Raymond Chandler’s “Farewell My Lovely,” set in...

Raymond Chandler’s “Farewell My Lovely,” set in the free-wheeling era of the 1930s when gambling ships were anchored off Santa Monica, refers to that town as Bay City. “The name’s like a song,” detective Philip Marlowe cracks. “A song in a dirty bathtub.”

In more recent years, critics of the town’s liberal government nicknamed it the People’s Republic of Santa Monica.

Now comes a complimentary appellation from Sunset magazine. Taking note of the Republic’s growing number of galleries and public sculptures, Sunset has rechristened it Art City in its September issue.

Fine, we’ll go along with that. We get a thrill just driving under “The Big Wave,” the zig-zag span across Wilshire Boulevard.

But the article also cites Jonathan Borofsky’s “Ballerina Clown,” a 30-foot bearded character in a tutu on Main Street.

Actually, the clown’s at an entrance to a restaurant in Venice . Where else would you expect to find a bearded clown in a tutu?

Councilwoman Joy Picus opened up the birthday present that her son mailed from Houston and found a subscription to . . . Garbage.

It’s a magazine that bills itself as “The Practical Journal for the Environment.”

“My son’s a real environmentalist,” Picus explained.

She added: “And I’m not an easy person to buy a gift for.”

It was not the usual catch for L.A. County Animal Control.

“I had to ask our people what it was,” said spokeswoman Kay Michaelson. “It looked like a mini-anteater.”

The creature brought in by officers turned out to be a coati-mundi, a ring-tailed, long-nosed critter that lives in South and Central America.

“Apparently it had been given to a resident in East L.A. as a gift,” Michaelson said. “Some of his neighbors were concerned. Actually, it was very tame. It even had a little collar with a bell. But the owner needed a special permit so he just gave it to us.”

The coati-mundi was turned over to a wild-animal facility Wednesday. It was that or turn it over to UC Irvine as a mascot for its athletic teams, the Anteaters.

Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky, who has asked the Coliseum Commission to ban the sale of beer at Raiders games, told KABC’s Michael Jackson that the stands have become so rowdy that “a lot of people bring binoculars to the games--not so they can see the game better, but so they can see the fights better.”

If you’re running late for an appointment these days, the trendy move is to call ahead on your car phone.

Insurance broker Edward Inouye recalls that in the late 1930s his father had a different method.

“We lived in Rosemead, which was a rural community,” said Inouye. “It was impossible to get phone service out there.

“My father worked downtown (in L.A.)--he taught in a Japanese language school. He had trained about 48 pigeons, and he’d take one with him. If he was going to have to work late, he’d go out to the corner of 1st and San Pedro streets and turn the pigeon free to fly home to my mother.”

Only one of the air-mail carriers failed to deliver, Inouye said. “And, believe it not, he showed up at our house six months later,” he added. “He probably had a little romance in between.”

miscelLAny:

When 56,000-seat Dodger Stadium opened in 1962, it contained two drinking fountains--one in each team’s dugout. More were installed elsewhere after thirsty fans complained.