Downtown L.A.--playground of athletes.No sooner does the...

Downtown L.A.--playground of athletes.

No sooner does the local World Trade Center open a golf driving range than a firing range debuts a few blocks to the east. Something new to do on your lunch break.

“I wanted to have a business close to the tourist trade downtown,” explained Elias Yidonoy Jr., owner of the L.A. Gun Club on East 6th Street.

“We’re targeting visiting businessmen, especially from Asia and Mexico who have more firearms restrictions in their own countries. I have one customer from Mexico City who told me he used to have to pull off the highway when he wanted to practice shooting.”

Yidonoy, a Korean-American who speaks Spanish, said one of his most popular items is a Thompson submachine gun.

“People want to try it because they’ve seen it in the movies,” he said.

Customers are welcome to bring their own weapons to the 15-lane indoor range, located in a neighborhood where bullets sometimes fly outdoors too. Law enforcement officers receive a 50% discount on the $6-per-hour range time.

Aside from offering weapons and ammunition, the club sells knickknacks such as bullet key chains and features a VCR in the lobby for waiting gunslingers. On Thursday afternoon, the VCR was playing a shoot-’em-up starring Kurt Russell. Mood music.

William Cartwright Jr. of West Los Angeles finds it odd that, in a survey quoted by The Times’ View section Thursday, Gov. George Deukmejian listed one of his favorite childhood books as “The Making of the President.”

Cartwright points out that the book was published in 1961, when Deukmejian was a tyke of 33.

Freeway Spill du Jour: On the Artesia Freeway in Lakewood, a volleyball net.

In case you missed any of the riveting episodes of the weeklong series by KNBC (Channel 4) on Bigfoot, the station’s crack investigative team failed to find the beast, though an alleged Bigfoot hair was found.

Maybe KNBC will be able to find the big guy (or gal) during the next rating sweeps period.

The angry garbage hauler who dumped 10 loads of trash in front of City Hall in a protest over job conditions calls to mind a similar splash made by an artist who dropped two tons of horse manure outside The Times building a few years ago.

Lee Waisler was protesting what he considered an unfair review of his work in this paper. “I’m just making my statement,” he said, after dumping a steaming load from a red rental truck. “I consider this (the manure heap) to be a piece of art--performance art.”

When a police officer arrived to ask what happened a few minutes later, someone in the crowd shouted: “It belongs to The Times.”

“It was a big horse,” another person yelled.

“It all comes together in The Times,” said a third voice.

The other day, we mentioned that the celebrated L.A. street sign that says, “111st St.”--that’s One Hundred-Eleven Street Street--might steal the civic redundancy award from “the La Brea Tar Pits, which translates as the Tar Tar Pits.”

No way, writes Jerry Martz, pointing out that “the La Brea Tar Pits” actually translates as “The The Tar Tar Pits.”

OK, OK.