STORIES QUIRKY, BIZARRE.

Byline: Patricia Farrell Aidem Staff Writer

SANTA CLARITA - Fifteen years ago, when the city manager tapped the pulse of Santa Clarita by picking the minds of hairdressers, the upstart city earned a reputation as quirky.

The city has grown up and turned from stylists in smocks to consultants in power ties, but, thank God, Santa Clarita still has its quirks.

While 2002 was marked by crime rising and the economy faltering, Santa Clarita had its share of stories that made us laugh, made us wonder and made us gasp in surprise.

As we sat on the brink of war, wary that terrorists could attack any time on our soil, we found relief in those headlines.

Like the list of the Top 10 news stories in Santa Clarita in 2002, the Daily News staff took an informal poll of the quirkiest stories of the year.

These treasures are in no particular order, given the subjective nature of the survey, but we all agreed the porn star who spoke of love and marriage to a Jewish congregation packed in a hotel ballroom was the quirkiest.

Her name was Nina Hartley, star of hundreds of skin flicks, and she spoke to a standing-room-only crowd, mostly members of Temple Beth Ami in Newhall.

``Sexual knowledge is sexual knowledge, and one way you learn it is when you do it,'' she said in an interview before the event. ``And most people haven't done it as much as I have. They want to hear from me because I'm a professional.''

Enough said.

Over the past 12 months, the Daily News has mixed among the headlines from City Hall, police and local schools the believe-it-or-not stories.

One was about a Canyon Country man who eats scorpions and another featured a construction worker who survived a gory accident when a nail lodged in his skull and was removed successfully. The photograph of the X-ray before surgery was eerie.

And there was the diaper story - Santa Clarita became the first city in the nation to recycle diapers. Old Pampers are now being made into wallpaper and other products courtesy of this city's youngest residents.

We close with one from Six Flags California's Magic Mountain, the world-renowned amusement park that dressed a gaggle of women in bridal gowns, and had a minister marry them aboard a roller coaster - only to reluctantly admit weeks later the show was a sham. It wasn't the first time the park held a Valentine's Day mass wedding that truly began with ups and downs. The question is, will they do it again this year?

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Photo:

(color) A Valentine's Day mass wedding on a roller coaster wasn't the real thing.

Shaun Dyer/Special to the Daily News