Following L.A.’s tracts: Brian Bennett of the...

Following L.A.’s tracts: Brian Bennett of the L.A. city clerk’s office likes the idea of reviving the names of the area’s old subdivisions, a concept that reporter Bob Pool wrote about in Saturday’s Times.

And Bennett agrees it’s a shame that new tracts are assigned nothing more than impersonal numbers.

But, he points out, some of the old names might not seem so romantic today.

“Do all the folks in the Semi Tropic Spiritualists tract (in Echo Park) have an urge to shout it out?” asks Bennett, an office engineering technician. “And would you leave your car parked overnight in the Anti Rubber Tire tract (in Wilmington)?”

The origins of these names, which date back to the early 1900s, are not revealed on the tract maps that Bennett found.

Gregory J. Fischer, a research consultant for a real estate firm, speculated that perhaps the latter merely referred to a “nearby tire factory, one that people wanted to move.”

Whatever, the Anti Rubber Tire name should not be revived. After all, what would L.A. be without tires?

Room and bungee: The once-stately Queen Mary is now offering a package consisting of one night in a deluxe stateroom for two (including breakfast) as well as a jump for one from its 220-foot bungee tower--all for $165. We don’t know how Prince Charles passed up the bungee attraction on his recent visit.

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The curtains are tie-dyed, we presume: Don’t know if you’ve heard, but the Beverly Prescott Hotel recently unveiled a J. Garcia Suite. Yes, that’s J. Garcia as in Jerry Garcia, lead guitarist of the Grateful Dead. You know, the group whose followers are mostly content to sleep in the back of VW vans.

Anyway, it led us to consult Art Fein’s “L.A. Musical History Tour” to come up with other hotels that could honor musicians, including:

* The Continental Hyatt House (now the Hyatt on Sunset): Where Jim Morrison lived “until he was evicted by management for hanging out a window by his fingertips, dangling over the pavement,” Fein wrote.

* The Chateau Marmont: Where Morrison wrenched his back while hanging onto a drainpipe and trying to swing from the roof into his window.

* The Hollywood Hawaiian Hotel: Where Warren Zevon was inspired to write his song “Desperadoes Under the Eaves.” Zevon, Fein said, “sings about sitting in the Hollywood Hawaiian hotel, listening to the air conditioner hum.” And hoping Morrison won’t come crashing through the window.

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He ought to be on the FBI’s Most Wanted List: One of our colleagues left L.A. in the midst of the recent storms and went to Houston, only to have the rain follow him. He complained to a hotel bartender, who groused: “It’s that damn El Ninja.”

miscelLAny The 1919 Broadway musical “The Rose of China” was deemed a flop, but the book “American Musical Theatre” notes that the authors could take consolation in one critic’s comment that the “rhyming of ‘Los Angeles’ and ‘man jealous’ (was) ‘probably the greatest single achievement of its kind this season.’ ” Next, we need a rhyme for bungee.