Bugs, Big Bird . . . Who’s Next on the Walk of Fame?

Things sure are loosening up on the Walk of Fame, once the preserve of legends the likes of Jimmy Stewart, Marilyn Monroe and John Wayne.

Last week, Big Bird of Sesame Street grabbed a piece of the world’s most fabled sidewalk. His star is located half a block from Bugs Bunny’s.

No knock on the 8-foot-2-inch canary--or any cartoon character for that matter--but trend spotters can’t help but wonder who’s next. Barney?

Our submissions for the new Walk of Lame: Montel Williams, Kathleen Sullivan and, of course, the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.

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BUS BUZZ: Where else but in Santa Monica could a simple bus ride turn into a rolling round table on the homeless?

Aboard the Big Blue Bus last Thursday, all eyes were on an elderly woman who bore all the disturbing signs of the dispossessed. Four large plastic bags of belongings wobbled beside her. Instead of shoes, she wore a thick padding of tape around each foot. A pile of newspapers rested on her lap.

The scene was enough to yank at the heartstrings of even the most jaded observers, and her departure on tony Montana Avenue triggered a burst of social consciousness. “Can you imagine?” one rider asked a fellow passenger.

“She’s one of the happiest people I know,” the driver volunteered. “She’s very fortunate in some ways.”

A passenger who claimed to know the woman agreed, saying, “She doesn’t have a care in the world. . . . She’d never be happy in an apartment.”

The discussion then turned to solving the homeless problem, and the talk took on a decidedly less sympathetic tone.

The driver came down squarely for warehousing the homeless in vacant military barracks. Others countered that most homeless people would never cotton to such settings--and the driver ultimately agreed.

“They want the pricey real estate,” he said, gesturing toward the Pacific Ocean. “They want the beaches and parks paid for by taxpayers.”

Everyone nodded in sullen silence.

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OUT OF ORDER: Coming as they do at the end of the agenda, meeting items initiated by Santa Monica City Council members are only for the hardy. For those with sufficient stamina, however, these discussions are often the most entertaining, newsworthy or contentious of the night. Sometimes all three.

Even if the items are a snooze, however, you can always count on them being at the end of the meeting. So much so that when council members have in the past sought to reorder the agenda, their efforts have been squashed by Mayor Judy Abdo on grounds that the public expects the agenda to go forward as advertised.

Why, then, was Santa Monica Police Chief James T. Butts standing at the podium at about 7:30 p.m. answering questions about a proposal to add full-time police patrols to Palisades Park? That discussion was supposed to be at the end of the meeting, not near the beginning.

Abdo said she asked to upend the agenda because a city staff member’s report to the council was imprisoned in a malfunctioning computer and they were trying to retrieve it.

Despite her past reluctance to reconfigure agendas at the last minute, Abdo said she didn’t think doing so was a big deal. “I said fine, I didn’t care,” Abdo said.

The mayor said she had expected the discussion of policing in Palisades Park to be completed in a few minutes. That clearly represented a triumph of hope over experience, as matters involving the parks, the homeless and the police are anything but quickly resolved in Santa Monica.

In fact, the discussion went on for an hour.