<i> Snapshots of life in the Golden State.</i> : World’s Crookedest Street Has Gone Too Far Downhill

Picturesque Lombard Street in San Francisco--known as the crookedest street in the world--will be closed to auto traffic for the summer, beginning Tuesday, for $1.1 million in repairs. It seems heavy traffic and souvenir-seekers who swipe loose bricks from the famous twisting roadway have prompted the repairs.

The street will be closed during the peak of the city’s tourist season, but officials say it can’t be helped. “There is no good time to do this,” said Alex Mamak, a spokesman for the Department of Public Works. However, the longer daylight hours will allow crews to get the job done more quickly, he added.

Many of the bricks are loose or have been stolen, Mamak said. Only about 20% of the bricks are from the original one-way street. “Every time the bricks come loose, people take them away as souvenirs,” he said. “It’s a real bumpy ride. As we go out there and do a patch job, it doesn’t look good.”

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First Sonny Bono, now . . . The good folks in Palm Springs probably thought they had seen it all when Sonny Bono, the former mop-head husband of pop singer Cher, became mayor of their town (and now congressman for the area). Now, they don’t know what to think.

Cole Bang, a 7-foot-tall drag queen who goes by the name Kitty Cole, has announced his/her candidacy for the mayor’s job. “I’m just trying to make Palm Springs what it used to be when the movie stars invented it,” the 26-year-old mayoral hopeful says. “Palm Springs used to be so glamorous, and now all anybody does is fight.”

A town that’s had cowboys, accountants and pop singers as the elected head of government figures to survive this, but longtime residents find the Bang campaign baffling. “He’s seven feet high, you say?” an incredulous former Mayor Frank Bogert asked when called for a comment. A former agent for a Los Angeles-based modeling agency, Bang now writes a column for a Coachella Valley magazine aimed at the area’s gay, lesbian and bisexual residents.

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Sign that kid up!A sixth-grader in Los Gatos with an .800 batting average knocked a home run ball so far in a Little League game that it ended up in the median of a busy freeway. And it left observers shaking their heads.

The ball 12-year-old Tim Wilson smacked not only cleared the outfield fence 185 feet from home plate, it also sailed over 50-foot redwood trees beyond the fence, a 25-foot-deep parking lot and a 21-foot-wide street. Two California Highway Patrol officers had to stop traffic on California 17 to retrieve the ball.

“When he first hit it, nobody moved,” said Bill Hubbard, coach of the Los Gatos Reds. “It left the bat on a trajectory like nothing I’ve ever seen.”

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Jailhouse floss: An inmate with four cavities has filed a claim for $2,000 against San Diego County, contending that he got the cavities because jail officials refused his repeated requests for floss. “Despite several requests, the sheriff’s deputies did not provide me with dental floss, which is a medical necessity to prevent cavities,” Richard Loritz, 31, wrote in the claim.

Jail officials say dental floss isn’t given to inmates because it could be used as a weapon. But inmates can request a medical visit during which they can be flossed by a dentist.

Loritz, a former law student, faces trial in connection with the attempted murder of his ex-girlfriend last summer in the mountain community of Alpine.

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Growing Population: Big Gainers and Small

California’s 58 counties range from the behemoth to the tiny. Here is a look at the biggest gainers in estimated population last year, and those that added the fewest residents.

TOP 5: GROWTH

1. Orange: 43,300 2. San Diego: 33,100 3. Riverside: 32,200 4. Santa Clara: 24,200 5. San Bernardino: 23,700

BOTTOM 5: GROWTH

1. Sierra: 40 2. Alpine: 50 3. Mono: 150 4. Inyo: 150 5. Trinity: 200

Source: State Department of Finance

Compiled by NONA YATES / Los Angeles Times

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Victory is sweet, but amnesia is something else: When Gary G. Miller, a Republican from Diamond Bar, beat out fellow Republican Barbara Stone of Whittier in an Assembly race to replace recalled lawmaker Paul Horcher, the victor had only nice things to say about Stone.

“She’s a nice woman and I’m not going to talk ill of Barbara,” Miller said after his win last week.

Just days before, during the heat of the campaign, Miller branded Stone a “hypocrite” for criticizing his endorsement by GOP Assembly Leader Jim Brulte and other Republican lawmakers when she had sought similar support herself. He also accused Stone of being a “liberal” who supported affirmative action quotas as a Rio Hondo Community College trustee, a charge that she denied.

EXIT LINE

“The freeway ends here.”

--Santa Monica Police Sgt. Ray Cooper’s theory on how an Oklahoma drifter ended up in his beach community.

California Dateline appears every other Friday.