People and Events

When you consider that Nostradamus had foretold that Los Angeles would be obliterated by the Big One last May 10, it didn’t turn out to be such a bad year.

Not that there weren’t other suspense-filled moments, such as:

- The day the courthouses in Torrance and Encino ran out of toilet paper during a dispute between the supplier and the county.

- The time trailblazing attorney Gloria Allred walked into the shower at the Beverly Hills Friars Club only to find five naked men in there.

- The moment when Tournament of Rose Parade officials learned that Grand Marshal Shirley Temple Black is allergic to roses.

Somehow, though, Southern California survived. However, it was, in one sense at least, the end of an era. Political activist Elaine Anderson ceased her decade-old daily regimen of dancing in a bathing suit on the corner of Temple and Main streets because the city wouldn’t give her her own parking place.

And Maurice Diller, whoever he was, lost his star on Hollywood Boulevard. His space was given to the man who was supposed to have received it 28 years ago, Swedish director Mauritz Stiller.

It was a year in which Los Angeles kept intact its reputation for innovative, if not slightly offbeat, ideas:

City workers painted big white numbers on the trees outside City Hall for the Dodger Day celebration so that medical authorities could more quickly locate fans who had fallen off branches.

The city began a study of the feasibility of equipping meter maids (and meter misters) with hand-held computers that punch out parking tickets after a year in which 50,000 citations had to be dismissed because of illegible handwriting.

The position of pedestrian advocate was established in the Planning Department to give walkers a say in development and other issues. Meanwhile, a woman fleeing a suspicious-looking man downtown was given a jay-walking ticket. (A judge later dismissed it.)

Culver City police, terming motorists their “customers,” conducted what they called the first-ever “marketing survey” of ticketed drivers.

A losing City Council candidate in Long Beach pledged to pay $1 for each campaign sign returned to her--only to have 3,000 placards from other races dumped in her lap.

It was, as always, a year filled with winners . . .

KABC’s Tawny Little finished first in the balloting among radio listeners in KFI’s “Stupidest TV Anchorperson in L.A.” survey.

And losers . . .

The term “Valley girl” was rejected for the latest edition of Webster’s New World Dictionary.

On the art scene, the year saw Little Egypt, describing herself as the “world’s foremost belly dancer,” file suit here to stop the “humiliation” heaped on her by a female wrestler who uses the same name.

A bust of James Dean was unveiled at the Griffith Observatory, a nostalgic reminder that in the movie “Rebel Without a Cause” he got into a knife-fight in the observatory parking lot.

And Los Angeles got a design for that distinctive landmark it’s always craved. A panel of judges, some of whom had never been to Los Angeles before, mulled over 150 entries, many from artists who had never been to Los Angeles before. Rejecting such imaginative proposals as a giant baseball glove, the panel chose a “deconstructionist” work to be stretched over the Hollywood Freeway. It was called “Clouds of Steel” by its New York creator and “Broken Popsicle Sticks” by some critics.

In sports, perhaps the most dedicated local coach was convicted swindler Barry Minkow, who, it was revealed, spent more than $26,000 from a slush fund to hire spectators for games played by his girls’ softball team.

Freeway shootings plummeted. But Michael Shesterkin was hit by a pomegranate as he stood outside his tow truck. He chased down the pomegranate-thrower’s vehicle, hooked it up to his truck and towed it to the Santa Fe Springs office of the California Highway Patrol.

Officers photographed the suspect’s red hands as evidence.

Criminals received mixed grades for good sense.

During a sting operation, two men in Lennox allegedly tried to buy cocaine from a county Sheriff’s Department deputy whose jacket said “Sheriff” and whose cap bore the word “Narcotics” and the letters “LASD.”

An East Los Angeles man, who said he was tired of walking, allegedly stole a steamroller and led California Highway Patrol officers on a (brief) low-speed chase.

On the other hand, a driver tailed by four police cars and two helicopters pulled into the parking lot of the downtown city jail and gave himself up. “He mentioned the fact he had been booked by LAPD officers before, and he knew where to go,” one police lieutenant said.