End of an Eros for Hollywood’s Erotic Museum

“L.A. now has its own little piece of Amsterdam,” wrote the la.com guidebook two years ago when the Erotic Museum opened on Hollywood Boulevard. The shrine’s collection includes such items as works by Pablo Picasso (is that a breast or a foot?) and a two-person bicycle-like sex apparatus.

Alas, as co-founder Mark Volper recently lamented, “Sex is everywhere these days, on the Internet, on TV, in the movies.” Hurt by dwindling attendance, the museum is closing its curtains -- I mean doors -- after today.

One consequence is that membership in the Erotic Museum Hall of Fame will be frozen at eight. No doubt Hugh Hefner and Dr. Ruth Westheimer feel fortunate they’ve already been inducted.

Several items in the museum will go on sale, though not the two-person bicycle-like sex apparatus. “That was an art piece that was returned to the artist,” a spokesman sid.

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Trashing visitors? “We visited [Disney’s] Epcot in Florida,” said Diem Tabon. “We were walking toward the entrance, and this is what we saw (see photo). What a way to treat your paying customers!

“Is this why they call it the ‘Happiest Place on Earth’?”

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Word imperfect: Noting a construction company’s warning in West L.A., Larry Teplin figures the sign must have been worded by an admirer of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (see photo).

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Smoke screen? “OK, we’re all in shock over gas prices,” wrote Tom Greene of L.A. (see photo), “but look what’s happened to the price of a pack of cigarettes at the pumps.” Greene wondered if there were a shortage of tobacco, adding, “Maybe people should switch to corn husks.”

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Don’t know much about history: Earl Perry Jr. of Altadena points out that one credit union has a problem remembering which holiday is which (see accompanying).

The perils of being footloose: The Sierra Madre Weekly reported that someone “stole the unattached feet to a bathtub from an outside window ledge of the victim’s residence.”

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miscelLAny: “I received an unsolicited e-mail from a legal firm wondering if I had suffered any side effects from a well-known drug,” writes Harvey Geller of Tarzana.

He was asked if he had suffered from any of a variety of symptoms, No. 3 being “death.” Added Geller: “No. 3, I guess, would include loss of appetite, fatigue, sexual impotence and drowsiness.”

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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.