Roller Coaster of Hunger Pangs

Bobby Freed, 13, and his family visited a popular cafe in Santa Barbara, where the maitre d’ announced they would have to wait an hour for a table. Young Mr. Freed, a veteran of several excursions to Magic Mountain and Disneyland, complained, “Geez, I can see waiting an hour--if there was a ride after it.”

SUCH A DEAL: For Labor Day weekend shopping, Only in L.A. has hunted up some real bargains (see accompanying).

Doug Trager noticed that if he takes out a three-year subscription to a health club, the rate is just $11,000 per year (compared to $70,000 for a single year). Steve Barlow saw a bench advertised for $198, but then it is five inches high.

Philip Weiner found just the computer for those who want something costing less than $650.

And Malena Wilcox spotted a bedspread sale in which every item--yes, every item!--had been increased in price.

SO OUT OF TUNE IT WAS A CRIME? The latest police log in the Los Alamitos News Enterprise carried this item:

“Seal Beach, Aug. 25, Twelfth and Electric, 12:07 a.m.: People were heard singing ‘New York, New York.’ ”

SING “NEW YORK, NEW YORK,” FOR ALL L.A. CARES: Northern Californian Michael Runzler tipped me to a series, “The California Century,” in the San Francisco Chronicle. One chapter, “Los Angeles: It’s Our Destiny,” termed L.A. the city of the future, and the Chron didn’t seem particularly pleased at the prospect.

The newspaper described L.A. as “a city of boosters with an inferiority complex as large as the city itself.”

In fact, Angelenos love to poke fun at themselves and their city--unlike their insecure counterparts in the City by the Bay, who seem to be obsessed with their dislike of L.A.

I recall a wise man once writing, “Knock San Francisco to a San Franciscan and you start a fight. Knock Los Angeles to a Los Angeleno and you start a conversation.”

The wise man was the late columnist Herb Caen of the San Francisco Chronicle.

SEARCHING FOR L.A.: As for San Francisco’s antipathy toward L.A., UCLA professor Thomas Hines told the Chronicle of encountering “the archetypal San Francisco matron.” Upon learning he was a professor at UCLA, she studied him, then said, ‘I’m just trying to think. Have I ever actually been in Los Angeles?’ ”

Caen himself used to write of how he’d love to visit L.A. if he could only find it.

CRAWLING FORWARD: I find myself agreeing in part with noir novelist Robert Ferrigno, who said in the Chronicle, “People think Southern California is laid back. But the opposite is true. It is a vast hustle where having fun is work. A hustle in workout clothes. In every Southern California gym you gotta have the latest workout look and equipment.”

Then again, perhaps I’ve been prejudiced ever since the time I was reprimanded by a lifeguard at a YMCA pool on the Westside for swimming too slowly. He informed me I was in the pool’s fast lane.

At least I wasn’t ticketed.

miscelLAny:

The movie “Blade Runner,” set in a drizzly, crime-ridden L.A. in the year 2019, is often singled out as a symbol of this city’s apocalyptic future. But the Philip Dick novel upon which the movie was based was set in . . . San Francisco, San Francisco.