Reader rumblings: Guess who phoned us about...

Reader rumblings: Guess who phoned us about our item on the San Jose Mercury News column that was headlined “What Los Angeles Really Needs Is a Bigger Quake”?

The San Jose Mercury News.

A representative wanted a copy of Only in L.A.’s report on the article by the Mercury News’ Joanne Jacobs. You may recall that Jacobs had postulated that “the problem is that not enough of Los Angeles fell down.” Apparently unconcerned with the potential loss of lives and homes that would result, she said a destructive quake would give planners a chance “to rebuild Los Angeles as a more livable city.”

The day we discussed Jacobs’ theory, the San Jose newspaper was inundated with angry calls. “They couldn’t all get through,” the Mercury News rep said. “I know they’re going to want to sock it to us again today. I want to have your column in front of me when they call.”

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Unexpected support: After the quake, Debbe Behr snapped a shot of a bicycle rack ad that gives an ironic message of encouragement to residents whose houses overlook Pacific Coast Highway.

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Flashback, 1933: Quake jitters are nothing new here in Seismic California. The 6.3 Long Beach quake of 1933, the most destructive ever to hit that city, was still on the minds of residents three years later, writes Ruth Snyder. She recalled attending a Long Beach showing of the movie “San Francisco,” which culminates with the 1906 quake.

“People were still so nervous,” she said, “that they screamed and some ran, thinking it was happening again--not just a film.”

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Flashback, 1925: Mary Jane Schmidt, meanwhile, remembers visiting Santa Barbara with her family after the 6.3 quake that struck that city in 1925. Her father was a general manager of the Pasadena Light and Power Department and wanted to assess the damage--which was considerable--to help prepare Pasadena.

“I remember standing in a line a block long (it seemed to me, at age 6) with my mother at the only open service station restroom,” she said. “When the ladies were slow in leaving, my mother said: ‘Those women, they are only in there smoking cigarettes!’ And, remember, this was in the days when ladies did not smoke.”

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The devil they say: We haven’t received any confirmation of the shocking report in the Weekly World News Tabloid--that “17 demons” escaped from “the gates of hell (through) a gaping crack in the Golden State Freeway” after the Northridge quake.

But city Firefighter Vince Marzo has a report from the other side, so to speak. Marzo says that when his crew returned to the Northridge firehouse several hours after the quake, they were pleased to see a tiny pink angel sitting on the station’s front wall.

It was one of the 5,000 or so plaster seraphs that artist Jill D’Agnenica has been distributing throughout the city to put more angel in Los Angeles.

Marzo adds: “Since we made it out of the station in one piece and have moved back in, it is obvious the power of divine intervention played an important role!”

Take that, demons.

miscelLAny:

You can’t blame actress Sophia Loren if she felt upstaged when she received her star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame the other day. How was she to know that retired City Councilman Ernani Bernardi, an ex-big-band orchestra leader, would receive a star the same day?