Chris Smith: The naked mannequins have left Peterson Lane

Happen to catch the nudist mannequins on Santa Rosa’s Peterson Lane waving goodbye before they went back into storage?

Homeowner Jason Windus has decided that for now, the nationally televised gag in his side yard has run its course.

It was in mid-March that Windus created a party scene in the yard with five undressed mannequins lounging on outdoor furniture. Little of the absurd, traffic-stopping display was blocked by Windus’ new, 3-foot-tall side yard fence.

Windus set out the mannequins to tweak whomever it was who complained to City Hall that he’d constructed a contain-the-dogs fence that originally was 6 feet high. The legal maximum height for such a fence along a sidewalk is 3 feet.

Windus had the $9,000 fence shortened, then plotted a visual response to the tattler. Out came the more or less anatomically correct mannequins he’d gotten from a Sebastopol clothing store.

His nudie party scene got a lot of laughs and media coverage. “It’s been crazy. I’ve enjoyed it,” he said.

With the trailing off of the rain and the return of yard-work season, Windus finds it’s time to do some gardening and construct a dog run.

Satisfied that the fence-height informant got the message, Windus removed the mannequins the other day. But they will be back.

Just imagine the possibilities for Halloween.

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LIKE HIS BOOK: Of course, Santa Rosa author Mike Lesch would be over the moon were his novel, “Lost in the Slipstream,” turned into a film or made-for-TV movie.

But at the moment Lesch, who writes under the pen name James Cahill, stands perplexed by similarities between situations he created in the book and those that later appeared in a TV show and a film.

Lesch points out side-by-side common story elements in his self-published book and in Amy Shumer’s “Trainwreck” and television’s “Girls.”

The writer said he doesn’t know what to make of the similarities, and he wonders what might have become of the copy of his book’s manuscript that he’d submitted to a San Francisco publisher and later was told had been lost.

Lesch noticed that filmmaker and comedian Judd Apatow was involved in both “Trainwreck” and “Girls.” I reached out to Apatow through publicist Matt Labov to ask in an email if Apatow might address the similar aspects of portions of the TV and movie productions and of Lesch’s book.

Labov responded, “Judd’s never seen, heard of or read the book nor has he heard of Mr. Lesch.”

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KOREA IS COMING in June to Don Taylor’s Omelette Express in Railroad Square.

Taylor, you may know, is a pillar of Santa Rosa’s sister city kinship with the South Korean island city of Jeju.

Three years ago, supporters of a Jeju home for teen mothers created a vocational cafe and named it Don Taylor Express.

In June, Samsung, a supporter of the home and cafe, will bring young moms and staff cooks and others to train at the original Omelette Express.

Vows Taylor, “We’re going to make it the best trip of their lives.”

If you would like to help welcome the Koreans, go see Taylor at his restaurant. He’s a good egg, and one not hard to find.

You can reach Staff Writer Chris Smith at 707-521-5211 or chris.smith@pressdemocrat.com.