Has San Pedro Been Expelled From L.A.? : Has San Pedro Been Expelled From L.A.?

In the midst of all the cries for secession heard ‘round L.A., what does City Hall do? For the convenience of visitors and the media, it prints up a batch of reference cards that list the names and phone numbers of the City Council members in Districts 1 through 14.

One problem: There are 15 districts.

So who was left off the cards? Rudy Svorinich Jr., who represents the San Pedro area. Petitioners were already busy collecting signatures in order to qualify for a secession study of the San Pedro-Harbor City-Wilmington area.

An interesting concept. But what would you call a city made up of San Pedro, Harbor City and Wilmington? San Harmington?

RANDY NEWMAN IGNORED HIM: San Pedro, which was a city from 1888 to 1909, when it (and its harbor) were swallowed up by L.A., has long complained that its concerns are ignored by City Hall. The late Vincent Thomas, an Assemblyman, put it most eloquently. “I’ve lived in San Pedro nearly all my life,” he said, “and I hate Los Angeles.”

HEY, WOULDN’T “PANHANDLER” BE KINDER? Brian Fairlee of Woodland Hills sent along a “BUM” sighting in Canoga Park. Was it a prank? An unfinished job? As a West L.A. native, I don’t care. I still love Canoga Park.

SAY CHEESECAKE: Michael Kirwan rode Disneyland’s Splash Mountain, where the passengers are photographed going down the chute. Afterward, the photos are shown on nearby TV screens for possible purchase. Kirwan noticed that one screen was blank except for the words, “Not available.” “There were two girls looking at this,” he said. “One was tucking in her shirt. The other says, ‘See, I told you you shouldn’t have done that.’ ”

Kirwan suspects they staged a “Flash Mountain” incident.

He added: “Maybe that’s why people watch (and tape) that area from outside the ride.”

WHAT WILL THEY THINK OF NEXT? Gene Doss of Diamond Bar saw a paved area off a street that was divided into segments by white lines. A painted sign read, “Parking Only.” Said Doss: “Doggone! I was planning to have a block party there.”

RADIO DAYS: Writer Hugh Ryono, a volunteer worker at the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach, has taken a liking to an interloper he calls Radio Flyer. She’s a wild western gull who has laid her eggs inside the aquarium grounds on the artificial cliffs of the Southland-Baja exhibit.

Her name derives from “the antenna that sticks out of her wing like a radio-controlled airplane. Some researcher in San Diego placed a radio tracking tag on her to monitor her movements.”

Added Ryono: “I would have loved to have seen the researcher’s face upon discovering that Radio Flyer didn’t fly out to the cliffs of the Channel Islands to nest like most gulls but instead chose an artificial Disneyish cliff.”

Ryono said one tourist noticed the antenna on the bird and complimented the aquarium on constructing such a realistic looking robot.

miscelLAny:

At a political roast of Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, a fund-raiser for the American Diabetes Assn., one speaker said that when Yaroslavsky was on the City Council he had a reputation for calling staff members at home at all hours--”at, well, shall we say, very inopportune times. You get the picture. I overheard his staff call this phenomenon ‘councilmanus interruptus.’ ”

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 L.A. Times, Times Mirror Square, L.A. 90053.