Group Gives Some Cities Bad News, and It’s Not Kidding
The warmup to next month’s Miss America contest had to be the urban beauty pageant by the Zero Population Growth group to find the nation’s most “kid friendly” cities with populations of 100,000 or more. Everyone was trailing a forefinger down the 219-city list, rooting for his own burg.
ZPG--which pointed out that the world’s population adds the equivalent of another Los Angeles every three weeks--factored unemployment, health, environment, infant mortality, education, crime and teen birthrates into its calculations.
That explains the poor showing of New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and such, but California numbers still provided puzzlements:
Not Irvine, which came in third; a planned community surely has planned children, a practice that meets with ZPG approval.
But Bakersfield, which prides itself on a child-centric lifestyle, ranked only 10 spots ahead of Oakland, with its crime and struggling schools. The rating is probably attributable to Kern County’s high teenage birthrate and welfare rolls. And Moreno Valley, virtually created by urban flight from urban blight, came in 134th.
For those who missed it, California’s runners-up and also-rans are:
3) Irvine. 12) Huntington Beach. 14) Thousand Oaks. 15) Simi Valley. 16) Fremont. 20) Santa Rosa. 23) Sunnyvale. 29) Orange. 31) Concord. 35) Fullerton. 47) Garden Grove. 49) Santa Clarita. 53) San Jose. 54) Chula Vista. 61) Torrance. 62) Anaheim. 66) San Diego. 76) San Francisco. 84) Hayward. 90) Escondido. 93) Rancho Cucamonga. 96) Oceanside. 97) Vallejo. 108) West Covina. 117) Glendale. 127) Modesto. 128) Santa Ana. 134) Moreno Valley. 140) Norwalk. 143) Palmdale. 151) Lancaster. 165) Sacramento. 166) Pasadena. 167) Salinas. 168) Bakersfield. 171) Long Beach. 178) Oakland. 180) Riverside. 181) Fontana. 185) Pomona. 189) Inglewood. 191) Stockton. 192) Ontario. 201) Los Angeles. 203) Fresno. 204) El Monte. 214) San Bernardino.
Dead last among the ZPG 219 was . . . Gary, Ind., fabled in song (“The Music Man”) and as the hometown of that perpetual child, Michael Jackson.
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What, they never heard of fig leaves? Don’t blame Lorena Bobbitt; probably some Puritan soul whacked the plaster of Paris penis off a 5-foot-tall statuary replica of Michelangelo’s “David” . . . and then thoughtfully applied a Band-Aid to the spot.
“David” had stood peaceably outside Patrick E. Mormon’s restaurant in San Jose until last year, when he moved his faux Michelangelo to his antique shop in Willow Glen. Since then, he told the San Jose Mercury News, it’s always been some indignity: toenail polish, a head-to-heel coating of blue paint and now the disfigurement.
Mormon rallied sufficiently from the shock to hang a sign around the neck of the statue: It reads: “Sick people.” He has filed a police complaint and pledged that he will find whoever it was who left David no longer a man of parts.
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Beware the Sun
Invasive melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer, is caused by overexposure to the sun. Experts advise avoiding the sun and having any skin changes regularly examined by a dermatologist. Here are melanoma incidence rates and number of deaths for the most current seven years for which figures are available:
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Year Incidence per 100,000 Deaths 1988 11.2 716 1989 11.7 766 1990 11.0 782 1991 10.7 802 1992 11.0 718 1993 10.7 723 1994 11.3 779
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Source: California Cancer Registry, Sacramento
Researched by TRACY THOMAS / Los Angeles Times
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Back of the bus: On the principle that if you can’t lighten the commute, lighten the commuter, Public Art Works engaged artist Manuel Lucero. Over the last two months, anyone plying the Bay Area’s notorious highways must have appreciated Lucero’s levity, adorning the back ends of 40 commuter buses with four different black and yellow word-play banners that fall under the “kind of random acts” rubric:
“hunting parking and gathering”--you’ll remember hunting and gathering as our ancestors’ pre-military industrial complex lifestyle.
“backandforthbackandforth” for the weaving shuttle of commuting life, “YES NO HELP CANCEL” for our pay at the pump choices, and--in mockery of the “How am I driving?” query--the commuter’s teleological quandary, “WHYAMIDRIVING.”
Or better yet, in the Bay Area’s horrendous backed-up traffic, “WHYAMINOTDRIVING.”
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One-offs: The Beatles’ last public concert took place 30 years ago today in Candlestick Park. . . . A state drug agent got lost in a Napa-area vineyard during a planned marijuana garden bust, which was called off until the agent could be found, five hours later. . . .
EXIT LINE
“This isn’t ‘Psycho.’ It’s a well-lit area that many employees pass through.”
--Spokeswoman Emily Avila of UC Davis Medical Center, where a housekeeper required treatment for rabies after being bitten by a rabid bat in the facility’s basement.
California Dateline appears every other Friday.
