Has the traffic chaos in L.A. reached...

Has the traffic chaos in L.A. reached the point where the meter maids are turning on each other?

That seemed the case on North Main Street Wednesday. Two parking-enforcement vehicles sat idle, each bearing parking tickets.

“It probably indicates a misunderstanding,” understated Jesse Johnson, chief of parking enforcement operations.

Johnson speculated that the tickets were not handed out by meter maids--or meter misters--but by Los Angeles police officers.

“Sometimes police personnel who take it upon themselves to cite our vehicles don’t know that a person writing tickets may park illegally while doing so,” the parking chief said.

Johnson, who couldn’t remember a case of a parking cop ever receiving a parking ticket, said the two citations will be turned over to the city parking administrator.

We’re betting that the parking cops will be able to fight City Hall.

Speaking of inter-departmental rivalries, 20 sheriff’s deputies recently teamed up to win the 1990 Baker-to-Las Vegas Law Enforcement Run, defeating squads of Los Angeles police, FBI agents

and officers of several other agencies. (The FBI runners were probably hampered by those street shoes and three-piece suits.)

Since Sheriff Sherman Block and Police Chief Daryl F. Gates made a personal bet on the outcome, a Sheriff’s Department banner will be posted for a month at the LAPD’s Parker Center.

Incidentally, a media team finished 95th, maintaining the slovenly image of the profession.

Amid all the other gloomy statistics, the Gorman School District in the northern tip of the county reported no crimes for the 1988-89 year. Congratulations to the district’s pupils, all 42

of them.

A warning to visitors (see accompanying photo) is one more indication that LAX is turning into a zoo.

Who needs the Getty, anyway? Venice, which is sort of an outdoor museum unto itself, is showing its own version of Van Gogh off Ocean Front Walk--”Homage to a Starry Knight” by Rip Cronk.

Southland film locations crop up in some curious ways in “Retakes,” by John Eastman:

For the film “Elmer Gantry,” true believers were recruited from revivalist tent meetings in Long Beach and bused to a studio tent mock-up, where “many believed they were actually in church

and joined wholeheartedly in the singing and emotionalism.”

In “Casablanca,” Rick made his emotional goodby to Ilsa outside an airport hangar in Van Nuys. (What was that he said--”We’ll always have Encino”?)

During the filming of “Touch of Evil” near Venice Beach, director/star Orson Welles suffered sprains and bruises when he fell into one of the canals.

Of all the places on Earth to choose, the title star of “E.T.” landed in Tujunga.

A Great Western Bank stands where numerous celebrities frolicked at a collection of bungalows known as the Garden of Allah on Sunset Boulevard. Writer Robert Benchley was said to have fallen

into a pool there and declared: “Get me out of these clothes and into a dry martini.” Though bulldozed in 1959, the Garden survives in a sense: A model is housed in a glass bubble in the

bank.