It figures to be one of the...

It figures to be one of the most historic gatherings of leaders ever--in Long Beach, at least.

Fifty-two mayors of L.A. County will convene this morning in the august surroundings of a maintenance yard on 208th Avenue to christen trolleys for the Metro Blue Line, which starts up next month.

Each of the vehicles will carry the name of a city selected in a random drawing. Among the winners, properly enough, was Azusa, which gained national fame on the old Jack Benny Show when a train conductor would cry each week:

“All aboard for Anaheim, Azusa and KOOK-amonga.”

A simultaneous bashing of champagne bottles is set for 11 a.m., though the revelry will be muted.

“Actually the bottles contain carbonated water that will foam,” said Clara Potes, a spokeswoman for the County Transportation Commission. “And the glass is very fragile so it will break with very little contact. That way, there is no alcohol on the premises and no one will be hurt.”

The Hollywood touch, using props.

Which reminds us: The old saying that L.A. is a suburb of Hollywood apparently still has some adherents in the East. The Washington-based p.r. firm coordinating the tour of Nelson Mandela, the black South African leader, listed the “Hollywood Coliseum” as one of his stops here.

The firm meant the L.A. Memorial Coliseum. Of course, the arena is a kind of Hollywood reproduction of the Colosseum.

Angel’s Flight, the world’s shortest railway (325 feet), is gone. So is the Richfield Building, with its terra cotta surface and 80-foot-tall tower. Gone, too, is the old County Courthouse, a red sandstone, Romanesque structure. The latter was replaced by the Criminal Courts Building, whose walls resemble rows of ice-cube-trays.

In L.A., landmarks exist mostly in the memories of the older residents.

One exception is the Bradbury Building, the 97-year-old Grande Dame that is celebrated for her wrought-iron staircases, bird-cage elevators and skylit courtyard.

The Bradbury, which has been shut down for months while undergoing seismic upgrading, will begin leasing office space at 3rd Street and Broadway in the fall.

Oddly enough, George Wyman, the building’s designer, was said to have been inspired by a contemporary novelist who described the typical office building of the year 2000 as “a vast hall full of light, received not alone from the windows on all sides but from the dome.”

The author forgot to mention the light from the computer screens.

A boy evidently accustomed to less formal learning environments scrambled into a roped-off area at the Gene Autry Museum in Griffith Park and set off an alarm. Groaned his father:

“I never should have taken him to the Children’s Museum.”

MiscelLAny:

The word freeway is believed to have been coined by planner Edward M. Bassett, who wrote in 1930: “This word is short and good Anglo-Saxon. It connotes freedom from grade intersections and from private entranceways, stores and factories.” (Traffic was lighter in 1930.)