Just the Ticket to Draw Traffic to the Gym

One new upscale gym in Manhattan Beach knows just how to appeal to area residents. Its fliers, tucked under the windshield wipers of cars on the crowded streets of the South Bay, offered this inducement:

“Attention. Join before 3-7-99 and we will pay your next parking ticket.”

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YOU CAN SAY THAT AGAIN: Submitted here are some word groupings (see accompanying) that might make you think you were seeing double, ranging from a not-so-clubby clubhouse, and a box of lemon drop cookies (submitted by Brittany Pool, 9, of Woodland Hills), to a non-dumping dumpster and a redundant city on the Westside.

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SAVED FROM THE DUMPSTER: Ventubear did not go to stuffed-toy heaven after all. You may recall that in the last episode of this cliffhanger, a DWP worker--responding to motorist complaints--had pulled the toy bear off a power wire over the 101 Freeway. It had reigned there for several weeks--an unofficial mascot to some.

A DWP spokesman told me that the creature was so moldy it was being placed in permanent hibernation in a trash can. But it turns out that DWP worker Ed Slattery cleaned the toy and placed it atop a television in the assembly room of the utility’s field office in Van Nuys. No grumpy commuter can complain about it there.

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VENTUBEAR FALLOUT: DWP spokesman Walter Zeisl, who was quoted here the other day saying that Ventubear was no more, admitted he took some grief from his family afterward:

“My 10-year-old daughter Katie said, ‘I don’t understand. When my puppy dog fell in the toilet, Mommy washed it and it was as good as new.’ ”

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GUERRILLA COPY-EDITING REPORT: Results of the latest findings of Only in L.A.’s at-large band of reader-editors:.

* A hotel that offered “logging” for two nights (spotted by Karen Satzman).

* A market sign for “oink salmon” (Andrea Calhoun and Arlene Cook).

* A convenience store that advertised free gas with “grossary” order (Monica Panno).

* A menu listing for stuffed pork “lion” (Fred Miller).

* A closed-captioned newscast reporting a man had been “in dieted” for a crime (Frederick Schreiber). Sounds like the old bread-and-water treatment to me.

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RIVER CITY ODE: It isn’t widely known but a subgenre of L.A.’s great poetic tradition celebrates the L.A. River. Songwriter-singer Dave Alvin of Downey wrote in “Melancholy Dreams”:

I was born by a river

but it was paved with cement

but it was paved with cement

but I’d stand in that dry river

and dream that I was soaking wet.

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SHALLOW VERSE (CONT.): And then there was the anonymous tune that used to be played locally on the old “Ken & Bob” radio show:

“I Left My Liver in the L.A. River.”

miscelLAny:

Down Orange County way, the marketing literature of the Irvine Co. describes its planned Northpark residential development as “a Pasadena-like neighborhood combining a blend of art and craftsmanship not seen since California’s romantic Golden Age.”

If you’re impatient, I guess you could see that Pasadena-like blend of art and craftsmanship now by going to Pasadena.

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, just west of the L.A. River.