Your Canoga Park Quilt Guide To Illegal Fireworks

By Quilt staff.

AS A PUBLIC SERVICE to our readers, we’d like to offer our recommendations for the best in illegal fireworks here in the West Valley. We’ve tested each one dozens of times — often after 2 a.m. and in various neighborhoods — and rated them on the following criteria:  

• Noise
• Potential for physical injury to the individual lighting it
• Hearing loss for those in the “blast zone”
• Potential for damage to surrounding property / collateral damage
• Noise
• Potential for physical injury to active spectators
• Noise
• Potential for physical injury to innocent bystanders
• PFQ, or pet freakout quotient (an average comprised of number of pets who frantically run from their homes trying to escape the noise, or shake uncontrollably for extended periods of time)
• Noise
• Posts complaining in vain about previous night's fireworks on Nextdoor.com and Facebook's local crime-reporting group in a desperate hope that those who are lighting fireworks are inexplicably civic-minded enough to be members of said online communities, will read such posts and adjust their behavior accordingly
• Noise

Based on those scores we have rated the following fireworks, available from your favorite illegal fireworks dealer, as the best of the best.

Victory Over Victory

Turn your neighborhood into a warzone with this 9-missile cluster. Light the fuse and watch the lights go on in houses down the street!

Owensmouth Explosion

Laffs galore when set up in the middle of that 4-way stop at Valerio! Potential for causing dangerous traffic accidents! Fun!

LA River Basin Reverberator
Powerful enough to shake loose the homeless folks from under the overpasses along the bikepath every time!

Riot at Rocketdyne

Solemnly remember Canoga Park’s legacy in the aerospace industry by giving those poor security guards something to do at 3 a.m. — chase after people old enough to know better — in underpowered golf carts!

Saticoy Salute

Shoots high into the air with a satisfying, spark-showering bang even if you can’t see the colorful explosion through all the dry, brittle leaves of the trees overhead!

Lanark Park Bombardment

160-shot repeater rains down lights, sparks and burnt paper casings everywhere! They'll be cleaning it out of the municipal pool through Labor Day!

Big Noise From Winnetka

Huge explosion accompanied by jazzy, whistling report! A delight for fans of both unnecessary noise and obscure references to 1940s songs!

Blowin’ Up Vanowen

Sends local cats under beds for weeks!  They won’t be coaxed out until the first week of August!

Warner Epi-Center

Condo-rattling boom spontaneously triggers bladder evacuation of small- to medium-sized dogs and the elderly!

The Carnage At Topanga

Extra gunpowder plus extremely short fuses guarantee a trip to the emergency room for you & all bystanders within a blast radius of 15 feet. Tissue loss has never been so patriotic!

Roscoe Racket

Powerful enough to make even the largest dog breeds instantly lose large patches of fur from stress up to a half-mile away!

Strathern Strafer

Unbalanced 60-shot bottle rocket blaster designed to fall to one side and shoot out horizontally!  Easily damages cars, private property, passersby. 

Corbin Calamity

Guaranteed to fly erratically and take out at least one eye!

Chatsworth Conflagration

They practically seek out wood-shingle roofs!





DeSoto Detonation

Amputates thumb and cauterizes the wound in one loud bang!

Sherman Way Shitstorm

An explosion of light, sound, and, if timed right, swerving cars!

Fallbrook Finger Remover

Who really needs all ten?

No Sleep ‘Til Northridge

You don’t have to work tomorrow — what do you care about anyone else? 

Reseda Ruckus

Fills the neighborhood with brief flashes of light, enormous noise, and noxious smoke that seems to hang in the air for hours!

• • • Remember, except for shows run by professional, licensed, permitted "pyrotechnicians" or fireworkologists, personal fireworks are illegal to own or set off in our little corner of Los Angeles County, can be extremely dangerous in a high density urban area such as ours, and cause untold amounts of frustration to people who actually work for a living and enormous distress to pets. However, this is the San Fernando Valley in 2017; civility was blown up and killed by a box of M-80s years ago (and it probably looked really cool) and thankfully we now live in an era where immature selfish entitlement reigns supreme.  

What's more, by the time anyone complaining actually gets through LAPD’s non-emergency line and speaks with Dispatch, you’ll be long gone, probably off carving donuts into the pavement of Platt Avenue near Pomelo in West Hills!  • • •  

Happy Fourth of—  ...Happy Months-Long Fireworks Season!

Canoga Park Participates In Bold New Pilot Program To Help Acclimate Seniors To Extreme Temperatures

By Sherman Farralone, Quilt staff

DATELINE: JORDAN AVENUE

In addition to offering a cool, air-conditioned retreat to help escape the effects of the current heatwave, the Canoga Park Senior Citizens' Center is launching a new pilot program that may help seniors deal with high temperatures in other ways.

“Summer just began today and already the West Valley's a blast furnace” says Jeanette Ulichny of LA's Department of Age & Age-Related Aging. “It’s only going to get worse and we’re guaranteed to get no relief until November. That’s why we’re exploring new approaches to help seniors deal with the heat.”

According to Ulichny, when the Senior Center reaches capacity, three seniors will be selected at random, escorted outside and directed to climb into one of three large cardboard boxes sitting on the sidewalk in the hot sun. The boxes will then be duct-taped shut and the seniors will endure invigoratingly stifling heat for five to seven minutes.

Hot Flash of Genius: By temporarily moving seniors into cardboard boxes out front, the Canoga
Park Senior Citizens' Center helps condition the elderly to extreme temperatures while preventing
overcrowded conditions inside.  Seniors could reap heat-related health benefits, too.  Staff photo.

“Once we let them back out, the outside temperature, no matter how high, will seem delightfully refreshing by comparison. Then, after another ten minutes standing on the sidewalk in the hot sun, slurping steaming hot mugs of Pepsi Fire, they’ll be allowed in the Senior Center again and three other guests will be moved outside and into the boxes," says Ulichny, who developed the practice, known as "cartoning," when she worked as the activity director for a now-defunct chain of low-cost nursing home facilities.

A favorite with seniors, Tuscan
Pops were discontinued in 1983.

Extreme heat on the body often can result in lowering blood pressure and increasing circulation — two positive effects that many elderly folks may benefit from. Additionally, the "cartoning" experience could potentially help aged persons on hot days when they can't make it to the Senior Citizens' Center or any of LA's other cooling centers.

"Where they otherwise might sit in their homes thinking 'Christ almighty, this heat is unbearable,'" explains Ulichny, "Now they might think 'Wow, yeah, this heat's a real bastard, the a/c hasn't worked in years, I'm out of Tuscan Pops and I'm stuck to this vinyl-backed chair — but at least I'm not in The Box.'"

Ulichny notes that if successful, the program may be extended to allow for additional boxes.  “My husband and I just bought a new stove, so I may bring the carton with me tomorrow.”

•    •    •    •    •

Correction: Whoops!  Turns out the Canoga Park Senior Citizens' Center is in no danger of overcrowding and is a marvelous place for those who need to cool down in an air-conditioned environment to spend the day. We regret the error. For a complete list of LA County Cooling Centers click here, or dial 311 from your telephone.

Canoga Park Teen Impregnates Friend's Girlfriend In Same Area of Park Where He Was Conceived

By Ingomar Schoenborn, Quilt staff

DATELINE: LANARK PARK


Father's Day has imparted extra-special significance to an already amazing set of circumstances for a local family this year: A Canoga Park teen recently impregnated a pal's girlfriend within a few feet of where he was conceived roughly two decades ago — under the same tree, by the same garbage can and on the same blanket at Lanark Park — yet mother & son had no idea of the remarkable coincidence until a cousin, friends with both of them on Facebook, noticed similarities between the pictures they posted commemorating the events.

The ritual of fornicating on the ground in a public park, or parkschtupping, is well-known in the West Valley.

Dr. Morris Detzer.
Photo: Mimi Detzer

"Folks engaging in parkschtupping are a common sight in our local parks," says Dr. Morris Detzer, head of the Center for Sex & Sexy Studies at Pierce College Winnetka. "We see it all the time: Two people who are involved in other relationships will arrange a rendezvous in a public park, traditionally on a ratty old blanket. While it generally starts with clothed but inappropriate groping, one thing quickly leads to another, passions are set aflame, and before you know it, a bunch of 8-year-olds from a local youth soccer league playing nearby get an early lesson in human anatomy and reproduction. It's the circle of life."

Says soon-to-be absentee papa Radek Murta, 19, of his recent public hook-up, "We like went to the park an' shit 'cause my Mom was home an' shit, you know? I just f_ckin' grabbed this old, like, blanket off the couch an' shit so we had something to lay on, right? When we was doin' it, Valeska [his schtup partner] was all complainin' an' shit because she rolled off the blanket and onto some dog shit and then onto some broken glass, but I'm like 'shut uhhhp!' you know?"

Above: Jana Murta in the act of conceiving her first son, Radek, in June of 1997 with "some married guy who like drove a truck for like the DWP," she remembers. "Holy shit, I had like good legs back then, right?"

Below: Radek Murta, Jana's son, on that same blanket last week, "with my homie's girl Valeska who works the graveyard shift at that strip club on Canoga an' shit." Based on the placement of the benches around the playground, it has been determined mother and son enjoyed illicit assignations within a few feet of one another — some 20 years apart.

"Oh my gahhh!" says Jana as she compares the two pictures on Facebook. "I like forgah that was the blanket we used. I've had that thing like forever. Who knows — maybe my mother used it too! Ooh, Raddie, you better like wash that thing before you put it back on the couch!"

"Heh heh heh...That's like crazy an' shit," chuckles her son. "It's like one of them...f_ckin' whaddayacall...coincidences an' shit! Man, I should give the blanket to Valeska so when her kid gets with someone in the park, they can use it, too."

The teen-aged father of three — soon to be four — beams with pride as he holds the wadded up blanket. "This shit's like a family hair-loom — like that you f_ckin' hand down an' shit!"

Canoga Park Resident Baffled By Mysterious Note

By Blythe Moorcroft, Quilt Staff

DATELINE: VASSAR AVENUE

A man in Canoga Park remains puzzled and confused after finding a cryptic note taped to the doorbell button at his front door last week.

“Well, I came home from work and there it was, just hanging there,” says Téodor Pasternak, an assembler with a local pool filter manufacturer. “I still don’t know what to make of it.”

The inscrutable note, typed in Arial Narrow 12 pt. and photocopied on standard 20-lb weight copy paper, reads in part: “Dear Neighbors: We just moved in to the house on the corner. My father is visiting and will be turning 60 on Friday, so we are having some friends & family over to celebrate his birthday. If at some point we get too loud, please feel free to come over and let us know or give me a call. Or just drop by and introduce yourself and have some cake.”

The incomprehensible message concludes with a friendly closing, a hand-written signature in blue ink, a name and a phone number.

Says Pasternak “I mean, I understand all those words. The phrasing, the entire sentences make sense. But when you put it all together, it loses all meaning. I’m at a complete loss. What is this person trying to say?”

Doorbell Cipher: The mysterious note was confiscated by the LAPD who were "concerned" but
had no answers.  It is currently being studied by Pierce College Winnetka's Cryptography Dept. 

Pasternak noticed similar pieces of paper on his neighbors’ doors, and was curious if they had any answers but had no means of communicating with them. “This is LA — this is Canoga Park,” he explained. “You don’t just go and talk to your next-door neighbor!”

As for whatever occurrence was planned for Friday night, Pasternak says he guesses it didn’t happen. 

“I heard some music for a little while, but it wasn’t loud at all — I mean, I didn't even have to close my windows — and it stopped at a reasonable hour. I did hear people quietly singing a song, and at the end, there was a little bit of cheering for a couple of seconds, but that part was over almost immediately,” says the baffled Pasternak. “At one point [that night] I went out to the store, and while there were a few extra cars on the street, no one was blocking my driveway. So I guess whatever these people had intended to do was canceled.

“I mean, there can be no other possible explanation.”