First Highways, Now the High Seas

How bad is the gridlock becoming here? A 33-year-old Agoura Hills resident complained to the Conejo Valley Star: “First, they’ll cut you off, and then they’ll flip you off. . . . You hear people yelling at each other. Every now and then it escalates to a push and a shove--maybe worse.”

But he wasn’t talking about motorists. He was talking about surfers at Malibu.

The number of long-boarders has increased by an estimated 50% since 1992.

Clearly, it’s time for radio stations to have their helicopter reporters also report about SigAlerts on the seas.

SALUTING THE VILLAINS: In today’s special edition, we spotlight some of the black hats of society (see accompanying). First up is a sign, snapped by Barbara Wanbaugh of Malibu, which refers either to members of a film crew or traffic violators, or both.

Claudio Dabdoub of L.A., meanwhile, saw an ad for a machine guaranteed to drive away evil spirits and thereby put one in “exelent” shape (except with English teachers). Not sure whether the “buttlerfly” in the ad is a servant, bug or film crew.

Finally, Joan Martin of Woodland Hills read that a storage shed of that community’s library was attacked. While a notice appeared to say that the library was seeking more termites, Martin suspects that a new shed is what is needed.

ANALYZING L.A. DRIVERS: No, this isn’t part of the “Villains” section. It turns out that people have actually been praising motorists here (if not surfers). Really. Consider:

* David Williams of Australia e-mailed me to say that, on his business trips here, he’s always impressed by “the good manners of L.A. drivers. Compared with Australian drivers, most of the folks are really tame and friendly.” He also warns readers planning “to come down to Australia for the 2000 Olympics, and planning to drive, to bring a Hummer.”

* Jeff Bliss of San Luis Obispo, meanwhile, sent along a Rob Morse column from the San Francisco Examiner that similarly praised Southern California freeway users while complaining that Bay Area motorists “make up in smug what we lack in smog.”

* And Marci Simonson of Fremont referred me to a column by Gary Richards of the San Jose Mercury News, who once sampled L.A. traffic for 12 hours. “Not once . . . did I see a single-finger salute from an angry driver,” Richards reported. “I saw three in a recent 20-minute trip on Interstate 880 through San Jose.”

Morse and Richards each theorized that the problem in their hometowns is that congestion has increased but motorists have not yet become accustomed to it--unlike beaten-down L.A. drivers.

THE BILLBOARD IS FAMILIAR BUT . . .: Alan Beauchesne, who used to live in L.A., brought his family out here from Boston to see the sights. “My personal L.A. moment occurred in Beverly Hills,” he related, “when who should I see on Santa Monica Boulevard but Angelyne! While the glimpse was fleeting I knew from the pink Corvette and vanity plate that it was her. I said ‘personal moment’ because I then had to explain to my wife and two sons who the heck Angelyne was. How do you explain ‘nothing’ to someone?”

Beauchesne was not being cruel here. Angelyne the billboard queen once bragged, “I’m the first person in the history of Hollywood to ever be famous for nothing.”

miscelLAny:

Hank Crawford was viewing a closed captioned television broadcast about someone who was supposed to be identified as a “star of stage and screen.” Instead, it read, “starve stage and screen.” Which struck Crawford as an apt description of the early years of actors, even those who later became famous for something.

*

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.