Bike Owner’s Day Takes Bad Turn for Good Causes

Unsweet charity: “The bike that was parked near the Salvation Army shed on Thursday was not a donation,” began the letter in Leisure World’s newspaper in Seal Beach. “It was parked while I was assisting someone having a problem with a vacuum cleaner.”

Reminds me of a neighbor of mine who, for safety’s sake, put a bumper sticker on his jalopy that said: “This Is Not an Abandoned Car.”

DINING GUIDE FOR THE DARING: Today’s selections (see accompanying) were submitted by:

* Jack Finston, who found a market where one variety of fish seems to be sold in the same manner as phone cards.

* Robert Gifford, who came across a restaurant in Oregon with a dry menu.

* Gerald Van Vleet, who wondered why anyone would want to wait until Christmas to pick up a turkey cooked a month earlier.

* And, finally, Jennifer Prince, who saw a dish that didn’t sound tasty even Szechwan style.

TORTILLA FIAT: Before you know it, Pasadena’s most glamorous annual event will be here: the Doo Dah Parade, I mean. Organizers of the Nov. 19 spectacular say the entries include such distinguished groups as the Hello Dalai Lamas, the Little Ol’ Ladies from Hooters, the Bastard Sons of Lee Marvin, Confused Dogs in Drag, and, of course, the Dead Rose Queens.

If you haven’t attended before, beware:

No matter how much you’d like to shower something besides praise on the entrants, Pasadena has a law forbidding the throwing of tortillas, a former custom of Dod Dah spectators.

STILL ON THE CULTURAL BEAT: Smogdance ‘00, the Nov. 3-5 film festival in Pomona, will become the first such event to offer two movies about the Salton Sea.

“One each for the east and west shores,” noted Smogdance founder Dan Dobrin.

Other entries (and descriptions) that caught my eye:

* “When Chickens Attack!” David S. Phillips, (54 seconds): “This shocking video exposes chickens to be clever killing machines.”

* “Toy Box,” by Phillips, (38 seconds): “An unloved doll is an unhappy doll.”

* “I Don’t Feel Too Good,” also by Phillips, (1 minute, 36 seconds): “Quickly eat three corn dogs . . . spin around 10 to 20 times . . . “

* “It Did It,” Peter Brinson (17 minutes.): “Fictional romp through the joys of antidepressants.”

DA REST OF THE STORY: Smogdance is produced by the DA Center for the Arts, whose unusual name has an interesting plot line of its own.

Once the home of an Arthur Murray Dance Studio, it fell into the hands of artists looking for dirt-cheap rent years ago. The DANCE STUDIO sign was left standing on a low roof below a landing as a sort of joke. Then “an unnamed roofer dropped a tar-encrusted piece of plywood on the sign, covering the NCE in the word DANCE,” said Smogdance’s Dobrin. “As this was the only landmark visible from the studio’s entrance, the name DA STUDIO stuck (no pun intended).”

miscelLAny:

So what kind of business would want to reside on a little street called Hamburger Lane? In-N-Out Burgers of Baldwin Park. There’s no Wienerschnitzel in sight.

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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, 202 W. 1st St., L.A., 90012 and by e-mail at steve.harvey@latimes.com.