How Weird Is My Valley? : You don’t have to venture far for some off-the-beaten-track sightseeing spots.

See here, Frank Zappa, The San Fernando Valley is more than a collection of shopping malls and ditsy-looking, ponytail-off-to-the-side-of-their-head babes looking for Now Clothing.

The Valley can be a happening place, almost as much as, dare we say, that cluster of confused buildings and people over the hill in the part of town that has anointed itself the real L. A.

I’ve only called The Valley home for a few months. One day, it was so blasted hot, I had to get out of my Sherman Oaks house. So I got in my late-model Honda and cruised for spots to write home about, places I wouldn’t mind taking my 103-year-old great-aunt Fiona Glionna from Sicily if she follows through on her threat to visit.

See, I’m a blue-collar kind of guy. I dig places without the typical L. A. glitz and phoniness. Give me real people and a real hangout, and I’m happy.

In the end, when I wasn’t waiting at traffic lights or in confounded freeway tie-ups, I found some pretty cool places--spots I’m used to seeing featured on late-late-late night television. What follows are the choicest nuggets of Valley gold:

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Hey, midnight cowboys, there’s a spot along Mulholland Highway that’s truly the place for the born to be wild.

Come weekends, hundreds of decked-out biker dudes and their tattooed love units rumble into the Rock Store, a quaint roadside bar and cafe just south of Calabasas, checking out rides and girlfriends, sizing up each other’s engines.

The hangout picked up its hip character in the early 1960s when cycle-riding Steve McQueen cooled his leather riding boots there on dusty Sunday afternoons. Now Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger are regulars. So is Jay Leno. But the real thrill is biker-gawking.

And if you chill long enough, you can see the sports bikers and horrid-looking Harley types rumble off into the sunset--wild at heart, every last one of them.

The Rock Store, 30354 Mulholland Highway, Cornell, (818) 889-1311.

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The heck with the over-hyped Sunset Strip. The Valley has its own little bit of ‘50s noir--right here in our own back yard. The Pink Motel, perched like a psychedelic trip out on San Fernando Road in Sun Valley, is a blast from the past with the coolest nighttime neon, a whale-shaped pool and rooms resembling the set of Hitchcock’s “Psycho.”

Owner Monty Thomulka has kept the place just like it was when his father opened it in 1946, when San Fernando Road was Route 99, the main drag for traffic bound for L. A. from the north.

The place is--you guessed it--pink. The 20 rooms are cozy, some with aqua-colored walls and pink carpets. And they cost just $30 a night--the perfect getaway from the Motel 6 rut.

Mosey next door and peer into the cafe with its “Rebel Without a Cause” red booths, signs for 25-cent burgers and a jukebox featuring Elvis, Rick Nelson and Bobby Darin. Food is no longer served here. But like most places in La-La Land, the diner sees its share of movie shoots. Some Japanese outfit just filmed here. So did an American car manufacturer.

So hop into your ’57 Chevy and motor out to the Pink Motel. Monty’ll leave the light on for ya.

The Pink Motel, 9457 San Fernando Road, Sun Valley, (818) 767-3605.

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Are you tired of getting pushed around by self-important film types who tell you: “Sorry, step aside. We’re doing a shoot here.”

Well, there’s a way-cool spot in the Santa Clarita Valley where you can see huge rocks jutting from the earth like the blooming Stone Ages--a place where you can stroll across a few movie sets.

It’s Vasquez Rocks County Park on Escondido Canyon Road, and everybody films here. Bill and Ted had their bogus adventure here. And this summer, Fred and Barney did the “yabba-dabba-doo” for the new Flintstones movie.

See, the Hollywooders pay to use the rocks, these rough-looking remnants from the days when big, bad dinosaurs roamed Los Angeles. You can run along them, screaming like you were loosed from some asylum for former tag-team wrestlers.

Here’s the best part: The boys in sunglasses can’t order you off their sets. Park rangers make sure that the public comes first out here. They have to ask you to kindly avoid their rolling cameras.

Vasquez Rocks County Park, Escondido Canyon Road, (805) 268-0840 .

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Speaking of rocks, there’s a cluster on Topanga Canyon Boulevard in Chatsworth that has become the Disney World of rock climbing. It’s called Stoney Point.

Rockers come from around the globe to try their skills at hundreds of different climbs. The spot has been popular with the chiseling set since the mid-1930s, long before the present-day trash and graffiti stains.

The Big Boys have been here. Famous climbers Royal Robbins and Yvon Chouinard climbed here before taking on some of the world’s major peaks.

Most outdoor stores offer classes for beginners. When you get good enough to do a little crack-jamming and laybacking, veterans say, Stoney Point provides a better workout than you’ll get in any sweaty gym. And unlike most climbing venues, this one’s in civilization, not the middle of nowhere.

Stoney Point, Topanga Canyon Boulevard just south of the Simi Valley Freeway, Chatsworth.

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All that climbing can build one powerful thirst. And there’s a crowded, people-watcher’s paradise Valley hangout to quench it.

It’s even got a bluesy, Wild West name: the Sagebrush Cantina in Calabasas. This watering hole is half rock ‘n’ roll bar and half Hussong’s, where the party-ers gather and sawdust litters the floor.

There are outside stages for screaming rock and mariachi music. On Sundays, there’s a $20-a-person brunch to make your eyes and gullet cry.

Sagebrush Cantina, 23527 Calabasas Road, Calabasas. Open 11 a.m. to midnight weekdays, till 1:30 a.m. weekends. (818) 222-6062.

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On Thursday nights over at a North Hollywood bar called the Rawhide, they’re elbow to elbow on the dance floor with their cowboy hats and faded blue jeans.

It’s one of the city’s three gay country-Western bars, a place where women and bras are a definite minority.

One-two-three-kick! As the guys do a C & W line dance on the floor, bar owner Dan Collett says that while the bar has obvious appeal for gays and lesbians, straight people are welcome--as long as they know what they’re in for.

“It’s a gay bar, remember that,” he says with a smile.

Anyway, there are pool tables and a big ol’ dance floor and, says Collett, a lot less drunken fighting than at most country bars.

Rawhide, 10937 Burbank Blvd., North Hollywood. Open 7 p.m. until closing Tuesdays through Saturdays, from 2 p.m. Sundays. (818) 760-9798.

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Did you know that perhaps the most important historic landmark west of the Mississippi is located right here?

On Lankershim Boulevard in Universal City, sandwiched between the studio entrance and some hip record-label outlet is Campo de Cahuenga.

On this spot on Jan. 13, 1847, the United States finally became a continental powerhouse. With the signing of the Capitulation of Cahuenga, the last battle of the Mexican-American War came to an end when Gen. Andres Pico, leader of the Mexican forces, surrendered to Lt. Col. John C. Fremont, commander of the California Volunteers.

City staffing shortages being what they are, there is no public touring of the red-tiled casa. But if you’re ever tired of the Valley’s suburban blight, take a cruise over and peer through the iron gates, past the serene courtyard, at the place that reflects a time when California was more than just bikinis and movie shoots.

Campo de Cahuenga, 3919 Lankershim Blvd., Universal City.

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What’s the next best thing to bellying up to a boat of popcorn and watching Johnny Weissmuller scream for Cheetah in the old Tarzan movies?

Well, jungle fans, it’s a cruise past the Burroughs bungalow on Ventura Boulevard. You know, Edgar Rice Burroughs, the guy who created Tarzan as a literary character. Burroughs owned a ranch in the Val, but in 1927 built the Spanish mission-style bungalow as an office and penned some of his Tarzan tales there.

Today the home, which sits across from a couple of coffeehouses in--you guessed it--Tarzana, is the headquarters of Edgar Rice Burroughs Inc.--the company formed to market the mother lode of fiction he wrote, including 97 novels and dozens of short stories.

While the place isn’t open to the public, you can swing by and look over the wrought-iron fence, into the yard, at the walnut tree under which the ashes of the author are buried.

When Burroughs wrote there, Ventura Boulevard was a winding country road. Imagine that.

Edgar Rice Burroughs home, 18354 Ventura Blvd., Tarzana.

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I like to go to cemeteries and read the cool gravestone messages people leave behind after they’re gone.

There’s a place where the dearly departed don’t inscribe their own messages--their masters do it for them.

It’s the Los Angeles Pet Memorial Park in Calabasas, the resting spot for some 40,000 animal best friends, from the obscure to the notable. How about Rudolf Valentino’s dog Kabar, Charlie Chaplin’s cat Boots, Humphrey Bogart’s dog Droopy and Hopalong Cassidy’s horse Topper?

Like most cemeteries, this one is shady and quiet. So go ahead, go on a treasure hunt, take a Sunday to look around at the inscriptions.

Some are so sweet you wonder what these people will do for their own parents. Like “Lupi, My dear best friend, I’ll never forget you” or “Timi, he was the sunshine.”

And there’s my favorite: “Girlie, our dear little tiger, so full of life yet so little time. Sleep well.”

Los Angeles Pet Memorial Park, 5068 N. Old Scandia Lane, Calabasas. Open 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays. Park open but office closed Sundays. (818) 591-7037.

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The Valley can be a wild place, especially at the Wildlife Waystation in Little Tujunga Canyon--for years a refuge for exotic animals from big cats to little birds.

Martine Colette has run the place for a dog’s age now, caring for animals that have been forsaken by zoos, mishandled by owners and just need a serene place to spend their final years. If you call ahead, Colette’s staff has been known to take visitors on a tour through the way station--where lions sit caged a few precarious feet away from their lion and bear brothers in wildness.

That’s the thing about this place. In one small area, there are more than 1,000 animals--one big happy, hooting, hollering family. It will restore your faith in captivity.

Wildlife Waystation, 14831 Little Tujunga Canyon Road, Lake View Terrace. (818) 899-5201.

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If you take me up on only one of these suggestions, this should be it.

There’s a pockmarked triangular lot in Lake View Terrace, right next to the Corral Bar, that bears a sobering visit--the spot where motorist Rodney G. King was beaten by Los Angeles police officers two years ago, eventually setting off the nation’s ugliest riots in more than a century.

Take a walk around the lot, look across the street at the second-floor balcony of the nearby apartments, the place from where the infamous video was shot. You know, the footage by George Holliday that was replayed from Kansas City to the surface of Venus.

Sure, there are similar sore spots around town. And, to be sure, a lot of us would like to forget what happened.

But take the kids out there and explain to them that the Valley--and the entire city of Los Angeles--is indeed a cool place. And, if anything, this spot could be a reminder that we can all get along.

Site of the Rodney King beating, Osborne Street and Foothill Boulevard, Lake View Terrace.