If he weren’t the owner of two...

If he weren’t the owner of two restaurants, Gerard Ferry never would have noticed the strange coincidence.

Ferry received a letter at L’Orangerie from a man who claimed that on a recent visit “one of your servers accidentally spilled a drink down the front of my suit. The incident did not anger me because I was a waiter while in school and accidents do happen. The server apologized and told me to just send in my cleaning bill.”

Funny thing, though. When Ferry opened his mail at Pastel, he received a letter that was identical except that “Pastel” had been substituted for “L’Orangerie” and “Beverly Hills” for “Los Angeles.” And a copy of the same bill was enclosed.

Next, Ferry related, “I call (owner) Eddie (Kerkhofs) at the Le Dome, and Eddie, he gets the same letter.” So did Locanda Veneta’s Jean Louis de Mori, and Tuttobene’s owner, Sylvio de Mori (Jean Louis’ brother).

Considering the small scale of the fraud attempt, no one has contacted police about the letter writer, whose address turned out to be a post office box in Laguna Hills.

“No, no, no,” Ferry quipped. “I have enough problems with (Times restaurant reviewer) Ruth Reichl.”

“Why join a fitness club when you can buy muscles for $1.85?” writes mid-Wilshire resident Jim Bishop. Despite the spelling on the label of the package that he bought in Little Tokyo (see photo), it actually contained mussels.

We’ve read all about sign-waving malathion opponents. But there was a pro-malathion sign out the other day at a gas station on La Brea Avenue.

“Spraying Tonight!” it said. “Car Covers $5.99.”

It’s always a thrill to see works of art in progress. There’s the blue stripe that has languished on the south side of the L.A. Convention Center for weeks while officials try to decide if that’s the color they want to paint the building.

A while back, the letters GO suddenly appeared on the Wells Fargo building downtown--a “visibility test” for its forthcoming Wells Fargo logo. The company’s stagecoach symbol was junked. Too subtle, perhaps.

Now comes Sa Ba, a test logo for Sanwa Bank’s new building, an otherwise-impressive combination of rose granite and turquoise trim on Figueroa Street. Already, letter writers in the L.A. Downtown News are accusing the bank of “uglifying” the skyline, in the manner of the 73-story First Interstate tower with its tacked-on “I” logos.

“When a company puts that much money into a location and all the competition around you has managed to put their names on their buildings, it’s a little tough to say we’ll forgo the logo,” said a spokeswoman for Sa Ba--excuse us, Sanwa.

The recorded message on the telephone answering machine for the sheriff’s patrol in Paramount says: “Hello. You’ve reached Deputies Pierre Nadeau and Augie Pando. They can’t come to the phone right now because they’re tied up.”

miscelLAny:

The first combination automobile-airplane, the Waterman Studebaker, was produced in Santa Monica in 1937. It never really got off the ground.