Will the last person out of L.A....

Will the last person out of L.A. please take down the HOLLYWOOD sign?Bill Kaysing guarantees that his Escape the Rat Race newsletter can help you get out of L.A.

“I feel strongly for the people who are still down there,” explained Kaysing, who fled Canoga Park on a smoggy day in 1963 and now lives in the community of Soquel, near Santa Cruz.

Kaysing, who founded the quarterly publication after the riots, says it can teach emigrating Angelenos such survival skills as eating for $1 a day, repairing boats and constructing “micro-houses” for less than $1,000 a piece.

Not only that, he pledges to his subscribers that “if you haven’t moved out of L.A. in one year, I’ll refund your subscription price.”

Judging from that price, Kaysing retains some Big City survival skills, himself. It’s $25 per issue, or $100 per year.

If you’re considering England . . . The Manchester Guardian reported that plans to have local police experiment with the “American side-handled baton have been postponed.” The reason: It’s the type of baton “used by Los Angeles police officers who beat up the motorist Rodney King.”

List of the day: A Van Nuys sound engineer says he’s “trying to keep a sense of humor” about the damage that the Twin Temblors inflicted upon his weekend home in Big Bear. So when he put his mountain residence up for sale for $160,000, J.P.--he prefers to keep his last name secret--ticked off these special features in a newspaper ad:

1. House split-level throughout.

2. Newly acquired view.

3. Two fireplaces (one down).

4. Fenced yard (mostly).

5. New detached carport.

6. Easy 4-wheel-drive access.

7. Rock garden (designed by Mother Nature).

Old El Lay: Patricia Saperstein came across a 1950 guidebook, “This Is L.A.” that shows just how much the city’s demographics have changed in four decades.

“As we continue on Main beyond 1st Street,” author Donald Houston wrote, “we enter the foreign sections of the city. . . . Russians east of the L.A. River, Koreans on Jefferson west of Vermont, Hawaiians and Czechs near the City Hall, Italians and French north of Olvera Street, Portuguese on Terminal Island, and Jews on Brooklyn Avenue and Temple west of Figueroa.”

Stupid criminal tricks: The Gardena Valley News’ police blotter reported a conversation between a police officer and a man who was loitering near a bank. At one point the man told the officer to “read him his rights because he was going to jail. When the officer asked the suspect why he thought he was going to jail, he told the officer that he was concealing a gun in his pants, and that it was falling down the pants leg.”

miscelLAny:

The practice of displaying Olympic winners on a victory stand began during the 1932 Games in L.A.