Odds & Ends Around the Valley : Restaurant Tie-In

Patrons of the Stanley’s restaurants seem to love one of the homemade items that don’t appear on the menu--the neckties.

“Our customers ask about them all the time,” said Greg Sadofsky, co-owner of the restaurants in Sherman Oaks and Woodland Hills. The ties--worn by the waiters, waitresses and busboys--are brightly colored floral and abstract prints on cream-colored material. “The look is what we call ‘vogue Hawaiian,’ ” Sadofsky said. “Each one is different.”

The ties give Stanley’s--where the chairs are wicker, the walls pastel, the light abundant and the menus heavy on salads--a distinctive look.

“A lot of our customers want to know if they can buy them,” he said. “We tell them they are custom-designed just for us.”

The designer is Barbara Wozencraft, who has a business in Westlake Village called Mr. Monogram. “Basically, I am a commercial artist who got into restaurant wear,” said Wozencraft, who specializes in aprons and other items worn by employees at eateries. You can find her aprons at Brio Restaurant in Tarzana, Alice’s Restaurant in Malibu and the Lamplighter chain, as well as at Stanley’s.

She had been making the Stanley’s aprons for several years at her shop, where she makes use of a computerized embroidering machine, when Sadofsky asked if she could create ties, also.

Wozencraft designed the basic form of the tie and farmed out the manufacturing of them to a tie factory. As for the distinctive prints, Wozencraft was willing to impart a secret. “To tell you the truth, I don’t design the patterns,” she said. “I just go out and find material I like with the patterns already printed on them.”

Baby Want Sprouts?

For those who believe that children should be exposed to the world of health food at an early age, life is now a bit easier. The Mrs. Gooch’s stores have equipped some of the carts with bolted-on baby seats, similar to those used in cars.

“I heard about it last year from a company that manufactures the seats,” said Vic Sohagi, operations director for the company, which owns seven stores in the Los Angeles area, including ones in Sherman Oaks and Reseda.

The seats are placed sideways on top of the carts, where the child seats are for older youngsters. “We made two or three of them available at almost all our stores,” he said. “We are always looking for things like that. In our Thousand Oaks store, we have put in a baby-changing station in the bathroom.”

Sohagi said the seats were a big hit in all but the Beverly Hills store.

“They just aren’t being used in that store. I guess there are not too many people with babies who shop there.”

A Real Letter Man

Except for just one day, mail carrier George Frost has spent every working day since April, 1956, on virtually the same North Hollywood mail route.

“I’ve seen all the changes,” said Frost, 55, who is retiring from the Postal Service on Aug. 3. “When I started, there were big homes, with swimming pools and tennis courts on Weddington Street, in back of where North Hollywood High School is. They had cattle and sheep back there for the agriculture students at the school, and sometimes one of the animals would get loose and come walking down the street.

The area was so bucolic that his route, which included 550 businesses and residences, was spread over 7 3/4 miles. “We didn’t use cars back then,” Frost said. “I would just load up my leather bag and walk the entire route.” He would refill his bag at special mailboxes along the way.

Because of the onset of the apartment house and condominium development, almost no single-family homes remain on the route, which has been shortened to about 4 1/2 miles to accommodate the increased density. “The 12 blocks they took off my route are more than enough for a whole other route now,” he said.

His route begins on Laurel Canyon Boulevard with delivery to the businesses between Magnolia and Chandler boulevards (only three of the businesses on the street date from when he began the route). He goes east to deliver to the residences on Weddington Street and ends his day among the duplexes and townhouses on Ben Avenue.

For those along the route, Frost has provided a rare sense of stability in a turbulent city. “I can’t believe he won’t be coming here anymore,” said Shelley Herman, who has lived in a Weddington Avenue apartment for 10 years. Frost began on the route a year before she was born.

“He knows everyone and what is going on in their lives,” Herman said. “When the woman’s daughter across the street was waiting for her college acceptance letters,” Herman said, “he would get as excited about the letters coming in as she would.”

And about that one day he missed: Frost switched to a different route after a dispute with his supervisor over the number of deliveries he had to make in a day.

“The one I tried was even worse,” he said. “After just one day, I went back home to my old route.”

Facing the ‘90s

At the San Fernando Valley Fair, which just closed Sunday, a sign of the times could be found at the face-painting booth.

For $1 you could get a nice little heart painted on your face. For $2 the design got a bit more elaborate. But for $3 you could have, right on your face, one of the heroes of the 90s: Bart Simpson, a Ninja Turtle or Garfield.