Here’s an Offer That’s Pretty Hard to Top

A concerned citizen called City Councilwoman Laura Chick’s office to report rumors that the female workers in a bikini bar actually were often topless and not averse to performing table dances for patrons. He demanded that the Chick’s office have police investigate. The concerned citizen also volunteered to help the police investigate by working undercover. And to save taxpayers money, he offered to hang out in the bikini bar for free.

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TOP THIS, TORRANCE: You may have read that Coolio, the Grammy award-winning rap singer, was arrested in Lawndale for allegedly driving on the wrong side of the road while in possession of a 9-millimeter pistol and some pot. I could be wrong but I believe Coolio is the biggest celebrity ever arrested in Lawndale.

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NO. 10, SPRING STREET: This is a good time to thank you readers for the many humorous and bizarre items and photos that you have submitted (and to beg your forgiveness for notes that went unanswered). I can’t think of anyone else who has as much fun opening his mail as I do. I bring all this up because Sept. 20 marks my 10th anniversary as the custodian of this column. And, in the tradition of newspaper scribes, I’d like to take a moment to reflect on my decade with “Only in L.A.”

OK. I’m done reflecting.

Let’s get back to work.

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NOIR PHOTO FESTIVAL: Speaking of my mail, I felt like gumshoe Philip Marlowe receiving illicit evidence when I went through my latest batch of snapshots (see photos). Peggy Oliveri found a sign for “Corpse” parking in Long Beach--note the $7 cost--though she thinks it may be related to a comedy of that name appearing at a local theater. And in Topanga, Stan Francis came upon a “Dead Horse Parking Lot”--dead horses get in for just three bucks.

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NOT TO BEAT A DECEASED EQUINE, BUT . . . : Continuing this column’s series on little-known school nicknames, R.C. Smith and Mark Allison nominate the Inland Empire’s version of UCLA: University of Citrus Located in Azusa (a.k.a. Citrus College). Rachel Yanez begs to differ, calling it the University of Citrus at Lower Azusa. Too bad TV’s “GE College Bowl” isn’t still around to settle this burning issue.

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SHE CAN’T STOP AND SMELL THE FLOWERS: Former child star Shirley Temple Black, just named one of the four grand marshals of the 1999 Rose Parade, is a trouper all right.

As grand marshal of the 1989 event, she was posing for photographers while holding roses when suddenly her voice became hoarse. She said, “You know, I can’t hold these roses anymore.”

It was then that the Tournament of Roses folks learned she was allergic to roses.

The members of the media, as merciless then as now, implored her to hold them for just a couple more shots, and the gracious star did.

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CIVIC ATTRACTIONS: I mentioned that the promoters of the November Smogdance Film Festival in Pomona, listing the city’s talking points, said “Where else but Pomona can you get both Chinese food and doughnuts at the same restaurant?”

Just a darn minute. Glen Creason says Silver Lake has just such an establishment on the boulevard of the same name. You want something unusual, Creason adds, there’s the Montrose establishment that “boasts an escrow office and a gun shop.”

miscelLAny:

One must praise the integrity of the Long Beach Press-Telegram’s latest Readers’ Choice survey. In the best local beach category, Seal Beach finished No. 1, followed by Huntington. Finishing a poor third in the Long Beach paper’s poll: Long Beach.