The news was shocking: Los Angeles’ convention...

The news was shocking: Los Angeles’ convention business had fallen 9% in the last year, according to the Convention and Visitors Bureau.

“Who wants to walk around there?” asked one golf show director, who chose Long Beach instead.

Obviously, it’s time for the bureau to start publicizing the Nine Wonders of L.A.:

1. The Painted-Number Trees of City Hall. So many spectators climb into trees to watch Dodger and Laker civic celebrations that officials have splashed numerals on the trees on City Hall lawn. Now, if any climbers fall out, the police can direct paramedics where to go.

2. Encino’s Amazing, Wrong-Way McDonald’s Drive-Thru. It was McBuilt with the order window on the wrong side of the building because a patio was in the way. Thus, drivers must stretch across the passenger window unless they’re fortunate enough to be in British automobiles.

3. Law Firm in a Car Wash. Attorney Thomas White hung his shingle above an office in the Valencia Car Wash. You have to get out of your car to see him. But White points out that while conferring with him you can still watch your car go through the wash.

4. The Joggers’ Rest Stop. The concrete oasis was installed by the city on a grassy median of San Vicente Boulevard at a cost of $9,898. A nice place to watch the Mercedes-Benzes pass by.

5. The Nose-Thumbing Gargoyle. For half a century, a 12-inch-high monkey has been making an impertinent gesture at former USC Chancellor Rufus B. von KleinSmid on a frieze of the Student Union building. Legend has it that an architect was upset with the chancellor’s frequent, unsolicited offers of advice.

6. The Max Factor Makeup Museum. The Highland Avenue monument offers such gizmos as a rubber kissing machine for testing lipstick. Formerly, a bowling alley.

7. The City’s First Parking Lot. Immigrant Andrew Pansini bought a lot on the corner of 4th Street and Olive Avenue in 1917 and offered to guard cars for 5 cents a day. He didn’t get a customer for a week (possibly because he didn’t validate). But the idea caught on.

8. Copernicus, Newton and . . . James Dean. Yes, there’s a bust of the late actor at the Griffith Observatory to celebrate the filming of scenes from “Rebel Without a Cause” there. Remember the knife fight in the parking lot?

9. Well, there used to be nine, until Frederick’s of Hollywood shut down its Bra Museum.