County Line

Arte Moreno, your Angels won the World Series a few years ago, the Ducks won the Stanley Cup, and now two teams from Orange County are in the College World Series. I think sports fans might know where Orange County is now. Drop the Los Angeles from your name; we are no longer a suburb. MARK TEMPLE Huntington Beach

THERMAL, Calif. - One of the most highly regarded farms in Northern California, Petaluma-based County Line Harvest started growing organic vegetables in the Coachella desert to extend its production in the winter and spring. For owner David Retsky, who grew up in Beverly Hills, selling to Southern California was the logical next step, and almost like coming home. It's been a circuitous route for Retsky, 40. The son of a doctor, he became interested in agriculture after high school, when he stayed on a kibbutz in Israel.

Sudden oak death, a disease that has ravaged California's signature oak trees in coastal areas as far north as Oregon, has turned up just 10 miles north of the San Luis Obispo County line. It is just a matter of time before it arrives in the county. Up to 25,000 acres of oak woodland in the county are considered susceptible, and experts said it already could be in San Luis Obispo in latent form.

Metrolink fares will hold steady for now, but weekend service in Riverside and Orange counties will be sharply reduced next month to deal with a budget crunch caused by a fall in ridership and revenue at the regional rail service. The board of the five-county commuter train system, which has been struggling with unprecedented, recession-driven financial turmoil for months, also voted Friday to cut two off-peak weekday trains on the Inland Empire/Orange County line. All of the trains being eliminated averaged less than 100 passengers as of October, officials said.

Residents of a tiny Lakewood-area neighborhood tucked between Coyote Creek and the Orange County line will soon become the last on their blocks--literally--to get MTV and "Ozzie & Harriet." The Board of Supervisors Tuesday approved an unusual franchise application from Copley/Colony Cablevision of Cypress Inc. to extend its cables a few feet out of Orange County and into Los Angeles County, providing the area with its first cable television service.

Twenty years ago there emerged a fashion for restaurants serving an informal food that was just becoming part of American mainstream dining (pizza), served in a nostalgia setting of 40 years before (the silent films and Dixieland music of the '20s).

A brush fire that broke out in an uninhabited area near the Los Angeles-Ventura county line in Calabasas was contained Wednesday evening after burning 20 acres, a Los Angeles County Fire Department dispatcher said. The fire started near Las Virgenes Road and Thousand Oaks Boulevard about 3:30 p.m., Dispatcher Chris Rash said. Firefighters from Los Angeles and Ventura counties had the blaze contained by 7 p.m. Flames burned in a northwest direction toward the Ventura County border, Rash said.

Orange County too often gets portrayed in stereotyping as a place removed by light-years from its neighbor Los Angeles. In that characterization, Orange County is a "square" and almost entirely white enclave, very consciously removed from the L.A. scene, and a place whose very act of sprawling was seen as a kind of cultural counterrevolution to the perceived failings of its northern neighbor.

Although many things may come easier for youths within Orange County's relatively affluent embrace, that advantage seems to reverse itself when they pick up a guitar. With a local political climate that hasn't been friendly to original music clubs, there is practically no place for groups to play. Bogart's, the only full-time venue that consistently presents original O.C.-raised music, is safely over the county line in Long Beach.

Nearly a decade later, San Clemente Fire Marshal Gary Carmichael still remembers waiting for the fierce blaze that advanced from San Diego County toward his firefighting crews, who were powerless to step beyond the county line. When the fire finally reached the Orange County border on a windy January evening in 1976, it had grown in such intensity that 16 homes in the community were destroyed and 69 others were damaged.

Arte Moreno, your Angels won the World Series a few years ago, the Ducks won the Stanley Cup, and now two teams from Orange County are in the College World Series. I think sports fans might know where Orange County is now. Drop the Los Angeles from your name; we are no longer a suburb. MARK TEMPLE Huntington Beach

Plans to widen the 405 Freeway in northern Orange County are causing concern among Metropolitan Transportation Authority officials who warn that the project will create a massive bottleneck at the Los Angeles County line where the road narrows. Traffic experts say the rift over the Orange County Transportation Authority's $500-million project highlights the need for better regional planning among agencies with differing views on how to ease congestion.

IT'S ONE THING to apply to become Los Angeles County's chief administrative officer, get the offer and then turn it down, as Sandra L. Vargas of Hennepin County, Minn., did earlier this month. It's another thing entirely to accept the job, as did Thomas G. Mauk (Orange County's chief executive), then decide after all the announcements were made and congratulations offered that maybe it was the wrong move.

Anyone who lost faith that American designers can change the direction of fashion had a come-to-Jesus moment on Tuesday. The buzz word coming off last season may have been "minimalism," but its master, Narciso Rodriguez, presented a knockout fall collection that turned minimalism on its head with unlikely fabric combinations and mod color-blocking, glass beads and plastic paillettes.

In north Orange County, Interstate 5 is a 10-lane superhighway, with the broad shoulders, terra-cotta sound walls and attractive landscaping one might expect along California's main north-south artery. Just short of Los Angeles County, however, the artery clogs. It narrows to six lanes, three each way, and sheds its modern features, becoming a 1950s-vintage roadway. Right about there, many northbound motorists get mad.

A 25-year-old punk rock singer apparently jumped from a limousine into predawn traffic on the San Diego Freeway in Costa Mesa on Wednesday, and was killed when struck by at least a dozen cars, authorities said. The 5 a.m. incident triggered a huge rush-hour traffic jam. "It's been a nightmare," said CHP Officer Denise Quesada at midmorning. "It's horrible out there. This is probably one of the worst backups I've seen," she said.

A 41-year-old Granada Hills woman who completed her scuba training only last Saturday--and was described as a good athlete--drowned during a night dive off the coast just east of the Ventura County line, authorities said Thursday.

An oil fire near the Los Angeles County-Ventura County line raged for about an hour Tuesday before it burned itself out, fire officials said. More than 50 firefighters from the Ventura County and Los Angeles County fire departments responded to the blaze, which erupted shortly after 1 p.m. at a field in the hills near San Martinez Grande Canyon Road. No injuries were reported, and officials have no estimate of damage. No homes or businesses were endangered.

Transportation officials from Ventura and Santa Barbara counties agreed Wednesday to explore the possibility of establishing a commuter rail line between the two counties to ease traffic congestion on the 101 Freeway. Acknowledging that starting a commuter line would be costly and time-consuming, officials said every means of alternative transportation should be pursued to find a solution to the growing traffic congestion on the 35-mile stretch of highway.

Sudden oak death, a disease that has ravaged California's signature oak trees in coastal areas as far north as Oregon, has turned up just 10 miles north of the San Luis Obispo County line. It is just a matter of time before it arrives in the county. Up to 25,000 acres of oak woodland in the county are considered susceptible, and experts said it already could be in San Luis Obispo in latent form.