This Tradition Needs to Punt and Start Over

Maybe next year: The folks who run Santa Monica’s Third Street Promenade thought it might be nice to start a new Rose Bowl tradition by inviting university bands and football fans to a pep rally.

So what was the first school invited? The USC Trojans--you know, that local team that did not get invited to play in the Rose Bowl.

“Is this a dysfunctional city or what?” said former Santa Monica Mayor Christine Reed, a graduate of the local school that did send a team to the Rose Bowl--UCLA.

Blame the whole thing on a couple of USC alumni, City Councilman Robert T. Holbrook and Promenade executive Ron Cano.

After USC was out of contention, the university’s band director asked Holbrook, a USC professor, if the band could still attend the Promenade pep rally. The answer was yes.

So why were the Trojans invited to what is ostensibly a Rose Bowl event? Holbrook and Cano pointed out that USC did, after all, rate the Freedom Bowl.

“Did anyone invite UCLA?” asked an incredulous Councilwoman Asha Greenberg.

Apparently not. But UCLA’s opponents in the Rose Bowl, the Wisconsin Badgers, were tearing up the town last week.

Wisconsin’s marching band practiced at Santa Monica High School. Scores of fans were ensconced at the Guest Quarters Suite Hotel next door. At the hotel bar, between drinks of the beer that made Milwaukee famous, they raved about the warm weather.

They, too, had a pep rally Thursday night, at the Santa Monica Pier.

And what were the Bruins up to? The day USC was cheering for itself in Santa Monica, the UCLA football team went to Disneyland.

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Name that tune: But which tune is it? “On Wisconsin”? “Mighty Bruins”? Both? Two-time Los Angeles City Council candidate Laura Lake, now running for Burt Margolin’s likely-to-be-vacated Assembly seat, admits to split loyalties when it comes to this year’s Rose Bowl game.

A graduate of the University of Wisconsin, she lives in Westwood, where her husband, fellow Wisconsin grad James Lake, is a professor at UCLA. How to deal with this dichotomy? In a press release last week, she said she would wear a Wisconsin T-shirt under a bright red down coat for the Badger band’s Thursday evening concert on the Santa Monica Pier.

Huh? Well, Lake said later, she meant to say she would wear a UCLA T-shirt under the Badger-red coat. “I typed it late at night,” she explained.

Margolin (D-Los Angeles) has said he will run for state insurance commissioner if that post is vacated by John Garamendi. Garamendi said last week that he would formally announce his candidacy for governor in January.

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D.C. shuffle: Once again, Rep. Jane Harman (D-Marina del Rey) will be sifting through resumes to find a new chief of staff.

After only four months in the post, Kyle Zimmer stepped down Friday to take a job with her old employer, Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, a Washington auto safety lobbying group.

Zimmer’s predecessor, Bill Black, left to work for Rep. Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.), after just eight months with Harman.

Harman, in Hilton Head, S.C., for the New Year’s weekend, said Zimmer left because she was offered a higher-level job by her former employer. Harman downplayed the twice-a-year turnover in the chief of staff post. Overall, Harman said, “We have had little turnover on the staff.”

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This week’s City Council meetings:

* Beverly Hills: 7:30 p.m Tuesday. 450 Crescent Drive. (310) 285-2400.

* Culver City: no meeting. (310) 202-5851.

* Los Angeles: 10 a.m. Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. (213) 485-3126.

* Malibu: no meeting. (310) 456-2489.

* Santa Monica: no meeting. (310) 393-9975.

* West Hollywood: 7 p.m. Monday. West Hollywood Park Auditorium, 647 N. San Vicente Blvd. (310) 854-7460.

Times staff writers Mathis Chazanov, Nancy Hill-Holtzman and Ted Johnson contributed to this report.