SIDEWALK WITH A VIEW : AT PEDESTRIAN PACE, THE VALLEY'S MAIN STREET REVEALS ODD SCHEMES, DOZENS OF DREAMS AND ONE OF ALMOST EVERYTHING.

Byline: Story by Glenn Gaslin

Dawn, the $20 psychic, fidgets with a stack of cards. She closes her eyes to the light of three candles. She takes in the trickling of a desktop waterfall, the smell of incense, the presence of another human.

``Do you have any questions?'' she asks me, opening her eyes, looking across the table in the tiny back room of a New Age superstore in Tarzana.

``Will I survive walking all 17 miles of Ventura Boulevard? Will I make it to the end?''

Earlier that day, on the far west end of the street, in a bowling alley parking lot, I began my journey. I started walking the San Fernando Valley's world-famous asphalt river of culture and commerce end to end.

I set out at a pedestrian pace to explore all five communities and 133 intersections of this street, usually experienced through a car window at 35 mph.

A few miles into the two-day hike, among the strip malls, storefront boutiques, lawyers' offices and nail salons that define the stretch, I stop for spiritual guidance.

Dawn Graham, a doe-eyed visionary who does readings (and, as it turns out, massages) at Tarzana's Imagine Center, ushers me to the back room, perhaps the single most relaxing place on The Boulevard.

I quiz her about The Boulevard.

``I'm not sure if you'll make it all the way,'' she says. She closes her eyes. ``Maybe two-thirds of the way.''

``But what about my relationship with Ventura Boulevard?'' I persist. ``How am I getting along with this street?''

She opens her eyes. She smiles.

``Ventura is like Disneyland to you,'' she says. ``Yeah, it's hot out there, but it's fun.''

Welcome to VenturaLand!

Ventura Boulevard begins in Studio City, between a freeway on-ramp and a Fatburger. The street was born in 1916, when there were no freeways or Fatburgers, when the city of L.A. merged a half-dozen roads under a single name, when the stretch that once served as a dusty highway for Spanish missionaries - El Camino Real, the King's Highway - became Ventura Boulevard.

In the next 80 years, the explosion of suburbia and the attention of Hollywood have made The Boulevard a cultural landmark of sorts, a kinetic, familiar face of L.A. And now the city has plans to reinvent The Boulevard, to urbanize the former trail, to bring together its five communities in a more pedestrian-friendly areas.

The idea builds upon dozens of L.A. institutions that, amid decades of come-and-gone commercial blips, have held the miles together as one 17-mile neighborhood. These icons include the Sportsmen's Lodge, CBS Studios, the deco facades in Studio City and the imposing white exterior of the Sherman Oaks Galleria.

And people like Art.

``Ventura Boulevard has a character of it's own; it's got a lot of history,'' explains Art Ginsburg, 61, who has owned and run Art's Delicatessen (``where every sandwich is a work of Art'') on the same Studio City site for 39 years.

He's seen the street go from rural highway to neighborhood. He's seen his original single storefront expand into five, his 28 seats grow to 150, his customers' favorite take-out sandwich go from pastrami to turkey.

``But, in a way, the street hasn't changed,'' he says. ``Studio City has always been called a sleepy town, a small town. It still has buildings from the '30s. It's still a small town, but it's modernized.''

From the foot of the Cahuenga Pass in Ginsberg's Studio City, The Boulevard cuts west through Sherman Oaks, Encino, Tarzana and Woodland Hills, slicing the Valley from end to end along its southern edge, offering a sample of the city's core, a parade of everything possible in Los Angeles, a skinny city unto itself, the Valley's main street.

Here a traveler can find gas, food and lodging. Ritzy hotels and hourly-rate holes. Consumers and Communists. Bums and stray dogs. Men in ties, eating Thai. Places called Amazon and Antarctica and Venus Cleaners. The Venus de Milo done in front-yard stone. Cops and criminals. Dangerous chemicals. Brand-new Ferraris Volkswagen Bugs.

And three bowling alleys.

One of these rests on the barren, western end of the trail, amid arid hills and, by Valley standards, wide-open space. This is where my journey begins. In the parking lot. The end of Ventura Boulevard.

Bums, bagels and loathing in Woodland Hills

I walk a mile with Daily News photographer David Sprague before meeting anybody. Beneath the freeway overpass at Fallbrook Avenue, a young woman stares at her 1972 VW Beetle, a bright orange bump stalled on the edge of The Boulevard.

``I've had it for one day,'' says Sandy Walkiewiez as her boyfriend toys with the ignition. ``One day!''

Had she not traded a Honda for the semi-mobile VW (plus cash), she might be at her job at the bike shop a mile down The Boulevard.

Instead, she waits as car after car pours out onto the street from the freeway and heads east past her.

``Normally,'' she says, ``I walk.''

The floating pool slide catches me by surprise. It just hangs there, above the street, suspended above a short brick shopping strip.

This hovering fiberglass swoosh would blend just fine further down the street. It would fit right in with the architectural absurdity, its novelty lost among the large plastic bee and the building that looks like a Cadillac.

But this stretch has yet to achieve the density that defines The Boulevard. This is Woodland Hills, the frontier, the outer limits. You can actually hear birds.

Flying yard furniture catches your eye.

Few of the 19,892 drivers passing through the Fallbrook intersection each day could possibly notice the signpost. At a nearby street corner, a white-picket marker points in three directions: ``Colombia'' and ``Seattle'' and ``Kona.'' It leads in only one, though, off The Boulevard to a pool of tranquillity that I would expect to find in Malibu or Montana, a Walden-esque outdoor coffee shop.

In the Secret Garden, owner Maria Hiona serves espresso from a tiny portable food stand. A tiny stuffed Peter Rabbit enjoys a tiny cup of tea with a tiny stuffed Babar the elephant. An African gray parrot watches from its cage. A child fishes for leaves in a trickling pond all set about with rocks inscribed with ``Believe'' and ``Inspiration'' and ``Love.'' Talking rocks, she says.

``This used to be a parking lot,'' says Hiona. ``I turned it into a garden.''

Just east of the garden, at Topanga Canyon Boulevard, a man wandering across a parking lot carrying a heavy plastic bag scavenges for eye contact. He finds it.

``Sir,'' he asks me. ``Can you help me get something to eat?''

The corner he cruises serves as a fat, happy microcosm of the street. It hosts strip malls packed with generically named small businesses - nails, pets, doughnuts, Thai - as well as megamarkets like Ralphs and Vons, Petco and Blockbuster.

My companion offers the panhandler a tip, saying,``Noah's is giving away free bagels.''

``I know,'' the man says, grinning and holding up his luggage. ``I got a whole bag full.''

He pauses. ``So ... but I need milk for my kids,'' he says finally. ``So ... I need $3.''

Ah, but $3 won't get you much on Ventura Boulevard, buddy. Not in this legendary linear shopping mall where anything on heaven and earth can be bought and sold: A bag of bagels. A banana. A cat. Shiny pants. Three hours in a dark motel room. A futon. Toilets. Pinball machines from the '50s. A G-string for a 600-pound woman. A life-size panther made from leather. A condo-size piece of construction equipment, leaking oil and stationed in a parking lot ($30,000 or best offer).

You can even purchase something red and Italian in which to cruise these truly American miles. Woodland Hills has one of only two new Ferrari dealers in Los Angeles. Models start at about $120,000.

On the morning I enter the showroom, two blocks from the bagel-toting beggar, it is as empty as a Testarossa's back seatI.

``Mondays are slow,'' a salesman explains. ``But, we do get a lot of Lottery winners on Mondays.''

When taking customers on test drives, he avoids the busy boulevard.

``You can't really drive these cars the way they're supposed to be driven,'' he says.

As I hit the street again, plodding east, I realize that I'm keeping pace with the early-morning garbage truck.

Me Tarzana. You Encino.

You've seen the lions. If you drive Ventura Boulevard regularly, you've seen the two patient concrete-gray carnivores staring into traffic at the lush and mysterious corner of Lindley Avenue.

You've seen the sign reading, ``How long have you been driving by? Isn't it time you stopped in?'' You've seen what looks like a huge yard crowded with concrete statues. And you've wondered: What's in there?

On this block of Ventura Boulevard, stone frogs spit, dolphins spout, pelicans spew and green naked boys fish. Buddhas grin, monkeys scratch and Roman soldiers slouch. Nymphs gather around a goblet, curly haired Chinese dragon dogs guard doric columns and an armless Venus practices her look of coyness.

As I browse this zoo of mythology, a quizzical-looking Beatrice Arata arrives. She needs tall columns and light posts for her Northridge garden, already inhabited by little stone boys.

``A lot of people think I'm nuts,'' she says, ``but I think L.A. should be beautified.''

Ventura Boulevard is not, as they say, ``at one'' with nature. Stand anywhere on the street and you will likely see only other parts of the same street. No grass. Few trees. Maybe a foothill or two. It is its own, self-contained, artificial ecosystem, an asphalt biosphere.

Sure, I enjoy the two fields of rolling green in Tarzana as much as the next guy who has just walked through miles of sprawl. But those are open spaces mandated by giant power lines passing through the area. And, sure, The Boulevard runs wild with creatures great, small and otherwise. But a stray stringy dog with mismatched eyes and a gang oIf crows `outside the Weinery in Woodland Hills don't exactly qualify as safari material.

A woman gets her nails done. And another. And then one more. The scene repeats itself up and down the street, in almost every strip mall on every block. In one of the 43 such places along The Boulevard, a Tarzana store called Top Nails, fingernail technician Andy Luu attaches, buffs and polishes acrylic tips onto the ends of a lounging woman's digits.

``You've got to be careful,'' warns the customer, Galit Barsano, who explains how unwanted, undetected fungus under your nails can lead to trouble.

At that moment, as if on cue, another woman enters the store carrying a tray of hot cheese danishes.

``You should buy one of these,'' she tells Luu, ``$1.25.''

He ignores her, instead focusing on the bowl of powder and liquid he mixes, and brushes and wipes on Barsano's nails.

``Oh, but smell them,'' pleads the pastry woman. ``They smell so good.''

Nobody bites.

The most affordable item in Recon-1, the biggest, baddest and only armory on Ventura Boulevard, won't kill anyone. But to find it, you have to notice the place first, the storefront that stands out because of the camping equipment and possum-size knives in the window. Inside, Greg Kalaydjian packs 5,000 small nylon knife-holders into boxes for shipment to Germany. His walls and cases house everything needed to outfit an army, modern or medieval: Samurai swords and spears, gas masks and machetes, enough well-crafted knives for 100 casts of ``West Side Story.'' Or a big-budget action film. Jean-Claude Van Damme, even, has wielded the store's thick metal blades and custom-made ammo packs on screen. He didn't, however, blow any bad guys away with the most unlikely display in Recon-1, the Handy Helper Tissue Packs, resting on a knife display case and sold in a box decorated with hand-drawn happy faces. Only 25 cents.

The guy in the Hooters T-shirt doesn't really want to be standing on the Tarzana sidewalk holding a sponge on a stIick. Scou`ring dirty store-front awnings on The Boulevard isn't his passion.

``Actually, I'm a headline comic,'' says Dylan Riggs, who usually lives in New York but came to Los Angeles to work on television pilots.

He dips the mop into a cleaning solution - he had a chemist cook it up special from ``all kinds of stuff, oranges and things'' - and scours the surface again. He explains that the awning cleaning service is only one of three businesses he started, all of them sidelines for his real career.

``People's awnings all over the place,'' he says, scrubbing and scrubbing, ``they're nasty.''

Today is a Ventura Boulevard day for Elliot Gray. Often, when the wind blows and the waves kick a little higher, you'll find him 15 miles away at the beach. But as I pass the White Oak Avenue intersection, the nose-ringed 20-year-old sits in front of Our Lady of Grace church, his feet resting on his primary mode of transport, a skateboard.

The man spins his lifestyle around Ventura Boulevard. He has an apartment right off the street in Encino. He works here, too, at Earth Wind & Flour, cruising the nighttime street making dinner deliveries. And he just grabbed lunch at Carl's Jr. down the street.

``I like to just get out here and look at people,'' he says, scanning faces in front seats. ``And look at people looking at other people.''

He chooses the church-front corner as his human-watching post, where, sometimes, he'll take pictures of red-light hostages.

``This street is wild,'' says the skateboarding bard. ``Stores go in and out so fast.''

He looks around at the block, which, he says, could be any other block.

``There's always stuff like this,'' he says, pointing to a chain-linked construction site across the street. ``It's never complete.''

That downtownlike, Sherman Oaks-city vibe thing going on

As I head east, The Boulevard's character begins to change. Evidence emerges of a more intense, more urban aesthetic: Posters plastered on barren walls. Peddlers.I Graffiti.` Sanctioned art. Tattered signs declaring American capitalism corrupt and calling for a meeting of like-minded individuals. Lawyers and businesspeople pouring from high-rises.

From Sepulveda Boulevard and to the east in Sherman Oaks, The Boulevard begins to glow with an aura borrowed from cousin boulevards Sunset and Hollywood. Pedestrians slow down and see things, hop on buses, eat on the sidewalk, exchange curbside commentary.

At 5:15 on a Monday night, 17 people wait at a bus stop just west of the The Boulevard's encounter with Interstate 405. A woman opens and closes and opens and closes a tackle box covered in alien-head stickers. One man paces by the pay phone and makes several calls. Another man holds to his ear a small radio, wrapped in a plastic bag. He explains that he has to play it very quietly, ``because of the MTA.'' I listen; no sound escapes the tiny metal box.

Teeming and busy, Ventura Boulevard's downtown district features small works of public art, the colorful tile mosaics outside an otherwise anonymous Motion Picture Association of America building. Speeding navigators would not notice these freeze-frames from ``Psycho,'' ``E.T.,'' ``The Ten Commandments,'' ``Patton'' and other film classics.

Nor would they see the post-production details of a bus stop ad for Fox News featuring a picture of Bob Dole. Somebody typed a commentary on two stickers and placed them on Bob's face: ``This ad gives a bad message.''

As I near the heart of Sherman Oaks at Van Nuys Boulevard, my leg begins to cramp. I blame this on walking 12 miles in 10 hours while wearing cheap, flat-soled Converse sneakers. David's got blisters, and the sun has dipped into Encino.

I feel like a motorist, screaming past the sites, ignoring the tug of The Boulevard's many moods: Groove Rider, an outpost for ``alternative culture'' gear and happenings; a human being wearing a 10-foot-high alien outfit and lingering on the sidewalk; tropical murals spilling from the Amazon restaurant; the pIsychic sett`ing up shop in a recently vacated sofa store; and the karate place where, through a huge glass wall, I can watch small children swing nunchucks over their shoulders and jump-kick a man twice their size.

Karate mom Susan Ossen informs me that her little Jonathan - ``He's 7-1/2'' - is close to achieving a black belt in the art, and ``he's already used it on the playground twice.''

By the time I stop for the night, I have walked about two-thirds of the way, exactly what Dawn the $20 psychic had said, exactly what Evan the skateboarding philosopher had said: Ventura Boulevard is never complete.

Early on my second day of travel, a Spandexed woman zips past me, digging what look like ski poles into the Sherman Oaks sidewalk with each step. I have to run to catch her.

``I started in Oakland,'' explains Judy Ann Regan, happy to break from her trek. ``Twenty-three days ago.''

This teacher from Pasadena planned a monthlong pedestrian mission to promote good health and spread wisdom about breast cancer. Hiking from Oakland to Fontana, she stops along the road, along Interstate 5 and Ventura Boulevard, in little towns and rough neighborhoods, and she talks to people.

``Everywhere I go,'' she says, ``somebody has a story to tell about breast cancer.''

And so driven, she goes and goes, trailed by a corporate sponsorship (Kaiser-Permanente) and a Winnebego containing supplies and a place to sleep.

And I think I have it bad. My mile 14 is her mile 540. My Day 2 is her Day 23. My two bagels, turkey sandwiches and Powerade are her pasta, protein, electrolytes and 140 ounces of water a day. My Ventura Boulevard is her California.

``I've been picking up change along the way,'' Regan adds. Her eye for roadside coins has netted $10.62 so far. ``But on Ventura, there's no money here.''

Near a strip of renovated shops at the quiet intersection of Ventura Canyon Avenue, I enter a store called Scarabe, unsure of what to expect, and find myself inside a small-scale replicIa of an anci`ent Egyptian temple.

A stone-carved eye of the god Horus stares me down. I am surrounded by statues of black cats, blue hippos, books on how to read hieroglyphics and small-scale reproductions of Tutankhamen tombs.

Outside, skinny green papyrus reeds, which exceed 15 feet on the shores of the Nile, struggle at 6 feet on Ventura Boulevard.

``They need more sun,'' says store owner Safwat Ibrahim. He then offers me, as he does all his visitors, a tiny carved scarab, an amulet in the form of a dung beetle, considered sacred and lucky.

``You see them go into the ground at night and then come out in the morning,'' he says. ``And you never see them die.''

Studio City: Same thing, different block

After two days of immersion in the concrete gorge, of walking through its easy-flowing river, I realize Ventura Boulevard could be my home. Forever. I eat, sleep, work, write stories (renting computer time at the two Kinko's Copies), dance, meet people, get married, have kids (at the Encino-Tarzana Regional Medical Center), clothe and entertain them, get divorced and then buy a $100,000 car and ``The Amazing Spiderman'' issue No. 1.

And forget my zippy Honda. Forget my running shoes. Forget getting down Ventura Boulevard in less than a day. This walking thing isn't so bad.

This place, this lingering black city, is actually a foot-friendly trail for the modern-day urban hiker, an environment as beautiful and challenging as any nature path. A horizontal Everest ... with mini-marts!

And look there: Supplies! A grocery store, a place to get to get your boots resoled. Motels for the tired. Movies for the bored. Manicurists for the rough of hand. And sidewalks that almost go from end to end.

Even a commuter - taking this alternative to the 101 Freeway gridlock - should recognize the pedestrian nature of Studio City's center, near Laurel Canyon Boulevard. This palm-lined oasis springs up after miles of treeless, single-story blandness, offering a place to get oIut and walk a`round. Sort of, like, you know, a mall, only outside.

But it's too familiar. I've been here before.

In the places where Ventura becomes friendly to the hiker, the same elements emerge again and again.

Here, near the Starbucks and California Pizza Kitchen, the art-deco movie marquee advertises the Bookstar. While in Sherman Oaks, the marquee from another defunct movie palace near another Starbucks advertises the Gap. And in Tarzana's Brown Center, the renovated movie marquee, which is next to another Gap and another Starbucks and another California Pizza Kitchen, actually lists movies.

This trend has not gone unnoticed. Two men walking down the Studio City sidewalk debate the finer points of mass culture.

``Is Starbucks better than Seattle's Best Coffee?'' one of them says.

The other man shrugs. He can't tell.

East of the leggy palm trees and sidewalk cafes, parts of the great and crowded Ventura theme park become noticeably, shall we say, original. Call it MotelLand, where all-ratings video stores follow hourly-rate accommodations, which follow still more motels. And no matter how dilapidated the signs become - the words El Royale Motel barely escape the downtrodden plastic - at least the availability of closed-circuit adult television is advertised on new, fully functioning boards.

A series of doors for the La Tura Motel opens directly onto the sidewalk. As I pass, a squinting woman emerges from room No. 2 ($30 a night), stepping uneasily from the darkness and into my path.

I say hello and ask how she likes the La Tura.

``This place?'' she says, scowling at the building. ``Sh-yech.''

Mailboxes. Mail and fax. Just mail. Mail and copies. Mail, mail and more mail. Every mile the same sort of sign appears over a different store, a store devoted to the routing of paper products to addresses on Ventura Boulevard. Each one of these neo-post offices holds a few hundred boxes, a shadow neighborhood done in stainless-steel cubes. Some are even opeIn 24 hours, su`ch as the one I enter in Studio City, Valley Mail & Telephone Service.

Inside, harried employee Gina Sanchez explains why one Valley street needs so many little holes in which to stuff mail.

``A lot of people use mail boxes to hide from the law,'' she offers, sorting piles and piles of sealed paper. She explains that some addresses on Ventura Boulevard share 20 or 30 names, aliases or businesses, many legitimate and many scams.

A half-dozen people quietly file through the corridor before owner Rita Lazar walks inside with a small dog on a leash and offers another spin.

``I've had customers here for 14 years,'' she says, noting hundreds of people who simply need a steady address while they globetrot. ``They don't get in trouble. They're fine.''

``Yeah,'' says Sanchez, ``and some of them have just never got caught for 14 years.''

Things get desolate near my journey's end. I duck into an alleyway that looks as if it once sported an Old West, swinging-door Dodge City motif, complete with a General Store and dark wood walkways. Now it's a ghost town where only a broken sink and a stack of Japanese magazines occupy the sidewalks.

Back on Ventura, just East of Vineland Avenue, standing in one spot, I can see 17 auto parts or repair shops, one outlet for custom-made seat cushions and nothing else.

I keep moving. And just when I feel like I have entered an industrial desert or walked onto the set of a post-apocalyptic movie like ``Westworld 2'' or ``Mad Max in the Valley,'' I find - There! Look! Everybody look! On the sidewalk! - Hollywood.

The heart of Los Angeles often flows into the Valley's main artery, and, quite honestly, it gets in my way.

Near Lankershim Boulevard, three large RVs shield an HBO camera crew from traffic. An audience of bulky cameras, production types and a motocycle cop watch as stand-up comic David Cross performs in front of a filing cabinet store. The crew is filming for a special called ``Not Necessarily the Elections.''

Pedestrians - ` that would be me and David and, well, let's see ... that's it - have to wait for a break in the filming so they can pass. I head into the street, hoping to jaywalk around the RVs, but the police officer stops me.

``Wait till they're done and go through on the sidewalk,'' he says.

Hollywood, it seems, takes precedence over progress.

Dawn, the $20 psychic, was right. Walking VenturaLand is like a day - a week? a month? - at Disneyland. My feet hurt. I'm beat, on the edge of sunstroke and convinced that nothing else exists in the world other than what I've just experienced.

Several short blocks after the film crew, with little fanfare, I pass the Fatburger and step onto Lankershim. Here, Ventura Boulevard merges with Cahuenga Boulevard. Or the other way around. Here, Ventura Boulevard begins.

After 15 hours over two days, after 113 intersections and 43 manicurists and 13 psychics, after two free bagels and five stops in public restrooms, I reach the end of this always-under-construction, post-suburban theme park. I move seamlessly off the curb, off Ventura Boulevard, onto a nearly identical street and into my strategically placed car.

BOULEVARD facts

Ventura Boulevard index

Miles: 17

Intersections: 133

Addresses: 11,549

Store titles containing place names: 295

(Encino, 55; American, 50; Valley, 30; California, 29; L.A., 27; Sherman Oaks, 24; Tarzana, 23; Ventura, 22; Studio City, 17; Woodland Hills, 15; Beverly Hills, 2; Malibu, 1)

Dry cleaners: 81

Nail Salons: 43

Used car dealers: 32

New Ferrari dealers: 1

Pet Stores: 30

Gas Stations: 25

Motels and hotels: 18

Video stores: 18

Coffeehouses: 17

Starbucks: 6

Liquor stores: 16

Ralphs grocery stores: 5

Thai restaurants: 14

Restaurants with two-syllable possessive male names: 14 (Carrow's; Monty's Jinky's; Coco's; Cable's; Bobby's; Tony's; Jerry's, 2; Denny's, 3; Stanley's, 2)

Churches, temples and shrines: 11

UnivPersities (or e`xtensions): 5

Psychics: 13

Lawyers: 1,008

Bridal Shops: 21

Clocks: 11

McDonald's: 8

Burger King restaurants: 3

Fatburger Restaurants: 3

Places where you can pay to wash your own dog: 3

Movie theaters: 3

Blockbuster video stores: 4

Discount golf supply stores: 7

Television and movie studios: 1

Sources: Pacific Bell Yellow Pages, PhoneDisc CD-ROM and Daily News research

CAPTION(S):

14 Photos, Box, Map

Photo: (1--Cover--Color) Strolling The Boulevard

A 17-mile trek down the Valley's main street

(2--Color) ENCINO: The Vencino Car Wash landmark exemplifies Jetson-esque Googie architecture and a good place to get your Lexus detailed.

(3--Color) STUDIO CITY: A spaceship (provided by the Department of Water and Power) patrols airspace above The Boulevard along with hundreds of other billboards, signs and marquees.

(4--Color) TARZANA: ``I'm waiting for my ride. My car broke down,'' says Deborah Reiner, a University of Southern California student on the sidewalk.

(5--Color) WOODLAND HILLS: The artificial bee. The mascot for the Honey Bee Portrait Studio joins sidewalk oddities such as full-size shining-armor suits, and a pool slide and bed stuck to rooftops

(6--Color) TARZANA: The $20 psychic. She predicts we'll only walk two-thirds of the boulevard. She calls it Disneyland.

(7--Color) TARZANA: The stone garden of mythical creatures. Nymphs and curly-haired Chinese dogs guard concrete fountains.

(8--Color) ENCINO: Time to Buy. At least 11 oversized timepieces along The Boulevard, including this one in Encino, keep commuters up-to-the-minute.

(9--Color) SHERMAN OAKS: Judy Ann Regan. Only one other human was crazy enough to walk the entire street. The Pasadena teacher tackled the rest of California while she was at it.

(10--Color) STUDIO CITY: Art's Deli. Where every sandwich has been ``a wPork of Art'' fo`r almost 40 years.

(11) Get your bearings - and a cup of coffee - at the Secret Garden in Woodland Hills.

(12) Don't try this at home: A pool slide hovers over Our Pool Store.

(13) Head to The Boulevard in Woodland Hills for a Porsche or Ferrari. ``Mondays are slow,'' a salesman explains. ``But, we do get a lot of Lottery winners on Mondays.''

(14) ``How long have you been driving by? Isn't it time you stopped in?'' says the sign at a Ventura Boulevard statuary near a freeway entrance, where a Statue of Liberty replica beckons passers-by.

David Sprague/Daily News

Box: BOULEVARD facts (See Text)

Map: Walking the walk

During our two-day hike of Ventura Boulevard's 17 miles and 133 intersections, its landmarks come alive.