Run, Don’t Walk, to Your Computer to Get to speedtrap.com

The hide-and-seek game between drivers and traffic cops never ends. Want to play? The Web site speedtrap.com, compiled by the National Motorists Assn., lists hundreds of stealth positions of gendarmes.

These were reported by drivers over the last couple of years so some of following testimony may not be up to date. (But, then, you don’t have to worry if you don’t exceed the speed limit, right?)

--Anaheim: There’s “a motorcycle policeman about 100 yards east of Eucalyptus Way and Santa Ana Canyon Road at least once a week. As a local, I fully approve of this ‘trap.’ ”

--Anaheim: Motorcycle officer “sits in covered driveway of business on west side of Euclid next to Mr. Taco.”

--Brea: Vicinity of Imperial Highway and Flower is heavily patrolled. “Brea officers are some of the best motorcycle riders in Orange County and they will not hesitate to chase violators in heaviest traffic.”

--Chino Hills: “All of my family members have at least one ticket on a 2-mile stretch of Chino Hills Parkway” near Grand Avenue.

--Laguna Niguel: “On Pacific Island Drive just west of Alicia Parkway . . . I live just to the west of this area and there are a lot of sirens, with people being pulled over.”

--La Habra: On Lambert Road heading to Beach Boulevard, officers sit in church parking lot at night “due to darkness.”

--Orange: On Meats Avenue, officers conceal themselves in the driveway of a local nursery just east of Santiago Canyon Road. But: “Be careful and courteous and it might get you a free get-out-of-jail card.”

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SHIPS PASSING IN THE NIGHT: I grew up in L.A. in the 1950s and ‘60s during the Westside’s Golden Age--when there were three Ships. They were 24-hour coffee shops that offered a toaster at every table. Founder Emmett Shipman had installed them because it irritated him to eat in breakfast joints where the toast arrived cold.

My favorite Ships was in Culver City, where waitress Lee Riling worked the graveyard shift with a brass whistle around her neck. “The drunks would come in and we weren’t allowed to touch them,” she once said, “so I’d have the busboys get behind them and I’d get in front and blow my whistle to wake them up.”

Ah, memories. The Culver City Ships is now a Starbucks, the Westwood Ships is a parking lot, and the La Cienega Ships is a, well, it’s a Ships, complete with old logo. But it’s a truck rental business (see photo).

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