Another Landmark Down the Drain

Reader Susan Compo alerted me to some sad news I hadn’t heard: Another Hollywood landmark has disappeared. David Hockney’s “Swimming Parentheses” has been erased from the floor of the Hollywood Roosevelt’s swimming pool (see photo).

“A big vat of Liquid Paper must have spilled in there,” she said of the erased masterpiece. She wasn’t far from wrong.

Don Hough, who recently took over as the hotel’s managing director, says he was told the pool was emptied a while back by a film crew, which then “acid-bathed it.” Presto--the pool’s canvas was blank.

Hockney had painted the pool floor in four hours in 1987 as a gift to Hollywood, wielding brushes on cutoff broomsticks. The work was threatened almost immediately when the county claimed that the design could “hamper” the view of lifeguards. But the state Legislature declared it a cultural artifact.

Hockney is not interested in repainting the pool. And Hough said he doubts if he’ll have anyone else step in (so to speak), explaining he doesn’t want to risk getting into hot water with the authorities again.

NO TAILGATERS HERE: Rick O’Keefe of Redlands says he chanced upon a building that has evidently “found a way to move trucks without polluting the air.” (See photo.) But he’s not sure, because he noticed another store sign that said, “World Truck Sales.”

HE DIDN’T NEED A BADGE: Retired newsman Roy Ringer wasn’t surprised that Sheriff Lee Baca’s practice of handing out badges to “celebrity” reserves has encountered problems. (One such deputy has been relieved of duty for allegedly drawing a gun outside his Bel-Air home.)

A half-century ago, Sheriff Eugene Biscailuz handed out honorary badges to celebrities as well as newsmen in a somewhat similar program.

One day Ringer received a call from Biscailuz, who informed him that a suspected robber had been found in possession of Ringer’s badge. The suspect was using it to gain entry and rob Hollywood nightspots just after closing hours, “including my bachelor haunt, the Hangover on Vine Street,” Ringer said.

Biscailuz invited Ringer over to meet the suspect. The latter told Ringer, “Just after I found it in the glove compartment of a Chevy outside the Hangover, I saw a guy walking toward the car. It must have been you. I tumbled into the back seat and hid. The guy drove to an apartment building and parked in the underground garage. When he left, I left.”

Ringer asked the gunman what he would have done if he had been spotted. “With my record,” the suspect responded, “I probably would have shot you.”

Ringer, by the way, left the badge with Biscailuz.

L.A. INSULT OF THE WEEK: Discussing why L.A. seems able to support just one “city glossy” magazine, the New York Times said “magazine insiders” advance these theories: “The city is too disparate demographically; the upstarts are of poor quality; Angelenos, they contend, don’t read.”

miscelLAny:

Actually, there is another glossy local in this area besides Los Angeles magazine. Attorney Stan Kelton saw a woman inside the family law courtroom in Compton, reading an issue of Southern California Divorce. (Hey, divorce is big business here.) The court had a stack of free issues for visitors.

The family law courtroom in Compton is Department M, by the way. In Norwalk, divorce court used to be in Department W, prompting one judge to quip, “Remember, it’s ‘Marriage’ turned upside-down.”

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 Metro, L.A. Times, Times Mirror Square, L.A. 90053.