Hey, Nobody Said Quiet on the Set

A colleague reports from Denver that a visiting Van Nuys woman went looking for a post office and decided to try the Denver federal building. She was unaware that it was the site of the Terry Nichols-Oklahoma bombing trial. The woman maneuvered around TV trucks, cameras and equipment and scaled a barrier to get inside. There, police stopped her. Didn’t she notice all the commotion outside? She explained that she was from L.A., where it’s no big deal to walk through movie sets.

A PENNY SAVED: Dolores Cassimus of San Pedro found a special at a household goods store that serves as one more example of an unfortunate trend in which some businesses ruthlessly undercut the competition (see accompanying).

BATTLING SIGNS: “I am a German student spending a three-month internship in L.A.,” writes Stefan Starina. “After 2 1/2 months of driving my Chrysler, I have got used to the traffic. Driving is not any problem compared to parking. Recently I was confused by the attached signs at Roxbury Drive (see photo). . . . With my English knowledge I was able to translate the signs. They still didn’t make sense. Can you please tell in which case I am allowed to park?”

Sorry, Stefan, they’re Greek to me.

TALK ABOUT BAD TASTE: OK, class, in our last urban folk tale lesson, we discussed the one about the woman back from maternity leave who posts a note for her co-workers that says, “Whoever used the milk in the small plastic container that was in the refrigerator yesterday . . . be aware that the milk was expressly for my son . . . “

That prompted Ernie Fujimura of Scottsdale, Ariz., to e-mail a tale he recalled from the 1980s when he worked in L.A. It concerned a pregnant worker who had an appointment to see her doctor about a minor problem. She had placed a urine sample in a juice bottle in the company refrigerator but when she went to retrieve it, the bottle was gone. Fujimura didn’t have any more details and I didn’t want to hear any more.

STOP AND SMELL THE BOOKS: Leonard Bernstein, owner of the Caravan Bookstore on Grand Avenue--yes, there are some independent bookstores left--told the Downtown News that the usual rules for books don’t apply in the food and wine categories. A food book, he said, can increase in value as it becomes increasingly “beaten up and spilled on . . . because someone used it to cook a meal. I have customers who come in and smell the books.”

THE FUTURE JUST WON’T GO AWAY: “Blade Runner: Replicant Night,” by K.W. Jeter is the third novel in the series about ex-LAPD cop Rick Deckard, pursuer of evil robots, no matter how bad the weather. It’s set in the Roaring ‘20s--that’s the 2020s--and Deckard now lives in an off-world colony of Mars where a movie about his life is being filmed on a set made to resemble L.A.

As for the real L.A.--if that’s not a contradiction in terms--a “10-block sector of the city’s decaying downtown had been leveled by urban renewal terrorists to drive out the last squatter tribes. . . . News footage of the mini-nuked buildings had shown up on the Martian cable’s nightly clown-wrap.” Deckard had been able to recognize the Million Dollar Theater’s “curling ornaments, lifeless and unlit in the rubble . . . “

Sort of a depressing vision, though the idea that Mars has cable is encouraging.

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One less-than-subtle seller of flood insurance advertises that its phone number is 1-800-ELNINO6.

Steve Harvey can be reached by phone at (213) 237-7083, by fax at (213) 237-4712, by e-mail at steve.harvey@latimes.com and by mail at Metro, L.A. Times, Times Mirror Square, L.A. 90053.