Even if Your Sweat Socks Are Darned, Your Running Shoes Can Be Blessed
The L.A. Marathon is Sunday, but the footwear of many participants will be on view the night before. Where? At “The Blessing of the Running Shoes,” of course. St. Agatha Church, near Adams Boulevard and La Brea Avenue, hosts the shoe to-do every year.
“It was the idea of Father Ken Deasy, who is a runner,” said marathon spokesman Laurence Cohen. “People come and put their running shoes on the altar for the service and he blesses them.” Prays for their soles, in other words.
Food for thought: Today’s specialties (see above) include:
* A restaurant where, as Wally Schultz of Rancho Cucamonga points out, “it’s tough to get a reservation, unless you’re having a class reunion.”
* A shop where you won’t be pestered by pushy used-doughnut salesmen (see photo).
* An ingredients label that confirms what every schoolboy has ever suspected about the fish sandwiches that mom packed for him (from Jill Mittelman of L.A.)
* And, finally, a macho Italian restaurant, snapped by Deloris St. John.
It’s located, by the way, in Manly Beach, Australia.
Stupid criminal tricks: The police log of the Los Alamitos News-Enterprise reported that a man and a woman allegedly stole a bicycle from a residence and tried “to ride off. They didn’t get very far as the bike had a flat. Police apprehended the two.”
Maybe there weren’t any trees around: The News-Enterprise also listed this sighting: “A man was reported to be hugging a telephone pole, and was doing it for the last hour. A local business owner says he does it all the time.”
Drive-away “oops” adventures (cont.): Referring to a discussion in this space, Bonnie Sloane of L.A. writes: “Cell phones left on car trunks? Filling station hoses left in gas tanks? Any average dunce can manage those stunts. It takes a true dunderhead to accomplish what I managed at age 17, leaving the drive-in movie with the speaker still attached to the window.” Can anyone top that?
MiscelLAny: Stuck in the office Wednesday night, Eric Munson of L.A. managed to follow the Lakers-Clippers game on www.nba.com, which provided up-to-the-minute scores. But he suspects the Web site was trying “not to disappoint anyone.” At one point it showed the score as “Los Angeles 47, Los Angeles 46.” L.A. -- we love them!
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Steve Harvey can be reached at (800) LA-TIMES, 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.