First- Draft Picks

First- Draft PicksBanks can tub-thump soulless debit cards all they want--Southern Californians show no sign of cooling their mania for personalizing everything they touch. To wit: custom checks--the vanity plates of banking.

Depositors at the Bank of Hollywood in Toluca Lake divide their favor between checks bearing the characters of two San Fernando Valley animation giants: Warner Bros. (the “Looney Tunes, Ltd.,” series) and Hanna-Barbera (“The Flintstones”).

Warner wins again in Universal City: The No. 1 choice after the free, standard-issue landscapes at the local Bank of America is the “Bugs Bunny” series, which comes with a keen matching checkbook.

There’s also, well, home. “Customers like checks with pictures of California, especially San Francisco,” says Lisa Jorgensen, Bank of Hollywood’s new-accounts representative.

Bank of the West reports that “America the Beautiful” tops the list of check preferences there. But, as Coast Federal Bank’s Lana Arzhelik notes: “They mostly like the checks that are free.”