Chafing at “Chief”: Chris Kelly of Westlake...

Chafing at “Chief”: Chris Kelly of Westlake Village has formed a guerrilla group to protest what he terms L.A. Police Chief Daryl Gates’ “non-performance, intentional or otherwise, during the riots.”

Kelly, 29, and his small band have conducted several covert operations into local bookstores, where the members insert flyers inside copies of Gates’ autobiography, “Chief: My Life in the LAPD.” The flyers ask potential readers not to buy the book until Gates agrees to donate some proceeds to riot-damaged communities.

“Why should Gates be the only one to profit from the riots?” asked Kelly, a self-employed desktop publisher.

The impact of the band, Suburban Whites Opposed to Political Apartheid (SWOPA), seems to be negligible. Some alert shop workers, such as one at a B. Dalton in Topanga Plaza, have spotted the guerrillas and removed the flyers.

And “Chief” is, after all, the No. 1 bestseller in Southern California--in the nonfiction category, of course.

Now allies: John De Simio of West L.A. reports: “Under the heading of ‘Maybe we can all live together,’ I saw a car with a special ‘Pearl Harbor Survivor’ license plate at the Sepulveda Golf Course. It was a Toyota.”

Saving the Queen, by God: We’re delighted to inform Long Beach that Times readers came up with several creative suggestions in Only in L.A.’s Recycle the Queen Mary Contest.

A half-dozen entrants advocated turning Long Beach’s beached white elephant into a gambling ship, though only Richard Wagner of Granada Hills came up with the additional twist of ferrying customers back and forth in the Spruce Goose.

Paul Roth of L.A., by contrast, suggested that maybe Long Beach could foist it off on Lake Havasu City, Ariz., which already has the London Bridge.

The winner, however, was Chick Russell of Pasadena, who came up with a solution that contained every bit as much merit as the grand prize that we offered--a Nixon-meets-Elvis button.

Russell said: “Lift the stern out of the water, face it east, crank the propellers up to full speed and blow our smog to New York.”

Riot irony: The juxtaposition of signs on a Hollywood storefront caught the eye of Sophia La Monica-Foley, who contributed this final shot in our series of unusual riot photos.

But will you work, too? Karen Snyder of Hermosa Beach saw a bumper sticker on an old VW van that said:

“Will Be President for Food.”

miscelLAny:

No telling when Daryl Strawberry will be playing again for the Dodgers. But his uniform, at least, can be seen at the current baseball exhibit at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Birthplace in Yorba Linda.