Growth Spurt

If the brain trust at top-rated KROQ-FM (106.7) wants to hold on to listeners who may have outgrown the yowling-young-men music they play, they might consider spinning off a second station--sort of a VH1 to KROQ's MTV. If so, much of Night 2 of the annual KROQ Almost Acoustic Christmas concerts Sunday at the Universal Amphitheatre would make a suitable blueprint.

Tom Brancati stepped away from the world of advanced telecommunications last year when he left his post as president and chief executive of the Whittaker Corp. of Simi Valley. He stepped away, but he didn't step far. Brancati has reemerged on the Ventura County scene as the newest member of the board of directors of TeleProcessing Products Inc., a Simi Valley-based manufacturer of access systems for telecommunications service providers, network system integrators and corporations.

Rich Aude did not bowl over professional baseball scouts during his career at Chatsworth High. He grew on them. Last year as a junior, Aude was a 6-foot-1 designated-hitter and part-time second baseman because, admittedly, he wasn't good enough to supplant Joel Wolfe at third base. Today, Aude is 6-5 and 185 pounds of developing muscle. On June 5, the Pittsburgh Pirates selected Aude in the second round of the amateur draft--he was the 48th pick overall--projecting him as a third baseman, first baseman or outfielder in Three Rivers Stadium.

Buildings grow from the ground up but they usually don't stop and wait for 20 years in the middle of the process. The 655 Hope Street building, at Hope and 7th streets, did just that. It went up eight stories in 1964 and hovered there until last summer, when it started to grow again. When its second growth spurt is finished about the end of this year or early next year, it will be a 17-story office tower. And fully modern.

The dramatic increase in violent crime by juveniles in Orange County last year is disquieting news that demands a response by parents, schools and others worried by the possibility that the numbers will get worse. The Juvenile Division of the Orange County district attorney's office said in its annual report, issued last month, that aggravated assaults by young people in the county increased by 81% over the 1994 figures.

"Organic (food) sales in conventional supermarkets have been a bust," reported thS. grocery trade magazine The Packer last week. But Ventura County consumers seem to be ignoring the suggestion that nobody is interested in food produced in an environmentally friendly way. Local storekeepers who specialize in foods without added chemicals, pesticides and artificial fertilizers--foods that include produce, cereals, juices, soups and even organically raised beef--are experiencing a boom.

You know, maybe this is what "happily ever after" looks like. It's Kobe Bryant and an utterly seamless 25 points, three turnovers in two playoff games, a wide smile for every assist, a fist clenched for every three-point shot knocked down by Rick Fox. It's Shaquille O'Neal and a brutish 32 points, 32 rebounds in two playoff games, an unpracticed grin for his buddy Kobe, a wrist hinged for the technical free throw he made in the fourth quarter of Game 2.

The green jacket Tiger Woods slipped over his shoulders after winning his first Masters was a size 42 long. It was a loose fit for the 21-year-old champion, but that was by design. "A lot of the guys say they get larger as they get older," Woods said. The same holds true for Augusta National Golf Club. About a month after Woods walked away from the Masters with his fourth straight major championship, the bulldozers moved in. Half of the 18 holes were lengthened.

This seaside city, where construction of almost any kind is viewed with apprehension, is on the verge of its biggest building boom since the early 1970s, when 10 massive, Miami-style condominium towers were erected on the beach. The focus of development is again the shoreline, though this time it's San Diego Bay rather than the Pacific Ocean.