Just Another City Landmark

Another spell check casualty: Mayor Richard Riordan sent City Councilman Joel Wachs an invitation to help celebrate the 75th anniversary of His Honor’s eatery, the Original Pantry. Alas, one letter was missing from “Pantry” (see accompanying), making it sound like a joint on Sunset Boulevard. Talk about a bad slip.

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TRIBUTE TO THE UNKNOWN JOGGER: In Sherman Oaks, Lee Lakso found an altered sign honoring all those poor folks out there running down streets wearing headsets and pumping arm weights (see photo).

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MAGIC MOUNTAIN PLACE: Did you read where an emotional producer, Aaron Spelling, couldn’t bring himself to visit the actors and crew of “Melrose Place” to tell them that the series had been canceled? Instead, he sent a note. Of course, it would have been a bit of a drive, too. The fabled courtyard in the series is not in fashionable West Hollywood. It’s a set in not-quite-as-glamorous Santa Clarita.

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ALL SOMETHING, ALL THE TIME: K-Traffic (AM-1650), the all-driver-mishap station, and Radio Disney (AM-710), the all-kids station, are current examples of niche broadcasting in L.A.

Thom Looney wrote of some of radio’s failed formats of recent years in the L.A. Downtown News--a list that I’ve enlarged slightly.

The casualties:

* All-commercials, KADS-FM (103.5)

* All-show tunes, KGIL-AM (1260)

* All-Beatles, KGIL-AM (1260)

* All-women’s talk radio, KTZN-AM (710). (Its slogan was “The Zone: Where Talk Radio Isn’t Just a Guy Thing Anymore.”)

* All-business, KBLA-AM (1580)

* All-polka, KLON-FM (88.1)

* All-motivational, KGFJ-AM (1230) and KTSJ-AM (1240) (Apparently Anthony Robbins and Deepak Chopra weren’t persuasive enough to garner decent ratings.)

And in the 1980s there was Car Radio on KHJ-AM (930), which combined a rock format (songs were called “car tunes”) along with an outlandish idea back then: traffic reports every 10 minutes.

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GRIN AND BARE IT: Huntington Beach police responded recently to a call from some Ralphs employees who reported that a group of naked men had just run through the store. An unusual incident, even by Southern California standards.

Then again maybe the nudeniks were celebrating the anniversary of the great streaking sensation that swept the nation 25 years ago.

The latest issue of Details magazine, in an article on celebrity brushes with law enforcement, points out that in March 1974, an entertainer named Liz Renay displayed the full Monty (she wasn’t even wearing a headset) during a brief run down a street in Hollywood. Police eventually caught up with her.

But it’s not like the violation ruined her job prospects. She was a stripper. And she’d have found nothing unusual about a place called the Original Panty.

miscelLAny:

Laker star Dennis Rodman, who lives apart from his new wife, Carmen Electra, admitted that when he was interviewed on national television at the Forum the other day he momentarily forgot her name. “I was caught in the moment of the game,” he told Jay Leno on the “Tonight Show.” Rodman remembered stammering, “I’d like to say hello to, uh. . . .”

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 all-polka Metro, L.A. Times, Times Mirror Square, L.A. 90053.