The Man Who Wore One White Cup...
The Man Who Wore One White Cup (cont.): Our mention Friday of the mystery of the downtown street evangelist who has been spotted with a plastic cup on his head brought this explanation from Dick Sheets of Granada Hills.
“I’m the curious type, so when I saw him one day I asked him about it,” Sheets related. “He told me that the cup had water in it. When his throat got dry, he’d just reach up for it and take a sip. He said he used to leave it on the curb. But people walking by would drop cigarette butts in it or spit in it or leaves would fall in it. So he just put it on his head. He didn’t think it was too unusual.”
Must be a native of L.A.
Light my fir, light my fir, light my fir:
Nooshin Lajevardi of Encino spotted a Valley furniture store whose marquee bragged:
JIM MORRISON BUYS HIS DOORS HERE.
In honor of the first anniversary of the Metro Blue Line, we bring you an 1880s-era poem that was penned to commemorate an earlier Long Beach-based transit line: A steam-driven train whose frequent breakdowns won it the nickname, “The Get Out and Push Railroad (G.O.P.R.R)”:
Oh, fireman, fill the teacup,
The water’s running low,
And you’d better scratch a parlor match
For fuel as we go.
And scare the squirrels off the track,
Before they wreck the car,
Oh, everybody get out and push,
On the G.O.P.R.R.
L.A. is full of offbeat shrines, from one Sun Valley junkyard’s salute to the “Ten Worst Automobiles” to Malibu’s Bigfoot Museum and Long Beach’s (Human) Foot Museum.
Perhaps the smallest museum is located in a glass case at the Little Old Bookshop in Whittier. It contains about 60 figurines of sombrero-clad men in sleeping positions.
Owner Charles Jimenez says his goal is to show that the icons don’t symbolize laziness but instead relate to “two tragic periods in Mexican history”--the Spanish conquista and, later, the system of peonage.
Jimenez, whose two decades of research resulted in his book, “The Sleeping Mexican Phenomenon,” says that when visitors question the propriety of the display he explains how the Sleeping Mexican woke up to stage the Mexican Revolution.
Jerry Cowle of Paciific Palisades suggests that vacationers on their way to Las Vegas watch for a sign on Interstate 15, outside Victorville, that announces a volunteer effort by a group of nudists:
“Litter Removal Next 2 Miles--Western Sunbathing Association.”
The big question, as Cowle notes, is whether the Good Bare Samaritans will agree to don orange safety vests.
miscelLAny:
Forest Lawn’s memorial park in Glendale claims the distinction of displaying the largest mounted painting in the world, Jan Styka’s “The Crucifixion,” a 19th-Century work that is 195 feet long and 50 feet tall.