As international gossips know, a Hamburg newspaper...

As international gossips know, a Hamburg newspaper recently tried to establish a romantic link between Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev and L.A. model Masha Kalinina, a former Miss Moscow.

Kalinina responded in the American way. She scheduled a press conference.

She’ll discuss the vague allegations in the article this morning at the L.A. Press Club in the Hollywood Palm Hotel. Her publicist, who notes that Kalinina was the first beauty pageant winner in Soviet history, said the 19-year-old woman will be available “for one-on-one interviews” regarding Gorby or her “international efforts as a spokesperson for environmental concerns. . . .”

We hardly need add that Kalinina is also taking acting lessons.

A KCBS-TV commentary on the LAPD the other night made a reference to former FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover--and whose face popped up on the screen? Why, that of Herbert Hoover. No, not the founder of the vacuum cleaner company. The ex-President of the United States.

But no one’s perfect. For instance, we should have said Wednesday that extension of the Long Beach Freeway through South Pasadena would mean the loss of, not several, but several hundred Craftsman and Mediterranean revival-style homes.

Some L.A. streets, with scenic names such as Ocean View, Flower, Olive, etc., now seem like misnomers. That is not the case with one that Alan Kishbaugh photographed in North Hollywood.

List of the Day:

KDAY-AM (1580), which once played “Top 40” hits and later changed to rap music, recently adopted an all-business news approach with new call letters (KBLA-AM). It’s only one of several local stations that have undergone format transplants:

1--KOST-FM (103.5): Now plays “adult contemporary” music, once broadcast classified ads 24 hours a day when it was KADS.

2--KLAC-AM (570): Now country, once played Big Band music. In between, it was all-talk. (Who can forget host Joe Pyne growling to callers, “Gargle some razor blades and call me back”?)

3--KKHJ-AM (930): Now Spanish, formerly was known as KHJ, when it played, at various times, oldies, country, and rock ‘n’ roll (“Boss Radio”).

4--KAZN-AM (1300)-- Now plays Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean and Thai music; formerly played Spanish music.

5--KLON-FM (88.1): Now all jazz, formerly was all polka. Before that, it played opera and Portuguese music. Originally, it broadcast elementary school lessons, when it was owned by the Long Beach Unified School District.

miscelLAny:

One of the earliest private swimming pools in L.A. County was a 200-foot-long plunge built for Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford at their Pickfair estate in Beverly Hills around 1920. The pool also had a sand beach, though no lifeguard.