Vinyl

Re "Faking It" (Dec. 17): So the vegans get free press in View promoting their lifestyle sans animal products. Thankfully, in America we have the freedom to choose what to wear, eat and benefit from (medical advances, for example). I choose to wear natural products--fur, leather, wool and silk. This way my conscience is clear. I'm not polluting the planet with rubber and vinyl manufacturing plants. I'm not supporting those huge tankers that carry gasoline from which synthetics are made, and that in one accident at sea have wiped out entire ecosystems.

For women, and perhaps for panty-hose promoter Joe Namath, there's Runaway, a new, clear liquid that stops hosiery runs in seconds. Runaway, which doesn't stick to your leg like nail polish, comes in a little bottle that can be kept in purse or desk drawer. It has a control-tip sponge applicator that measures out the proper amount of liquid. Tracie Cessna--a computer sales representative from Westlake Village, Calif., who says she invented her product because she got tired of slapping "gobs of sticky nail polish" on her legs--cautions consumers to keep Runaway, which is flammable, away from heat or flame.

Magnus Walker steps between the scarred carcasses of Porsche 911s lining his garage wall. He pauses and points to a gaping hole where the car's front hood should be. "Cars in here have to die," he says, "so others can live. " With a chest-length beard and finger-thick dreadlocks, the 45-year-old English immigrant doesn't look like a prototypical buttoned-down Porsche collector. But for more than a decade, Walker has worked in downtown L.A.'s arts district, transforming scrap heaps into one-off custom 911s, earning him the nickname "Urban Outlaw.

It's a dry heat - a boulder-studded, wind-raked Mojave heat, in which rock stars lie low, artists think big, marines train, weird plants jut toward the sun like beseeching biblical figures, and climbers cling to granite walls like insects stuck to flypaper, except the climbers are way happier. That's a notable thing about Joshua Tree National Park and the towns around it. While legions of Californians keep their faces to the beach, no matter the season, a certain stripe of traveler is powerless to resist the desert, especially in cooler months.

Southern California, long the epicenter for customizing cars and motorcycles, is now also the go-to place for made-to-order food trucks. The food truck craze has revived one of the region's classic postwar businesses — catering trucks — breathing new life into the companies that sprang up decades ago to make the vehicles that frequent construction sites, factories and movie shoots. Hopeful gourmet truck entrepreneurs come from all over the country to get retired vehicles transformed into gleaming, rolling emporiums that dish out everything from comfort food to exotic fare.

Retired Huntington Beach firefighter Robert LaFever, 61, and his wife, Gaye, 57, a retired dental hygienist, wanted to stay fit with daily swimming and water running, but didn't like the heavily chlorinated water at the gym and didn't have the budget and backyard space for their own full-size pool. The solution? Last year they got a swim spa -- essentially an elongated hot tub with a current emanating from one end.

From handcrafted, one-of-a-kind art dolls to mass-market factory imports, an estimated 3 million Americans collect contemporary dolls. The market is estimated at $1.4 billion a year and growing. But while magazine ads and home shopping channels have made collecting dolls as easy as paying for them in monthly installments, experts caution that doll collecting isn't child's play. One pitfall is the belief that any doll is an investment that will grow in value.

They keep saying that Hollywood is being transformed. They keep talking up new places to dwell and shop and dine. On the boulevard, such change can seem spotty and slight: Tourists still look nonplused as they try to sync image and reality. Stores along the Walk of Fame still skew toward glass water pipes, thigh-high vinyl boots and "World's Greatest Cousin" souvenir statuettes. Just west of Vine, you still find the sign advertising girls: "Totally Nude, Totally Naakt, Totalement Nue, Benar-Benar Bugil.