People and Events

Looking for a gift that really says Southern California? One sporting goods store in the Westside Pavilion is selling a lady’s athletic shoe called “The Mall Walker.”

For visiting out-of-towners who must drive, not walk, here’s our Yuletide present--a clip-and-save map of the involuntary rest stops on the local roadways.

Some of the congestion points need no explanation, such as Malfunction Junction--the East L.A. interchange.

KNX trafficmeister Bill Keene, coiner of many of the names, attributes the Commerce Creep to drivers who gawk at the old Assyrian-style tire factory (now the Citadel shopping center).

But Keene admits that he has no idea why “traffic slows to a crawl where Puente Avenue crosses the San Bernardino” (the Puente Pause).

The lexicon varies among drivers. Poop-Out Hill and Thou-Shalt-Not Pass are interchangeable descriptions of the Sepulveda and Cahuenga passes. The Stack is also known as the Four-Level.

Lookout Mountain Avenue is one of many canyon roads that could be given a Look Out! designation.

And we think it’s time for the South Bay Curve to be renamed the South Bay Swerve.

Bill Slake’s family tree was sprouting branches all over the place the other night. His wife, Maureen, gave birth to twin boys, Kody and Kyle, at Long Beach Memorial Medical Center. Just a few hours earlier, the Slakes’ daughter, Billy Jo Wright, 20, gave birth to a girl, Kaitlyn, at the same hospital.

Kute, no?

We mentioned Thursday that today is the 50th anniversary of the death of F. Scott Fitzgerald, the author of one of the most famous novels about Hollywood, “The Last Tycoon.”

By a sad coincidence, Saturday is the 50th anniversary of the death of Nathanael West, another novelist known for his brilliant portrayal of Tinseltown. West, who wrote “The Day of the Locust” (and was a onetime roommate of Fitzgerald), was killed in a traffic accident outside El Centro.

West, who died in virtual obscurity, was at the wheel when the crash occurred. His friends had long warned him about his absent-mindedness while driving. It was a tragedy that the novelist couldn’t have emulated his main character in “Locust,” Todd Hackett, who leaves the driving to others.

Cadillac Santa, a tradition on Skid Row for the last decade, made his annual appearance at the Midnight Mission on Thursday, handing out about $11,000 in $10 bills to the homeless.

“What makes him so unusual is that he . . . doesn’t come with photographers and doesn’t want his name known,” said Clancy Imislund, the mission’s director.

The clandestine Santa’s M.O. is to give Imislund about an hour’s notice before arriving.

“We then tell people on the street that Santa’s coming and the word gets out and it spreads like wildfire,” Imislund said, adding that a line three blocks long soon formed.

He said that the recipients’ plans varied widely.

“One guy said he’s going to send it home to his child,” Imislund said, “and another said he was going to buy a bottle of wine.”

Does the San Fernando Valley have a kinky underside? Wally Branch of Toluca Lake sent along a copy of a wedding announcement that invited people to see a couple “ untied as husband and wife.”

Really!

miscelLAny:

Cafeterias appeared in 1912 when “the Boos Bros. opened the first self-service restaurant” in L.A., historian Carey McWilliams wrote. He noted that even before the Boos Bros., “a little old woman had a hole-in-the-wall place on Broadway where you ran a tray along a railing and were served food.”