Don’t miss your one and only opportunity to nab the city’s best stocking-stuffers and sundry arcane Chicken Boy tschockes at Future Studio’s Second Saturday in Highland Park!

Future Studio, of course, is home to The Statue of Liberty of Los Angeles—Chicken Boy—and the Chicken Boy Souvenir Stand (as featured in the new edition of L.A. Bizarro, which, by the way, also makes for great holiday gifting; see button at right).

Future Studio Gallery will also be hosting “Soft,” a show of artist’s soft toys and sculptures which are, according to Future Studio matriarch and Chicken Boy’s mom, Amy Inouye, “priced to move!”

The event happens Saturday, December 11 from 7-10PM (if your dance card’s full, you can nab the wares via the interweb on the Chicken Boy Shop website). But whether you just want to check out Future Studio’s inimitable digs or simply marvel at the majesty that is Chicken Boy, just try to leave without purchasing at least one floaty pen or coffee mug. Just try, we dare you.

The super bitchin’ neon sign of the Safari Inn (1911 West Olive Avenue, Burbank) was one of the many noteworthy drive-by gems around greater Southern California that we didn’t have room for in the new edition of L.A. Bizarro. And it’s just as well, because since the book went to press we made a startling discovery: the Safari Inn played host to the Partridge Family!

In the famous episode “But The Memory Lingers On” (Season 1, Episode #8),  the Partridge family bus gets contaminated by a frightened skunk while the band is en route to a charity gig at a children’s hospital.  With no time to spare, P-Fam pulls over to the first motel they spot (The Safari) to book a quick shower for an intensive de-stinking.  Although the Safari Inn turned them away (they apparently don’t book by the hour, not then, not now), you can see the hilarity unfold in exterior shots of the motel parking lot—bus and all—easily identified by the tell-tale African moderne wrought iron of the second-floor railing.  The iconic signage, however, never made it into the frame, and we assume the location was chosen due only to it’s proximity to the Columbia lot, where the show was filmed, and not for the bitchin’ neon.

IMPORTANT PARTRIDGE FAMILY FOOTNOTE: The provenance of the Partridge family bus is well documented, but where it ended up after the show was cancelled remains a mystery. Apparently it was never gifted to a car museum, or repurposed by the studio. There is, in fact, a web-sourced rumor that the original Partridge Family bus (there are several fakes) sat—vandalized—behind “Lucy’s Mexican restaurant on Martin Luther King Blvd. near USC” until 1987 (?!?), at which point it was allegedly towed to a wrecking yard.  The rumor is erroneous at best however, as Lucy’s is on Melrose.

In any case, anyone who can produce a photo of the Partridge Family bus parked behind a Mexican Restaurant adjacent to USC  gets a free signed copy of L.A. Bizarro!  Anyone who can tell us how it got there, and, more importantly, where it went, will win a wild night of unbridled polyamorous passion with the L.A. Bizarro author of your choice. Or both of us together if you swing that way.  We just really want to know what happened to our favorite bus, and we’ll do anything to find out—as long as it’s legal in the state of California and doesn’t involve children or animals.