Stop the presses!Isn’t it enough that Southern...

Stop the presses!Isn’t it enough that Southern California has fires and floods? Now we learn, courtesy of New Republic magazine, that Portland’s newspaper, the Oregonian, ran this headline recently:

“Scientists see quakes in L.A. future.”

Earthquakes? Nah.

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Of L.A. we sing: While the city of Los Angeles is starting a public relations campaign on its own behalf, as The Times reported the other day, Only in L.A. has been beating the drums for years. Periodically, we’ve been quoting excerpts from an 1886 Times feature story that detailed 70 reasons why the living was fine here.

Here are a few more:

* 8. Los Angeles is 100 years old, but in real life dates back only about 15 years. In that short time it has gained nearly all that artificially makes it beautiful.

* 40. The inhabitants do not wear arsenals nor shoot at the drop of a handkerchief. The Apaches are 800 miles away.

* 41. Los Angeles is not a border town.

* 42. Every known secret society is largely represented here. An idea of their remarkable growth may be gathered by noting the lodges instituted in 1885.

* 55. There are two strong and well-equipped athletic clubs, one German.

* 56. Places in the county never have fogs.

* 57. Los Angeles is the Chicago of California.

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The River L.A.: Another selling point for L.A. boosters, which didn’t exist in 1886, is the spectacle of a river with a concrete bed. The mighty Gray Los Angeles didn’t get its make-over until the 1930s. Since then, it has been the host of cinematic car chases (“Repo Man,” etc.), training exercises for bus drivers and various recreational pursuits. Today’s photo shows a sign that the city apparently posted for sightseers to watch bicyclists plying the concrete.

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Or just call it “L.A.”: Historian Bruce Henstell has written to Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti, asking him to protest the pronunciation of “Los Angeles” by Simpson defense attorney F. Lee Bailey.

“Bailey is making the name of our fair city rhyme with ‘bees,’ ” wrote Henstell, author of “Sunshine and Wealth: Los Angeles in the Twenties and Thirties.” He adds that “once upon a time there was a certain upper-caste quality associated” with that pronunciation. Visiting President Theodore Roosevelt, for instance, praised Los Angeleez in the early 1900s.

But now, Henstell adds, that pronunciation is “simply dated.”

If the Simpson prosecutors won’t object, your Only in L.A. editor himself will appeal to Bailey--man to man, National Guardsman to Marine.

miscelLAny In the unclear-on-the-concept category, we heard a radio commercial inviting Southern Californians to stay at a low-priced, Las Vegas hotel that caters to “budget-conscious gamblers.” As for us, we’d rather be here in the Chicago of California, anyway.