White-Carpet Treatment

If you’re dreaming of a white Christmas, but the yard outside your window puts you more in mind of the Everglades, thanks to El Nino-fueled rains, take heart: The Community Services Department of the city of Calabasas is coming to your rescue.

On Sunday, these folks are having 30 tons of artificial snow spread over hill and dale in that city’s Gates Canyon Park, near Las Virgenes Road north of the Ventura Freeway.

“It will be first-rate snow,” said Stefanie Pantelas, a recreation coordinator for the city, “for parents who don’t have the time or [don’t want the] inconvenience of driving kids to the mountains to play in the snow.”

Kids are asked to bring their own saucers, those garbage-can-lid-type devices that youngsters in Big Bear use to slide down snowbanks. Or bring an inner tube or a big sheet of cardboard. “We’ll have a few inner tubes here if kids can’t bring one,” Pantelas said.

This event, known pretty much only to West Valley families for the past five years, also includes an arts and crafts fair and a visit and photo opportunity with Santa.

The contractor providing the white stuff--it will be shot from a gigantic snow gun--is a local outfit with a modest if somewhat incongruous name, the North Hollywood Ice Co.

But its talent for turning 300-pound blocks of ice into very realistic snowfields is such that it was flown to Minnesota to do its thing for a recent Arnold Schwarzenegger movie. When filmmakers need “complete control of the snow,” said the company’s general manager, Pete De Grandis, “they will fly us in and even truck our equipment in from California.”

That was the case with the Minnesota film “Jingle All the Way” and the Colorado-made “The Shining,” he said. The company’s snow work for “Batman” and dozens of other productions was done on local sets, mostly in the Valley. “Producers now use us instead of going to the mountains,” he said.

Quite democratic about whose turf it will bedeck, the firm will cover front yards of people’s homes at holiday time, as well as city parks and schoolyards--for a fee of around $120 per ton of snow.

Last week, before the first El Nino storm hit, the North Hollywood company’s equipment could be seen blanketing part of the Loyola University campus with 30 tons of snow for a family festival. “The biggest attraction is the slide area we build,” De Grandis said.

In addition to snow-sliding and the inevitable snowball throwing, the Calabasas event will feature an extensive arts and crafts area. Operated annually by another Valley firm, T&D; Enterprises of Canoga Park, it will provide kids a chance to make craft items they can take home with them--Christmas ornaments, seasonal “edible art,” spin art and Hanukkah refrigerator magnets, according to T&D;’s Bruce Weinstein.

Volunteers from Calabasas and environs will be handling other aspects of the event.

BE THERE

“Snow, Snow, Snow,” the city of Calabasas’ annual frolic in 30 tons of artificial snow; Gates Canyon Park (Las Virgenes Road exit off 101 north to Thousand Oaks Boulevard at Mountain Gate Drive); Sunday, 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m.; featuring arts and crafts, moon bounce, refreshments and a visit and photo opportunity with Santa; admission $3 per child, with adults and children under 2 free. (818) 880-6461.