Making Contact With Ghost (Town)

You know we’ve entered a new era when a certain community near Barstow has its own Web site. I’m talking about the Calico Ghost Town.

HARDY OUTDOORSMEN: “It had to have been some of those yuppies from L.A.,” writes Kay Yates of Big Bear Lake, referring to this item in her town’s Grizzly newspaper:

“7:15 p.m.: Report of someone camping on the shore near the Big Bear Dam with a satellite dish set up and a loud generator running. Subjects gone on deputy’s arrival. Turned generator off and left note for them to keep it off . . . “

Hope that doesn’t affect the campers’ TV reception.

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA--YOU CAN’T ESCAPE IT! As a member of the Beverly Hills Architectural Commission, Joan Quinn is not unaccustomed to encountering signs that say, “City of Beverly Hills.”

But she didn’t expect to find one on the island of Cyprus (see photo).

The development “was a flat parcel of land with raked gravel studded by a few short, wide spreading palm trees. Upon the hill were a few new whitewashed homes with TV antennas and water tanks on the roofs--not a common sight in Beverly Hills.”

And there were no Mercedes-Benzes in sight.

ELSEWHERE ON THE ROAD: Last week I showed a San Clemente reader’s photo of a Minnesota cafe/bait shop with the slogan, “Eat here and get worms!”

Now Karlyn Musante of Malibu sends along a shot of a sign for a unique family business in Delaware: The husband runs a bait shop and his wife has a beauty shop (see photo).

HOW’S THAT AGAIN? Nancy Smith of Orange noticed an ad for a worker who rips your clothing the old-fashioned way (see accompanying).

ANIMAL HOUSES BECOMING EXTINCT? The college football rankings are on the sports page. But college lifestyle rankings, based on interviews with students, are listed in the Princeton Review. Here are categories in which Southland schools placed in the top 20:

Quality of life: Claremont-Mudd, No. 7 in the nation (Dartmouth was No. 1).

Happiest students: Pomona College, No. 5; Pitzer College, No. 10; Pepperdine, No. 15 (St. Bonaventure was No. 1).

Best food: Pepperdine, No. 19 (College of the Atlantic was No. 1).

Worst party schools: Caltech, No. 3 (BYU was the No. 1 dullard).

Best party schools: UC Santa Barbara, No. 19 (Louisiana State was No. 1). Can’t believe my old school, USC, was unable to crack the top 20.

INSIDE JOB: We went out for dinner the other night and when we returned to the house my daughter turned on the answering machine and heard a strangely familiar voice. It was telling a story.

The strangely familiar voice turned out to be mine. What had evidently happened was this: I was carrying my cell phone in my pants pocket and while babbling away in the restaurant I rapped the speed dial button against something. The phone had called home and recorded me. I’m not certain, but I believe the machine purposely cut off before I got to my punch line.

Anyway, I gave myself a stern talk afterward about my right of privacy.

miscelLAny:

In the spirit of NBC, which is tape-delaying the entire 2000 Olympics, here’s a 68-year-old flashback from David Wallechinsky’s “Complete Book of the Olympics.” During the 1932 Games in L.A., prohibition was in effect in the United States. But one team from a foreign country received permission to bring along several thousand bottles of wine, maintaining that it “was an essential part” of the athletes’ diet. The country: France. A good party country.