Hotel Treats Guests Like Billionaires

You know how hotels like to sneak little charges onto your bill--for making local phone calls and such? Well, Jon Dowling of L.A. noticed that a Santa Barbara hotel was going to hit him with a charge of $7.8 billion for “concessions” (see accompanying).

Lamented Dowling: “I thought the popcorn in the lobby was free!”

Luckily, the extra fee was dropped from his final bill. Glad it didn’t happen to me. I hate to quibble over billion-dollar charges, and I probably would have proposed to the hotel that we split the difference.

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L.A. TRIVIATA: Some factoids about the Southland, as related in the 1999 “Access Los Angeles” guide by Richard Saul Wurman:

* Beverly Hills issues more licenses for gardening than any other business.

* Producer Aaron Spelling’s television episodes total more than 2,600 hours of air time, meaning “the typical American (who watches the tube six hours a day on average) could watch different Spelling clips for 436 days.”

* The city of Santa Monica collects about $5 million in parking fees every year. (If you’re parked in that city as you read this, get outside and check that meter now!)

* Dona Maria Rita Valdez and her eight children moved away from what is now Beverly Hills in 1854 after “an Apache attack on their cattle ranch.”

* In 1908, Long Beach became the first California city to organize a lifeguard service. (But did TV’s “Baywatch” ever consider filming there? N-o-o-o-o!).

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TOO MUCH AARON SPELLING? A television set that either fell or was pushed from a moving vehicle was spotted in traffic on the Artesia Freeway.

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MORE MARXIST THOUGHTS: The item here about the diner who asked Groucho Marx to insult his wife reminded Art Verity of Van Nuys of his own meeting with Groucho.

Verity was at the opening of the Woody Allen movie “The Front” in Westwood. “About 15 minutes before the film was scheduled to start,” he said, “a buzz rippled through the packed theater that Groucho Marx was in the back row. . . . I couldn’t let this chance encounter go by without shaking the hand of a living legend.”

However, when Verity approached him he was so nervous that all he could blurt out was, “Are you Groucho Marx?”

The comic, then 79, wearing his signature beret and chewing on an unlit cigar, looked him in the eye and said, “Well, I used to be.”

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WOULD SHE TAKE YOU TO THE CLEANERS? Marvin Wolf, coauthor of a book about L.A.’s colorful criminal cases (“Fallen Angels”), came upon a mystery himself. “It was getting dark when I parked my car,” his note begins in true Chandlersque fashion, “and got out to study Talmud at Rabbi Dan Shevitz’s home on a Venice street. That’s when I noticed his neighbor taking in a sign.”

The sign read, “Madame Ruth’s House of Spells, Spirits & Laundry.” (Could she put a spell on clothes?)

Incidentally, Wolf says that on that night, “Our text dealt with Jewish demons. . . .”

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WORD FROM ABOVE: A new set of billboards that purport to carry sarcastic messages from God are cropping up on roadways (undoubtedly the first phase of a talk radio station’s campaign). Most terrifying pronouncement: “Keep using my name in vain and I’ll make rush hour longer.”

miscelLAny:

Several readers pointed out that in Tuesday’s column, I should have said that Groucho Marx hosted, “You Bet Your Life,” not “You Are There.” Doggone it.