An Insider Marketing Strategy

The people at the Europa store would gladly have schlepped some stuff outside for the big sidewalk sale on the Third Street Promenade last weekend.

Really, they would have, just like all the other stores--they have in the past. But with two employees on vacation, there were not enough of them left to sell things inside and outside at the same time, said Laurie Romano, manager of the 54-year-old emporium.

So, they painted a sign on the window and welcomed bargain-hunters to their “sidewalk” indoors.

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SON ALSO RISES: The sanctuary at Temple Emanuel was so crowded with political players that David Yaroslavsky opened his bar mitzvah speech Saturday by welcoming “family, friends and people I do not know.”

That got a laugh, but so did David’s dad, Zev, when he explained the presence of some of the guests: Gloria Molina and Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, his colleagues on the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, and Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti, who has troubles of his own. “They’re not here about your bar mitzvah,” Yaroslavsky said. “They’re looking for divine intervention.”

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LOOK OUT, HENRY: Among the guests at the Yaroslavsky bash was U.S. Rep. Henry A. Waxman of Los Angeles, one of 28 Democrats featured on a “wanted” poster put out by the National Republican Congressional Committee.

Twenty-two of the targets were African American, Latino, Jewish or female, which prompted Waxman to scold Republicans for dragging down the standard of political debate in the country.

“Racial hatred and bigotry are not family values,” Waxman said at a Washington press conference.

“When they make a blatant appeal to the racial, ethnic and religious divisions in our country, they are doing a disgrace to themselves.”

Maybe so, but Democratic outrage over “Project 28” will win no apologies from Republicans, who targeted their victims for opposing House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s Contract With America.

They say the minority Democrats started it with a fund-raising brainstorm of their own, the Contract With America Report Card, issued in April.

“Project 28 is a fund-raising vehicle, nothing more,” said Rep. Bill Paxon of New York, chairman of the Republican group. “It is about ideology and voting records. Any insinuation that it is anything other than that is outrageous.”

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UNEXPECTED TREAT: Preschoolers had quite a day at the Westside Jewish Community Center on Friday.

First, there was a bomb threat, and everybody had to leave the building while the police checked it out.

Then a nice doctor asked some of the kids in for ice cream at the cafeteria of the Midway Hospital Medical Center next door.

They loved it.

Fake bomb threats--a new trend in early childhood education? Don’t bet on it. But parents say some of the kids want to do it again.