Anti-incumbent fever grows: Some longtime occupants of...

Anti-incumbent fever grows: Some longtime occupants of Hawaiian Gardens’ City Hall were ousted more than a week before Election Day. The city tented the building to rid it of termites.

Courting the defendant vote: One man arrested for violating the curfew during the recent riots had an unusual alibi: He was campaigning for the presidency as a write-in candidate. In fact, he solicited votes from some of the other defendants before pleading not guilty in downtown Municipal Court. To paraphrase Lloyd Bentsen, he’s no Ross Perot. He’s an unemployed bus driver from Colorado.

Unscheduled semester break: Sign spotted recently on a Bellflower building:

“Webster Career College--Quitting Business Sale.”

Trading-card heroes: The 1992 U.S. Customs Canine Enforcement All-Stars include two sniffers from the agency’s L.A. office, B.J. and Reese. The cards are being distributed to schoolchildren as an anti-drug message.

As with the sports variety, they’re chock full of stats on the back. Reese, for example, aided in one seizure of 400 pounds of cocaine, while B.J.’s greatest performance was helping accomplish a 618-pound seizure of cocaine. Good boys!

A tribute that made his eyes water: It all started when Gordon Murley, then president of the Hillside and Canyon Assns. in L.A., remarked on the vast number of facilities, parks, parking lots, etc., named after politicians. Noting his crusty style at City Hall, Murley observed: “About the only thing they’d ever name after me would be a sewage outfall pipe.”

You got it, Gordon.

The association--not City Hall--recently presented him a trophy described as “an old rusted piece of pipe, defiantly sticking vertically out of a thick block of glass with an engraved brass plate affixed to the front . . . all resting luxuriously in a blue velvet drawstring bag.”

Just the thing to display on the mantel in the front room.

This trial followed the riots: Jeff Bringle of Newbury Park wonders whether history will note that a few hours after the violence in L.A. began, Channel 5 showed the movie “The Verdict,” starring Paul Newman.

Doesn’t sound familiar: On his 3,507-mile roundabout walk from Cincinnati to L.A. in 1884, author Charles Lummis recalled one stretch where “the ground was carpeted with myriad wildflowers, birds filled the air with song, and clouds of butterflies fluttered past me. I waded in clear, icy trout brooks, startled innumerable flocks of quail . . . “

Then, he said, he arrived in “pretty Pomona.”

The latest sighting of you-know-who: A British newsman, interviewing U.S. Senate hopeful Gray Davis in L.A., sported a press badge that featured a photo of a singer who is reportedly seen only occasionally these days. The badge said: “Elvis Press.”

miscelLAny:

Newmark, Zelzah and the Indiana Colony are the former names, respectively, of Montebello, Northridge and Pasadena.