Weather That Suits Shoppers

John Suderman of Burbank saw a notice in a Valley newspaper from a clothing firm that said “the closing of our Orange County warehouse, and terrible El Nino storms, has caused an overflow of the finest Italian clothing.” Still, another threat facing residents and motorists--an Armani slide!

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OBVIOUSLY, THE JURORS WEREN’T ALARMED: A Torrance group has conferred its Looney Lawsuit of the Month award upon a woman and her son who sued a department store for $110,005 because they were stopped by guards after paying for some clothing. What happened, according to Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse, was that “a sensor tag that had not been deactivated set off the inventory control announcement.” The two were allowed to leave after the clothing was checked, but they claimed “embarrassment, loss of sleep and change in personality” as a result. The trial lasted four days; the jury took one hour to rule in favor of the store.

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NOT SO HAIR-RAISING: Restoring balance to the universe after the mention we made of hair salons called Tantrum and Insurrection, Nola Jones of Rowland Heights found a much more low-key shop (see photos).

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SIDEWALK CAST: On Tuesday, this column mentioned the late Eileen Anderson, who danced in a bikini on a downtown street corner each afternoon for more than a decade to protest alleged mistreatment by Secret Service guards. Later, I got to thinking that the local sidewalks seem devoid of colorful characters these days. Departed personages I recall over the last quarter century include:

* The religious zealot who preached at Spring and 1st streets while balancing a cup of water on his head. He kept the cup perched there, he explained, so passersby couldn’t drop bad things into it.

* A war protester who called himself “General Hershy Bar” and wore a mock dress uniform, decorated with rockets hanging from his lapels.

* A panhandler who prefaced his pitch with the phrase, “Hello, professionals. . . .” Once a colleague in line at a DMV office in the San Gabriel Valley heard that line and was alarmed to see the panhandler. “Relax,” the latter said. “I’m not working.”

* “Spring Street Joe,” as he was known, a chap with an English accent who used to sweep the local sidewalks with his shoes, muttering, “Encumbrances. Too many encumbrances.”

* And, finally, a curious fellow who walked about holding one dirty pant leg above his knee. Once I gave him a pair of clean work pants out of my car. Several weeks later I asked how the pants were working out. “Fine,” he responded. And did he wear the pants very often? “Oh,” he responded, “I throw away all my clothes after three days.”

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REALLY EXERCISING HIS LUNGS: Sophie Kountz saw it in Santa Monica--”a man jogging with his female companion, all the while trying to talk on his cell phone.”

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ASSURING GOOD McKARMA? A couple of readers pointed out how ironic it was that philanthropist Joan Kroc, the widow of the McDonald’s burger magnate, donated $25 million to an institute named for vegetarian Mohandas Gandhi.

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“Not only is the Hebrew language read from right to left,” observed Hank Rosenfeld of Santa Monica, “but in the bathroom at the Grill restaurant on Fairfax Avenue, the spigots are reversed, with cold on the left and hot on the right.”

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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.