Sign Puts a Little Muscle Behind Warning to Drivers

Road-hazard signs nationwide warn motorists about all manner of creatures crossing the highway. Now, Venice has its own sign cautioning travelers about a different breed of animal.

“We don’t have deer, quail, frogs or armadillo crossing the roads here like other places, but we do have bodybuilders,” said Derek Barton, spokesman for Gold’s Gym in Venice.

To guard against accidents, the management at Gold’s a few years ago put up the sign pictured here, at Hampton Drive and Sunset Avenue. Hordes of the establishment’s pumped-up patrons often swarm across the intersection, seemingly oblivious to nearby traffic.

The sign seems to have protected Gold’s customers, who include celebrities Mel Gibson, Charlie Sheen and Jodie Foster; there have been no car accidents since it went up, Barton said.

The orange sign has also become something of a tourist attraction. Employees say groups of foreign visitors often pose for pictures in front of it.

“It’s really become quite a landmark,” Barton said.

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SYMBOLIC INDEED: Sure, a picture may be worth a thousand words. But in the case of a recent campaign brochure used by Los Angeles City Council candidate Barbara Yaroslavsky, a photo may be worth just one word:

Phooey.

Seems that the 5th district candidate issued a glossy red and white mailer that touts her determination to help rebuild quake-ravaged neighborhoods in the San Fernando Valley. In an effort to prove that repairs of damaged buildings in Sherman Oaks have moved too slowly, the mailer shows two photos of a quake-wrecked apartment building.

Under one of the photos is the date of the Northridge earthquake, Monday, Jan. 17, 1994, and the address of the apartment building, in the 4600 block of Vista Del Mar, Sherman Oaks. The second photo has the same address, but the date is April, 1995.

Pretty compelling stuff until one realizes that the two photos on the mailer are really the same photo, printed twice.

Yaroslavsky’s campaign manager Laurie Saffian conceded the two shots are the same photo--taken in April of this year. She said the mailer was not meant to deceive anyone and that the before-and-after effect was “not to be taken literally.”

“It’s symbolic,” she said. “It’s absolutely symbolic.”

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FLYING HIGH: If you think the battle over Santa Monica Airport is bad now, wait until the year 2015, when the city must begin renegotiating the contract under which the federal government operates the airfield’s air-traffic control tower.

Neighbors upset with the increase in jet traffic have pledged that in 2015 they will call for the airport to be shut down.

In response, the Santa Monica Airport Assn., a pilots’ group, announced in its latest newsletter that it, too, has plans for 2015--and they don’t call for grounding aircraft.

A logo on the association’s newsletter sums up the pilots’ feelings: “2015 & Far Beyond.” The slogan, according to the newsletter, will appear on all association materials. “We have 20 years to build strength and a good case, so that only fools will dare to try and close down the airport again,” the newsletter states. “If they attempt to do so, they will fail again.”