IN L.A., IT'S B.Y.O.F(RIDGE).

Byline: Jenifer Hanrahan Daily News Staff Writer

L.A.'s got it all over other towns for apartment living.

You can have palm trees outside your window, a wet bar in your one-bedroom and a piano-shaped pool in the courtyard.

The only thing that's most likely missing when you move in is a refrigerator.

Of all the mysteries to ponder about Los Angeles, like why a man changing a tire can cause traffic to grind to a halt and why Bruce and Demi decided to call it quits, there is no greater conundrum than this.

Justin Ash, 25, could hardly believe it when he moved to North Hollywood from Indiana a couple of years ago. Even his apartments in Muncie and South Bend came with refrigerators, for heaven's sake.

Everything he owned fit in his car. Then all of a sudden, within a few days of arriving, if he wanted milk in his coffee or a cold beer, he needed to fork out the cash to buy a major appliance.

``It's just a huge pain to have to buy something that large for a place you're only going to be in temporarily,'' Ash said.

Take Arch View Apartments in Studio City. Amenities include a Jacuzzi, pool, fitness room with cable TV, sauna, gas fireplace, microwave, dishwasher, washing machine and clothes dryer and a water hook-up for one of those fancy cooling units that feature water and ice from the door.

But the actual fridge? You'll have to bring it yourself or rent one for $35 to $45 a month, said Sandy, an assistant apartment manager who would not reveal her last name.

The reason? Tenants steal them, she said, and it costs too much to keep replacing them.

``I've even watched tenants take out a built-in dishwasher and microwave and range,'' she said. ``If they can get it out, they will steal it, if they are that type.''

Several apartment managers said renters don't take care of refrigerators, and maintaining them costs too much.

It's hard to say when this fridge-free trend took hold throughout the Southland, but anecdotal evidence suggests that older apartment buildings are more likely to have that cool amenity included. Unfortunately, most of these fridges also appear to be from the ice age - before frost-free freezers - which means you periodically have to break through several inches of snowpack to find the frozen peas.

Seriously, though, when it comes to today's refrigerators, what's to maintain? You plug it in. Put the food inside, and open and close the door a few times a day. Wipe up the occasional gooey spill. Nothing to it.

And none of these excuses really begins to answer the mystery of the missing Frigidaires. Even nearly all of those stark dwellings no bigger than an icebox that try to pass themselves off as apartments in cities like New York, Boston and San Francisco come with a food cooling unit.

So why is the Los Angeles area one of the only places with apartments that have an empty nook where the refrigerator should be?

Pat Vaz, a licensed real estate agent and rental consultant at Apartment Search in Woodland Hills, says her data base lists several thousand properties in the Los Angeles area. Only two or three buildings supply fridges.

Janeen Tucker, manager of Summit at Northridge, stopped providing fridges several years ago because - everyone who moved in already had their own.

Now, why do you think that is?

``It's just a different lifestyle here,'' Tucker said. ``We drive a lot, so we have cars, but they don't in places like New York. We also have refrigerators.''