These suspects may pose flight risk

Birds? Maybe.

They were considered suspects when a woman’s purse mysteriously disappeared from a shopping cart and was later found on the store’s roof by a man setting pigeon traps.

Was a vengeful gang of feathered thieves trying to give the store a bad name? The woman’s credit cards were intact, reported the Coastal View News of Carpinteria.

Then it was discovered that something of interest to humans, but not birds, was missing from the purse: $300.

And local carrier pigeons breathed easier.

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A reminder to partying state legislators? Larry Rosen of Culver City attended a dinner featuring Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in Sacramento, and afterward “a group of us took a car back to our hotel. I sat in the front seat and was confronted with the enclosed sign” (see photo).

The driver told Rosen that such a mishap had occurred only once, “but that was sufficient motivation to place the sign.” The driver didn’t identify the political party of the offending passenger.

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Such a deal: In Bellflower, Michael Buccowich saw a sign that made him wonder why a dealership had so many overused cars and who would pay that much for one (see photo).

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Unclear on the concept: Gene Toton spotted adjacent notices (see photo) at Channel Islands Harbor Marina that raised the question, what’s up dock?

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One of a kind: Former boxer Art “The Golden Boy” Aragon, the Oscar de la Hoya of his time and a great character to boot, recently celebrated his 80th birthday. And that unleashed the memories. Doug Hays recalled that after Aragon lost a one-sided match in the 1950s, he said of his vanquisher: “I really had him worried there for a while. He thought he’d killed me.”

The witty Aragon was a favorite of columnists long after his retirement.

The Times’ John Hall received a telegram from him in the 1970s that read, “John, you won’t believe how important I still am. I arrived this morning at the Rome airport to thousands of cheering fans. There must have been 500 reporters and cameramen. To tell you the truth, I felt a little embarrassed for Elton John, who came in on the same plane with me.”

Happy birthday, Art.

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Riverside hits the big time: Orange County is home to the El Toro Y and the Orange Crush, and Los Angeles County has Malfunction Junction (the East L.A. Interchange).

But Riverside has no such colorful terms to jazz up traffic reports. Press-Enterprise columnist Dan Bernstein wants to change that. He held a Name That Interchange contest to honor the confluence of the 91, 60 and 215 freeways.

Suggestions included the Riverside Pretzel, the I.E. Threeway, and the Citrus Exchange and Packinghouse.

But his readers settled on the Riverside Squeeze, submitted by Keith Kress, a retired IRS employee who commuted from Riverside to L.A. for 19 years (two hours each way).

“We do have the orange background,” Kress told Bernstein. “What else do you do with oranges but squeeze them? Squeeze. That’s what it looks like when all the traffic is bottled up there.”

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MiscelLAny: The motto of Art Aragon’s bail-bonds business was: “I’ll get you out if it takes 10 years.”

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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