A Meter Madness in Studio City : Merchants might be so angry, he suggested, that they would resort to acts of civil disobedience--a little masticated Juicy Fruit in the parking meter, perhaps.

Millie Michaels and Marcia Slutsky have burn scars on their forearms. “Hot plates,” Millie explains.

Such is the price of a career as a coffee-shop waitress. Customers see the friendly smile and the little white Du-par’s cap like a dollop of whipped cream atop your ‘do. But do they know that Marcia suffered pain in her wrist so severe that the doctors called it “carpal tunnel” and performed surgery? Well, the regulars might, but who else?

And that time Millie lost her poise at the counter, did the customers understand?

“I got so mad, tears were coming out of my eyes,” Millie says. As she dutifully took breakfast orders and poured refills, she looked out the glass door and saw “a meter maid”--that’s her term, not mine--ticketing her car. Millie had just gotten too busy to feed the meter. (Meter-feeding is illegal too--you’re supposed to stay your two hours and move on--but Millie usually gets away with it.)

The $20 fine didn’t bother Millie so much as the sense of injustice. “It was the principle of the thing,” she says. “Here I am working and there’s nothing I can do about it.”

I wonder if Marx ever said anything about this. If religion is the opiate of the masses, where does parking fit in? Now that Studio City has gotten so many trendy restaurants, shops and customers, now that residents south of the Boulevard are demanding a permit system to reserve their streets for the people who live there, now that Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky is mad as heck about the fate of Millie’s nickels, dimes and quarters.

Millie holds her thumb and forefinger two inches apart. She’s got a stack of $20 parking tickets that thick. But if Millie parked in the customers’ lot, with its two-hour limit, she might get towed.

That happened to Marcia 10 years ago--and she hasn’t tempted fate again. How much did it cost to get her car out of impound? “Forty-six bucks,” she says, as if it happened yesterday. Today, it would cost much more.

Not every worker bee in Studio City has it so rough. Steven Sylber or Diane Wallach, who work in sales at Studio City Camera Exchange, park in front of the homes on Cantura, just around the block. They won’t play chicken with parking enforcement. “The meter maids--they’re real gung-ho in this neighborhood,” Wallach explains.

But Millie would rather take her chances than schlep the four blocks to and from the nearest residential street. She’d rather race outside three or four times a day to guard against the fine that doubles if you don’t pay on time.

Until last week, it looked like Studio City’s parking crisis, if not resolved, might be eased a bit by a plan to use the nickels, dimes and quarters that Millie, Marcia and everybody else puts into those meters to build a $2.1-million public parking facility. For years the Studio City Chamber of Commerce had been told that’s what the money would be used for, says Executive Director Sondra Frohlich.

But last Thursday, Mayor Tom Bradley’s office said the money was needed to help out the city’s ailing budget. Yaroslavsky, defending the honor of Studio City, became so upset that the money would go away that he threatened to remove the meters entirely. Merchants might be so angry, he suggested, that they would resort to acts of civil disobedience--a little masticated Juicy Fruit in the parking meter, perhaps.

Frohlich discounted official speculation about the prospect of such sabotage. “I was rather surprised the councilman would suggest that,” she says. Actually, she adds, many merchants like meters because they create customer turnover. But there’s no question, she says, that business people are ticked.

Yaroslavsky may feel like feeding the meter himself. At the same time that the Chamber of Commerce is angry about losing the parking structure, the Studio City Residents Assn. is fed up with employees and customers taking up parking on nearby residential streets. It wants the same kind of resident-only permit-parking system that has existed near Melrose and in other communities for years.

To make matters worse for Zev, there seems to be some confusion about the state of Studio City’s parking plans. Residents’ association president Tony Lucente told me emphatically Monday that residential permit parking has already been approved for south of the Boulevard--that it will just be a matter of a few months before the system will be working. Frohlich told me just as emphatically that it hasn’t been approved.

Katharine Macdonald, Yaroslavsky’s press deputy, looked into the matter. Frohlich was right: The permit parking plan (or what Frohlich prefers to call “preferential parking”) hasn’t been approved--not yet. On the other hand, Macdonald suggested that in all likelihood residents will get their parking plan approved . . . someday.

Meanwhile, Macdonald says, a search is on for other sources of revenue to build the facility that will, in theory, bring parking and peace to Studio City. Failing that, there’s still the notion that maybe employees could be convinced to use the park ‘n’ ride lot a couple of miles east on Ventura Boulevard and take the DASH bus to work.

Millie Marshall, who lives in Sherman Oaks, isn’t thrilled with that idea, either. And she’s afraid the parking structure, if it gets built at all, will be farther away than she cares to walk.

“When I get off work,” she explains, “I’m dead.”

Scott Harris’ column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. Readers can write to Harris at The Times Valley Edition, 20000 Prairie St., Chatsworth, Ca . 91311.