Hey, N.Y. Surfers, Fuggetaboudit

You know how difficult it is for New Yorkers who move to Southern California--they don’t like the bagels here, or the pastrami, or the freeways, etc., etc. Well, here’s another complaint those East Coast newcomers have about Southern California. San Clemente-based Surfing magazine reports that long-boarders with New York accents are derided by Californians who figure they must be beginners.

Well, if they don’t like it, they can always paddle back to Manhattan--and I don’t mean, Manhattan Beach.

ON THE ROAD: My latest collection of car culture items includes a fishy car for sale (from Jim Moore), a reminder to Herbert Marlin to have his 99-year-old Impala serviced (including the hand crank) and proof that Southern Californians really have a passion for cars (see accompanying).

NOT OUR SCANDAL: Hey, don’t kick a law enforcement agency when it’s down.

L.A. emigre Roy Harris spotted an article in the Wall Street Journal about British drivers who take out their road rage on “lollipop ladies.” That’s the British term for crossing guards, referring to the round signs they carry. The Royal Automobile Club has even named the phenomenon: “Lollipop Aggression Psychological Disorder.”

Or, LAPD.

THE MOST INEXPENSIVE DIET YET: The syndicated “News of the World” column says that an Australian woman is preaching the doctrine of “breatharianism”--that is, encouraging her subjects to abstain from all food and liquids. Breathing is enough, she maintains in her speeches (she charges $2,000 per).

Like many offbeat movements, this one may have had its roots in California. In 1983, 47-year-old breatharian leader Wiley Brooks was proclaiming--at one-day seminars costing $100 per person--that all foods and liquids are poisonous.

But the local chapter broke up after Brooks was allegedly seen ordering chicken pot pie and biscuits in a hotel and later observed leaving a 7-Eleven store with a bag of groceries. Brooks claimed at the time that he only visited the 7-Eleven stores to buy magazines.

MY LIFE AS A CITY: The San Fernando Valley as well as San Pedro, Wilmington and Harbor City are in the midst of movements to secede from the city of L.A.

San Pedro and Wilmington were independent earlier this century, along with several other towns that were swallowed up by L.A.

The brief tenures of some former municipalities:

Eagle Rock (1911-1923)

Hollywood (1903-1910)

Hyde Park (1921-1923)

San Pedro (1888-1909)

Sawtelle (1906-1922)

Tujunga (1925-1932)

Venice (1911-1925)

Watts (1907-1926)

Wilmington (1905-1907)

ARE THERE ROAMING CHARGES FOR HEAVEN? The L.A. Business Journal says that cellular phone use has become so flagrant that it’s now common “to see people on cell phones at grave sites during burial services.”

I don’t know who they’re trying to contact. But I do know that some people speak so loudly on cell phones in public that you’d think they were trying to wake the dead.

miscelLAny:

I saw this placard on a truck in Los Alamitos: “God has watched you take my personal belongings. Stealing is a sin and it’s against the law.”

Somehow, I don’t think God would object to a little help from an earthly anti-theft device.

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Steve Harvey can be reached at (800) LATIMES Ext. 77083, by fax at (213) 237-4712, by mail at Metro, L.A. Times, Times Mirror Square, L.A. 90053 and by e-mail at steve.harvey@ latimes.com.