Fights over Boardwalk and Park Place were...

Fights over Boardwalk and Park Place were never this rough: Manny Villagran, a Downey plumber, has designed a board game called Drug Wars: The Police Game, in which the players are put in the roles of cops. And, in some cases, killed.

Participants move their pieces along a board in pursuit of bad guys by rolling dice. Death can result from drawing one of 98 “high-risk” cards.

The $29.95 game, which will go on store shelves in November, received mixed reviews from Bob Anderson, a Long Beach police spokesman. “If it helps enlighten the public to the dangers of police work that’s good,” he said. “But if it depicts a lot of violence, that’s not so good--especially for young people.”

Whatever, Drug Wars is a long way from Monopoly, where the biggest crime seems to be an overdrawn bank account. And everyone obeys the “Go to Jail” cards.

*

Today’s mystery guests: Photographer Paul Cate of San Pedro went in search of unusual business names and found a jeans company called Not Guilty, a toy company called Applause and a clothes-for-petite-women company called, naturally, the Great American Short Story.

*

Overwriting: After we published a photo of his anonymous work, we received a call from the author of a message that is scrawled on an empty Fairfax storefront: “Graffiti No Longer Accepted Here! Please Find a Day Job. Thank You.”

He’s Joe Connolly, head of the anti-graffiti detail of the Carthay Square Neighborhood Assn.

He revealed that he also left a message--”To Be Continued”--on another empty building after rubbing out the work of taggers. “It’s just to let gangs know that as long as they tag, I’m going to tag over them,” he said.

Connolly, who uses paint supplied by Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky’s office to rub out graffiti throughout the neighborhood, says he likes to remind gang members: “You have to pay for your paint, I get mine free.”

And he tells them that he’ll personally report the names of taggers to the police.

His campaign seems to be succeeding. In four months, no one has tampered with “Graffiti No Longer Accepted Here . . . “ or “To Be Continued.”

miscelLAny:

While it seeks to improve the city’s image, L.A.’s Chamber of Commerce might also send out a directive on how to pronounce Los Angeles . Delta Airlines is broadcasting a radio ad that calls the city Los An-juh-leez . We thought the last person to utter that variation was a visiting President Teddy Roosevelt.