Low-Altitude Near Miss Is Reported at LAX

Author James Morgan drove a new Porsche more than 9,000 miles throughout the country to explore Americans’ feelings about cars. The closest he came to a traffic accident, he writes in his new book “The Distance to the Moon,” was at the finish of the seven-week journey--in an LAX parking lot.

He admits to a bit of reckless behavior in the lot.

“I found a clear stretch where I could get up some speed,” Morgan writes. “I was moving at a nice clip when a woman in a shiny new Jaguar emerged from a row and we almost collided. I careened left to miss her and then quickly regained control. . . .”

I should add that Morgan was hurrying along on foot at the time, pushing a luggage cart.

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LOCAL RECOGNITION: Former Simi Valley City Councilwoman Sandi Webb merits a spot in the book “A Short History of Rudeness” by Mark Caldwell.

In 1996, Webb showed her displeasure over Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s support for a gun control bill by giving Feinstein the finger at a Washington meeting of city officials. Webb then stormed out.

“I blew it,” she later said. “I was so pissed at her I got up and left.”

Caldwell calls this a “mid-’90s” version of public apology, whereby the perpetrator knew the act was “unmannerly, but thought an insult just the right note, a stink bomb thrown at smug and immoral convention.”

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OOH, L.A. L.A.: And the third selection from the Only in L.A. Book Club is “Sins of the City--The Real Los Angeles Noir,” by Jim Heimann. It’s a collection of colorful black and white photos showing the not so romantic underbelly of life in the (ironically named) City of Angels between 1920 and 1960.

It’s a city full of mean streets, mean nightclubs and even, in the case of the murdered Bugsy Siegel, mean Beverly Hills mansions. And, of course, there are plenty of con men and kooks.

Some of my favorite shots include those of:

* A bouncer named Cairo Mary throwing out a customer at the San Pedro waterfront dive Shanghai Reds, around 1953 (see photo).

* A half-smiling undercover officer holding a three-inch knife “retrieved from the prostitute who slashed him above the right eye.”

* Bearded, shabbily dressed Peter the Hermit, who would stroll down Hollywood Boulevard, staff in hand, chatting with tourists.

* The Pyramid Cube University in Alhambra, where visitors were invited inside to “plot the planets and figure out the future.” A flier trumpeted founder Frank Ormsby’s “Forecasts for 1932 . . . Will It Be a Good Year for You?”

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SUCH A DEAL: Lisa Counts of Burbank found a bubble gum sale where only someone with poor mathematical skills would order by volume (see photo). I’d like to see them try that offer on Cairo Mary.

miscelLAny:

In case you missed it, Pamela Van der Meer points out that The Times’ Santa Clarita edition carried this police log item: “Smoke was seen at 6:41 a.m. July 15. . . . Deputies discovered an overcooked breakfast.”

Nothing worse than noir toast.

Steve Harvey can be reached by phone at (213) 237-7083, by fax at (213) 237-4712, by e-mail at [email protected] and by mail at Metro, L.A. Times, Times Mirror Square, L.A. 90053.