“Helmet Law Sucks” was the defiant message...

“Helmet Law Sucks” was the defiant message scrawled on the headgear worn by a local motorcyclist involved in a crash over the weekend.

The helmet saved his life, officials at UCLA Medical Center said. And the cyclist has changed his mind about the law, which took effect Jan. 1. But he won’t have to remove the message.

“The crash scratched it off,” said one doctor.

Attn. Nude Gardeners:

You can pay for your “gate fees or annual dues” at the Elysium nudist colony in Topanga “by helping us beautify our grounds, doing office work, or. . . ?” reads an announcement in the group’s publication, Journal of the Senses.

We hope, by the way, that nude motorcyclists at Elysium won’t feel they’re violating their principles by wearing helmets.

It couldn’t have been a more apt symbol for the traffic situation in Southern California. A flag--the state flag--was flying upside down at the Spring Street headquarters of Caltrans. An upside-down flag, you’ll recall, is the universal distress signal.

And, now, it’s time to report the traditional first Dueling Signs sighting of the new year. Tobias Rosner of West Los Angeles came upon this unfathomable grouping in Santa Monica. Rosner doubts that a team of experts could translate it.

“We can’t choose our relatives but we can choose our causes,” wrote Dawn Marvin of Rochester, N.Y., to an L.A. abortion-rights group that was holding a fund-raising auction. She contributed an old photo of her nephew as a teen-ager in hippie-like garb. The shot, blown up to poster size, sold for $1,000. Marvin’s nephew is Randall Terry, founder of the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue.

Monday was the 30th anniversary of the death of the Los Angeles Examiner--and the end of Victor Frisbie.

His was a name that appeared often in the Examiner, even though he wasn’t a real person. Years earlier, Examiner reporters, bored with covering such recurring events as the Rose Parade, began sneaking quotes attributed to Frisbie into the paper. Their higher editors were unaware of the game.

Judging from Frisbie’s statements, he never lost his enthusiasm for the parade, though he missed one year after being arrested for drunkenness on New Year’s Eve.

And then the Examiner folded. A boxed, one-paragraph story appeared in the last issue on Jan. 6, 1962. It said simply:

“BAKERSFIELD--Victor Frisbie, well-known sportsman and traveler, died here Friday. He was 58.”

At least he got to see one last parade.

miscelLAny:

San Francisco has the highest proportion of citizens subscribing to gourmet magazines of any metropolitan region in the nation. L.A. is 11th, right behind Newark, N.J.