STRIPPED: It’s bare all around at the...

STRIPPED: It’s bare all around at the site of a former strip club in Castaic, but the neighbors won’t complain this time. A building near the Golden State Freeway and California 126 that had become a strip club over the summer was bulldozed this week. . . . The Newhall Land & Farming Co. owned the building; a spokeswoman said the company was concerned about vandalism.

O.J. LETTERS: Some people feel so strongly about O.J. Simpson (B1) that they want to write him a letter. Now a CSUN journalism staffer says write him, instead. . . . Jerry Biederman hopes to put a sample of the letters in a book about what ordinary Americans think of the case. . . . “I was dying to see what people wanted to say to him,” he says. So far, a majority of the 100 letters support Simpson.

SUPER: The “Super Scooper” (above) was super-duper Tuesday. The firefighting planes, on a test run, scooped up 1,400 gallons of water apiece from Castaic Lake, and dropped them on a nearby hillside (B1, B7). . . . “The Super Scooper is not a panacea or guarantee that all fires will be kept small,” said county Fire Chief P. Michael Freeman, “but it has a unique capacity to extinguish California’s hellfires.”

TRUANTS: Hockey might be on strike, but hooky certainly isn’t. Police swept through West Valley hangouts Tuesday morning, catching 38 truant high school and middle school students. Police had received a lot of complaints from business owners (B2). . . . The students were quickly returned to their respective schools.

TOO LATE: Can women have it all? Can they put their careers together and then turn to motherhood in their late 30s and early 40s? For many, the answer is no. They’ve simply waited too long. Says Marilyn Shenker, 44, a therapist intern who runs a support group in Sherman Oaks: “By the time we’re ready to have a kid, we’re ready to enter menopause.” (E1).