Why he never shackles his feet: Matt...

Why he never shackles his feet: Matt the Escape Artist knows all about pressure at Santa Monica’s 3rd Street Promenade. The city has decreed that he and other street artists can perform for only 30 minutes in one spot, or face the possibility of being ticketed.

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Let’s do lunch: The once glamorous Ambassador Hotel may be torn down to make room for a high school or a large office building, or it may be preserved, as conservationists hope. In the meantime, a sign inside its chain-link fence advertises its availability in the time-honored fashion of vacant L.A. landmarks:

“For filming at The Ambassador,” it says, “call the American Film Location Company. . . .”

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List of the day: The August issue of Los Angeles magazine carries a “restaurant critic’s personal diary of 25 years of L.A. dining.” Mostly it’s a paean to the area’s overpriced eateries. Here are some more relevant munching milestones:

1977: Philippe downtown sandwich shop doubled the price of its coffee--from a nickel to 10 cents. (It’s now 11 cents, including a snack tax.)

1978: The TV show, “The $1.98 Beauty Show,” offered as a grand prize two free meals at Johnnie’s Pastrami Restaurant in Culver City.

1981: McDonald’s introduced its Amazing, Wrong-Way Drive-Thru in Encino. The order window was placed on the wrong side of the McBuilding because a patio was in the way. Thus, drivers must reach through the passenger window. A first baseman’s glove helps.

1984: Papa Choux restaurant downtown closed its Intimate Room--six curtained booths for lovers--with a mock funeral service after a court said it couldn’t ban lesbian couples from the area.

1990: A county health inspector ticketed the Standing Eight Cafe on Terminal Island for unhealthful conditions. The structure turned out to be a prop for the movie “Parker Kane.”

1991: Fodor’s L.A. tour guide praised the SS Princess Louise for staying “afloat with a piano bar and a good restaurant” in L.A. Harbor. Actually, the ship had sunk two years earlier.

1992: Pegasus, one of San Pedro’s greatest landmarks, closed. It was a waterfront eatery where the waitresses wore negligees from morning to evening.

1992: Kelbo’s Hawaiian Restaurant in West L.A. hired Joey Cheezhee, the first singing comic on Roller Blades.

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Happy July zero: Reader Ken Brock, taking note of the traffic sign typos that Only in L.A. has cleaned up in L.A. County, has made a special request for us to publish a photo he took at an overpass on the 91 Freeway in Riverside. He’d like Caltrans to take it down inasmuch as almost two months have passed since June 31.

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They put on their shoes to LEAVE work: A visitor to a women’s boutique in Belmont Shore noticed that all the help were barefooted (unless you count the ring that one clerk wore on a toe). No doubt that’s why the place is called Footloose.

miscelLAny:

The hippest street name in L.A. has to be Carfax Avenue in Long Beach.