The hair and glasses are close. But I was running HO scale. Those cars in the picture are TOYS.
I grew up in West LA and I would see them filming CHiPs all the time when I was a kid. A liquor store that was a short walk from my house was robbed on one episode. (Triangle Liquor on Venice and McLaughlin). As I recall, it was a Halloween episode and the robber was in a ghost costume.
There was another episode where John and Ponch went on a double date at a bowling alley. That was the long gone Kingpin Lanes where I used to go and was also walking distance from my childhood home.
I liked how CHiPs was always introducing the latest craze by acting like Ponch had been doing it for years.
“Ponch, that’s right near the spot you always have your rollerblading competitions.” “Well Officer Poncherello here just happens to be the department paragliding champion three years running.” “Ponch, all your roller-disco experience will let you infiltrate the skating bandit gang.”
Bumping this cause i just noticed in the pilot, there’s a drawing of Steve Austin after the accident and the picture basically says
N-Need
A-Another
S-Steve
A-Austin
WOW…so a form of that joke predates Challenger? Never knew that.
A friend loaned me a copy to read when we were in college (late 1970s), saying it was pretty good. I couldn’t get past the protagonist being named “Steve Austin” and gave up just a couple of pages in. Highly unusual for me, I’ve read a lot of crap in my day - that remains one of a handful of books I didn’t just power through.