Back From the Dead
How do you make a defunct savings and loan reappear? Put it in a movie.
In the hit film “In the Line of Fire,” one of the key plot twists occurs when actor Clint Eastwood, playing a U.S. Secret Service agent, discovers the telephone number of a branch of Southwest Savings in Los Angeles.
Upon further examination, Eastwood finds that a fistful of dollars has been deposited there by the film’s villain, played by John Malkovich.
That was the first real piece of business Southwest has had in some time.
The money-losing thrift failed in 1989. Southwest disappeared altogether when the federal Resolution Trust Corp. sold the S&L;’s 25 branches to Bank of America in 1990 for $7.3 million, although several empty Southwest buildings remain.
And Leave the Vibes to Us
Want to bail out of Los Angeles but can’t find time to locate the place with the best harmonic convergence for you?
Now a New Age service called “City Seekers” is offering to help people relocate who are “tired of the rising crime, decline in the education system, graffiti and pollution” in Southern California.
Among the services is a “sanctuary map” that shows some of the following:
* active and inactive nuclear power plants,
* “power vortices,”
* hazardous waste sites and
* locations for acupuncturists, meditation groups, New Age bookstores and organized food co-ops.
The service also offers more conventional relocation information, such as crime statistics, housing prices, private school locations, climate data and unemployment rates.
Listen Closely for Stock Tips
All-news radio station KFWB (the one that promises you the world if you give it 22 minutes) now has “The Psychic Hotline” as an occasional sponsor of its news segments. Presumably, listeners now can not only get news as it happens, but news just before it happens as well.
Is This Good News or Bad?
One inverse economic indicator emerged last week when U.S. Pawn, one of the nation’s larger publicly held pawn shop chains, announced its quarterly results.
The Denver-based company, which boomed during the slow economy, posted a $43,000 quarterly loss.
But the red ink isn’t due to a pickup in the economy. Instead, U.S. Pawn said, business was so strong that its capital was depleted, forcing it to raise working capital internally “at the temporary expense of normally expected profitability.”
Briefly . . .
Lucky number: The new address for the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce is 711 East Desert Inn Road. . . . Sign of the times: “Pawn Your Car, Bike or RV” reads a sign on a Newport Beach store. . . . Are they in the American or National league?: A new ad for Los Angeles Rams season tickets reads: “Mentally tough. Physically imposing. Ready to take it to anyone. With a vengeance. That’s playing Hardball!”
