Don’t you dare say downtown L.A. lacks...

Don’t you dare say downtown L.A. lacks romance. Larry Kaplan of Silver Lake points out that the Coast Federal Bank Building downtown has a cafe that overlooks the Harbor Freeway.

Its name? The Harbor View Restaurant.

Brings to mind the mournful strains of an old standard, slightly modified:

“I saw the Har-bor headlights / They only told me we were parting. . . .”

While we’re being lyrical . . . CALNET public radio reporter Kitty Felde asked listeners at some Westside spots to improvise poems to appease the God of Rain.

Our favorite:

It’s so nice it’s wet

Thank God I don’t have to sweat.

And then there’s the ode to postal employees, which requires this revision for Santa Monica’s unit:

Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of taping two dimes to each $6 stamp book.

The post office in the People’s Republic has created a new job: Coin-affixer. It became necessary with the increase of the first-class mail rate to 29 cents, which ain’t exactly round figures.

“It’s a nightmare for us,” said Postmaster Ron Barco, pointing out that his office’s stamp machines “aren’t capable of letting dimes come out (as change). It’s easier to package them with the stamps than retrofitting (the machines).”

Hence, customers who buy a $6 book of twenty 29-cent stamps get their change--the two dimes--taped to the book. Usually one head up, one head down, though no sequence is required.

Barco said that he’s assigned “some people who are on light and limited duty for medical reasons” to the coin-taping detail.

No buddy-can-you-spare-a-dime jokes, please.

First, car alarms . . .

A beach-goer was taking his dog for an early morning walk in Malibu when he heard a beeper activated. The machine--a battery-operated motion detector--belonged not to Johnny Carson, Sean Penn or Sylvester Stallone. It belonged to a transient camped in some nearby rocks.

Joe Brito of Baldwin Park was intrigued by our recent photo of a business sign that said: “Freeway Stores--Since 1919.” He wondered whether the store founder was “a latter-day Nostradamus,” since the first freeway didn’t appear until two decades later.

Actually, Freeway Stores began life as Guarantee Typewriter, says company Vice President Mike Lacy. As the first store expanded into a chain of 10, the firm began running newspaper ads referring to their “freeway-close stores.”

By the late 1960s, Lacy said, “people were phoning us and asking, ‘Is this Freeway Stores?’ Since it seemed to be catching on, we decided to take that name.”

And now, the post-war graffiti? A diner at a Korean restaurant in Midtown noticed that the building was covered with the usual list of gang monikers, as well as “Irak.” No reports of a “Saddam” yet.

MiscelLAny:

During a recent five-month period, 201,000 RTD passengers rode gratis as part of the agency’s guarantee to grant free rides to anyone whose bus is late by 15 minutes or more. The freebies amounted to 0.115% of the total of 175 million riders.