Win a few, lose a few: The...

Win a few, lose a few: The Central City Assn. has scheduled a “Fight Back L.A.” lunch today, featuring two speakers who’ll give their inspirational thoughts “on marketing Los Angeles as a work, business and travel destination.”

Which reminds us that we just received a press release touting the dinner/massage package offered by the Nature Cafe on Melrose Avenue. It’s called: “Antidote to L.A.”

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Wipeout: Willy the Wave, the much-derided mascot at Pepperdine University, has undergone a make-over. The old Willy was compared to “a fuzzy Smurf” and “a furry banana,” says school spokesman Jeff Bliss. He has been replaced by a gnarly dude who sports a wave of blond hair, sunglasses and a buffed body. And no doubt drives a BMW.

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Movable feasts: Lou Kilgore of Redondo Beach writes that we included Les Freres Taix in Echo Park on our list of the city’s oldest restaurants even though it’s a spinoff of the old Taix restaurant (est. 1927) downtown. The latter, at 321 Commercial St., was annexed by the federal government, which needed a parking lot.

Well, we’re still happy to see that for the Taix family, blood is thicker than red wine when it comes to the family business.

Kilgore also objects to including Canter’s because it began in Boyle Heights in 1931 before moving to the Fairfax area a couple of decades later. It wasn’t the building that made Canter’s popular. In our mind, it was the cantankerous waitresses.

As far as that goes, the Original Pantry (1924) was originally a few blocks west of its present location on Figueroa Street and moved between breakfast and lunch one day without stopping service.

Philippe (1908), at 1001 N. Alameda, has also bounced around. When it left its old haunts at 364 Aliso in 1951 (giving way to the Santa Ana Freeway), wreckers found a 30-gallon keg jutting out of a wall on the second floor.

It turned out that a bootlegger had an office there. When Prohibition ended in 1932, he reportedly took his $40,000 stash, moved to Spain, bought a dairy and lived happily ever after. Even if he didn’t get back his cleaning deposit.

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Goodby, Columbus: The Doo Dah Parade has been run out of Columbus, Ohio. The Midwestern Doo Dah, a July 4 event inspired by the Pasadena prototype, has been discontinued. Organizers said that in this year’s Doo Dah at Columbus, spectators threw several items at the crazily dressed marchers, including water balloons.

OK, but what was the problem?

miscelLAny:

Pepperdine University, founded in 1937, adopted “Waves” as the nickname for its athletic teams even though it was then located in South L.A. at Vermont Avenue and 79th Street. A school history says the name was proposed by a group of students who were from Tennessee and became captivated by the beach, which was eight miles away.