Valley Talk

Love Blossoms We’ve all heard the stories of love blooming on the Internet. But there’s still a bit of romance in the air surrounding brick-and-mortar retailers too, it seems. Take the recent incidents at the Sherman Oaks Fashion Square. Matt Sidoti, who recently started working at the mall’s concierge desk, answered the phone one day to find a caller who needed the spelling of the word “appropriate.” Sidoti obliged, and within minutes, a bouquet of flowers arrived with a thank you note, unsigned. Sidoti figured it was just a very generous gesture of appreciation until another bouquet arrived about a week later. This one, still unsigned, complimented him on his new haircut. Now the 26-year-old figures he must be dealing with a secret admirer, and he doesn’t mind saying he’s flattered by it. Since the flowers came from the mall florist, It’s a Blooming Business, Sidoti thinks his mystery lady works somewhere in the shopping center. But alas, he hopes that, like many cyberspace flirtations, this one will remain a mystery. “I’m kind of involved,” he said. One for the Big Apple L.A. and New York are always trying to one-up each other. But who would have thought that New York would have an edge when it comes to traffic news? Through the Web site of WNBC-TV Channel 4, New York City commuters have access to some of the best traffic information around. Using “skycams” mounted on buildings, the site constantly streams traffic images of most major arteries in and out of Manhattan. At a recent panel discussion, WNBC News Director Paula Madison suggested L.A.’s own KNBC-TV Channel 4 in Burbank offer a similar service, considering the city is the traffic capital of the nation. It seems KNBC does have two stationary cameras that stream images on its Web site. One is in Long Beach, focused on the Queen Mary for weather and other shots; the other is trained on a newsroom seismograph that measures the magnitude of earthquakes. Neither would seem to be the hottest source of useful news. Officials at KNBC say the station is planning to beef up online traffic coverage that will “most probably” include use of skycams. By the Numbers Always on the lookout for ways to spice up his budget presentation, County Administrative Officer David Janssen cooked up a few interesting statistics to commemorate the 150th birthday of the county. In 1850, there were only 3,530 people in L.A. County, while there were about 100,000 cows (a ratio of 28 cows for every person). Today there are 2,016 cows and 9.8 million people. While the population has exploded, the size of the county has shrunk. In 1850, it covered a whopping 34,520 square miles; today, after San Bernardino, Riverside, Ventura and Orange counties were carved out, it’s only 4,083 square miles. Other milestones had little to do with numbers. In 1853, the county built its first public building a jail. And in 1856, a man named O.W. Childs introduced the first bees into L.A. County when he paid $100 to bring a single hive and swarm down from San Francisco to produce honey. “Today, of course, we’re spending millions (of dollars) trying to kill bees,” Janssen said about the “killer bee” scare. Technically Speaking From the better-late-than-never file: Koll Development Co. recently held a ground-breaking ceremony for its new five-story Pasadena office building several months after actually breaking ground and starting construction. About 200 people, including city dignitaries and brokers, attended the event, which included an on-site luncheon to draw attention to the $36 million project. “Because of the weather and holidays, we hadn’t had a chance to do a formal celebration,” said Celina Traut, an official with Koll. “It was technically not a ground breaking, but a kickoff.” Indecipherable Take a look at that scribble of a prescription your doctor wrote and try to read it. Just try. Impossible, you say? That’s the consensus of hundreds of pharmacists and nurses who routinely have to decipher the chicken scratch. Cedars-Sinai Medical Center is doing something about it. Next week, Dr. Paul Hackmeyer, chief of the medical staff, will hold an in-house clinic to help signature-impaired doctors. He was prompted by a national study showing bad penmanship sometimes leads to medical errors. Among the 50 physicians who signed up for the workshop is kidney specialist Dr. Marshal Fichman, who colleagues say is legendary for his illegible scrawl. “I do have terrible handwriting. What can I say?” Fichman admitted. “I got straight As in the third grade and a B-plus in penmanship. It has been downhill ever since.”