Nudist Resort Tacks Heaters Onto the List of Bare Necessities

The newsletter of the Elysium nudist colony in Topanga reports that the facility has added heaters so that members will be “able to be outdoors in cooler weather, comfortably!”

People! Did you ever hear of putting on clothes!

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WHAT WAS THAT NAME AGAIN? Adding to our list of sites that seem to have shifted as a result of seismic activity, Keith Dixon points out that the Los Alamitos Race Course is actually in Cypress.

Some other entities I managed to locate:

* The Hollywood Reporter is on Wilshire Boulevard, south of Hollywood.

* The Beverly Hills Country Club is in West L.A.

* Universal Studios-Hollywood is in Universal City.

* Newport Dental is in Hawaiian Gardens.

* Lake Los Angeles is in the Antelope Valley.

And, finally, Cal State Channel Islands is located not offshore but in Camarillo.

One reason boosters weren’t in favor of the name Cal State University Camarillo, by the way, was the inevitable designation of C-SUC.

Now it’s CSUCI, which I’m told, is informally pronounced C-Sushi.

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NOW FOR THE WEATHER: In a dry period like this, it’s difficult to remember that just a few years ago the Southland was flooded--at least according to the map of one area newspaper (see accompanying). Notice the positions of Torrance, Santa Fe Springs, Long Beach and Huntington Beach, also known as the Channel Islands.

IT WAS L.A.ME: I’ve waited until all the yawning was over before commenting on L.A.’s dull New Year’s Eve spectacle. Reader Lance Hill wrote that he was upset over a New York Times report that called the show “lackluster.” But USA Today was even more critical--it didn’t even list L.A. on its colorful map of Y2K festivities.

Luckily, the next New Year’s should also be a big event, so maybe L.A. can make a comeback. I like the idea of my colleague Agustin Gurza “to shut down the freeways and throw a party on the ramps and connector roads. Let revelers roam those soaring roadways to their 10-story peaks. Let there be salsa dancing on the diamond lanes. . . .”

And at midnight, I think, all eyes should switch to the Santa Monica Pier. As Jennifer Campana suggested in this space a year ago, nothing would be more L.A. than to stage a fake earthquake on the pier at the stroke of 12, “crumbling a giant mock HOLLYWOOD sign to the sounds of Strauss’ ‘Also Sprach Zarathustra’ (the theme from the movie ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’).”

I guarantee you no one would call that show lackluster.

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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.