Leave it to an expert: Aspiring actor...
Leave it to an expert: Aspiring actor Dennis Woodruff had finished auditioning for a role as a police officer when girlfriend Tonya Nance grabbed a pair of his handcuffs and jokingly shackled herself to his car seat in a 7-Eleven parking lot in Hollywood.
She learned too late that the key to the bracelets was broken.
Woodruff flagged down a police car. The officers tried their handcuff keys, which didn’t fit. Then they brought out a 4 1/2-foot-long pair of bolt cutters and snipped the chain between the cuffs. But they left in place the one cuff that was around her wrist out of fear that they might injure her.
By this time a small crowd had gathered in the parking lot.
A passer-by offered to open the cuff if someone would get him a paper clip. A store clerk found him the piece of equipment, after which Steve Torrez needed 15 minutes to free Nance. Afterward, Torrez told Times reporter Darin Esper that he had been released from San Quentin 2 1/2 months ago.
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Holding a torch for El Monte: With the Fourth of July weekend here, what could be more appropriate than a photo of the Southland’s Statue of Liberty? The 22-foot-high sculpture, made of fiberglass, was donated to the city of El Monte in 1987 by a local doctor who had received it as part of a deal with an overseas manufacturer. And Lady Liberty has stood in front of El Monte’s City Hall ever since, gallantly beckoning toward motorists on the 605 Freeway.
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Obviously, the Westside has standards: “What fun is a yard sale without a bit of obnoxious haggling?” asks John M. Wilson, still puzzled by the accompanying sign, which he found in West Los Angeles (see reproduction).
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Two extra bags of complimentary peanuts, please: Cliff Dektar saw it on a Continental Airlines flight that had just left LAX: “A passenger reached into a big black bag and pulled out two parakeets--putting one on her shoulder while she fed the other.”
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Fictional and real-life roles: The cutlery shop that claims to have sold a knife to murder suspect O.J. Simpson is housed in Downtown L.A.’s century-old Bradbury Building, which has been the scene of many movies--including “Blade Runner.”
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The other villains: During a screening of “Speed” for industry types at the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences, spectators cheered the good guys trying to save the passengers of a bus strapped with dynamite. They also cheered in one other spot--when the bus enters the Century Freeway and cops block the TV vans from following.
miscelLAny:
The Alliance for a Paving Moratorium, based in Northern California, is calling for an end to road construction in L.A., as well as a de-paving of some areas to reclaim “buried lands . . . for parks, bike paths, housing and farming.” Doesn’t this group know that L.A. rhymes with freeway?