Another L.A. Landmark Lost

If I told you “Starsteps” was no more, it might not mean much. So I’ll just use its more familiar name: that big, white, erector set rooftop thingy by the Hollywood Freeway (see photo).

For a quarter century passersby were dismayed, puzzled or amused by the 40,000-pound, 35-foot-by-133-foot sculpture atop KTTV’s Metromedia Square building.

It was “like some fire escape run amok,” said the Web site guide https://www.seeing-stars.com.

But Metromedia, which long ago unloaded KTTV to Fox, recently sold the building itself to the L.A. Unified School District. So sculptor John David Mooney’s “Starsteps” was taken down and shipped to Chicago.

I’m not sure what the future holds for it there. But I’m sorry it had to leave. It could have been a nice attraction for L.A. schoolkids on some playground.

HIGH-LEVEL GAME OF CATCH: Memories of “Starsteps” remain, of course. Years ago, according to one story, a KTTV intern was stationed on the roof, where he was to retrieve a can of film dropped by a news crew in a helicopter.

The station received a call from the California Highway Patrol complaining that traffic was backing up on the 101. It seemed that the intern had climbed up on “Starsteps” to await delivery and motorists thought he was going to jump.

SUCH A DEAL: In the automotive market (see accompanying) Jeff Hawks spotted an ad for a Ford Mustang that contained an unusual accessory, while Jared Hedden came upon a camper with an amazing array of extras.

. . . BUT NOTHING LIKE THIS: Richard Longshore was on the San Diego Freeway in Seal Beach when he noticed “traffic backing up behind a pickup truck with a camper shell. As I got closer, I could see a brightly lit light inside the truck. There was a TV mounted on the back window. And it was showing a porno film--a really graphic film.”

Added Longshore: “I wonder if anyone ran out of gas following it.”

RECALLING DOOMSDAYS PAST: One of the biggest screw-ups in broadcasting history was discussed on author Don Barrett’s https://laradio.com Web site this week.

It involved an incident of 30 years ago, when a worker at the National Emergency Warning Center in Cheyenne Mountain, Colo., inadvertently sent the nation’s television and radio stations an emergency alert for a nuclear attack. Some stations broadcast the emergency.

“I was getting ready to go on the air at KFWB when the bells [on the teletype machine] went off,” recalled Mike Botula. “Our instructions were to open a sealed envelope attached to the teletype machine and check to see if a code word in the bulletin matched the one in the sealed memo. It did.

“Just as we were about to send an announcer into the booth to tell all of Los Angeles, ‘The world is ending, the world is ending,’ cooler heads prevailed. One of our engineers, Charlie Heimlich, loudly argued that if it was true that a nuclear attack had really been launched, we would have all been vaporized before we heard any bells.”

miscelLAny:

Hollywood activist Joe Shea, one of a couple dozen mayoral hopefuls, calls himself the “secession candidate” because he favors the breakaway campaigns of Hollywood, the San Fernando Valley and San Pedro. And if those campaigns succeed while he’s mayor? Shea pledges to make the supreme sacrifice--move from Hollywood into what is left of L.A.