the end, L.A. will shrink to its 19th-Century dimensions, and Western Avenue will no longer be a misnomer. It was once considered the western end of town.

If you thought L.A.’s 72-year-old leader, Tom Bradley, was the county’s oldest mayor, you weren’t close. That honor went to La Canada Flintridge’s Edmund J. Krause--until Monday, when he retired at 88. Krause was, in fact, the nation’s oldest mayor.

The octogenarian was so full of energy that one of his daily customs was to drive through the city, taking pictures of potholes. The photos would then be sent to the county, along with a request for road-repair funds.

Krause also headed the city with the longest name in the county, owing to the union of La Canada and Flintridge in 1976.

Headline writers would have preferred something along the lines of La Flintada.

Sure, it’s only right that Zsa Zsa Gabor perform some community service for the now famous cop-slapping incident.

But let’s not forget that she has some public service saved up.

Surely you remember that in 1958 she served as chairman--there was no such thing as a chairwoman back then--of the holiday traffic campaign sponsored by the Greater Los Angeles Safety Council and the California Highway Patrol.

It was another side of Zsa Zsa--friend of law enforcement.

At an on-ramp to the Ventura Freeway, Marilyn Young passed a youth holding a handmade sign that declared:

OUTA

HERE.

While film legend Greta Garbo tried to stay out of the limelight, the pioneer Swedish director who discovered her suffered through a peculiar kind of anonymity on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

His name was inscribed as “Maurice Diller” in 1960, occasioning semi-serious speculation that the plaque had perhaps been intended for Phyllis Diller or Barry Diller or Jerry Stiller.

Two years ago, just before a visit by Sweden’s royal family, that nation asked the Chamber of Commerce for a correction. The star was reinscribed as Mauritz Stiller.

MiscelLAny:

Philippe’s, the 82-year-old downtown cafe, claims that the French dip sandwich was invented on its premises in 1918. A customer’s roll was dropped accidentally into a roasting pan, but he took it as was. The diner returned the next day and asked for his roll to be dunked again. The dish caught on. The customer, so the story goes, was a policeman called Frenchy.