Public Nuisances

Tucked away in this exclusive coastal enclave where redwood decks, vaulted ceilings and skylights seem standard features for most homes, there remains a sprawling folk art compound made entirely out of junk. Nitt Witt Ridge has always rubbed a large number of people the wrong way here at the north end of San Luis Obispo County.

Each night at 7:45, the birds come back. Four thousand starlings screech, caw and snap their way into a stand of cottonwoods, landing high above Mapleton Mobile Home Park. As the birds settle in, there's another sound, reminiscent of the patter of a summer rainstorm. Only it's not rain. It's the steady "plop-plop" of thousands of birds pooping--splattering people, plants and property from eight stories up. Walkways accumulate an inch and a half of droppings in a day.

The illegal use of a Northridge house by a college fraternity, which resulted in numerous complaints from neighbors, has ended, city officials announced Wednesday. Under a June court settlement with the homeowner over a number of infractions, no more than four members of the Pi Kappa Phi fraternity can live in the one-story ranch house in the 17000 block of Parthenia Street near Cal State Northridge. Also, the residents cannot host parties in the rented house until 2004.

Kay Leibrand has the kind of California courtyard you might see in a magazine: towering redwood trees, a blooming dogwood, fragrant herbs and, beyond those, a dense green hedge between the sidewalk and street that shields her property from traffic noise and unsightly cars. Now that hedge could land her in jail. Leibrand, a 61-year-old software engineer, faces a criminal misdemeanor charge for letting the hedge, a xylosma shrub, grow too high.

The Los Angeles City Council on Wednesday revoked the operating permit of the Sunset Pacific Motel in Silver Lake, which police called one of the most dangerous properties in the city. The 10-0 council vote came after a 20-year community effort to shut down the motel. Police and neighbors have complained that the three-story, 37-room building at 4301 Sunset Blvd. is a den of drug use, shootings and prostitution.

Its real name is the Sunset Pacific Motel, but many Silver Lake residents know it as the Bates Motel. One reason is that the motel is at Bates Avenue and Sunset Boulevard. The other reason is that neighbors say the place is creepy, even if not in exactly the same way as the motel in the Alfred Hitchcock thriller "Psycho." Around Sunset Pacific, the stench of urine is everywhere. Drug dealing is rampant, police say, prostitutes are easy to find and gunshots are common.

Inside the Swedish Salon massage parlor a sign warned prostitutes not to parade outdoors in skimpy clothes because "school was back in session." For three decades, a chain-link fence is all that separated the children at Pomona's Abraham Lincoln Elementary School from the parlor. Youngsters with curious eyes would sometimes get an early lesson in sex education.

Two-year-old Torrey Menne bolts from the frontyard of his Laguna Beach home in tears when motorcycles thunder down Pacific Coast Highway on weekends. All day, Lyn Chevli hears the rumble of bulldozers and dump trucks at the Treasure Island construction site, sounds she and neighbors fear will only be replaced by the din of tourist traffic once the five-star resort opens.

The Villa Park duck lady has a simple lesson to spread: Don't feed the birds. That seemingly animal-friendly gesture landed Judy and Ron Simons in criminal court after a two-year battle with neighbors and city officials. Four days of trial, two hours of jury deliberations and more than $25,000 in legal fees later, the Orange County couple were cleared Tuesday of misdemeanor charges that they created a public nuisance by feeding ducks in their backyard.

A Ku Klux Klan faction that had terrorized neighbors in rural Indiana has agreed to cease all gunfire on its property, except for hunting expeditions by the group's leader and his family. Richard Loy also testified in court that he was not using his Osceola ranch house as a church, although for months he has insisted that the cross-burnings and white power rallies he holds there are a form of religious worship. And, in exchange for Loy dropping a lawsuit claiming religious persecution, St.