You are invited to help create a more livable West L.A. This is your opportunity to learn about the community planning process, hear the latest updates and provide your opinion on design and streetscape improvements, mobility plans, parks and community services.
The Los Angeles Housing Department showed up unannounced to The Lofts at Noho Commons today. This is the first of two days they will be conducting unit by unit inspections. Some of the residents have voiced anger because there was no prior notice given to the residents. They felt unauthorized entry is not except-able, unless there was an emergency.
Although there has been some significant improvements in the day to day upkeep of the common areas, the problem with dog feces and urine has not subsided.
ALLN is the only independent organization in L.A. to focus exclusively on granting community college scholarships to deserving students. There are a lot of smart, capable people who for a variety of reasons are not able to matriculate to four year colleges and universities. ALLN
pays for tuitition, books, transporation and meals, and it provides weekly mentoring to help students stay focused and on track.
ADVISORY Tuesday, August 26, 2008
For Immediate Release
The Wall Las Memorias Projects 8th Annual Strike Out AIDS event at Dodger Stadium is next Friday, September 5th
Note: EDITOR'S NOTE: THE DODGERS ANNOUNCED TODAY THAT THE START TIME FOR THIS GAME HAS BEEN MOVED IN ORDER TO ACCOMODATE ESPN'S NATIONAL TELECAST. FIRST PITCH WILL NOW BE AT 7:08 PM, NOT 7:40 PM.
At a recent Churches of NorthEast LA Monthly Breakfast Gathering Chief Murphy challenged the churches to become involved in helping to reduce crime in the streets of NorthEast LA area. In immediate response the churches and other religiously-based community organizations represented at the meeting said let's do a peace march and so was born the Peace in the NorthEast Community March and Resource Fair, which we believe will become an annual event.
The Churches of NorthEast LA present:
PEACE in the NorthEast Community March & Resource Fair
Saturday, August 16 10a-5p
Gather: 10a Highland Park Sr Center 6152 N Figueroa St
March: 11a York Blvd just below Figueroa St
Resource Fair: 12noon5p Victory Outreach 4160 Eagle Rock Blvd
Check Out: http://www.myspace.com/peaceinthene
Supported by: The Churches of NorthEast Los Angeles in cooperation with Northeast LAPD, Mayor Villaraigosa, Councilmember José Huizar, Councilmember Ed Reyes, Council President Eric Garcetti, LA Board of Education Member Yolie Flores Aguilar, Assemblymember Anthony Portantino, RemixOurWorld.org, Highland Park Ministerial Association, Historic Highland Park NC, Arroyo Seco NC, Eagle Rock NC, Glassell Park NC, Silver Lake NC, Greater Cypress Park NC, Lincoln Heights NC, LA32 NC, Highland Park Chamber of Commerce, Glassell Park Chamber of Commerce, Greater Highland Park Kiwanis, Victory Outreach, Iglesia Pentecostal Esmira, St Bernard Church, Peace over Violence, Simon & Lupita Reyes & Armando Guerrero, Anahuak Youth Soccer Association, McCormack Baron Salazar, Machete Tacos, Gifts Plus, Luther Burbank Middle School, Jesse Rosas, David Solis, Jose Carmona, Dr. Nicole Gatto, Kendra Gratteri, Jarritos Wheres the Fruit, Sparkletts Eagle Rock, Children's Hospital Los Angeles, Swift-Tee screenprinting, Las Cazuelas Restaurant & Pupuseria, Inca Real Estate, Las Casas Realty, KIA of Glendale, Southland Real Estate, Southwest Museum Coalition, District 17 American Legion, Figueroa Produce, Jim's Chevron, Rey-Crest Roofing, Encore Tax, Marquez Family and Hecho de Mano
As per testimony by the residents of numerous complaints to the leasing staff, at The Lofts of Noho Commons, at 11136 Chandler Boulevard, North Hollywood, California 91601, currently under the supervision of Octavio Sanchez, regarding security, maintenance, and health and cleanliness issues, you and your staff have had knowledge of resident dissatisfaction since the introduction of Legacy Partners Residential, Inc. There has been a steady decline in all areas. In all fairness to your staff, we understand there has been some level of dissatisfaction regarding these same issues under Jodie Piccinino, while she was the community manager representing Alliance Residential Company.
North Hollywood is currently going thru many changes by business owners and developers, hoping to solidify a strong and safe community. One property stands out, The Lofts at Noho Commons. It is a beautiful property, centrally located in the Noho Arts District, across the street from the Metro Station on Lankershim Boulevard. Even through the architecture sets a tone more of a resort than that of a family based residence. There is a hidden story developing here. Under the facade of the modern design and amenities, there is a story of dangers developing. Due to numerous requests by the residents for security directly to the owner(s) at Redwood Partners, Inc. and the management company Legacy Partners, assaults, theft and vandalism run rampant with no resolve. The general consensus is focused on the well being of the children and families that reside here, as well as to deter the inevitability of more violence, further property loss and death.
Saving the South Central Farm: Listening to the Land
A teaching story
By Juan Santos and Leslie Radford
The secret of storytelling amongst the poor is the conviction that stories are told so that they may be listened to elsewhere, where somebody, or perhaps a legion of people, know better than the storyteller or the storys protagonists, what life means. The powerful cant tell stories: boasts are the opposite of stories, and any story however mild has to be fearless and the powerful today live nervously.
A story refers life to an alternative and more final judge who is far away. Maybe the judge is located in the future, or in the past that is still attentive, or maybe somewhere over the hill, where the days luck has changed (the poor have to refer often to bad or good luck) so that the last have become first.
Story-time (the time within a story) is not linear. The living and the dead meet as listeners and judges within this time, and the greater the number of listeners felt to be there, the more intimate the story becomes to each listener. Stories are one way of sharing the belief that justice is imminent. And for such a belief, children, women and men will fight at a given moment with astounding ferocity. This is why tyrants fear storytelling: all stories somehow refer to the story of their fall.
From John Berger's That have not been asked: ten dispatches about endurance in the face of walls.
Its not always a matter of justice; there are simply too many of us who know not to expect justice from this system that profits at the expense of all life: Sometimes its not a matter of justice, but as John Berger says above, its a matter of luck. Good luck or bad. Good Karma and bad, whos in synch with the flow of change and the Times, and who stands foolishly against the tide. Its like that this time. Its a matter of luck, of grace, of Karma, of what is necessary as the times change. This time, we are determined: the last shall be first, life will come before profit, the poor before the wealthy, the natural will supercede the artificial. This time, if we have something to say about it- and we do all of us the Conquest is over.
No one could have predicted it, and frankly, no one did. There were those of us who had nothing to go on but this: we listened to the land, and the land spoke to us. We listened; we listened to what might be possible but seemed impossible; We refused to surrender dreaming; we refused to forget what had been born, the ancient, magical connection of land and a newly arising culture that touched so many of us here in LA: a connection that touched a nerve so deep in us that its resonance spread in a web of connection and yes, we will say it hope across the world. Mayan Indians in a Zapatista community prayed for the land and for the life unfolding there. Native elders came and shared the lessons of their peoples. Red tailed hawks visited the trees.
The Churches of NorthEast LA presents Peace in the NorthEast Community March
On August 16, 2008 at 10am, lead by the Churches of NorthEast LA, the NorthEast LA community will be meeting at the Highland Park Adult Senior Citizen Center, 6152 N Figueroa St, to march down York Blvd to Eagle Rock Blvd and down Eagle Rock Blvd to a Resource Fair. Snacks will be served at both the staging area and the Resource Fair. Bottled water will also be available for marchers. The Resource Fair will end at 5:00pm. Along with the Resource Fair there will be music and a Mini Car Show.
Community groups, families and other local organizations are encouraged to join the march and bring organizational / identificational banners. And, we can still use more help in organizing the Peace March / Resource Fair, so we also encourage you to become involved. Call 626.831.7970 for more information.
Join us for an idyllic day featuring delicious
food, games, and music by Ellen and Matt, The Hollow
Trees, Tomas O'Grady, and Foreign Born. And of
course, our renowned Silent Auction, where amazing
deals are to be had. There will also be a quilt for
auction which is handmade each year by the families,
truly an heirloom. The NNS Spring Fair is a Silverlake
tradition not to be missed!
A "green" event-BYO water cup when possible.
Nike and the LA84 Foundation to Announce Plans to Renew 84 Play Surfaces throughout Los Angeles
Nike and the LA84 Foundation are committing $4 Million to renew 84 play surfaces to benefit young sports enthusiasts in Los Angeles. The new play surfaces will help rejuvenate the community by creating spaces for the youth of Los Angeles to play so they can be healthy and live active lives.
WHEN: Thursday, March 13, 2008
3:30 p.m. 5:00 p.m.
WHERE: Holiday Inn (pool deck)
1020 S. Figueroa St.
Los Angeles, CA 90015
One late evening, my husband, Drew, was shopping at the new, convenient, high-end Ralph's Fresh Fare supermarket at Ninth and Flower in downtown Los Angeles. He noticed the copious amounts of prepared food that had gone unpurchased and asked the Ralphs employee what was to become of it all at the end of the day. The employee replied that it all gets thrown in the garbage. It was a LOT of food.
Note: This submission was received from LA Voice Reader "Laura" who was having difficulty posting it herself... given the time and effort she has put into this, we offered to post it for her. The views expressed are entirely her own...
Join the Pat Brown Institute (PBI) tomorrow for their launch of the California Agenda 2008 Lecture Series with Civic Engagement Across California Communities. It should be an interesting eventespecially with Shirley Jahad as the moderator. Seats are still available for this free event but you must call Tarren Lopez to RSVP or go online. Below are the details.
For Immediate Release
Friday, December 20, 2007
Contact: Frank Aguirre Jr.
213.688.2802 or faguirre@ypiusa.org
Los Angeles, CA. Tomorrow, the Youth Policy Institute will have its culminating event of the Valley Family Technology Project (VFTP) alongside state Senator Alex Padilla. AT&T will present a check of $10,000 to VFTP for their continued work to integrate technology tools in the hands of underserved populations. The VFTP provides 100 families per year with a computer system and free internet service.
It was an incredible experience for the children with cancer and their familiesas well as the volunteer army assembled to put it on. Although its the ninth time PADRES has hosted this event, this year was by far the biggest and grandest PADRES Holiday Christmas Posada yet.
Exploring news places, whether it's across the Atlantic or right down the street, is one of my favorite pastimes - and living in LA affords endless exploration opportunities.
I recently found an incredible website called Hubbuzz.com that essentially lets you take a virtual stroll through all the 'hoods and cities in LA County. Hubbuzz profiles over 70 neighborhoods and cities and includes photos, community blogs and maps plotting the location of cool restaurants, museums, fitness centers, boutiques and shopping centers.
You can also see Los Angeles Apartments by neighborhood, or search by neighborhood characteristic (think diverse, trendy, kid-friendly). So when I find that perfect neighborhood in all my urban exploration, I can find an apartment there too.
Check it out, maybe you'll find a cool new 'hood to explore.
In addition to bringing to you the latest and greatest from the world of journalism, the LA Press Club also puts on events with opinion-leaders and newsmakers from a wide swath of public affairs. Our event this Monday night is no exception and for the first time ever, two premiere social entrepreneurs here in Los Angeles, Paul Vandeventer and Tom Riley, will be leading a panel discussion on social entrepreneurism and civic engagement.
If youre curious as to what social entrepreneurism means and/or interested in the state of civic engagement in Los Angeles, you wont want to miss it. The evening will also be dedicated in the memory of Dr. Carol Baker Tharp, who both men knew personally through her community work and who lost her battle to cancer earlier this week.
Los Angeles. A number of organizations are planning a series of public actions targeting Countrywide Home Loans in cities throughout Californiawhere it is estimated the company services 50,0000 loans. While Countrywide CEO, Angelo Mozilo, has taken literally millions of dollars from the company before the initial decline of its stock, thousands of homeowners are set to lose their homes, and some 12,000 Countrywide employees will be fired before the holidays of Thanksgiving and Christmas. Mr. Mozilo will be the Grinch who stole the home, hearth, and the American dream.
Cuesta creer que en una ciudad civilizada como Buenos Aires se hagan pactos entre un gobierno saliente y otro entrante para subir los impuestos con el objeto de equilibrar las cuentas del gobierno saliente.
It's not all that often when Santa Monica takes the lead from other cities but here it is: Santa Monica will likely join other municipalities like BH, Burbank and Calabasas with strict anti-smoking ordinances. The next step, of course, will be banning the use "Smokin'" when referring to heavyweight boxing great, Joe Frazier, and when using lines from "The Mask." Below is James Ricci's piece from today's Times.
Unfortunately I've given up on any sort of sound reasoning on the part of the parks dept. and their steadfast refusal to reopen areas of the park untouched by the fire so that work crews will have unfettered access this fall. Yes, many unburnt areas are still closed and summer is almost over. And yes, there are signs that say they are closed. But more and more people are ignoring these signs. The sense I get is that people are fed up and are going back into their park because, well, they can.
The Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, a non-profit public interest legal organization, is now conducting free presentations on fair housing and home ownership rights.
A press conference will be held later this morning at 11 a.m. on the south steps of the Los Angeles City Hall to announce HMLs fight against vehicle confiscations for merely lacking licenses and proof of insurance. HML National Director, Nativo V. Lopez, will be available for interviews tomorrow and throughout the week. There is also a Spanish translation of this communiqué at the end.
I emailed Tom LeBonge's office and heard back from someone today. She said:
"The parks department is not without their reasons for keeping the park closed, but as of right now we think there is not sufficient justification for the closures. The fire recovery team has not yet settled on what strategy they will use to prevent erosion this upcoming winter. One of the strategies being considered will require exclusive access to the burn area for the department. And RAP's thought process says that it is better to keep the park closed and for the recovery team to complete their work and then open the park, rather than opening the park now only to have to close areas of the park off and on for the next six months. But, the Councilman disagrees with this train of thought."
So we've got a three-way game of "thought process" chicken going on here between RAP, Tom LeBonge and the evil bikers and hikers.
I've been posting comments at the laparks.org Griffith Recovery blog. It was suggested that I also post here. The following is from my last comment posted on Wed. June 27. More to come...
This past weekend I was told by the guards at the Vermont entrance and also by a guard at Griffith Observatory that all paved park roads were open to bikes. I asked about the road to Mt. Hollywood summit and going through to Travel Town. The guards said they were indeed open.
Happily, I went for a great ride up Vermont to Mt. Hollywood summit and through to Travel Town. I saw other cyclists during my ride. We smiled and waved to each other, obviously glad that the roads were open again. Along the route there were signs on a lot of trails that led uphill from the road saying they were closed. I thought that made sense. People will know what's off-limits but at least we can use this road.
What was odd to encounter was that THIS ROUTE WAS UNTOUCHED BY THE FIRE...
There's lots of fun these days up in the Antelope Valley--and you won't read about it in the Times
Lancaster Councilmember Ed Sileo placed bogus Ethics complaint on the City Council agenda for the sole purpose of trying to silence concerns about the questionable lobbying practices of his father, said Councilmember Ron Smith.
This homemade solution will destroy Skid Row staph on surfaces: Mix 1/3 hydrogen peroxide (the 3% kind you buy at the pharmacy) 2/3 clear water. Shake. Add a bit of dry laundry detergent. Shake again. You must use rubber gloves when applying. Put some of the solution on a surface. Allow to stand a minute or two. Clean off with clear water.
The commercial "antibacterial" cleaners used by most hospitals are not alkaline enough to kill these new superbugs. Staph bacteria can actually live in most commercial solutions. So make your own. It is much cheaper, and it WORKS.
Note: EDITOR'S NOTE: LA Voice does not dispense medical advice and the opinions expressed are solely those of the individual author of each post...
A funny thing happened on the way to the West Hollywood City Hall. A few weeks ago some "NIMBY" activists finally went laughably a bit too far while opposing a development of a mixed-use project of apartments and retail space at Santa Monica and Crescent Heights in West Hollywood. They began circulating an old article from the "Real Property Section Review" (a publication read by developers and land use folks) written by Robert I. McMurry and Dwight Merriam, tilted, "How to Kill a Development Project in 10 Easy Steps."
The article reads more like satire than a "stop development manifesto" with suggestions like:
-"We don't just Bamboozle them, we Google Them."
-Dirty Tricks Even Richard Nixon Never Thought of: (I.e. form a non-profit corporation, recruit celebrities, etc.)
-Taint and Paint: (Claim Native American Rights Exist)
In fact, the article reads exactly like the "Action Items" list currently being circulated by the project's opponents which will be anchored by a well-designed Walgreens, once built. The action items under serious consideration by opponents of the project meant to throw up red flags at City Hall include:
-Research how to form a non-profit corporation
-Get Celebrities to join the cause
-Find out how to make this area a historic site
-Research if we can claim Native American Rights.
I love the thought of turning a run-down 1960's strip mall into "an historical site" as if West Hollywood is suddenly a part of the San Fernando Valley!
But here is where irony kicks in--the original "How to" article credits lawyer Todd Elliott for his "witty and unrestrained editing."
Elliott is a name partner of the law firm Truman & Elliott, LLP, the project developer's land use attorney. While the "how to" article was intended as humor, if the developers prevail, the joke will surely be on the ultra intelligent NIMBYS.
Looking for tenants who will be (or have been) displaced because their landlord is converting their apartment to a condominium
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Much discussion has begun via e-mail regarding a park planned to be built in the distant future over the 101 freeway. Some complain that it may not be well ventilated while others wonder why a park when we can't remain safe due to lack of officers on our streets. Some throw darts at the elected officials (that's the juicy e-mails) for allowing over-development while giving a pass to developers regarding open space requirements and parking needs. Some (me) say that parks must have plans in place along with appropriate funding to make them truly safe places for children to play and residents to recreate. What do you have to say?
I get a bunch of commercial pitches all the time that never see the light of day on LA Voice because that's not what this blog is all about, but one just came across the transom that is worth mentioning-- because it involves a free Pabst Blue Ribbon beer!
For years now, I have heard all the hubbub about how Runyon Canyon in the Hollywood Hills is the place to "see and be seen," but until Saturday, I only vaguely knew where it was and to expect lots of dogs wandering off their leashes.
To put my mind at ease, I clipped on my iPod Shuffle, checked out Google Maps and made the thirty minute walk to Vista north of Hollywood.
I got a chuckle at the hordes of people fighting for a close parking space to the Canyon. Two or three blocks away--say, South of Hollywood Boulevard--there's available parking. Yet people jockey for positions to get the closest parking spaces...so they can go for a hike.
Am I the only one who finds this somewhat ironic?
Councilman Tom LaBonge is now talking about taking away some of the canyon's open space to put in a parking lot. Maybe what we need isn't new parking but new priorities, people!
In a gushing profile of Highland Park, Eagle Rock and Mount Washington, the Times notes: "But housing costs still seem reasonable, compared with West Los Angeles. And some west-Angeleno types are moving in."
My favorite line was actually in a photo-caption: "Residents of Northeast Los Angeles enjoy vistas of Mount Washington, which could be mistaken for Tuscany."
The Disney Company is all set to expand the operation in Orange County and turn Anaheim into Orlando West, which might sound a bit scary to anyone who has ever been to central Florida, but actually might be the best thing for a city in need of something new.
Sunset Triangle, Sunset & Edgecliffe
19 Mar 06:30 PM
This is the small park at Sunset & Edgecliffe in Silver Lake next to the Farmers Market site. Bring something to share if you can -- words, a snack, light music -- what you think would be appropriate at a vigil. Kids & pets OK
"On Sunday March 18th, 2007 the Downtown Los Angeles Neighborhood Council will hold a conference on how to save Los Angeles physical, cultural and social history. It will be co-sponsored by citywide Los Angeles Neighborhood Councils Congress (LANCC), the City of Los Angeles Planning Department and the Los Angeles Conservancy with the aid of the Getty Institute.
The conference will be on Sunday March 18th from 10 AM 4 PM in the historic 1931 Los Angeles Theatre at 615 S. Broadway in downtown LA. The program will open with Councilman Jose Huizar at 11 AM speaking on the need to preserve our historic civic resources and, in particular, about how we need to restore the historic theaters of Broadway."
Shuster recalls an armed Martin Lawrence stopping traffic at a Sherman Oaks intersection, loudly demanding that motorists fight the power!; Jack Nicholson attacking a Mercedes with a 2 iron in Studio City; Alec Baldwin punching out a paparazzi in Woodland Hills; and Margot Kidder hiding in the bushes in Glendale.
This sweetheart deal brings to a close a close to 25 year saga where Geffen thumbed his nose at the state of California and the general public, reneging on the most basic of deals and misappropriating some of the most valuable real estate in California.
Preserve LA posts writer Chris Epting's article from Preservation Online that calls out LA as being "one of the worst cities in the country" when it comes to historical preservation.
Ouch.
Judge for yourself, but I think Epting's argument is full of holes.
Although sex offender accusations against West Hollywood City candidate Ed Buck have proven to be false, subsequent investigations have revealed a long, and sometimes entertaining record of legal troubles for the anti-development candidate.
Buck protested over fliers distributed in West Hollywood exposing him as "a homosexual Sex Offender in 1986," when Buck lived in Arizona.
A subsequent investigation by IN Magazine turned up no sex offender record in Arizona or elsewhere, but turned up two felony indictments and at least two restraining orders sought against the candidate.
Curbed LA has a post this morning about the cost of renting in LA.
According to a new survey, LA is the 8th most expensive rental market in the country, with an average rent of $1,360/month.
The comment thread kind of focuses on the economics of the buy/rent decision, but the post begs the fundamental question, "Will the average person soon be able to do either?"
Posted by: Ryan_Knoll on Thursday, February 08, 2007
Last night, the City of West Hollywood unanimously approved the 152-unit Greenwich Place development at San Vicente and Beverly Boilevards.
Located on the former Tail O' The Pup property, the Regent Properties development will add 117 new market-rate condominiums and 35 affordable units to West Holywood's housing stock.
Here, in Venice, we have a tradition of championing the rights of poor people, as in 1965 when the City of Los Angeles tore down one third of Venice's 1600 structures in an attempt to get rid of the recalcitrant hippie population:
They were stopped in court by the NAACP and the Peace and Freedom Party, who organized to protect the poor. The city's dream of building high rise hotels and apartments like Miami Beach was thwarted. Venice looked like it was bombed during World War 2 as little was rebuilt during the next decade. (Wikipedia)
And, throughout the 70s, when the then Venice Town Council, in direct contrast to our present Venice Neighborhood Council: felt that the poor had just as much right to live in Venice as the rich people who were buying property to develop. They realized that rapidly rising property values were on a collision course with the community's entrenched low-income population. The Venice Town Council's goal was to delay or at least scale down any project that might affect surrounding property values and the rents landlords charged ..."
I have a confession to make. I, too, dream of making it in Hollywood. For a tiny while during my misspent youth, I yearned for work as a a studio photographer / location scout. And now look at me ... (rimshot!)
Patrick Ecclesine not only got my dream job, but he's tackling something of a dream assignment - documenting the city's richest artery in portraits. FacesofSunset.com is an engaging (if aggressively lit) portfolio of Angelenos anchored to Sunset Boulevard, ranging from powerbrokers and public servants (Villaraigosa, Bratton, Bammatre) to Industry types and construction workers.
In a dazzling showcase of NIMBY rebellion, a small faction of Cheviot Hills IMBY’s have launched LightRailForCheviot.org to inform the world that not all Cheviot Hills Homeowners are scared of mobility:
We want mobility mobility not involving cars, driving, and parking mobility that will raise property values in Cheviot Hills as gridlock worsens.
See you all in court?
Posted by: Mack_Reed on Wednesday, January 31, 2007
The New York Times Travel Section, no less, now declares that Culver City is hip.
Restaurants are spilling into Culver City because there's nowhere else to go, says the chef Michael Wilson. He chose Culver City as the location of his new restaurant Wilson Culver City's most ambitious endeavor, serving dishes like truffled pasta and slow-roasted pork with cherry sauce over the tonier (and more crowded, competitive and pricey) neighborhoods of Beverly Hills or Santa Monica. The rents are a lot lower so you can really get away without charging astronomical prices for good food, he said. In five or six years you won't even recognize Washington Boulevard it will be the new little restaurant row.
Word to Culver Citizens nauseated by the thought of chic-seeking tourism ruining their bucolic peace: Silver Lake survived. So can you.
Elections for the Eagle Rock Neighborhood Council will be held Sat. March 31 from 10:00am - 4:00pm at Eagle Rock City Hall. NOW is the time to throw your hat in the ring and become a candidate! An informational meeting will be held on Jan. 27 and the deadline to file as a candidate is Feb. 26 ...
He's got a great, formal color photographer's eye - shots of antique cars, train tracks, store fronts - capturing the sort of hyper-realistic images of cityscapes that should be catalogued and set up under the twitchy eyes of guards at the Getty. They remind me of the images we saw and devoured today at the Getty photography show, Where We Live: Photographs of America from the Berman Collection ...
The animated map of homeless data captured by the LAPD is interesting in that it lets you see - over time - how the homeless population has migrated and thinned out as the weather downtown approaches the freezing mark.
It'll be interesting to watch as winter progresses into spring and people return to downtown.
Posted by: Mack_Reed on Thursday, January 18, 2007
If you're selling a house this month in L.A., don't bother letting reality get in your way:
The specter of L.A. realtors snatching themselves bald in eternal torment over the fast-crashing housing market seems to have had no effect whatsoever on pricetags: Houses are sitting on the market for months, but sellers are still jacking up the prices.
The latest numbers from DataQuick saw L.A. home prices rise 6.5% last year, to a new median of $522,000:
For the full year, Los Angeles County's median home price rose 8.5% in 2006, while sales fell 16.8% compared to 2005. Price appreciation for the county peaked in 2003, when the year-over-year median price rose 24% from the previous year ...
The LAPD's "Safer Cities" assault on Skid Row crime is working, with dramatic results according to Capt. Andy Smith, who brought the Downtown Neighborhood Council the good news this week.
As seen in Don Garza's video, Smith declares the crime rate downtown is at its lowest point since 1944, and then offers crime-fighting benchmarks he says Chief Bratton will tout soon in a press conference:
The 50 extra officers added to Central Division in October have helped the department make 4,100 arrests and identify 172 gangs dealing drugs to the homeless (18th Street, 5th and Hill and 8-Trey, among the larger ones) ...
Okay, road resurfacing is definitely needed, but it's been a mess for more than a week now, the paving equipment's all parked in place along the roads, and still no paving has occurred.
Yet just two blocks away, tiny Avenel Terrace was thoroughly (and beautifully) paved the day the equipment arrived ...
The Department of Neighborhood Empowerment doesn't care enough about the Neighborhood Councils it's supposed to be administering to even let them help plan their own semi-regular congress, Ken Draper writes at CityWatch LA ...
Charlotte Laws, a 912 Commissioner and Greater Valley Glen Councilmember, makes the following comments in response to a report issued by a team of USC researchers who are studying the Los Angeles Neighborhood Council system. Their project is called the USC Civic Engagement Initiative. Before reviewing Dr. Laws' comments, you may want to look at Mack Reed's article called "USC: Neighborhood Councils Are Not a Failure." The researchers say they welcome input from the community; they will soon be compiling their final draft of the report.
_____________________
Dear Los Angeles,
Below you will find my comments related to the findings and recommendations presented by USC researchers on Saturday, December 16. I am specifically concentrating on items of potential disagreement or that I feel are in need of further clarification ...
If you're tired of smelling urine while using the free wi-fi in Pershing Square, here's some (mostly) good news:
The city's considering spending $165,000 expanding downtown's free-wireless nodes to include Bunker Hill, the financial district, the historic core and Little Tokyo.
The Community Redevelopment Agency wrapped the hardware expense into a larger new appropriation for its "official" ExperienceLA calendar site and, oh, just happened to tack on some money for more wi-fi surveillance cameras ...
LAObserved points us to City Watch L.A., "an insider look at city hall" that has apparently been publishing since November, though an email newsletter has been running since '03. Wish I'd known of it earlier - it's a valuable, level-headed look at city politics.
The site boasts a comprehensive calendar of L.A. panel and board meetings, columns by my friend Marc Haefele and some interesting public-affairs articles.
Among them is a piece by the USC team that has been studying the successes and shortcomings of the city's overly-criticized Neighborhood Council system:
If you drive downtown via Cesar Chavez much, you may have noticed some fast-moving heavy construction bustling along on the south side at Grand Avenue.
It's my fellow man - at Christmas - whom I cannot stand. My fondest memories of snow-frosted New England Christmases, filled with love, warmth, song and good food completely shatter the minute I step out the door into the bull-goose madness of L.A.'s shopping frenzy.
So here - without much fanfare and more than a dollop of "HUMBUG!" are the Top 10 Obstacles to Xmas Shopping encountered in just four lunchtime hours of Christmas shopping this week - and notes on how to dodge 'em. Feel free to add your own:
E's promising a smoother interface in the new year. Until then, it's kind of fun flipping through all 224 - a quick fingertip tour of Broadway. If you're feeling really nostalgic, you can compare them side-by-side with Jim's set to see what's changed.
Posted by: Mack_Reed on Tuesday, December 19, 2006
The sylvan image of UCLA and Westwood - complete with apple-cheeked coeds in kicky, trendy togs shuttling merrily between noshes at Diddy Riese and saving the world in civics class - is a big, fat lie. Or so Westwood Ca. Blight (tagline: "A hard look at the dark side of Westwood") would have us believe.
When I toured Skid Row with Senior Lead Officer Deon Joseph back in September, we rolled at one point through a pungent cloud of pot smoke near the corner of 5th and San Julian. "This is where the weed is," he told me - a customary spot for dealers to peddle marijuana and harder drugs.
Today, he vows publicly that he and his fellow officers will "take down" that "stronghold" and return the park to the people of the city:
If you missed this op-ed piece in the Times, now's the time to check it out.
LAPD Officer and novelist Will Beall offers an eloquent, powerful cop's-eye view of 77th Division's bailiwick, South Central. What's striking about it is the unflinching view of what murder does to African-Americans in South Central, and how they respond:
U.S. News and World Report just popped a profile of Skid Row that chats up all the usual sources: LAPD Chief William Bratton, downtown developer Tom Gilmore and Central City Association head Carol Schatz.
The article touches on many of the most recent events in Skid Row's history - September's 50-officer LAPD staffing boost and ensuing crackdown, the against-all-odds development boom, the ACLU suit ending the sidewalk-sleeping ban, and the woes of merchants who have to step over filth and down-and-outers to get to work.
And it pulls a few choice quotes, among them Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's declaration of Skid Row as "a national disgrace" ...
If anyone had doubts about Chief William Bratton's ability to make LAPD more effective than Bernard Parks ever did, here's the proof: Part 1 (violent) crimes are down again for the fourth year in a row.
But unless he gets more money for more officers, Bratton warns, he can't hold the downward trend to an 8% drop every year.
This seems an easy bet to make, since the horribly under-manned LAPD won't likely to get a substantial bump in investment from the city's notoriously cop-stingy taxpayers, and since the cyclical nature of crime will likely result in a bottoming-out and possible reversal of the crime rate's downward trend next year.
Does your neighborhood feel safer than it did in 2002? Do you think more officers on patrol will make a difference?
The map shows the number and concentration of homeless people living on Skid Row's many corners in two-week increments represented by the LAPD's biweekly homeless counts. The samples are then set up in javascript layers to show dynamically how the population is shifting geographically from one corner to the next.
While Eric admits the map has limitations of precision, it does seem to be a potentially useful tool for police and for policy-makers to track how their work with homeless people is affecting - or being affected by - the conditions of the streets, buildings and businesses around them:
All students who live in LAUSD's boundaries are eligible to apply for the many amazing magnet schools with in the system. In a few weeks all current LAUSD parents will be receiving the Choice brochure. If you are not a current LAUSD parents, you can pick up a brochure at any LAUSD school.
LAUSD is having a magnet school information fair Saturday December 9th from Saturday, from 8:00 am - 12:00 noon at Cal State Los Angeles (California State University, Los Angeles. 5151 State University Drive, Los Angeles, CA 90032). Materials will be presented on Magnet programs, Public School Choice (PSC), Gifted/High Ability/Highly Gifted Magnets and Permits with Transportation (PWT) Program. Personnel from many of the schools will be in attendance and able to ask many of your questions. This is a free event, open to everyone. They tend to get crowded, so I advise getting their early.
That's the city's umbrella euphemism for benches, bus shelters and, now, automated crappers: Ignoring for a moment the (privately-funded) $1-million cost and the ongoing maintenance expense, the new Central City toilets being installed in the next few weeks sound like the greatest thing since sliced bread.
L.A. Downtown News provides the geek-executive summary:
You may be wondering who left the freezer door open after temps dipped into the 40s last night. But the LAFD says the National Weather Service has issued a red flag warning, as brisk, dry Santa Ana winds setting us up for another round of wildfires.
Don't flip your tiparillo butts out the window, try not to back your hot sport-tuner exhaust into tall, dry grass, and watch where you park in the hills.
Here's more from the LAFD News & Information blog:
FED UP WITH FILM CREWS?
email me at stopfilmabuse@earthlink.net
FED UP WITH FILM CREW ABUSE OF YOU AND THEIR PERMITS?
FED UP WITH POLICE, LAPD, CHP THREATS & RUDENESS ON FILM SHOOTS?
FED UP WITH FILMLA NON RESPONSE TO YOUR COMPLAINTS?
Im a in pro per (acting as my own attorney) preparing a lawsuit against FILMLA, CHP, LASD, LAPD, a production company and the big company that contracted for the commercial they shot. After 7 years of submitting formal, documented complaints to EIDC, FILMLA, CHP, etc. with zero improvement, I am committed to achieving real, lasting solutions through court rulings, injunctive orders. Individual efforts & complaints& phone calls & letters & even community meetings arent getting it done Lets stop the endless B.S., lies, lip service, empty promises, non-action and abuse ...
Curbed L.A. just posted this fascinating spreadsheet (prepared by Peter Dreier at Occidental College) detailing how the $1-billion Measure H affordable housing bond crashed and burned - district by council district.
No surprise, the bid to issue bonds to build housing for homeless and low- and middle-income Angelenos scored tremendously well in districts in the city's poorer core (Councilmembers Perry - 82.3% yes, Parks - 81.9% yes, Wesson - 79.4% yes, Reyes - 77.9% yes) and much more weakly in affluent, home-owning west L.A. and the West Valley (led by 55.6% noes in Greig Smith's district - Granada Hills, Northridge, etc.).
What surprised me was that the measure did as well as it did overall - 62.29% yes to 37.71% no - close, but not quite over the 66.6% approval needed for passage. Anyone got thoughts on why it got the votes it did?
My bully Ruby and I walk all over downtown, but certain routes are saved for special moods. Sometimes at dusk when we both feel alert and frisky, we head for the heart of Skid Row, Fifth Street between Main St. and Central Av. ...
Touted with fruity marketing language such as " Wired within Sunset Silver Lake's architectural framework is an inspired array of tools and amenities," the project promises to deliver crisp condos to upwardly mobile hipsters. According to a Curbed L.A. correspondent, sales might not be going so swimmingly:
To read the L.A. Times yesterday, you'd think Koreatown residents have "never felt less safe," are living in fear of a serial rapist and a rash of robberies and shootings and are generally suffering a headline-worthy crimewave.
This morning, the LAPD Blog puts the lie to that scenario, saying that violent crimes in Koreatown's 29 reporting districts are down by 12 percent overall, but up in just five of them.
The anonymous blogger (Lt. Ruben de la Torre?) then takes Times editors to task for using an anomalous triple-homicide last month, and a few interviews with frightened residents to gloss over the facts:
Well, this'll make traffic on the 101 interesting, but it does have the ring of a Grand Idea:
The burghers of Hollywood want to roof a half-mile stretch of the 101 through Hollywood in a tunnel and put a park on top.
It already has backing from Councilman Tom LaBonge, and the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce and the L.A. Redevelopment Authority are meeting tonight to see if they can squeeze $120,000 out of business execs to fund a feasibility study for the ... wait for it ... $209 million project ...
It's not often that new paranormal lore erupts in Los Angeles - the Hollywood Roosevelt ghosts, the Queen Mary's resident haunt, and the poltergeist in the L.A. Weekly conference room and others are all pretty well-known.
But this Halloweek, the Times points us to the the legend of the haunted Griffith Park picnic table. - supposedly possessed by the ghosts of two young lovers who were crushed to death in flagrante delicto atop said table by a falling tree back in 1976.
A Griffith Park tree trimmer swears that a newly-felled tree he was working on gave him the heebie-jeebies - and then started bouncing up and down on the fateful picnic table. Griffith Park Chief Ranger Albert Torres scoffs: "It's a big park, somebody's got to haunt it." Indeed.
If it sounds too amazing to have suddenly popped up on the Halloween radar, then you have probably realized that the ghost of Orson Welles smiles down on this story, because the clever and industrious Will Campbell is having you on.
We've all been there, at one time or another: wide awake at 2:30 a.m., gritting your teeth, listening to your neighbor's dog bark his fool lungs out. Don't they HEAR it?, you wonder. Isn't there a LAW?
Turns out you actually do have legal rights, and can file complaints about problem barkers (and their do-nothing owners) with the L.A. Department of Animal Services, using this form.
Palms resident George Garrigues finally got sick of losing sleep to his neighbor's dog, and writes in journal format in the latest Palms-Village Sun that he's taking his gripe to the city in an upcoming hearing:
There's a guy in North Hills who's staged a fake airline disaster in front of his house using parts from a Gulfstream jet that he apparently acquired during his day job as an aircraft mechanic.
Just about everyone who's seen the display so far likes it, once they realize it's not a real accident.
The only complaint the homeowner says he's received is that the display is creating a traffic jam in the neighborhood because so many people want to see it.
One night a year, a teensy west-L.A. burg (pop. 39,000) becomes California's seventh largest city (pop. ca. 500,000). People in and around West Hollywood either run cackling to or flee screaming from the cacophonous blowout debauch that is the Halloween Carnaval.
This year, if you want to avoid the mobs, but don't want to sit lonely at home and watch the whole thing on Stickam, you can check out Saturday's Venice Carnevale. The event at Windward Circle in Venice promises arts installations, video mixing, a costume contest, a beer garden and car show plus DJs Jason Bentley, Todd Spero and others will be spinning.
But if you absolutely positively must join the WeHo Carnaval noise on Tuesday, here's the schedule of pre-Carnaval events, Carnaval acts and a ton more useful information:
It appears that Field Operations, one of the three finalists to design a new historic park at the Cornfields says we should:
Their proposal would involve razing historic Dodger Stadium and building a new, $500 million ballpark on the Cornfield site. They would transform the remaining acreage into a five-story aboveground parking lot. On its roof, a park would sit flush with Broadway and connect on its northern end to Elysian Park. The second component of their project would involve redesigning Elysian Park, adding nature walks, golf courses and soccer fields, and creating 1,000 acres of green space.
In the stadium's place, the team described a multi-use, high-rise development perched on the bluff of Elysian Park that would include 25,000 residents, police and fire stations, and even a school. The money garnered from selling that land - estimated at $350 million - would fund the entire project.
Sorry - but what's that you're drinking? It seems to have gone off.
Thanks to the City Council, doing something about visual blight in the city as part of the CDO process may become that much harder.
An agreement to settle a lawsuit brought by Clear Channel and CBS, both of which maintain billboards on Lincoln, gives these multi-billion dollar outdoor advertising companies carte blanche to convert up to 450 existing billboards to double faces, digital displays, and something called "tri-vision", which consists of rotating electronic prisms in three different panels on one billboard.
You may or may not remember this before seeing the ballot on Nov. 7, but City Measure H wants you to approve $1 billion in bonds to provide "affordable housing" for the city's low- and middle-income earners.
Times staffer Steve Hymon devoted all of five paragraphs - buried three-quarters of the way down in a city-measures story stuffed into the bottom of page 9 in an 11-page "Voter Guide" - to one of the largest tax measures this city has ever faced ...
The Eagle Rock Neighborhood Council is forming an ad hoc grievance committee. This committee would work as an advisory committee suggesting resolutions for grievances between stakeholders and the Eagle Rock Council, between stakeholders and between board members.
We are looking for 2 people who live, work, or belong to an organization in Eagle Rock and 3 people who live or work outside of Eagle Rock to join this committee. We are hoping to attract people who have negotiation and mediation skills.
Training will be provided and the committee will only meet as necessary. If you are interested in serving the public in an advisory position or for more information please contact Cherryl Weaver ERNC Secretary at 323-254-1352.
The Times says Police Chief William Bratton remains cagey about a new round of negotiations with the ACLU, but City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo apparently found a way to let the police address Skid Row's squalor while skirting the ACLU's objections to the civil rights violations it says are contained in the city's anti-vagrancy ordinance:
Bratton is quoted as saying things went forward because there were more than 100 open beds available in Skid Row shelters that the displaced street-campers could migrate to for the night, or a string of nights ...
One thing that just killed me on the Skid Row ride Wednesday was seeing little children mingling with junkies.
They were mostly right outside the missions, where their parents must have been seeking help. But there's nothing quite so heartstopping as the sight of a 3-year-old girl doing a happy little dance on trash-strewn San Julian, surrounded by hundreds of lost and wasted adults.
Here's another view of childhood on Skid Row: WowTV gave three young teens there a video camera and turned them loose on their neighborhood ...
I've been writing about Skid Row for way too long now without having spent much time there. A handful of city-desk briefs for the Times 11 years ago, a coupla recent lunchtime walks and some fast drivethroughs do not an expert make.
Time to see close-up the day-in, day-out meat-grinder street culture of Skid Row that has defied eradication for decades now.
After a couple hours at Senior Lead Officer Deon Joseph's side, I'm still no expert. But I know far more than I did before, thanks to his generosity, experience and non-stop narration.
So, no punditry today, just facts and observations about Skid Row through the eyes of a cop who has to police it ....
L.A. County District Attorney Steve Cooley's office finally got wise to the recidivist problem on Skid Row: He announced he'll start dinging convicted Skid Row drug offenders for probation violations any time they're caught returning to Skid Row.
The Times reports that Cooley's plan - effective as of Tuesday - makes 4th, 5th and 6th Streets between Central and Broadway a "stay away" zone for anyone already convicted of selling, buying or using drugs. This will give the 50 cops just added to the beat some teeth in the fight to break up the brawling Skid Row dope trade, as well as giving Cooley's 10 new Skid Row case-handlers something to focus on immediately ...
The closed-door 3-10 vote (with Weiss, Huizar and Rosendahl supporting it) apparently cleared the way for the City Attorney's office to appeal an April 14 federal appeals court decision that prohibited the city from banning sleeping on the street so long as homeless beds in SROs and shelters are in short supply.
If the bald numbers are any indication, the city has something of fight on its hands: with 90,000 homeless people countywide, vying for 9,000 to 10,000 beds - you do the math ...
So far, the criticism over Tuesday's news about the LAPD/ACLU agreement on letting sleeping junkies lie and ghettoizing them into a "free-sleep zone" has been harsh and swift.
Downtowners polled by the Times rightly point out that the measures do nothing to keep addicts from shitting and leaving crack pipes on their doorsteps, nor help push them into shelter, counseling or mental health care ...
Three months ago, the South Central Farm was a hive of activism, a magnet for media attention, a cause celebre for hundreds of people who blocked the streets around it and the actors festooning its trees.
For months after the bulldozers moved in on landowner Ralph Horowitz's behalf and scraped the pocket farms of some 350 families off the 14-acre parcel they had been tending since the 1992 riots, the land was quiet, dark and dead.
But for some occasional saber-rattling from SCF leader Tezozomoc and his supporters and some token gardening of city parkways surrounding the farm, the place seemed to be dead and buried.
Today, L.A. Independent Media reports, the farmers won a court victory when a judge tossed a lawsuit Horowitz had filed accusing the farmers of abusing justice by filing a 2003 lawsuit blocking destruction of the farm plots ...
Well, it took a closed-door meeting between the LAPD, the ACLU, the city attorney and the mayor's office, but it looks like the cops finally have permission to keep Skid Row streets free of tents and sleeping people.
During the day and early evening, that is.
The Times reports that compromise lets Chief William Bratton's officers bust anyone found lying or sleeping on the sidewalk from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. - and anyone camping within 10 feet of a home or business entrance.
This'll either encourage a few more homeless folks to find long-term solutions or just teach them to get better and faster at pitching tents, IMHO ...
Re: Crimes and other Violations of Law by Officers of Ocean Towers
Dear Mayor Holbrook:
I gather from your silence that neither you nor other officials of the City of Santa Monica have any intention of fulfilling your responsibilities to residents of Ocean Towers, despite overwhelming evidence of incessant criminal offenses and other violations of law by officers of Ocean Towers ...
Today mad props go to Beverly Hills City Manager Roderick Wood (a shortened version of that is certainly someone's porn name) for articulating my nagging unease with my recent forays into Mr. Wood's fair city. It is, apparently, those oh-so-pedestrian sidewalks. Mere concrete, it seems, is not sufficient to differentiate Rodeo Drive's extended collection of incredibly overpriced shops from anyone else's, and so Mr. Wood has fashioned a remarkably appropriate solution.
Okay, summer's officially over, all the demagogues are waking up from a well-earned nap and preparing to yell at each other (and us) again about immigration reform and how wrong the other guys are.
In addition to the Labor Day weekend immigration marches, I just got a press release emailed from ANSWER L.A. fairly shrieking that we should all "Protest Racist Minutemen in Maywood" when they arrive there for their own protest at 11 a.m. Saturday.
The L.A. Times' Steve Lopez went off Saturday about LAPD's Central Division was failing to stop drug sales from happening right under his indignant nose.
The LAPD snapped back today with a first-hand view of precisely how hard it is for cops alone to make a dent in a drug culture that runs through Skid Row like the grain in hardwood. Too bad, Steve: might as well bitch about the weather, for all the good it'll do. The problem is far deeper and worse than you'd like to have us believe.
UPDATE BELOWBy more than a few indicators, Skid Row is getting worse - despite a huge influx of cash, cops and care over the past year.
The Times unspools an excellent look at the LAPD crackdown on Skid Row crimes - big and small. *
It seems to be failing:
The Central Division has made about 7,000 arrests so far this year. During the same period in 2005 and 2004, there were more than 9,000, the department reported. That 23% drop comes at a time when arrests in the city as a whole are flat ...
The U.S. Library of Congress has posted "Los Angeles Mapped," a rich collection of historic, artistic and - in some cases - simply goofy maps of the city.
BoingBoing points out the 1942 map by Joseph Jacinto Mora, which is packed with historical detail and whimsy, including animated ballplayers at Wrigley Field and Will Rogers twirling a lariat.
This press release just came across my desk. The hundread-dollar-plate-fundraiser is just the latest attempt to fund a decade-old battle to keep the few remaining Lincoln Place tenants in their apartments.
Produced by a coalition of Venice "Progressives" and a number of prominent Westside and Hollywood Limo- Liberals, the event is evidently aimed at folks who don't actually need affordable housing themselves. But what the heck, if you have more disposable cash lying around than I do and this is something you feel strongly about, then I would encourage you to pony up and attend.....
How's the crime in your neighborhood? Do you feel safe walking at night? Leave your car unlocked? Keep the ground-floor windows open after dark?
If not, maybe you'll want to join the National Night Out, a sort of moral booster shot for neighborhood watch activities all over Los Angeles.
The LAPD Blog has a huge neighborhood-specific list (.PDF) of nearly 100 neighborhood meetings, block walks, pot lucks and candlelight vigils going on around the city tonight.
This trailer is worth a look: Erin Grayson - a tenant of the Lincoln Place Apartments in Venice that are slated by the management company for condo conversion - pulled together a documentary on the fight called "Venice Lobotomy." Here's a trailer, and a couple notes after the jump:
KCET's Life and Times just ran a segment on the ongoing clashes between artists, vendors and free-speech advocates who scramble for space on the Venice boardwalk.
They also asked me and a couple other folks, including blogging.la's Jillian Tate (a current Venetian) and longtime Venice activist (and sometime LAVoice contributor) Marta Evry, to comment.
Marta posted some fascinating - and kinda nauseating - observations about racist taunting among the vendors at a recent meeting:
The land of the filthy-stinking-rich and dirt-poor just snapped into sharper focus:
Zillow published a heat map of Los Angeles, showing where they all live - or rather, showing where the ones who can afford to buy houses live.
Dirt cheap: Downtown and the Inland Empire are mapped out to $150 to $299 a square foot, while - no surprise - homes are going for up to $1,199 a square foot in Beverly Hills, Santa Monica Malibu and assorted pockets of prime real estate all up and down the coast. There are a couple of weird little hotspots in WeHo and downtown, as well ...
She's in the hospital - apparently still alive after a guy with an assault rifle shot up a car in South Central this afternoon in an alleged gang shooting, and bullets passed through the car and hit the child in the abdomen and leg.
This makes two, now: LAPD detectives are still looking for leads - and dangling a $105,000 reward - in the case of a triple slaying on June 30. More if/as this develops.
The LAPD Blog just posted a mystery with a triste twist:
Witnesses said this guy was throwing himself on the ground in front of passing cars in Hollywood on Friday, June 9, and one of them finally hit him.
He's in a coma and police are trying to identify both him and the driver of the car that put him into the hospital:
Anyone with information regarding this incident is urged to contact West Traffic Detectives at 213-473-0234. On weekends and during off-hours, call West Traffic Division Watch Commander at 213-473-0222.
If L.A.'s a sprawling, complex city today, it's due largely to the fact that it has always been that way.
Brent C. Dickerson has built a brawling, pungent historic tour of old industrial-age Los Angeles bustling with horse and bicycle traffic,
Divided into 30 episodes, "A Visit to Old Los Angeles" walks you around downtown block by block with old photos, post cards, sound clips and text of a slightly bemused fin-de-siecle flavor:
A while back, I worked with computer researchers who warned that without proper safeguards, clever crooks could mesh two or three government databases and come up with virtually every shred of your personal data.
I just stumbled across another such resource - PropertyShark lets you look up the square footage, land value, tax status and, in some cases, phone number of virtually any house in Los Angeles.
I just spent half an hour checking out comps, peering at houses from our old West L.A. neighborhood (did we get a good price when we sold last year?) and generally being an evil snoop ...
Padlocks, bulldozers and real estate law be damned. The organizers and activists behind South Central Farmers failed bid to cling to their community garden are still at it.
They're still griping mightily about "backroom deals" and generally ignoring the fact that - in the end - they apparently pissed off David Horowitz to the point where he just didn't want to sell them the 14-acre plot where they'd been squatting rent-free for three years.
They're camping out outside the fence, tending crops and flowers they've planted in the 30-inch strip of parkway between curb and sidewalk, and generally refusing to give up. Protests are planned for this weekend, starting this morning at City Hall just minutes from now:
While the ambitious Grand Avenue Master Plan moves forward on well-greased bulldozer treads, there's still a little room for input:
A public hearing at 5:30 tonight is seeking your ideas for what to do with the big 16-acre park at the heart of the redevelopment plan, says Eric at Blogdowntown.
The city is planning to re-engineer the pedestrian shoulder along the eastern edge of Silver Lake Reservoir to make it safer for the hundreds of runners, bikers and dog-walkers who circle the lake at dawn and dusk.
The plan involves ripping out 23 old trees in order to shove the retaining wall away from traffic on Silver Lake Boulevard, replace them with new plantings, build a proper running path with curb and generally increase the distance between cars and bodies ...
Here's a thumbsucker for you: What makes a great walking neighborhood great? On that level, is Hollywood great? Could you live there - or anywhere in L.A. - without a car?
Council President Eric Garcetti's leading a walkabout of Hollywood this Saturday morning with a small group of architects and planners - and anyone else who wants to join in strolling the 'hood and trying to answer these philosophical questions:
Man, I'm torn: the outdoor smoking ban now blankets every city, county and state beach in L.A. County but three - Redondo, a sliver of Palos Verdes Estates and part of Leo Carrillo.
On the one hand, I'm sick of stumbling across stubbed-out butts in the surfline or my kids' sand castles. On the other hand, honestly, how much dangerous second-hand smoke can a single cigarette generate in a 22-knot offshore breeze? Might as well try to ban passing gas ...
Looks like property rights is L.A.'s issue of the week.
Consider this: Rocky Delgadillo's office sued a Van Nuys landlord company for forcing people out of rent-controlled apartments in upcoming neighborhoods so it could upgrade and rent the units at a higher "market rate."
On the one hand, rent control was established to prevent this very thing: kicking people out of their homes to make a profit. Condo conversions and runaway gentrification in L.A. neighborhoods ranging from Venice to downtown are forcing poorer families to move away from friends, family and businesses they've had for decades, and rapidly eroding the foothold in the city that many Angelenos have fought to maintain ...
If generator noise from late-night shoots downtown has ever ruined your sleep, this may interest you on a couple of levels:
Last January, Councilmembers Jan Perry and Eric Garcetti asked the DWP to look into a proposal by urban environmental firm Plasmatic Concepts to have the city install "infrastructure nodes" at prime downtown filming locations to provide water, power, storage and data to the film industry.
Okay, so it's a cliche, but for the South Central Farmers, it really is all over but for the shouting.
The L.A. County Sheriff's Dep't. evicted them and restored custody of the land to legal owner Ralph Horowitz. Bulldozers flattened much of the crops. The celebrity tree-sitters got booked and went home to regroup for a press conference about 50 minutes from now.
And the 40-odd protesters who got busted for lying in the middle of Alameda Street or bucking the LAPD signed whatever papers were necessary to move their cases into the court system ...
SOUTH CENTRAL FARMERS AND LINCOLN PLACE EVICTIONS -
OPEN LETTER TO ANTONIO VILLARAIGOSA
From: Jim Smith
Memo to Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa:
Dear Brother Antonio,
It�s been a long time since our union days when we could sit down together and have a drink with friends while discussing the issues of the day. But if we could do it today, I'd like to steer the conversation to the South Central farmers <www.southcentralfarmers.com>, who are fighting to save L.A.'s largest urban farm and a source of nutritious food for poor people and to Lincoln Place <www.lincolnplace.net>, where tenants are fighting to save their homes and 696 affordable garden apartments. As you well know, there have been massive evictions at both Lincoln Place and the South Central Farm ...
UPDATES BELOW including news that the landowner set a price, then balked when the Annenberg Fondation offered to meet it.
Looks like all those flyovers by L.A. County Sheriff's choppers were recon missions:
Sheriff's deputies began evictingevicted the South Central Farmers at around dawn this morning from the 13-acre industrial lot where they've built a farm over the past 14 years - and been squatting since the city sold the land in 2003.
Arrests have been made, bulldozers are in position flattening the crops, and the eviction is continuing at this hour, Fernando Flores reports on the farm's web site:
LASD chopper scoping out the South Central Farm
(image via LAIndymedia)
It's been an interesting week for the South Central Farmers, who continue to wait for sheriff's deputies to evict them on a court order handed down three weeks ago:
When a kid is murdered, L.A. goes looking for culprits:
While Westside detectives are searching for the kid who actually shot 17-year-old Venice High student Agustin Contreras to death Monday, everyone else in the realms of L.A. power and influence has been searching for the Real Killers - the systemic breakdown or social tension that put the shooter's finger on the trigger.
But Agustin's death doesn't fit into the neat little blame box that LAUSD and the less-introspective news media were hoping for:
Nearly 1 million L.A. County residents seek help from soup kitchens, food pantries and shelters every year - 34% of them with at least college or trade school education.
The costs of gasoline, housing and food are driving up hunger rates to the point where 957,000 people have to lean on the system to put food on their plates, says "Hunger in Los Angeles County 2006," PDF), a report from the L.A. Regional Food Bank ...
Yeah, something's afoot - bureaucratic perfect storms, satanic gremlins in the election machinery, I have no idea.
Because in addition to last night's Diebold shocker, my poll experience today was completely SNAFU'd for a while.
We moved to Silver Lake in December, finally got around to changing our DMV info in March. But in the two and a half months since then, we never got confirmation of our voter registration - let alone a sample ballot or the ceremonial cartload of 4-color campaign junk mail.
I checked the voter rolls at our polling place on Rowena - nope, the previous occupant is still registered at this address. So I set off across town to our old polling place on the West side ...
After years of planning, lobbying, cajoling, and intense opposition, the mall giant's plan to gut and rebuild Santa Monica Place with 21 story condo/retail/office towers is dead. Today's LA Times reports that the company will come up with a more modest redesign of the Santa Monica mall - open air, more unusual shops, a third-floor food court with ocean views, and a connection from the mall to the Third Street Promenade and the ocean.
Cool: The LAFD's Engine Co. 9 has the words "Skid Row" proudly painted on its engines and rescue vehicles.
Lame: Some nannyhead griped long and loud enough to the city that the department is now planning to erase the words because they're somehow offensive ...
I've been wondering lately why the L.A. County Sheriff's Department has held off on evicting the South Central Farmers from the 14-acre plot they've been borrowing from landowner Ralph Horowitz for the past 13 years. (Anyone have information on that? Please comment.)
If it's a tactical move, it may have been a mistake, because the farmers and activists have dug in:
I love downtown Los Angeles in the summer - there are so many things to see and do. The LA Dept of Parks and Recreation are kicking things off by throwing an event in Pershing Square called "Meet Your Neighbors" on Saturday, June 3, 2006. Their website encourages attendees to "pack a picnic, take an L.A. Conservancy tour, and listen to live music", among other things, between noon and 4pm on Saturday.
If you want a glimpse of downtown L.A.'s future, the L.A. Downtown News' new Development section is a good place to start:
LADN lists 156 active projects including a 512-bed jail next to Parker Center, a $4M renovation of the L.A. Theatre Center (why don't they spell it theatre centre? Just asking) and the Anschutz Entertainment Group's megalithic, 4-million-square-foot L.A. Live center.
As of today, L.A. Live's multi-use sports-and-entertainmment center is just a bustling hole in the ground (see right) ...
By the time you read this, the demonstration to save the South Central Farm (downtown @Figueroa & Pico) may already be over.
There's a little ticker running on the farm's home page: At this second, it says, "Only 2 days, 15 hours, 13 minutes and 49 seconds left to Save the Farm."
Monday morning, the clock runs out for the 30-day grace period the Trust for Public Land had won for the farmers to give them more time to scrape enough money to buy the land from owner Ralph Horowitz - who plans to build warehouses there ...
And unlike the stomping murder last week of Kristi Morales, these two have no positive ID's yet. Just two more lives wiped out. Make of it what you will ...
What do you get when you mix chronic drug abusers, alcoholics, mentally ill individuals, young families in transition, newly emancipated youth, youth transitioning out of group homes, and those who are homeless because they just got out of prison/jail? Skid Row! That is the demographic and dynamic of Skid Row. And that is what is planned for the Gower Street "Demonstration" project - Permanent Supportive Housing for Chronically Homeless Adults. All of these individuals will live together under one roof ...
On top of evidence that the Southern California housing market is slowing down, yesterday's Los Angeles Times had, tucked away on page C3, a little blurb with the oh-so-nonchalant headline, "Mortgage Defaults Rise in State."
Ask yourself: Has the high (if falling) number of murders in Los Angeles completely numbed your reaction to the point where news of a killing is no more shocking than a traffic report - sort of a flesh fender-bender? Just so much background noise?
I just stumbled across a couple of items that made me wonder, too: The L.A. Police Commission finally answered homicide commanders who were begging for more "cold-case" detectives ($767,000 worth per year) to handle evidence against sex-slaying suspects - including four serial killers ...
L.A. is full of characters - public figures, stone weirdos and street cartoons.
You grin or grimace when you see them, wonder who they really are underneath the "act," register them as part of the streetscape and take them for granted. One such character just died, reports Will Campbell, who never took the guy for granted.
Will noticed "El Circo Loco" missing from Silver Lake. He inquired of the L.A. County Coroner's office. And he delivers a lovely, bittersweet elegy for the odd, squinty guy in the technicolor toreador costume, whose legal name we learn was "Antonio Ruiz" and who may have OD'd ...
Looks like the South Central Farm is still clinging to its disputed turf while lawyers for the 300+ farmers duke it out in court with landowner Ralph Horowitz Shapiro. They're not too happy with SFV councilman Dennis Zine's noisy rant against them a couple weeks ago, either:
Meanwhile, Perry Crowe writes in L.A. City Beat that farmers camping nights at SCF got a Late-night drive-by from Councilman Dennis Zine. Only problem was, he was traveling in an unmarked LAPD unit, wearing an LAPD raid jacket, with two cops - one of whom drew a handgun on a 13-year-old girl ...
If you're somehow well-off enough to be saving up to buy a home in Los Angeles, this news might make you wait a bit longer:
Bank foreclosures on defaulted mortgages are up by 63% this quarter over the first quarter of 2005, thanks to everyone overextending their buying power with too much credit and aggressive financing, according to DefaultResearch.com.
Pare away the commercial foreclosures and you're looking at 77 percent increase in defaults on single-family homes and an 88% jump in foreclosures on duplexes ...
Yes the title of this article is true. There was an art exhibit hosted by Maestro Cafe on Saturday, April the 15th. The art exhibit was showing life and figure drawings by students of the Maestro's Fine Arts Program (presented by Art Center College of Design). I was invited so I decided to go check it out with my friends.
I did not expect it to be so great. I knew there were some talented ghetto kids in the classes but the degree of talent strewn across the walls in nude and clothed model drawings was incredible. The place was swarming with people. It smelled like sweat, coffee, and drawing pencils ...
I was wandering around the web tonight as I relaxed after coming home from work, trying to find information on the new Arroyo Seco Historical Parkway signs (which I just saw tonight) and on the U.S. Bank Tower changing its lights back to white, from the blue last week.
I stumbled on Caltrans's District 7 Rental Properties and thought, ooh? Maybe Caltrans is renting stuff out for under market value. I am blissfully happy where I live now, but shoot, if Caltrans has got a house they're renting out for cheap I would be all for that. Plus I know that Caltrans owns a bunch of the nice Pasadena and South Pasadena property along the defunct 710 extension, and usually government stuff is cheaper than retail...
I was one of about 15 people to speak at a Planning Department hearing in favor of downzoning a chunk of our cluttered little residential hillside from commercial to residential.
As I've noted before, my new neighbors already shot down plans last spring to build two big apartment buildings with a total of 40 units near the base of the hill.
The rezoning (headed for a full Planning Commission hearing on June 8) would make it basically impossible to build almost anything but single-family homes on the hill - and if you've ever driven any of those streets, you'd probably agree that's a very good thing ...
Maybe you've always thought of office-tower security guards as guys who flunked the LAPD entrance exam (or were "retired early" from the department) and now spend their worknights sucking doobies and snoozing with their bootheels up on the spycam monitors.
You thought wrong. Turns out they're supposed to be patrolling their turf like growling, hair-trigger Rottweilers, ever-vigilant for signs of terrorist infiltration. Too bad the turnover rate for security guards is 243%.
Councilman Eric Garcetti blogs that he and Jack Weiss want to change all that by beefing up training and job-retention efforts for private security firms so they can work more closely with firefighters and cops if/when the someone actually approaches the Library Tower with wicked intentions ...
It's getting easier to get online around greater L.A. without being tied to your office. This is either a good thing - you can work outdoors or over a cup of coffee for free - or a bad thing: you're never far from the obligations and distractions of your online life.
Latest add: Santa Monica has been hooking up free hotspots at places like Third Street Promenade and the city's library and Virginia Avenue Park, reports the Lookout.
Next up: Civic Center, the Ken Edwards Community Center and the Santa Monica Pier and the City Hall courtyard ...
The Times posted L.A. County's list of 14 possible sites to be picked for expansion into the five regional multi-service centers needed for its ambitious and politically risky $100-million homeless stabilization plan.
I threw together a map of the sites with the Google API that shows their precise locations - which you might want to check against your own address - and some interesting distribution patterns:
Obviously there's a good concentration downtown, where most of the county's estimated 80,000 homeless people now live ...
I'll never forget the first night I rolled into LA from the midwest back in 1993. I was fresh off a dead marriage, most everything I would still own was jammed into my Camry, and it was Valentine's Day. I had made a reservation for that first night at a random Ramada Inn (this was seriously pre-Internet everywhere)... in West Hollywood, an area I knew nothing about, being from conservative ol' Cincinnati and all. I unpacked and headed to the closest bar, which just happened to be The Palm on Santa Monica. Needless to say, I was the only cajone-sporting biped in the place and just couldn't get my bearings. I think I finally gave up after the bouncer's fourth round of "are you SURE you want a beer in THIS bar?" It was full of women, and not a guy in sight -- of course, I did! LOL ...
This should be interesting: new L.A. City Planner Gail Goldberg will unveil her "vision for Los Angeles" Thursday evening at (of all places) The L.A. Zoo, RowenaCommunityVision reports.
Goldberg, you may recall was the San Diego City planner who encouraged the development philosophy of "villages" in her former city - pedestrian-friendly collections of housing, businesses, schools and public facilities fed by mass transit ...
Just finished riding the L.A. Treasure Hunt - a twisting 25-mile bike cruise through Echo Park, Los Feliz, Griffith Park, Silver Lake, downtown, MacArthur Park, more downtown and Chinatown.
Kicked off with free tamales at Echo Park Lake and framed as a scavenger hunt to collect food and toiletries benefitting the Union Rescue Mission, the ride was everything a good, intimate 2-wheeled journey through this city should be: colorful, smelly, joyous, dangerous, painful, grimy and rewarding.
We had crystal-blue skies and cool destinations and nobody in our crew got doored ...
There are lots of very cool business establishments opening up in the Eagle Rock section of Los Angeles City Council District 14. One of my favorites was Dante's Chicken and Ribs which until last month was a great place to get ribs on Eagle Rock's main drag (Colorado Boulevard). I guess I'll have to get my ribs at Original Texas Barbecue King on Cesar Chavez Avenue in downtown Los Angeles. I'd love to hear from other Angelenos where you think the best ribs in town are.
On Sunday afternoon, there will be a rally in Hollywood to protest the proposed taking of Bernard's Luggage (and other small businesses) to make way for a City-sponsored "W" hotel. Details are ...
Looks like somebody didn't get the memo about dumping people on Skid Row:
A patient in a hospital gown and slippers from Kaiser Permanente's facility in Bellflower was found wandering in Skid Row traffic after a cab dropped her off yesterday, the Times reports.
One thing I've learned since moving to Silver Lake: The NIMBY kung fu here is very powerful:
- Last spring, homeowners shot down plans for 3027 Angus Street, which would have crammed a 3-story, 40-unit apartment building onto a quiet hillside full of single-family-homes, on a lot serviced by a gnarly-narrow street and an even gnarlier one-lane driveway. (Full disclosure - I live on that ridge and sometimes commute via Angus.)
Defeated, the owners put up the land for sale and all went quiet until just now - It looks like the opponents are working to drive nails into the project's coffin: A City Planning Department hearing is scheduled for April 10 to review a request to modify the General Plan and zoning ...
The City of Los Angeles has some terrific laws on the books to preserve the architectural character of its Historic Preservation Overlay Zones ("HPOZs"). If enforced zealously, the existing laws (i.e., Municipal Code �� 11(l)-(0) and 12.20.3(q)) would ensure full compliance with the City's architectural standards ...
Do you wonder what the hell they've been doing up at the shuttered Griffith Observatory for the past three years? Me too.
The observatory just posted a brief video tour ( Quicktime, 13MB) outlining the huge project, which included building a massive museum space and theater under the lawn, repairing chipped masonry and restoring the gorgeous 1933 murals inside.
The video tour by LookUpTonight.com shows some pretty alarming (older) views of the building's exposed superstructure and skinned domes (now restored) as well as reassuring images of the still-intact woodwork in the "director's quarters" ...
Itâs a manâs sympathy with all creatures that truly makes him a man. Until he extends his circle of compassion to all living things, man himself will not find peace.
These words spoken decades ago by Albert Schweitzer ring true to a special group of dedicated and caring Los Angelenos. Appointed to be the eyes and ears of those who can not speak for themselves, The Directors of Animal Welfare (DAWs) work with their Neighborhood Councils to tackle problems, initiate proposals and hold events aimed at solving problems or creating awareness on issues that help humans and animals live together harmoniously. In 1999, the new L.A. City Charter divided Los Angeles into 90 geographic areas and a Neighborhood Council was empowered in each to represent its respective neighborhoods ...
For all the ham-fisted hand-wringing over Skid Row done by newspapers and off-site, off-target bloggers like me, for all the mental health service funding and beefed-up policing and expanded social services, there are at least a couple of downtown activists who worry that a smarter approach is needed.
Homeless-care advocate Brady Westwater points to the complex, self-perpetuating culture of Skid Row criminals and benefactors as the reason it's so hard to get sick, addicted people off the street and cleaned up:
Excuse the foul language connotation, please. These are foul times and foul days, and "f&%k" seems to sum up a whole conglomeration of sentiments at the present time.
Anyway, on to the continuing saga of "Broke A$$ Fayza Attempts to Go to California." The latest chapter in this quest features, as it does for so many fiscally-savvy people, "Adventures in Craigslist." ...
West Hollywood's City Council has apparently decided it's going to be 4:20 around the clock.
The council just voted unanimously to order the Sheriff's Department to put simple marijuana possession at the very bottom of their crime-stopping priorities. Councilman John Duran believes that keeping the chronic for personal use is "not a burning issue in West Hollywood," according to WeHoNews.com.
Apparently, the sheriff's department has been turning a blind eye to pot possession for some time:
Videographer Robert Sobul has tossed together a nifty video travelogue about Los Feliz that tours some of what he considers the neighborhood's high points:
Writer Jahmin Assa guides the tour of the Vista Theatre, Yuca's, Skylight Books, the Shakespeare bridge, the Post Office (?), the Dresden, the dueling Frank Lloyd Wright houses (Hollyhock and Ennis) and he makes brief mention of the Griffith Observatory curse, said to have killed James Dean, Natalie Wood and Sal Mineo before their time for filming "Rebel Without a Cause" there.
The video is hosted on TurnHere.com, a collection of such neighborhood videologues from around the U.S. supported by ads for the businesses mentioned in each video, but it's hard to ascertain from the home page whether the businesses that sign up actually control what the videographers shoot ...
Now's your chance to completely redesign the 32-acre Cornfield near Chinatown (made infamous by last summer's Not a Cornfield art installations) as a state historical park.
The California State Parks Foundation just announced a competition to find the best design team to create the park. It's offering a $25,000 plan-development stipend and the Annenberg Foundation is ponying up $400,000 to $500,000 for execution of the winning design ...
The 350 tiny farm plots were due to be kicked off their 14-acre patch of green by COB Monday, after they lost a court fight against the landowner, but they quickly filed something with the sheriff that kicked the whole affair into yet another court hearing.
Open letter to all the foreign correspondents in the city:
You're not Angelenos yet if you're still writing nonsense like this:
To the New York Times, which wrote in this morning's fawning piece about Oscar parties:
In the hierarchy of place here, there is no more exalted locus than the Chateau Marmont. The hotel high above Sunset Boulevard has launched a thousand clichĂŠd magazine profiles, is legendary for bad behavior by its inmates, and is the place where business is not so much done as memorialized ...
This is to complain about the Los Angeles Public Library system and its unreliability when it comes to their drop-off boxes and how you are responsible for PAYING for the item if it's lost ...
Harvesting sugar cane in the Garden.
Image by Kathryn Hill
Monday's the day the L.A. County Sheriff's will evict the South Central Farm from the 13-acre, 350-plot farm in industrial South Central, where families have tended their crops on borrowed land since the aftermath of the 1992 riots.
Deputies tacked up an eviction notice on the farm's west gate yesterday afternoon, warning that everything the farmers own must be off the land by the end of the day Monday.
Sure, it's just business - the owner wants to build warehouses there to begin making serious money off his land, and now legally has that right. But seems a damn shame ...
If you're a camera geek like me, you may have spent at least a few hours a few hours dampening the glass counters full of exotic old Hassys and Leicas at Studio City Camera Exchange.
HereInVanNuys points out the very sad news that, after 62 years of business under that glorious pre-Googie storefront with the giant flashgun, SSCE is shutting down due to family illness.
No word on what's going to happen to the signs, says HereinVanNuys, who adds this lament ...
Looks like the hardest fight is over for the controversial 3-story condo/retail complex slated for Rowena Avenue just around the corner from my house:
The famously bristly Silver Lake residents apparently couldn't muster enough displeasure to persuade the neighborhood council to block it - perhaps because it's nicely designed and the beloved Coffee Table will have a home there.
Apparently 57% of the 200 residents at last week's meeting at Ivanhoe School opposed the project, while 43% supported it. So, the Silver Lake Neighborhood Council conditionally approved it.
So riddle me this, all you defenders of L.A.'s supposedly unstoppable real estate boom:
The latest numbers show that greater L.A. still holds the unenviable title of least-affordable city in America (six straight quarters!) and the median home price in L.A. is $500,000. That was for the last three months of 2005.
Yet how come we just closed a sale yesterday on our West L.A. house to the only person who would give us an offer (and a lowball one at that) after two open houses and a broker's open brought 300+ people trooping through it - the only 3+2 on the market in the Westwood Charter School District at the time? ...
I got it in my head to go to Little Ongpin, but not to my favorite location on Beverly in Historic Filipinotown (or Hi-Fi for you trendies), but to the one in Eagle Rock, which opened there maybe a year ago. Why go where I don't know? I guess I wanted to turn it into a short (not fast, with all the street construction going on) jaunt throughout Northeast L.A. ...
Here's yet another reason to love being a 2-wheeled Angeleno:
The L.A. Treasure Hunt invites you to bike all over Los Feliz, Silver Lake, downtown and Koreatown on a scavenger hunt, kicked off at noon, March 12 with a big barbecue at Echo Park Lake, to benefit the Union Rescue Mission.
All you need: an area map, a bike and six bucks. Plus, there's an after-party at the Echo, and a $2,500 grand prize.
From organizer Sean Carlson, who also put together last fall's L.A. Scavenger Hunt, here are the details:
Today the LAPD's Media Relations office put to rest a blog rumor that we pointed to Monday:
A reader at Jim Bursch's West L.A. Online had emailed him to say that the body of a homeless woman found on Speedway in Venice last week was the latest in a string of a dozen murders of homeless women "in the last few years."
I emailed the LAPD to look into it, and just got a call from Officer April Harding of the department's Media Relations office, who said Venice Homicide has had only the one case referred to here. "If there had been a series of homicides, we would have put out a press release asking for the public's help," she said.
Posted by: Mack_Reed on Wednesday, February 22, 2006
And they live in places like this: a $23.5-million water's-edge estate with 24-foot ceilings, five bedrooms, 5.5 baths and a deck like a frickin' ocean liner. The Flash slideshow alone is pretty devastating ...
If you've been keeping track, you know that the South Central Farm - a 13-year-old community farm for 350 families n the heart of industrial South Central - just lost its court battle with the owner. They're literally on the brink of eviction.
(Here's a good backgrounder by Dan Abendschein on the farm's history and struggles)
You may not know that the farmers have planned a demonstration Friday morning at 9 a.m. at City Hall to protest what looks like their impending doom - and to ask us to help them raise $16 million to buy off landlord Ralph Horowitz (who wants to build warehouses there) and keep the 14-acre farm running.
LAX 'Hood is Fugly: Council Member Janice Hahn is pushing for a facelift for the Century Blvd. corridor near LAX - a cleanup of what the Weekly's Steven Mikulan refers to as low wages, civic neglect and violent crime. Could this spell doom for LIVE NUDE NUDE NUDES, er, "Vaginas 'R' Us?" Could we try steering the "bad element" away from LAX by singing this?
So is the Valley: HereinVanNuys bemoans the "dull, pale stamp of the Eisenhower years on Valley architecture, and longs for landlords to brighten up his home turf with more-Mexican color schemes.
SBC Still Continues to Suck: It's easy to hate a utility company. That's because it's so hard to find an alternative, when the company has a monopoly on the basic service provided. Cybele is suffering in DSL Hell thanks to SBC's rock-solid record of suckage ...
i'm writing to get the word out and to obtain support to pass an important ordinance. parking, or lack there of, is a huge issue in los angeles.
California dmv code 22507.2 specifically allows local municipalities to issue permits to park in front of private driveways for owners/leasees.
that means we can have the option of creating an additional parking space that would otherwise be unavailable. imagine this: to be able to legally park in front of your private driveway while preventing rude strangers from blocking your driveway access with their cars ...
Last time someone tried building an apartment building in Silver Lake - right near the house we just moved into - they got their ass handed to them by homeowners who didn't want 40 apartments cluttering up the 'hood with traffic, noise and eye pollution.
I'm betting the same will happen again: My neighbors are already mobilizing to block a 3-story, 64-unit commercial/condo development that would replace three buildings at 2916-2930 Rowena Ave. including the beloved Coffee Table, which just lost its lease.
Found a flyer taped to my fence this weekend (that's the photo at right) that warns:
A chase and fierce gun battle between a shotgun-wielding carjacker and police ended early this morning when the suspect was cornered and shot dead in Venice. Santa Monica police Chief James T. Butts said his officers acted "valorously." "It took a great deal of courage," Butts said. "This person has manifested the intent to kill you, and these officers chased him. That's what you expect of police officers in a free society."
The incident began in Santa Monica, when a motorist stopped to help what he thought was a driver with car trouble. Instead, the suspect jumped out of a vehicle, pointed a shotgun at the would-be good Samaritan, and commandeered the car. The motorist was not injured. Butts said officers stopped the car at 7th and California streets, where a gun battle broke out. The man, who has not been identified, fled in the carjacked auto. About a half-mile later, with police pursuing, the suspect crashed the car in the 1300 block of Electric Avenue in Venice.
When he ignored commands to surrender and pointed a shotgun at police, officers opened fire, Butts said. The suspect was declared dead at the scene. No officers were hurt, Butts said. ...
To hear some spinny-eyed realtors tell it, the California housing bubble will never burst.
Sure, we're due for a "market correction" but the value of real estate in L.A. is too solid and strong to collapse.
Well, Another Fucked Borrower is already choking like a coal-mine canary on our behalf by blogging market hiccups, bad-lending trends, dire predictions and early-90s horror stories to remind us what will could happen if we're all wrong ...
This is either a wonderful bid for mass enlightenment or just a clever way to sell books, but Long Beach is reading My California: Journeys by Great Writers for Book Week next month.
Yep, the entire city of Long Beach.
So say CaliforniaWriters.com and Press-Telegram columnist Tom Hennessy, who points out the organizers are holding a competition to encourage you to write about California, too ...
They've done it again. To paraphrase a crack coined by someone far wittier than me, can we please pass these out-of-town journalists the clue bong?
Every so often, some non-Angeleno tours Los Angeles, makes stereotyped assumptions, and goes home with his/her empty mind made up.
The AP's (New York-based) Beth J. Harpaz takes her kids on a Hollywood bus tour in search of celebrities, gripes about prices at the Ivy ($35 a person!!!), ogles Muscle Beach, trudges down the Walk of Fame, rides the Universal Studios tram and then moans that they didn't see a single celebrity.
Anyone care to set her straight about the real Hollywood? (Wait, lemme cue up the soundtrack ...) What would your ideal Hollywood tour include?
Posted by: Mack_Reed on Tuesday, February 07, 2006
Today's a school holiday ("Pupil-Free," they call it, which generally means Dad has to take a day off work), so I took my son for a bike ride on the beach.
We arrived to find the Nomadic Museum closed (only open Tues. through Sun.), but watched three dudes weasel their way in ...
Ghost bridge: The Cocoanut Grove awaits its new tenants
In the end, it wasn't about the building.
The grand Ambassador Hotel, its inexorable destruction by the LAUSD and tonight's wake at the Gaylord Apartments across the street from the gutted monolith of the Cocoanut Grove were about the people: kings and presidents, movie stars and chambermaids - all the lives that transected its baroque lobby and inhabited it from the suites to the cheap rooms.
A good 250 people piled into the ornate lobby of the Gaylord Apartments, drank a good deal of liquor (provided by the L.A. Conservancy) and listened to lament after eloquent lament over the Ambassador's demise ...
When I lived in Venice, we'd hear gunfire every so often. You'd rarely see a story in the Times about it the next day, since it was almost always just a couple of neighborhood assholes shooting at cans, or maybe each other while drunk, and no blood was spilled - except, of course, when they wasted anti-gang activist James Richards.
Now I'm in Silver Lake, and the news of a shooting this week is no less disturbing: LAPD Northeast detectives want any information they can get on the gang-related murder of a 27-year-old man, whose body was found Tuesday, shot several times in the head.
Posted by: Mack_Reed on Thursday, February 02, 2006
I'm beginning to wonder if homelessness in L.A. can ever really be "cured" or if the care agencies are merely keeping it from getting far worse than it already is.
Bob Pool writes in today's Times about homeless kids harassing the good people of Hollywood, bumming change and generally putting a hefty load on the care system.
I was buzzing through Griffith Park yesterday on my pre-dawn bike ride when something hit me (no, not a car, just a thought).
It's cold and damp, and my little 4-AA headlamp barely cut the gloom. But out on the golf course, I could see bright headlamps sweeping the deep dark. Little ride-on mowers were cruising around the bunkers and greens, cutting grass. I'm kinda bleary, so the sight barely registers as I grind on toward the Zoo.
Then one of the mowers rumbles up the path to cross Riverside at the edge of the grass and whips into a tight little 360 loop - the headlights whirling like a disco ball - before screaming across the road right in my path to cut the other half of the course ...
Random sharp reports and noise bulletins from around downtown this weekend:
If you live anywhere near Grand Avenue you've probably already had your dinner (or your sleep) interrupted by the chirp of tires and the screech of turbo valves.
Shock-and-awe experts Survival Research Labs put on a little show last night that rattled more than a few windows and teacups in Chinatown, according to reports from Ivymike (with two videos), Sean Bonner and Xeni Jardin. I would love to have seen it, having thoroughly enjoyed last year's show. Mike reports SRL is re-exploring its animal decay motif, and pelted the crowd with dead fish, among other substances.
UPDATE BELOW: Now it's a RSVP/hosted-bar sitch on Feb. 2.
Franklin Avenue and the folks at the Ambassador's Last Stand invite bloggers, readers and history geeks to hoist a few next Tuesday soon in honor of the near-naked patch of ground that lies where the mighty, musty Ambassador Hotel once stood.
They're looking for volunteers to lead a toast (just one?) or perform a spoken-word piece in tribute to the hotel's past, which takes place at the nearby bar where Sirhan Sirhan reputedly grabbed grub before assassinating Bobby Kennedy in the Ambassador's kitchen.
Former Cocoanut Grove, future LAUSD building (image via FranklinAvenue)
FranklinAvenue points out that the massive pile of I-beams, history and hype that once stood as the Ambassador Hotel has been completely demolished - save for the Cocoanut Grove complex near what once was its face.
If you're an architectural preservationist or lover of L.A. arcana, you might want to keep tabs on FranklinAvenue: Mike there is working on an Ambassador wake, to be held perhaps down the block at the HMS Bounty ...
Congratulations: You live in "the homeless capital of the United States of America."
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa so declared it today, upon announcing a report that says 48,000 of L.A. County's 88,000 homeless people live within city limits. The report, due out this afternoon, still isn't up on the L.A. Homeless Services Authority's web site. Download it here. All 200 pages of it. (Press release here
But the Times points out a stat that puts the lie to the popular misperception that the homeless are happy vagabonds who've come to L.A. for the sun: 78% were already living here when they became homeless ...
Looks like the City Council threw Steve Soboroff another bone: The council decided the PV developers don't need to file another environmental impact report, despite west L.A. Councilman Bill Rosendahl's urging to the contrary.
That's the second bit of good news in a week for Playa Vista, which - unless development is again halted by court action over traffic, wetland impacts or the pockets of methane lurking beneath the soil - will expand by another 2,600 residential units and some retail space.
There's a small debate going on in an earlier PV post about whether developing the last huge slab of marshland in L.A. County is a good or bad idea. Feel free to wade in.
Posted by: Mack_Reed on Thursday, January 12, 2006
The litigation has been thick and relentless, but developer and one-time mayoral candidate Steve Soboroff must be chortling over this one:
An L.A. Superior Court judge today ruled in favor of the city's approval of building stores, parks and 2,600 more apartments at Playa Vista.
Playa Vista foes and the City of Santa Monica apparently had sued, alleging that the city had approved an inadequate environmental impact report for a development phase known as "The Village" in one of the last big developable chunks of coast-adjacent land in L.A. County ...
For a classic public-service-slash-feelgood-PR-gesture, you couldn't machine anything much more perfect than Councilmember Eric Garcetti's first big splash as Council President:
He's helping launch an 8 p.m.-to-4 a.m. hipsters-and-tourists shuttle service catering to the increasingly choked nightclub scene along and around Hollywood Boulevard.
The "Holly Trolley will tootle round H'wood in Red Car drag, helping to pool up to 50 clubgoers and looky-loos who might otherwise be clogging the pavement in single-occupant cars, and ferry them around to MTA stations, parking lots and various (as-yet unnamed) clubs ...
Live downtown? Sick of the late night film shoots? Had enough of squib explosions and squealing tires at 2 a.m.? Ever choked back the urge to drive through a set yelling "HOLLYWOOD GO HOME!!"?
The Downtown L.A. News says it's getting worse. Trucks suck up the parking and block the view of businesses, cast and crew clog the sidewalk, and the locals don't get much sleep.
Despite pledges by the city's filming office to downscale activities in recent months, 138 notices for filming in the district were issued from Sept. 8 to Dec. 15. What's more, the tiny area east of Alameda logged nearly 800 filming days last year, making it one of the busiest in the city.
Here's an intoxicating approach to city planning: Ask L.A.'s neighborhoods what they want, and then try bending the bureaucracy to satisfy them.
San Diego City Planner Gail Goldberg, newly-appointed by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to head the L.A. Planning Department, apparently plans to respond to your neighborhood's specific need for change, the Daily Breeze and Times report:
As you read this, preparations are being made to Hundreds of mourners packed Bethel A.M.E. Church to honor the life of Stanley "Tookie" Williams with a memorial service that will be was webcast at noon today.
Despite the debate over whether Williams' public repentance after a life of violence was sincerity or show, it turns out he did inspire a few people: 2,000 of them turned out to see his body - all that was left of the convicted murderer and notorious Crips co-founder after the state executed him last week.
The Times was quick to point out that many of the mourners were wearing gang colors:
For all the commotion in our new neighborhood yesterday afternoon, I thought a small plane or perhaps an alien gunship must have crashed straight into the reservoir.
Helicopters overhead for two solid hours, traffic being diverted up our hillside streets to a state of near-gridlock because the cops had closed Griffith Park Boulevard and this was the reason?
It's moving day and I'm between homes, waiting while the movers cruise slowly between our old house in West L.A. and our new house in Silver Lake, all our furniture and belongings packed into their two smallish moving vans.
I have keys to the new house - but it's empty and there's no DSL hookup yet. I have keys to the old house, but DSL's cut off and the floor is littered with the crap that falls behind furniture over the years - small change, spent ballpoints, ossified cookies and Bionicle weapons ...
Inclusionary zoning ordinances and density bonusesâalso known as "below market rate" (BMR) housing programsâcan negatively impact the community. These affordable housing programs reward developers who earmark a percentage of new homes or condos for those in the low and moderate income brackets by letting them increase density, build taller structures and curtail open space and parking requirements. This can lead to over-crowding and infrastructure headaches for residents in the area ...
Sixty-nine percent of Americans are homeowners, and they are under siege. A number of "unfriendly" policies, proposals and court decisions within the past year have produced an atmosphere which is arguably antithetical to the American dream of carving out a slice of the apple pie and plopping a single family residence on it.
The assault weapons have catchy titles, such as inclusionary zoning, smart growth, density bonus incentives, eminent domain and mortgage interest tax reform. It could be said that corporations and developers attack from one side while politicians and government officials, acting in the interest of the less well-off, attack from the other.
Looks like a Los Angeles World Airports commission has approved plans to relocate one of its runways and build a gate that can accommodate the mammoth Airbus A380 (the bigger one pictured here next to an Airbus 320.
The runway shift will apparently reduce the risk of what the aviation industry lightly calls "runway incursions" ...
I stumbled across these mysterious and wondrous chunks of street art today in Culver City, outside the Pacific Culver Stadium theaters.
Someone has photographed the street, enlarged the shots onto vinyl stickers, and laminated them onto a pair of city street signal switchboxes, in a nifty bit of urban trompe l'oeil.
Stare at them long enough from the right angle, and they almost disappear. I'd love to know more about them, but Googling only turns up a single mention in comments on a MetaFilter post. Anyone have info on their creator? Is this a municipal thang?
Posted by: Mack_Reed on Tuesday, December 06, 2005
FA's Michael Schneider gives us views of Sammy's eye-popping boudoir mosaic, the brick-vaulted living room and his princely view of the Cocoanut Grove's roof and the city beyond - all doomed to the wrecking ball as LAUSD clears the site for a new school complex ...
Skid Row has become a hip cause among bureaucrats who once paid it little to no mind, and now downtown residents can have realistic hope that helping hard-luck cases and junkies back to their feet will be something more than an unwinnable campaign for overwhelmed social services and an annual resume-buffer for a few Hollywood actors.
This week has seen a burst of strategy and forward-thinking action by L.A.'s councilmen, cops and landlords on reversing Skid Row's decades-long, greased roller-coaster ride to hell ...
I'm a little late with this news, but it seems a California appeals court ruling Friday cleared the way for a clash of the titans at Glendale Galleria:
Megadeveloper Rick "The Grove" Caruso won superior court approval to build the $264-million Americana at Brand project - putting 475,000 square feet of stores and restaurants and 338 housing units smack-dab across the street from the Glendale Galleria, the LABJ reports (reg. required).
The loser in the court fight was Galleria developer General Growth Properties, which also lost a million-dollar campaign to persuade voters in the 2004 election to vote against the Americana project ...
For the L.A. historian who has everything, or at least for the one who's too busy to go stealing construction debris for himself, someone has put a chunk of the Ambassador Hotel up on eBay, says Curbed L.A.
No bids yet on the 3-1/2-inch-long piece of nondescript stone demolition debris, but a crafty buyer could nab it now for the $4.99 Buy-It-Now price (auction ends Nov. 16!)
As anyone in the building trades and preservation community will attest, L.A. developers don't give a sheetrocker's damn about saving the Googie relics of L.A.'s homegrown 20th-century architecture.
Fortunately, LATimeMachines.com is busy pickling the past in JPEGs with a near-comprehensive guide to "L.A. Bars & Restaurants of the 40s 50s 60s" and all things Googie ...
Okay, it's official: About the only thing more blood-sappingly expensive than buying a home in Los Angeles is, well, buying a home in Los Angeles. This is now the most overvalued real estate market in the U.S..
Worse than San Francisco, worse than San Diego - L.A.'s real estate market is overvalued by about 33.7%, says the PMI Group of Walnut Creek, one of the largest insurers of home mortgages ...
Sean Bonner reminds me about IncidentLog.com - the Google/homicide report mashup that pinpoints felonies on a map of major U.S. cities (including Los Angeles) - which I first pointed out in August.
From this week's log, here's a sad murder-suicide in Century City, made doubly sad because the bodies were so far gone the cops couldn't identify them ...
When a neighborhood is stretched to its limits with a growing influx of homeless, what should their response be to yet another facility planned for the neighborhood? When agencies say "yes", and neighbors say "no" thereâs only one answer.
There's little that a neighborhood can do but make noise ...
On nights when I go google-trawling, I'm a virtual tourist in my own town - shocked and tickled by surprises found in places I thought I knew:
Koreatown's nightlife hums away in a network of clandestine bars, exclusive soundproofed karaoke clubs and even microbreweries where people party all night long, buy drinks for minors and smoke like chimneys. Of course, I had to go to the Seoul Times to learn Ktown is not all electronics stores, churches, barbecue restaurants and the occasional day spa ...
Avoid the dull arty-party spawn like the plague that it is this Halloweekend and come down to Il Corral in L.A. near Melrose and Vermont for "noise and sound art".
It's dubbed by City Beat as "Avant-Bliss" and the host of one of the best concerts of the year." Don't listen to City Beat. Do it yourself.
So, Glendale Police just busted five men for having sex in the J.C. Penney's bathroom at the Glendale Galleria.
The scenario's so sad and silly, it's just aching for a punchline: something about taking 50% off, checking out the plus sizes or boning near the herringbone, you decide.
But seriously, the JC Penney's bathroom? How desperate can people be for sex in Los Angeles, one of the more gay-friendly regions on the planet, that they have to sneak into a semi-public place (that's apparently been touted on the web as "a good location for men seeking to engage in sex acts") to have some fun?
Wednesday night (2005/10/26), a special meeting of the Santa Monica city council will be convened to determine who will reign over the burg as city manager.
You may wonder, what's the rush? Who is being considered for this high-paid, professional position? Why hasn't there been a well-publicized search for the best qualified person? Why has the process been conducted in secret? And why hasn't the community been consulted? ...
Ryan Seacrest will be crowned "Queen of the Carnaval" at the 18th Annual West Hollywood Halloween Carnaval set for Monday, October 31, 2005 between 6 p.m. and midnight on Santa Monica Boulevard between Doheny Drive and La Cienega Boulevard in West Hollywood ...
Among the appointees is Ramona Ripston, head of the ACLU of Southern California. Funny thing is, the American Civil Liberties Union is actually suing Los Angeles in federal court over its enforcement of vagrancy laws prohibiting people from sitting, sleeping and lying on public sidewalks.
At a gross tactical level, Villaraigosa's choice of Ripston is a good one - make a chief critic part of the solution. It's a gambit he's already used once before, when he named Valeria Velasco, a leading critic of Jim Hahn's $11-billion LAX expansion boondoggle, to join the Airport Board of Commissioners ...
There are a few things going on downtown this weekend that might actually convince me to go somewhere other than Coleâs for a change.
Friday, October 07
DJ Nuts performs Cultura Copia Live at Firecracker
Who is DJ Nuts, you ask? Why heâs the turntablist champion of Brazil as well as a celebrated producer for Brazilian music legends Gilberto Gil, Trio Mocoto, and Joao Donato. Cultura Copia is his first commercial CD available outside of Brazil and pays tribute to Brazilian funk, jazz, and soul as well as samba, bossa and sambarock. It is the perfect introduction to Brazilian music for those who have never experienced its diversity or for those who think they have. Get a third world perspective of funky Brazil, in Chinatown.
THE GRAND STAR
943 N. BROADWAY (@ COLLEGE)
CHINATOWN, DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES
9:30 PM - 2:00 AM 21 & UP
$5 BEFORE 11 PM
This is starting to remind me of Willie Sutton's famous line that he robbed banks "because that's where the money is:"
The Times this morning puts the cart before a couple of horses with a story explaining that cops dump mentally ill, addicted and intoxicated homeless people in downtown Los Angeles because that's where the shelters are.
First of all - cops from Beverly Hills, Venice, and other areas far beyond spitting distance from downtown have been ignoring shelters and mental-health facilities in their own neighborhood to dump hard-luck cases on the streets because it's easier than paperwork, so I guess I don't buy that explanation ...
Call me cynical, but am I wrong to predict that, when all the noise over the great Skid-Row homeless-dumping scandal finally dies down, the practice will continue as it has for years?
Mayor Villaraigosa has asked the city attorney's office to look into legal remedies to stop the dumping, which now appears to include Beverly Hills (why am I not surprised?), Pasadena, El Monte and El Segundo.
If there's no law buried deep in the California penal code forbidding it, I'm betting someone like Assemblyman Fabian Núùez will soon introduce a bill ...
It's official. The small, blackened thing that passed for a heart in the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department has finally revealed itself to be a lump of coal. The brain's looking pretty poor, too.
The LAPD caught sheriff's deputies dumping a mentally ill man with a long rap sheet onto downtown's Skid Row on Tuesday night because they just didn't want to deal with him after releasing him from Men's Central Jail.
Sheriff Lee Baca immediately proved himself to be a politically inept bureaucrat in the classic mold by defending the practice, which the Times says has been rumored to be going on for decades:
Your earthquake rations are stocked up and your house is bolted, right? Okay, maybe not.
But we like to assume that all public buildings are as earthquake-proof as they can be, or perhaps that's one of the thousand-and-two little fibs we tell ourselves when occasionally we wonder how things will shake down in the Big One.
The unsafe ones are getting safer, though - as money permits: The city of Pasadena has been doing massive earthquake-reinforcement work on its gorgeous old Mission-style City Hall, where tractors are driving through the basement as you read this. The construction firm doing the work (Clark) has posted some nifty photo galleries of the foundation work being done in the steel-framed building ...
For those who don't need it, rent control can become an addiction, resulting from too many years of a sweet deal. It can leave the real estate muscles paralyzed and the investment portfolio sick. "Penny wise" might have a "pound foolish" problem ...
If you've followed her story at all, you know that Laura had been blogging her medical odyssey in painstaking detail, and Celia had held a blood drive for her not long ago.
I parked my car on Temple street half a block from the front of the Rampart Police Department, pressing the record button on my new digital voice recorder, about the size of the smallest available cell phone on the market. I dropped it in my pocket, buttoned it shut and walked up the steps to the opaque doors. When the door pulled back, I saw a Latino family; a man, woman and a mix of young boys and girls sitting on the wooden bench waiting. For what, I didnât know.
Think much about your own mortality? As Joe Jackson sang, everything gives you cancer.
But it's more likely that clogged arteries from all that junk you're eating will kill you than will cancer, non-motor-vehicle accidents or murder - according to the intriguing map of murder rates I spotted on the Times site this morning.
The map shows pretty dramatically the regions of L.A. bathed in the blood of murder victims: South Central, Compton, downtown, Ladera Heights and the LBZ.
Even quaint, sniffy little Santa Monica is pinkened by 2003's gang violence and the odd attack on tourists ...
There are times when I think West L.A. is the dullest part of town. Then the latest homeowners' association newsletter hits my inbox:
The final EIR for the Santa Monica Boulevard project has LADOT shoving a dedicated left-turn lane onto Overland directly down the throats of the Little Overland neighborhood. The LOers so far had been doing a pretty good job fighting off attempts by the DOT to widen Overland, which would have made the fast, dangerous traffic conditions even worse.
There's also more than one robber roving the 'hood ...
Out-of-towners often slam L.A. unjustly for having a shallow history - just a cheap facade slapped onto land swiped from Mexico.
The architecture is all vintage 1960, they bray. The whole city is one big strip mall, and the best it can offer is the Capitol Records building.
Next time you hear this, point the clueless churls to the bloody-wonderful You-Are-Here.com - an obsessively indexed photo-catalog of Los Angeles buildings ranging from the Victorian homes of Angelino Heights and the gilded-age gems of the historic downtown core to the once-bleeding-edge designs of Frank Lloyd Wright and Googie genius Welton Becket ...
I caught this post a bit late, but Downtown Central City East Blogger says he had a run-in recently with the quasi-security types of the Business Improvement District.
The BID's "Purple Shirts" have harrassed a couple of black friends of his - even assaulted one, the DCCEB reports:
Of the 359 homeowners in my area, 112 are running afoul of the law in a deviously blatant way by committing the heinous "fence offence;" in other words, breaching Los Angeles municipal code sections 12.21 and 12.22 which limit front yard fence and hedge height to a maximum 3 ½ feet above grade. Now that's a lot of criminal activity for one neighborhood ...
A New Hampshire marketing guy built IncidentLog.com by data-mining press releases from more than 60 police departments nationwide, and then marrying them with the Google Maps API. In L.A., incidentlog pulls LAPD releases.
The L.A. map is updated weekly, so it might not have yesterday's brutal baseball-bat beatings of two Skid Row denizens even if a press release is written, and the database for L.A. is about a month deep. But the map does pinpoint a dozen-and-a-half homicides throughout the LAPD's jurisdiction.
Here's some background from the creator, Scott Brodsky:
Laura desperately needs your help: Her sister, Celia, of 5th and Spring is organizing a blood drive at Cole's on Friday, Aug. 26 to help her get through chemotherapy and fight off anemia.
If you've never donated blood, this would be a worthy time to consider it. Here are the details:
After predicting back in December that L.A.'s loony-toons housing boom was doomed to blow up in our faces like Yosemite Sam's cigar, it's time to eat my hat.
The Daily News reports that the median price of a home in the Valley has topped $600,000 and the drooling moneybucket speculators and rock-bottom interest rates are conspiring to keep the bubble inflating. Hardly the harbinger of a rapid downturn.
This morning, KTLA's Eric Spillman reported that there have been 70 takeover restaurant robberies in the San Fernando and San Gabriel valleys (including Pasadena) since the year began, including two that occurred last night. Michaela Pereira (disclaimer: she's my favorite anchor) asked a very astute question - why is it we haven't heard about this before???????
Here is the 5th part in the series of OCR'ed scans from a 1906 electric coach tour guide entitled Los Angeles From an "Auto" which, now in the public domain, I am releasing free in installations first and eventually as one complete work. I have also been creating google maps mashups of the original buildings shown in the engravings in the guide juxtaposed with current photographs I have taken of where the building is or was. The first four parts can be found here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4. This installment covers the old plaza, a military fort that is now a hay market and the Church of Our Lady of the Angels and includes 16 engravings featuring the Los Angeles Times, the Jail and the Bradbury Building.
This bit of news could give rise to the usual sort of thumbsuckin' moralizing I always indulge in, about the way that L.A. as a city spends more money than it should on real estate for people who don't really need it. But I'll leave the value judgment to you.
At the corner of Sunset and Crescent Heights in the
City of West Hollywood stands a shrine to fitness and beauty. In a town where the fairest of the fair get the best gigs and the hottest jobs, Crunch is one of the trendiest gyms in the area.
Renowned for classes like Cardio Striptease and Dodgeball 101, Crunch emphatically boasts to offering âan environment where our members don't feel self-conscious and don't worry about what others think.â They proclaim to have created a sanctuary for fitness buffs and weekend warriors, who are free to bask in judgment-free aerobic glory.
I'm currently in the seventh circle of hell. No no, not just the seventh circle. I'm under the rock that was shat on by the great antichrist and am currently sinking into the quicksand of a California fault under the weight of someone's leftover waste and heat.
I am looking for a new apartment in the Valley.
No no, not just the Valley, but Burbank, North Hollywood, hell, Valley Village and Toluca Lake, if they'll have my gentrified self. It ain't all pretty out here ...
MSNBC and NBC4 had this intriguing little item this morning:
The Los Angeles City Council will consider on Wednesday an emergency ordinance that would prevent small homes and bungalows from being torn down and replaced by larger dwellings in the Sunland-Tujunga area.
This edition in the series of scans from the 1906 electric coach tour guide entitled Los Angeles From an "Auto" takes us deeper into the Old Chinese Quarter and then to the original heart of the city, when it was just a tiny Spanish pueblo.
This portion of the book is less of an advertisement for the hotels of Downtown and more of a glimpse into the unique history of the City of Angels. In case you missed them, the first three sections can be found here: Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3. Check out the google map which shows the locations of the buildings shown in the guide along with a few (soon to me many) photos of the buildings as they exist today. The engravings from this section will be posted soon thanks to the historical address finding wizardry of Eric Richardson, who has already helped find several of the addresses for the map.
The third installment [part 1 & part 2] of the Los Angeles From an "Auto," historical tour guide scan from 1906, series covers the Bank District and the Pacific Electric Building and also touches on the Chinese Quarter, which is not the same as modern day Chinatown, now actually known as New Chinatown.
As I mentioned in the last post, I created a google map with links to the engravings featured in the book so far along, to which I have added the buildings which I found addresses for. I have also set up a google map of Los Angeles Historical Cultural Monuments that currently covers Downtown LA and soon will cover all of LA and Long Beach.
Last Friday, Santa Monica attorney Carol Sobel filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of Venice Beach Free Speech Zone activists and artists. According to Sobel, who announced the filing at the junction of Ocean Front Walk and Windward Avenue in Venice, the lawsuit alleges that the ordinance restricting Venice Boardwalk performers and vendors violates the First Amendment.
The following account was posted by Barbara Peck - a Venice Boardwalk activist who has been a very vocal opponent of the new Boardwalk ordinance and lottery. Her original post can be found at http://la.indymedia.org/news/2005/07/131893.php
This is a fascinating look at inside politics amongst the West side vendors and "Free Speech" activists leading up to the first lawsuit filed since the Lottery was instituted. The Peggy Lee Kennedy mentioned in the article was part of the "Progressive Slate" majority of GRVNC before the City of LA invalidated their last election and ordered a new one.
City Council District 2 includes a slice of Sherman Oaks, and Council Member Wendy Greuel presides over it with an iron fist. I live in a nice neighborhood in the area of Moorpark and Woodman, but according to Ms. Greuel and her ill-informed policies, I am part of a criminal threat to the home owners in Sherman Oaks ...
Here is the second part in the 1906 electric coach tour guide, Los Angeles From an "Auto," series of which I posted the first part here.
I threw together a google maps mashup with the locations of the buildings and photos from then and now.
So far I have only taken photos of 2buildings from the first 5 I posted, 2 have been demolished (maybe I should take a photo of the parking lots...) and I didn't make it to the Lankershim yet. I am hoping to get the angles the same as in the engravings, but this obviously won't always be possible due to buildings that were not there 99 years ago. Read on for the next few pages and engravings ...
Several years ago I bought an old book from a random used book store on Hollywood Blvd.
The book entitled Los Angeles From an "Auto", a tour guide printed in 1906 by an old electric car tour company called California Auto-Despatch Co., contains 50 pages of text, engravings and one color plate.
I think I paid $30 for it or something reasonable like that and now I have decided to scan the book in its entirety and post it on the web for everyone to enjoy. The book is copyright 1906, that is now expired and I can give the content away. I searched for the title on the LAPL online card catalog and google, finding nothing.
Here is a little tidbit of info I found about the Ca Auto Despatch from an old newspaper article related to the 1906 SF quake:
Proceeds from the tours of the California Auto Dispatch Co.âs sight-seeing autos tomorrow will be given to the relief
fund. The employes will also give their services. The autos will leave the Hotel Angelus at 10 a.m. and will call at the Nadeau, Hollenbeck, Natick, Westminster and Rosslyn hotels.
I am releasing a few pages at a time starting with this post and continuing over the next few weeks. I also plan to photograph the buildings in the engravings, if the still exist and hopefully from the same angles if possible. The first 7 pages, plus the cover are contained after the jump.
Is there a perpetual shadow hovering over your house? Do you feel as though you live in a Batman movie? You may be the victim of a neighboring McMansion or a new development trend called mansionization, the housing industry's equivalent to bigger portions and fast food.
These mansionizers-who are frequently "spec" builders--buy small or dilapidated homes, raze them and erect massive structures, often resembling sterile apartment buildings. Except for meager set-backs, they swallow up the entire lot, dwarf their Liliputian neighbors and invade the privacy of adjacent yards with their second-story windows ...
Do you remember that catchy little tune from Sesame Street that goes "who are the people in your neighborhood ?, in your neighborhood, they're in your neighborhood.." Then they proceed to introduce you to your friendly neighborhood grocer, garbage man, baker ad infinitum. But I feel that there's a segment of the populace that is being ignored in that little ditty. It may not be pleasant but it is what we call "real" or a part of what we see and experience each day....
Are you a single female in Los Angeles, still looking for that special someone? How do you feel about spending time in Las Vegas? Are you okay with spending time in a dive bar in downtown Los Angeles?
Then I want you to meet Ali. He's the proprietor of Cole's and this Friday is his divorce party ...
I admit I'm late to the party on this, but I do have to recommend WALK! Los Angeles with Me - the terrific videoblog of artist/filmmaker Lisa Salem.
From home in Echo Park, Salem's trying to cruise all of L.A.'s neighborhoods on foot with a stroller-mounted DV-cam, interviewing whoever she can persuade to help her push the rig. The British ex-pat's goal is to "walk the whole of Los Angeles ... as if I were an explorer charting unchartered territory ..."
Every now and then, my neighborhood just shreds my nerves.
Treelined streets, 1920s houses, on the edge of a busy west L.A. boulevard. It's nice enough, sure, but it's still The City. Urban life intrudes, and I find myself thinking, "There oughta be a law."
I pulled up to the driveway tonight - kids in the back seat - to find a skinny guy pissing on my garage. Full daylight, he's got it whipped out. And he's just hoooosing down the garage door and the little gate around our trash enclosure at 5:30 in the afternoon like it ain't nothin'.
I roll down the window: "Hey! That's not your bathroom! I live there!" ...
Last night, Board of Neighborhood Commissioners (BONC) voted unanimously to give the go ahead for the next Grass Roots Venice Neighborhood Council election, which will be held September 10 and 11th.
The Board's decision came more than nine months after the last GRVNC election was invalidated by the City's Human Relations Commission, leaving the neighborhood council without a quorum, ability to function, or funding.
In 2003, GRVNC was plunged into chaos for months when that election was challenged because one of the candidates had successfully cast an absentee ballot for her dog. (see http://www.missvenicebeach.com/raku/ for details) ...
I have read with interest all of the hoopla surrounding neighborhood councils. Some write things that make absolute sense and others ramble on and on about nothing.
But one thing that DID catch my eye was how an alleged felon wanted to run for the Cypress Park NC. However, quickly booted off from running by people who felt scared by his ability to mobilize and make a real difference. Since that time, I took it upon myself to hunt this person down and talk to him. What I came away with was that this person is indeed Cypress Park's Best hope ...
Looks like Nick Pacheco's already begun drumming up support to regain his CD 14 seat now that onetime foe Antonio Villaraigosa will be shedding it in a few weeks.
"Mayor Frank" (who???) over at MayorSam's Sister City pipes us a press release from one Robert Urteaga on behalf of Councilman Nick Pacheco for City Council claiming the poll numbers are good ...
Maybe it's some deep-seated need to prove what jerks they can be, but the city Department of Transportation apparently lied about Little Overland on NBC Channel 4 News last week - and got promptly and publicly busted for it.
Little Overland, you'll recall, is the heavily-traveled, 2-lane strip of northern Overland Avenue between Pico and Santa Monica Boulevards in west L.A.. Traffic-addled homeowners there are staving off the department's bid to turn the road through the otherwise quiet old residential 'hood into a 4-lane urban highway that feeds the 10.
Friday, NBC interviewed LADOT general manager Wayne Tanda, who whitewashed the ongoing battle over the street's status ...
Here's another (in a series?) of cool but iffy experiments on L.A.'s web space lately: a tool that lets you search for "a 2BR condo with a pool and fireplace in Redondo."
RentSlicer.com (beta) claims to provide "the bluebook of L.A. rental property" by data-mining real-estate listings from the CraigsList RSS feed.
Actually, it offers a better search interface of Craig's ads than CraigsList does, with slick-looking data-parsing tools that let tenants (and landlords) comparison-shop (and set prices) from neighborhood to neighborhood. Here, for instance is what apartments, condos, townhouses and houses are going for in Agoura Hills, one of 35 rental markets RentSlicer covers ...
South Central Los Angeles is not a crime-wracked wasteland. "Oh, sure, I knew that," you say, wrinkling your nose and trying to think of better evidence than the Watts Towers.
If you've never ventured off the Harbor Freeway, then here's proof: "A blog that chronicles the life and times of a young architect and his family living in a former crack house in the heart of South Central Los Angeles."
Our own Rogan Ferguson has just relaunched his
Crack House Diaries series as a photo blog that documents everything from the happy pile 'o' neighborhood kids that include his young son to the neighbor's ferocious guard rooster ...
Venice wasn't always junk food, garish amusements, cute cottages and freaks by the sea. But it was close.
It was one hundred years ago next month that Abbott Kinney opened "Venice-of-America." The grandiose community of canal-side homes, beachfront entertainment and "continental" architecture was meant to edify the public and serve as a premier resort town for the West Coast.
Of course, he opened it on July 4, 1905, just weeks after a huge storm had basically wiped it off the face of the map, and saw it fall into horrible disrepair as the canals began to stink. But that's all part of the mystique of the once and future Dogtown ...
Don't even think of trying to drive through WeHo this weekend:
Debbie Harry, Paris Hilton, Tiffany and Debbie "Deborah" Gibson are singing, performing and waving flags and whatever-all-else for the 35th L.A. Gay Pride Parade, which will basically swamp Santa Monica Boulevard with happy marchers and acres of skin, starting at 11 a.m. Sunday.
There's a visually annoying but fairly sexy Flash animation fronting the LA Pride site, which is celebrating 35 years of activism by L.A.'s gay and lesbian communities ...
Remember the $200 million Belmont High debacle? The promise of glow-in-the-dark classrooms? PCBS for lunch? And extra limbs sprouting for all students? If they survived the methane underneath, that is.
Well, it seems Roy "Running An Entire State Was So Much Easier" Romer's staff has managed to repeat the beleagured district's biggest blunder ever... but this time it features a good ol' cover-up.
Maybe photography's on my mind lately, but everywhere I turn, someone's taking photos of the city. Here's a random sampling from the clickety-click corner of L.A.'s blogosphere:
Flickr'ing Los Angeles - Some L.A. cambloggers have launched GuessWhereLA, a Flickr-based gallery of maybe-obscure views of Los Angeles daring the visitors to guess the location. ChaChaCha on Ventura Boulevard in Encino, the moderne KFC and Felix Chevrolet down near USC are easy, but after that ... it's a big city. Go shoot it and baffle us some more. (Via blogging.la)
Tours of the Lots - WalkinginLA tours Compton and Lynwood and comes up with evocative pictures of empty lots and blooming agapanthus
LA's NBC4 is running a fascinating and frightening special report tonight about the methane problem under the irrationally-expanding Playa Vista development (NBC4 still doesn't have the entire video report up on its site as of 5 pm, but they promise it will be shortly, For now, you'll have to settle for two "ain't our fault" statements from Playa Vista and SoCal Gas).
All this time, we've been worried about some nutcase blowing up LAX, when the more immediate threat is Playa Vista's developers and Southern California Gas Company.
Is it a truly explosive report? I hope not, but it could be...
Just before I moved to Boyle Heights recently, I was summoned to jury service for the Criminal Courthouse downtown.
These two situations: traditionally dreaded jury duty and the equally laborious process of moving, I would soon learn, were linked to one another in a way I couldn't have previously imagined ...
The South L.A. neighbors of the "Rochester House" sober-living residence for 31 (now) 17 registered sex offenders this week apparently dumped hundreds of protest letters and cards onto the governor's desk.
Assemblyman Mark Ridley-Thomas reportedly brought the mail ...
Now that the election's out of the way and his horse lost, mega-developer Eli Broad can move forward with his massive revitalization plan for Grand Avenue and gauge whether Mayor-elect Antonio Villaraigosa's on board.
Earlier today, the public-private Los Angeles Grand Avenue Authority green-lit the plan to pump $1.8-billion worth of housing, commercial and entertainment-related development into the huge gap between City Hall and the Walt Disney Concert Hall according to the project's lofty principles and rosy-sounding plans that were drafted last fall.
The Grand plan clusters 475,000 square feet of stores, a 275-room "boutique hotel" (whatever that is) and up to 2,600 condos and apartments around a 16-acre park - promising enough, provided everything's kept affordable or at least attracts enough night-time traffic to support it from people who can afford the ever-rising rental rates downtown.
Here's what the 1.1 million square feet of the $500-million Phase One sounds like - pending full city approval, that is .
Don't you just hate it when you get back to your car milliseconds after the meter has expired -- which seems to be all the time it takes for a meter person to write you that $60 ticket?
Well, West Hollywood is doing something about that. I LOVE this idea ...
For a trial 18-month period, the secretary would team with two or three councilmembers, officials in the Santa Monica police and fire departments and the city attorney's office and volunteer advocates for the homeless, according to the proposal Shriver laid out in an April 26 editorial in the Santa Monica Mirror ...
What's with the bikes? I had no idea so many people in Los Angeles were into their bicycles. I'm not into it, but if you supply me with beverages I'm sure I could watch it for hours.
A while back, I pointed out the alarming Casden Forecast, which says it costs an average $18,000 a year to rent a two-bed apartment in L.A. A bit earlier, our own Marc Caldwell gave us a street-level view of the nasty business of apartment-hunting.
I've just started browsing through it, but my favorite bit so far is the sobering set of numbers they compiled on the relative cost of living under a roof in L.A. ...
Recently I bought a house in what is known as "Montecito Hills" or possibly, "Monterey Heights." (It's on the boundary between Monterey Hills and Montecito Heights.) I had no idea there was <it>another huge park near me (Ernest F. Debs Park). After having lived in Eagle Rock for over a decade and experienced people change from saying "Oh, and where is that again?" to "Oh, wow, Eagle Rock---that is such a cute area!" I wanted to start up a conversation about all the neighborhoods that people at LAVoice.org know about, live in, are interested in but which are still hidden gems to most of the Angeleno hoi polloi.
Yesterday I went downtown to check out a loft gallery for an upcoming exhibition, and the directions led me straight into the middle of St. Vincent's Court, a retro courtyard of Persian cafes and delis nestled underneath fake Disneyesque balconies and aging theme park eatery signs ...
Today I went to a travel and tourism debriefing on new development projects in downtown, focusing on the area surrounding Staples Center. Statistics tell us that LA received over 24.3 million visitors last year, apparently the highest number "ever", or at least in the history of the statistic. So AEG, a private development group, is planning an enormous "Sports/Entertainment" District which will incorporate the Staples Center amongst a new Grammy's Museum, 65 story Hilton hotel, and Nokia Music Theatre in order to attract these sun-seeking tourists (a.k.a. walking wallets) to the downtown area.
The truth behind the sales pitch of course, is that they are building an isolated corporate universe in which a visitor should sleep, eat, drink and be entertained without venturing into the so-called less desirable areas of the metropolis ...
The latest Casden Forecast issued by the USC Lusk Center for Real Estate says the average rental for a 2-bedder in L.A. County will hit $1,500 this year ($2,319 if you're shooting for West L.A.!)
Here's the hard data that confirms what LA voice Marc Caldwell posted just last month - that apartment-hunting in Los Angeles has become a grim little trudge toward poverty ...
It's time someone marched up to the dais at the Board of Supervisors chambers, grabbed the five of them by the collars and shouted: Why does this keep happening?
The L.A. County Coroner attributed the death of 61-year-old Robbie Toney on March 25 to a collapsed lung caused when someone botched the placement of her breathing tube, according to the report by the Times' Charles Ornstein and Tracy Weber ...
Even though it may be lost one day to it's stellar repuation, there is a post office in Los Angeles where there is virtually no wait.
Trying to find it though is a bit like hunting for the lost ark unless you know the inner workings of the Hollywood & Highland shopping complex. And on days like today, when the WWF is talking over Hollywood boulevard with a giant wrestling ring in the middle of the street, it's hard to stay focused on directions.
Working on Hollywood Boulevard, I am constantly walking through the claustrophobic stream of fresh meat (tourists) which swarm thickly around the Mann's Chinese theatre lavishing dollar bills on the crackhead superheroes that greedily congregate on the sidewalks. So I'm usually a little negative trying to navigate through the mess in an attempt to get a lunch that I am always to lazy to prepare at home. Lately, though, one man has lifted my spirits and that is the Baritone Voice of Hollywood.
Now that he's found himself flat-footed after four years with a paper-thin record of social activism upon which to base a campaign, Mayor Jim Hahn's feverishly engaging in empty, populist shovel-work:
Put aside for a second that 22 such localized injunctions are already being used to quell the worst of the gang activity in South Los Angeles, the Harbor area and east L.A.. - by forbidding cop-ID'd gang members to congregate, carry cellphones, possess spray paint, etc.
It's really just another pandering, implausible "cure-all" proposal being flung into the mediasphere by a losing incumbent who's desperate to look busy ...
This may or may not make it into the "apologies" segment of Harry Shearer's weekly LeShow, but it's a choice example of a bureaucratic heel falling on his sword:
The thoughtless LADOT official who suggested to Little Overland Avenue homeowners (who were angry about fast, heavy traffic whipping past their homes in West L.A.) that they move somewhere else has found religion - or at least been compelled to apologize.
I have a lot of problems with the San Fernando Valley. I live in Studio City, which I love, I really do, but for the love of St. Thaddeus, have you ever been to Sun Valley? Jesus. Like I said, I love Studio City and some of the surrounding communities like NoHo and Toluca Lake, but decent residents of The Valley beware: watch where you travel or youâll find yourself wondering Where All The Culture Went. All the worst rumors about The Valley are confirmed by places like Arleta and Panorama City.
But the diligent Studio Citizen can live happily in The Valley, despite the jealous Hollywooders laughing at us. Tell them what your monthly rent is, and watch that smile disappear. Then, show them a good time in the southeast San Fernando Valley. Anyway, theyâll be surprised at how short the drive back to Hollywood is at the end of the night.
SaveOverland.org is urging neighbors to gripe long and loud to Councilmembers Jack Weiss and Antonio Villaraigosa (both of whom serve on the council's Transportation Committee) about the LADOT's Carl Nelson:
What apartment hunting will do to make one get to know his city better...
Been hunting around for a new apartment (for backstory checkout 03/15/05 Neighborhoods post at lavoice.org <a href=http://www.lavoice.org/News+article-sid-625-mode-thread-order-1-thold-0.html>House prices, apartment rentals, where we gonna' go?) and as necessity is the Mother of Invention, perhaps looking for a new apartment can be the Sister of Discovery, as in "discovering" what's been in our own backyard.
The apartment that's got me all hot and bothered is in L.A.'s treasured Boyle Heights neighborhood: a newly restored four-plex Craftsman building from 1919 that has all the built-ins you'd expect from this style of architecture: secretary, buffet, even two Murphy beds. Before the second visit to the apartment, I came by early to check out the neighborhood. I walked all over, hoping to find good places within walking distance for
restaurants and grocery stores ...
My landlord is taking over my apartment for his personal use and evicting me. Bummer is, I have (had!) a schweeeeet deal: 1 bedroom in a great Silver Lake neighborhood, apartment is an addition to a house (so I have the privacy and beauty of a backyard), and rent's a little more than $700 a month.
So I have 'till April 30th to get re-sheltered.
I started looking last Saturday and it wasn't pretty...
This Saturday's anti-war protest in Hollywood almost didn't happen, thanks to a few pushy Hollywood Boulevard merchants and a namby-pamby L.A. Police Commission.
The Daily News editorialized yesterday that the commission deadlocked (in one commissioner's absence) on whether to allow Answer L.A. to hold its demonstration at the intersection of Hollywood and Vine.
But fortunately (for the sake of the First Amendment, free speech and several thousand fired-up protesters, if not the unnamed merchants), Commissioner Alan Skobin classified the gathering as a "parade," taking advantage of a loophole that requires only one commissioner's nod ...
It is now officially impossible for normal people in Los Angeles to buy a house. Stats in today's California Ass'n. of Realtors report say that 82% of the people in Los Angeles cannot afford home ownership - up from 77% of us who couldn't afford it last year.
The seemingly endless boom in L.A.'s real estate market smells of desperation and snake oil, like a patent for a perpetual-motion machine - too good to be true. Or, to paraphrase Douglas Adams' description of an impossibly massive space vessel, "The Vogon constructor ship hung in the sky in much the same way that a brick doesn't."
Bear with me. Just doing a little mental math on a ghost town here:
Let's see - the U.S. Navy just auctioned off 42 acres of deserted Navy homes and barracks in San Pedro for more than $2 million an cre of land that's zoned a lucrative R-1.
That's enough for 245 single-family homes that cost $359,183 for the land alone, tack on $150,000 to $200,000 for construction of a new house, plus developer markup and ...
Oh, wait. Does the fact that they're plunking down a massive homeless settlement right next door have any effect on the market value?
For a hotly-contested mayoral Election Day, my polling place in West L.A. was dead quiet - just three other people there at around 7:45 a.m. to be handed ballots and "I Voted" stickers by a platoon of hopeful-looking poll-workers.
Maybe it's because they keep moving the damn location. In four elections over the past two years, I've voted in a Masonic Lodge, an L.A. Parking Authority building and two separate churches.
Let's hope turnout improves today, as people dig through their recycling bins to find the polling place address on the voter-info pamphlet they tossed out several weeks ago.
UPDATE BELOW
I discovered a new city ordinance this weekend that just - excuse the expression - blows my mind:
If Los Angeles is arguably the creative capital of planet Earth, and the Venice Boardwalk the freest of its free zones, then who the hell passed the city law that now says you cannot be a street performer on the western edge of Ocean Front Walk, or even criticize the government there without a permit?
Upon spotting protest signs and angry drummers rallying on the boardwalk over the weekend, I Googled the phrase "Venice Lottery" and learned the appalling news:
Apparently, you now need to enter a lottery to even be eligible to set up a booth, wield a bullhorn, blow a digeridoo, hand out bumper stickers, etch names on a grain of rice, or just stand mutely behind a tiny placard that says what you think ...
Jonah at LABlogs focuses his weekly L.A. Insight questions on the bane of every air traveler's existence, LAX. My .03 follows after the jump.
1. Anything you like about LAX?
2. Anything you hate about LAX?
3. Parking at LAX, any tips/secrets?
4. Given the choice, do you fly out of LAX or one of the other Southland airports?
5. Food finds, are there any, and have you ever tried or wanted to try Encounter?
6. If LAX was a region of Los Angeles, what would it be?
7. Did you know that you can't mail anything from LAX? I didn't, until I tried to drop some bills off on the way to a two week vacation in Costa rica.
8. LAX Expansion, have you been following it, do you care? ...
A December wreck on Little Overland put the nose of this Acura through someone's wall
L.A.'s mayoral candidates have been touting the supposed benefits of developing residential neighborhoods near transportation corridors in Los Angeles: It can cut down traffic, increase mobility to improve the job market and generally grease the wheels of prosperity.
As we've reported before, people living on Little Overland Avenue in West L.A. beg to differ. They live on a little tree-lined, 2-lane street - with an elementary school nearby - that just happens to be a major north-south artery between Santa Monica Blvd. and the 10.
They've got signs out on their lawns saying things like "This is not a FREEWAY," they've posted a grim little album of crash photos on their site.
And now that Santa Monica Boulevard's extreme makeover is about to send four lanes of traffic pouring down Little Overland, which is already treated like a major thruway/speedway during rush hour - they're scared, angry and motivated:
Some kind of cosmic energy vortex has been swirling around Santa Monica lately, sucking in some huge firms and spitting others out.
Consider:
Crappy earnings reports (down 15%!) are forcing Atari to shut down its Santa Monica and Beverly, Mass.. studios. All the grisly numbers are here but there's no news yet of how many layoffs this might mean.
Meanwhile, Yahoo's moving in to Santa Monica. The big portal company's building some kind of entertainment/content operation that will "develop a comprehensive, integrated approach to online content opportunities, establish stronger relationships with the media community, and attract the best and brightest talent," in the words of one Yahoo flack. Anyone care to do the math on how many new jobs they can fit into the 229,728-square-foot office space at Colorado and 22nd that MGM once occupied?
The spectacle of our lackluster mayor strutting in a hardhat around after a major storm filling potholes should have been a clue as to how much he's willing to insult your intelligence.
But just to hammer the point home, Jim Hahn announced today he's tripling every neighborhood council's budget - just hours before he's to debate his top four opponents before the Alliance of Neighborhood Councils.
Kevin Roderick reports on the City Hall press release:
Last October, the L.A. City Council, lead by Councilman Eric Garcetti, proposed installing five surveillance cameras on Hollywood Blvd., with 59 more to follow on Hollywood, Sunset, Santa Monica, and Western. According to an LAPD spokesman at the time: "people are ready to feel more secure in their communities. I think they are willing to give up a little bit ... for more security."
On January 24 2005, the cameras arrived [PDF version] ...
Apparently we should all be boiling our tap water before drinking or cooking with it, to kill bacteria caused by a reservoir leak.
The California Department of Health Services, in conjunction with the DWP, issued the boil-water advisory for customers in the areas bounded by the city of Beverly Hills on the east, Sepulveda Boulevard on the west, Somma Way on the north and Santa Monica Boulevard on the south.
Boiling kills bacteria and other organisms in the water. Failure to follow the advisory could result in stomach or intestinal illness, according to the DWP.
It was only a matter of time. The systemic rot at King/Drew Medical Center finally led the Joint Commission on Accreditation to yank its seal of approval on Tuesday.
This clears the way for the feds to vote later this month on whether to pull about $200 million in Medicare and Medicaid - the bulk of the funding that supports the hospital's patients, most of whom are otherwise uninsured.
Leaders of the Grass Roots Venice Neighborhood Council (GRVNC) have learned, through the release of public records, that several Los Angeles city departments were secretly monitoring their activities. Ultimately, members of a working group within the city government succeeded in overturning the neighborhood councilâs election and rendering the GRVNC unable to function.
âVenice has gone rogue...â declared a Dept. of Neighborhood Empowerment (DONE) staff member while asking the League of Women Voters not to assist in the GRVNC election. A Human Relations Commission member warned against allowing neighborhood councils too much latitude: âExpecting the NCâs (Neighborhood Councils) to develop their own procedures, or to develop a city-wide procedure is too risky...â
LABlogs is staging a photo hunt for this week's L.A. Insight. Here are three favorite places in my little neighborhood:
Rancho Park Golf Course - I don't have the time, money (or skill) to golf, but the park's a gorgeous place to picnic and kick a soccer ball around.
My back yard in today's rain. The house needs repainting, so we're testing colors (and leaning toward a cream). The graffiti's from my son's birthday party.
I live near Westwood, which looked like this in the 50s (image from the amazing YesterdayLA.com)
As often happens in times of tragedy, someone has set up a trust fund for the victims of Wednesday's train wreck in Glendale.
Councilman Eric Garcetti, who is running unopposed for re-election has opened a PayPal account on his campaign site for the "District 13 Train Wreck Relief Fund."
The Donate button is embedded in a long post about Garcetti's visit to the crash site, which includes some photos of the wreckage - with the promise that the fund's home will be moved to the city of L.A. web site as soon as possible ...
The Red Line between Hollywood and Union Station must be the greatest free subway ride in the world.
You can hop a train and buzz straight downtown and back without seeing a turnstile, ticket taker or even anyone in MTA uniform at any of the stops. But for the bored drone of the driver calling out the station stops, you'd think the line were staffed by the ghosts of the tunnel workers who died during its construction.
We did it today - took the kids on down to Olvera Street - without encountering a single barrier (human or mechanical) that ensured we'd paid for the ride ...
So, 2004 has been a hell of a year for Los Angeles. Malpractice, malfeasance, malice in wonderland. I'll leave it to the L.A. Weekly's Zeitlists Issue and the L.A. Times to try to make sense of what all happened to us.
Better to look ahead. Focus. Make plans. Dream up concrete ways of transforming Los Angeles into the calmer, warmer, savvier city we all need. Here, in no certain order, are 10 modest proposals. Feel free to add your own:
As of this morning, there's a new way to keep track of rapists and child molesters in your neighborhood.
The California Attorney General's Megan's Law site offers a clickable, zoomable map that allows you to pinpoint with near accuracy the names, photos, rap sheets and home addresses of 11,568 registered sex offenders in Los Angeles County.
Or at least it would if it weren't getting slammed by users at the moment. Bill Lockyer's web gurus appear to have bought him a very skinny pipe, failing to anticipate the interest this would draw from parents, teachers, victims, attorneys, data geeks and, uh, registered sex offenders ...
L.A.'s housing market may be having a Wile E. Coyote moment. Gravity's on holiday and realtors are running in midair, oblivious to the canyon floor five thousand feet below.
Remember when UCLA predicted the L.A. real estate market was doomed to a downturn?
Remember two months ago when I scoffed because realty flacks were burbling with joy over a 25% increase in the price of Los Angeles homes?
All wrong, according to numbers quoted in this L.A. Times piece which reports that against all other economic trends and common sense the boom continues ...
LAObserved points us to news that Sirhan Sirhan - imprisoned for life for assassinating Bobby Kennedy at the Ambassador Hotel in 1968 - is suing to block demolition of the hotel because it could contain evidence of a second gunman.
Living in West L.A. lulls you into a false sense of security. Sure, you lock your doors, draw your curtains and stick to well-lighted streets while walking at night but you tell yourself it's nothing like south L.A. or downtown or poorer parts of the Valley.
You stroll out of a club at 1 a.m. and reach your car unmolested, hit the late-night sushi joints without a care. The homeless guys rave, but they're harmless. People behave because they're pretty well-off. The cops are always on patrol, a few minutes away.
Then you get an LAPD "Community Crime Alert" and your bovine, bourgeois mind shudders as if someone large and ruthless just pissed on your shadow:
RESTAURANT TAKE-OVER ROBBERIES
FOUR RESTAURANT/BAR TAKEOVER ROBBERIES HAVE RECENTLY OCCURRED ON THE WESTSIDE. THREE CRIMES OCCURRED DURING SEPTEMBER, ONE EACH IN THE WEST LOS ANGELES (WLA), PACIFIC AND CULVER CITY AREAS. THE LAST CRIME WAS COMMITTED IN WLA IN LATE OCTOBER ...
A few years ago, the Air Force was in the middle of working to upgrade the base, which is used as headquarters for the Space and Missiles Center, the group responsible for shooting much of the expensive hardware that blasts off from Vandenburg AFB ( up the coast), Peterson AFB in Colorado and Kirtland AFB in New Mexico.
LAAFB staffers declined to be interviewed by NPR's Ina Jaffe ...
Looks like the the residents of upper Overland Avenue in West L.A. have fought City Hall and won - at least the first round.
They persuaded the City Council's Transportation Subcommittee to nix a plan that would have widened Overland Avenue from two lanes to four and turned the speed-prone little residential street into an urban highway. That's very good news for the homeowners and members of the Westwood Charter Elementary School community, who worried about a boom in the already-rampant speeding on the street by commuters zooming north and south between Santa Monica and Pico Boulevards ...
AP's reporting that the L.A. County Board of Supervisors went ahead and closed King/Drew Medical Center's Trauma Unit to help take pressure off the overloaded and deeply flawed administration of the main hospital.
And for what it's worth, the vote was 4-0 (Knabe, Antonovich, Molina, Yaroslavsky) to zero. Yvonne Brathwaite-Burke didn't even have the courage to vote against the measure that will surely result in the needless deaths of her own constituents. She abstained ...
UPDATE BELOW
In case you needed persuading, L.A. Alternative Press has a compelling profile of families with kids on Skid Row to illustrate L.A.'s brutal shortage of affordable housing.
While you read this at your computer in your nice home or at your comfy office job, Esther Lawrence is raising her four kids amid the junkies, drunks, crack addicts and hard-luck cases of L.A.'s teeming downtown missions, the LAAP's Joseph Sorrentino reports:
The hearing at King/Drew Magnet school saw a speechifyin' U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters, and the Rev. Jesse Jackson band together with Mayor Jim Hahn and Hahn's arch-foe Councilman Antonio Villaraigosa and political leaders and celebs to criticize the plan and plead with the Board of Supervisors during a six-hour hearing with more than 90 speakers - to reconsider ...
To hear the denizens of RyeStreet.com gripe, you'd think L.A. City Councilwoman Wendy Greuel had proposed apartheid for their Sherman Oaks neighborhood by shutting down a pedestrian bridge there last summer.
Now chief Greuel critic Bruce Forkush is gunning for Greuel's political endorsers and financial backers, urging you to flood their inboxes with the message, "Please tell Wendy Greuel she is making a mistake. Forkush says his "Greuel mail" campaign is not spam because "Every one of our email targets have public email addresses and openly solicit comments."
Bad news: Vandals broke into Long Beach's Aquarium of the Pacific and dragged creatures from their tanks just to torture them and watch them die.
Good news: The idiots suspected of doing it have already been collared by LBPD.
If you've ever been down there, you know the ray and shark encounter tanks are the most popular attractions - and if you haven't been down there, you should go. The collection is astonishing.
The aquarium newsletter reports:
The Aquarium of the Pacific is saddened to report that sometime Sunday night or Monday morning someone broke into the Aquarium's Shark Lagoon exhibit and injured or killed several animals. We lost one of our nurse sharks and one cownose ray, and a bamboo shark that was injured passed away Monday night. Other animals were moved or injured but will survive ...
We had been camping out in the house for weeks. When I say camping, I mean this in the most literal sense. No hot water. No heat. No refrigeration. No oven or range. No proper front or back door. The security screen doors let the wind blow through.
We did have a toilet, cold running water, and electricity in a couple of the rooms. This meant that we slept wearing sweats and socks, performed selective personal washing when necessary, listened to a lot of NPR, and ate an inordinate amount of microwave popcorn. It was like being a college freshman all over again, but with a four-year-old boy constantly complaining that he was BORED ...
Most troubling about the campaign to unleash dogs upon the beach in Santa Monica is its disingenuousness. To bolster her case, for example, Santa Monica Daily press columnist Carole Orlin cites the safety record of pet visitations at nursing homes and hospitals, while failing to mention that these programs are motivated by hoped-for therapeutic benefits and are limited to a very small number of carefully monitored animals in highly controlled environments that are cleaned by professional staffs and protected by extensive liability insurance.
While everybody else was reeling around after the election like mugging victims who had been punched in the head, the L.A. City Council quietly authorized LAPD to spy on you with remote-controlled cameras.
The Times reports (ever so briefly) that the council greenlit a plan to light up five cameras on Hollywood Boulevard between Vine and Sycamore by January, using money donated by the Hollywood Entertainment District.
As we pointed out earlier, Eric Garcetti has been pushing this rather intrusive and tactically questionable plan, but still has yet to respond to questions from LAVoice or blogging.la about how he weighed the value of surveillance against the intrusion on privacy ...
If you frequent the Chinese or (Lord knows why) Hollywood and Highland, this should give you a chill:
The LAPD has picked Hollywood as the location of the first five cameras in what will become a 64-camera surveillance network just to make sure you're behaving yourself on some of the city's busier boulevards prone to crime.
For the privilege of having your every move in public watched remotely by pannable, zoomable spy cameras, you can thank Councilman Eric Garcetti, who introduced the motion to accept the donation from the Hollywood Entertainment District of $103,000 for cameras and $25,000 in annual maintenance fees ...
A typical day begins with the sound of roosters. They start âsingingâ, as tradition would have it, at the crack of dawn. This means that we wake up every morning at the crack of dawn, if only for a few minutes, to cuss out the damn roosters.
On weekends, the roosters are followed by the tamale lady. Her sounds begin with the distant rattling of her metal shopping cart on the pot-hole strewn streets, followed by the cry, âtaMALeee-taMAleeeeees!â For one dollar, she will reach into her Styrofoam cooler and pull out tamales de queso, carnitas, pollo and carne. She laughs at my stilted attempts to speak Spanish, but seems to appreciate the effort. The tamales, hot and delicious, are the perfect start to a lazy Sunday morning.
SaveKingDrew.com is gathering petitions, calling meetings and printing cries of rage to be stuck onto your bumper or lapel - all in a bid to keep the Board of Supervisors from carrying out its foolish plan to save the hospital bypadlocking the Trauma Center. The latest SKD newsletter suggests THINGS FOR YOU TO DO TO SAVE KING/DREW TRAUMA CENTER ...
Finally, the L.A. County Supervisors woke up to the fact that they're ultimately responsible for the trail of death at King/Drew Medical Center.
The Supes voted to bring in yet another consultant to clean up the mess left by the last consultant they hired. In 10 months, Camden Services was supposed to overhaul the nursing department, but managed to leave the vital South Central hospital in such a state that the Supervisors planned to shut down its Trauma Center in order to save the place. Unfortunately, the board was not moved by continued pleas to put off that plan, which comes to a hearing Nov. 15.
Will the $13.25-million fee for Navigant Consulting cure the systemic rot that let yet another patient die last week when a nurse turned down his heart monitor alarm and failed to notice him dying?
I guess I feel I need to preface this post with some explanation. I grew up in Montana, where the gun culture is very different than here in South Centralâ I have my riflery merit badge, a distinction few of my neighborhood marksmen share . I had grown up with guns and rifles in my home, and I had participated in shooting sports my entire life. My mother had started me off with a BB gun at age nine, and graduated me to a .22 rimfire when I turned eleven. A couple of years later she would take me into the hills to target practice with her .38 special. Though I was aware of the potential to use a gun for self defense, the emphasis was always on sport, which made a lot of sense in a town where most people never locked their doors.
I tend to be quite liberal in my politics, and I support sensible gun control. Nevertheless, I own a Glock 9mm, a gun whose ghetto cachet I was almost entirely unaware of when I bought it in Helena, Montana, over six years ago. I had no idea that five years later I would be living in a Crack House in South Central L.A..
So you're planning to buy a house in Los Angeles - maybe quit wasting all that rent on something you can't own, scrape up a down payment, eat cat food for a few years and sock your money into some PROPERTY.
Are you sitting down? L.A. home prices ballooned by 25% in the past year. The Daily News reports that the median price of a home (home, mind you, which includes cheesy little townhomes and crackerbox condos) is now $494,000.
Naturally, spinny-eyeballed realty flacks are gushing that all this Soviet-style inflation is just wonderful:
It's final: The LAUSD Board has voted to flatten the mothballed Ambassador Hotel to make way for a $318-million mega-school to house some 4,240 students.
Edifice-hugging preservationists had been fighting to save the Ambassador, which saw Robert F. Kennedy assassinated, Frank Sinatra adored, Albert Einstein welcomed and Dick Nixon moved to write the 1952 "Checkers speech" that saved his career.
Four plans were proposed for the Ambassador property, but in the end, the board went with Superintendent Roy Romer's plan to level most of the Ambassador in favor of school space, with a token wall retained for posterity, but there may still be room to save the pantry where RFK was shot ...
There is little in urban life more dreary than the sight of a lawn. Even when well-tended, their uniformity is deadening to the spirit; thus, they are suited to the tedium of suburbs but inappropriate to the more bracing landscape of the city.
More often than not, a yard is not the verdant meadow that was intended, luxuriant and enticing, but a tufted and scrabbled wasteland, like the carpet of a fleabag hotel ...
So the Supervisors are shocked - shocked - to learn that yet another patient has died needlessly at King/Drew Medical Center because (this time) a nurse turned down the volume on the man's beeping heart monitor, and failed to notice him dying.
The unidentified AIDS patient was 29. Twenty-nine and dead - not of AIDs, not of pneumonia, but because the Board of Supervisors have failed to answer the seemingly endless string of negligent deaths at King/Drew with anything remotely resembling an effective plan. The one they have in place allowed a nurse, effectively, to unplug a man's umbilical to survival and then cover it up by falsifying the fresh corpse's chart ...
Susan, my wife is a public school teacher at Jefferson High, one of the most notorious schools in a district known for failing schools.
At my local YMCA an older member of the gym heard that I was an architect and asked, âWhat the hell are you doing here, hanging with thugs and hoodlums?â I said, âOur house is right between my wifeâs work up at Jefferson, and my work over near the marina.â The manâs eyes lit up at the mention of Jefferson. âJefferson HIGH SCHOOL?â He looked over at another gray chinned man who added, âShit, Jeff was bad back in my day. I canât imagine what it must be like today.â âNow I know what you are doing here,â laughed the first man. âYou are running defensive tackle for your lady!â
This city is older than it lets on. Beneath the vibrant, digital, go-go-powered generation-next veneer of modern Los Angeles and the Hollywood makeup job are sinews of old brick and bones of mid-20th-century iron.
For evidence, check out YesterdayLA.com, a trove of last-century postcard views that show Los Angeles coming of age and beginning to show signs of its future as a city of the world.
In which a crack-head passes out on our porch and leaves a gift.
I have seen some crazy stuff from time to time.
In our first week of âcampingâ in the house I woke up on Monday morning to this:
5:30 am, before sunrise
*THUMP*
Susan: AHHHHHHHHH!!!
LEAVE NOW!!! YOU CAN'T SLEEP HERE ANY MORE! PEOPLE LIVE HERE NOW!
Male Voice: *GROAN* O-o-okay miss. I'm leavin'.
S: LEAVE NOW!!! I am calling the POLICE!
MV: O-okay miss.
Funny how the "World" Wide Web often keeps us locked inside our homes or workplaces, forced to rely on land-line connections for high-speed Internet access.
I moved back to Los Angeles last month after a summer stint in Washington DC. One of my major frustrations in Washington -- other than having my car broken into, eviscerated, and ticketed -- was the sorry state of the cable infrastructure in that city and the systemâs abysmal performance in supplying a consistent connection to the web.
The Comcast âcable guyâ in DC had little confidence he could successfully install an internet cable line in the ancient brownstone walkup where I lived. Sure enough, the flaky signal that resulted from his half-hearted efforts would fail a dozen times a day, particularly when it rained -- cutting out the instant I heard raindrops plunking down on the air conditioner ...
Sure there is affordable property in L.A. Have you tried South Central?
So you don't want to spend $500k on a 'tear down' in Santa Monica.? There ARE options, if you don't mind hearing a little semi-automatic gunfire. But hell, you get that in Venice where condos start in the mid $300k's.
I moved to South Central at the end of August, 2003, and now I am going to (try) to keep up a blog series of my experience ...
The Old Northridge Community Council -- one of the first certified -- faces questions about its legitimacy by the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment ...
Oblivious to the cries of several hundred protesters, dozens of hapless herons, thousands of frustrated Lincoln Boulevard commuters and the risk that the whole place could blow sky-high any second, the L.A. City Council voted 10-1 to greenlight the final stage of the Playa Vista development.
Antonio Villaraigosa's sole dissenting vote will force the measure to a confirmation vote next week, reports 4th Floor.
Even if you don't care about baby frogs, Marina gridlock or yuppies breathing underground methane in their homes, the development is pretty indefensible, just from a land-use standpoint:
Phew: Looks as though protesters pushed the L.A. County Board of Supervisors back from the brink of an ill-considered, truly callous plan to close King/Drew Hospital's Trauma Center. The Supes agreed to hold hearings on the plan instead, KTLA reports.
The change was largely semantic, since the original proposal would also have required a public hearing and a second vote by the board. But it reflected the political hurricane into which the board has navigated by calling for the closure of the unit.
The vote to hold the public hearing passed 3-1, with Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke opposed. Burke, who represents the district in which the hospital is located, had wanted to postpone any decision on the trauma unit. Board Chairman Don Knabe, attending a homeland security meeting in Washington, was absent.
Unable to draft with a realistic plan for curing King/Drew Medical Center's terminal case of mismanagement, the L.A. County Supervisors have decided to raise the mortality rate in surrounding neighborhoods.
That's right - as the Times reports this morning, the Supes would rather shut King/Drew's trauma center and help cure the rest of the hospital at a leisurely pace than work harder on the root causes of the crisis.
Listen - nearly half of King/Drew's trauma patients - almost 1,000 last year - were shooting and stabbing victims. How many of them do you think would have survived the long drives to trauma centers at County/USC or Harbor/UCLA? The county's rationale is chillingly cruel, a sort of destroy-the-village-in-order-to-save-it stance:
Franklin Avenue points us to the impending referendum Tuesday on whether Glendale should let The Grove's creator Rick Caruso build "Americana at BrandBroad," a new temple of commerce (okay, a big mall) smack at downtown Glendale's center.
Naturally, the owners of the Glendale Galleria are trying to push their own failed refurbishment proposal, calling it superior to Caruso's plan because it offers
-No Billboards
-Keeps Harvard and Orange Streets Open
-Protects Open Space
-Less Traffic
-Saves Historic Buildings
Well here's a scary little development: Playa Vista.
No, seriously, the whole neighborhood could blow sky-high in a massive explosion of 7 billion cubic feet of natural gas stored under the Ballona wetlands, according to a press release from Grassroots Coalition (aka SaveBallona.org). If that happens, the whole neighborhood could look something like the Aug. 19 Duke Energy blast near Houston.
GC has been pushing the City Council and the developers of Playa Vista to "reconsider placing high-density housing immediately beside a similar underground gas reservoir."
As is his wont, Jonas at LABlogs asks 8 new questions today. Pavlovian slob that I am, I can't help responding and adding answers to the most important question that was left unasked - WHY?
1. What city or part of Los Angeles do you live in now? 2. If you have lived somewhere else in the area, where was it? 3. Besides where you live now, where else would you want to live in the area? 4. Where would you not want to live? 5. How often do you venture out of your area? 6. Where do you usually go when you get out? 7. How far do you work/school from where you live? 8. Money is no object; Beach, the Hills, the City or Leave?
I don't know whether this is a useful resource or a tool of paranoia and dread, but soon you'll be able to look up even more data about perverts in your neighborhood.
L.A. County's sex-offender database will be upgraded to include the photos, names, aliases and addresses of any registered sex offender in the county, thanks to a Board of Supervisors vote approving a motion by Sup. Mike Antonovich.
Certain rights watchdogs (including rapists and child molesters themselves) call this an invasion of privacy.
Bob Hertzberg blogs Sen. Richard Alarcon's trouncing of every other mayoral wanna-be in a straw poll taken last weekend at the Eastside Mayoral Candidates Endorsement meeting.
Smack-dab in Villaraigosa's own district, more attendees at the meeting said they preferred Alarcon, over Hertzberg and the three guys currently in City Hall. To his credit, Hertzberg lists the unflattering (to him) vote tally that followed the meeting:
Does anybody really "own" Sunset Strip? Does George Maharis? Jim Morrison's ghost? John Doe?
There's a fun little debate being drummed up in the pages of the Times over whether West Hollywood (a bonafide city whose borders encompass the Strip) or Hollywood (a neighborhood of Los Angeles) is the true owner of the ever-mutating nightlife capital of L.A.
It seems the city of West Hollywood slapped up 10-dozen lamppost banners blaring "Sunset Strip - Only in West Hollywood," which set a little electricity crackling into the knee-joints of Rodney "Mayor of Sunset Strip" Bingenheimer and Laugh Factory founder Jamie Masada, who are declaiming the posters as a history-obliterating buzz-grab.
Wary homeowners and incurable paranoids take note: Tuesday night is National Night Out, and the LAPD has plans for your neighborhood:
Unity walks and a rally in Rampart Division, music in the street in Newton and a whole slew of barbecues in the Harbor district, according to the schedule linked above as noted earlier - all with the goal of symbolically scaring away the bad guys.
In case you needed a reminder of why many Angelenos think this kind of feel-good event is worthwhile, here's a random sampling of crime notes from a couple of sources:
Driving to my usual West Hollywood laundromat late Saturday afternoon, I overshot Crescent Heights cause I was daydreaming about my home away from home: Cape Town, South Africa, so I had to pull a fast right on Laurel towards Beverly Blvd and the mini-mall which houses my suds, my carbo lite yogurt, my Chinese take out and a few other essential pit stops like a framing store and sushi joint and dry cleaners and, if I'm really in the mood to hack off my tresses, a cheap haircut place.
Speeding for no particular reason, mid block on Laurel I spied the just-closing gates on an open house ...
It may be a bit early for it, but the LAPD has just begun touting August 3 as the night L.A. folks should celebrate "National Night Out" to show the crackheads, burglars, muggers and gangstas that we're not afraid ...
One of my pet peeves is the failure of city government to take full advantage of e-mail and the Internet to communicate with constituents.
That peeve is especially aggravated when public officials hold public meetings (in the name of "outreach") that are invariably poorly attended and usually dominated by cranks and gadflies ...
Well lets try going back to the beginning. Grass Roots Venice Neighborhood Council was established with the Approval of the City Of Los Angeles Department of Neighborhood empowerment, like many of the other Neighborhood Councils around LA. A lot of them struggle with factional nitpicking, but in Venice it has come to sabotage.
Back in my days as a newspaperman, I worked weekend nights as the city desk reporter on duty at the Times. I'd field calls from the public - wet-newspaper complaints, paranoid ramblings of the tinfoil-hat crowd and the occasional hacker looking for attention. It was never dull.
Since LAVoice's launch a few months back, we're attracting more of the same - stories submitted not about L.A., but about some massive conspiracy against the only guy who can see through the lies. Publication is a nut magnet.
Now I've made no secret of my limited brush with the Church of Scientology. The "religion" is not for me, nor do I go out of the way to criticize its business. Not like Keith B. Justice, who insists that Scientologists conspired with the LAPD's Hollywood Division and Mayor Jim Hahn to make his life hell with false arrests, police harrassment and sinister towtrucks:
As I watched L.A.'s real estate values balloon to cartoonishly high levels over the past few years, Mark Twain's line about "lies, damn lies, and statistics" kept coming back to me.
Now a new UCLA study says the bottom could drop out soon, and I want to add a fourth item to Twain's list: "real estate prices." It was only a matter of time before the homebuying frenzy in Los Angeles that outlived the dot-com bubble finally burned itself out and sent the market into freefall ...
If this thing ever gets manufactured, the future will change radically for masons, day laborers and Home Depot cement aisles across Los Angeles:
USC roboticist Behrokh Khoshnevis has designed a robot that built the first wall ever constructed entirely by machine. By 2005, Khoshnevis promises a version that can build an entire 2000-square-foot house in a day - completely untouched by human hands ...
Back in 1989, about four months after Reagan had finally turned over the reins to Bush the Elder, I had been assigned to do a stakeout in Bel Aire. As far as neighborhoods to have to stake out, well, there are pluses and minuses. While you arenât going to have to deal with some crackhead smashing the window and carjacking you, the Bel Aire Patrol can be a real pain in the ass, coming by every couple of hours and rousting you as you suck bad coffee and try to work the line for the 49ers v. Rams game.
I was parked in front of a mansion that looked very familiar. As I stared at it, I gradually realized that it was the Clampett Mansion from the Beverly Hillbillies â the one that Granny, Jed and the clan piled out of, waving at the end of each weekâs episode. It was right next door to the mansion that Reaganâs wealthy friends had gifted to Ronnie and Nancy (sort of a thanks for the nice tax cuts and fat defense contracts of the 80s). At the time, the address was this: 666 St. Cloud ...
My gorge rose yesterday as we tried to eat lunch on the Santa Monica Promenade. The place was crawling with stinking, lurching bums and crazies. Oh, excuse me, "the homeless."
Santa Monica has gained fame/infamy on Harry Shearer's Le Show as "the home of the homeless." But bleeding-heart charity-pimping seems to have blinded everyone to the fact that the city's own PC generosity has infested its beaches, business districts and outdoor restaurants with a shambling, reeking army of alcoholics, schizophrenics and chronic losers. One in every five or six people on the Promenade around lunchtime yesterday - no, I am *not* exaggerating - appeared to be "homeless."
Oh, wait - they're not all addicts or mentally ill? I sound like a ranting, heartless, elitist bigot? Read on ...
My friend Dave reports:
The good news is planning staff have recommended against Lincoln Center, the out-of-scale mini Century City a developer wants to build on Lincoln Boulevard at California in Venice.
However, the Planning Commission may well ignore their recommendation this Thursday unless it is aware of public opposition.
WHAT CAN PREVENT THIS?
Citizens speaking out at the hearing Thursday at 9:30 a.m. Citizens writing to the commission Citizens signing a a letter to Mayor Hahn (like the one linked to below)
The group, calling themselves "Greater Cypress Park" claim to have several hundred stakeholders attend their regular meetings (which are never publicized, even though state law requires it), told a local newspaper they are one of the "best organized" in our part of the city.
Last month, they told KPCC radio (which didn't bother to check credentials) they were doing great things for the community -- one of the poorest in the city -- but couldn't really offer any examples ...
I'm posting this for my friend Dave Ewing, who's doing the organizing:
Lincoln Boulevard is already over-stressed. Now an out-of-state developer is looking for special zoning changes to muscle a six-story shopping center & apartment complex into the middle of Venice. This "Lincoln Center" on Lincoln between Lake and Palms, would add hundreds, if not thousands of cars to Lincoln traffic every day. It adds unprecedented height, gives short shrift to affordable housing, and is NOT pedestrian friendly.
The letter below, with a list of supporters, will be hand-delivered to Mayor Hahn before the May 13th Planning Commission hearing on the matter:
Sometimes, the rich-poor divide in Los Angeles just takes a 2-by-4 to your sense of balance and fairness:
I drove through Beverly Hills this afternoon, en route downtown to see the terrific "Street Credibility" show at MOCA. Stagnant air there hovers over manicured lawns and empty driveways surrounding BH's spotless mega-mansions. It's like an unused set for Dawn of the Dead, The armed-security-enforced quiet is an invisible cordon of psychological piano wire, stretched so taut that at any second, you expect it to explode in zombie riots flooding the boulevards with blood and fire. You rarely see anyone enter or leave at any hour, and you wonder - what do these people do all day?
Contrast that with a dinner I had last night at our friends' house in South Central ...
Okay, the headline's hyperbolic. But consider these facts:
Before our eyes, a new studio power is taking shape. The old giants - Universal, Fox, Paramount - and the relative newcomers - Miramax, Dreamworks, et al - are already sharing box office dollars and viewers' attention spans with video game studios. Soon, they'll also have to share political juice, educational influence and even the responsibility for traffic jams.
In a news item posted last month, I bemoaned a decaying mattress that lay along La Brea for months -- and whose sight I was forced to suffer each day as I drove past it on my way to work.
Thank you to the unknown Good Samaritan who finally hauled away this environmental abomination. Your mission of mattress mercy has made my daily commute a little more pleasant.
Still, I must criticize the politicians who failed a simple civics exercise vis-a-vis this silly mattress ...
Do we have an accident or a pattern? It was only a $2.50 overcharge -- but the way it was done was suggestive
I had an hour to kill while having my car worked on, so I strolled over the Von's market on Wilshire @ 14th in SaMo -- I hadn't been in a Von's since the strike began.
A large sign announced a special price $1.97/lb on boneless, skinless chicken breasts, a staple of my diet. So whatthehell, I grabbed two large packages, and headed for checkout...
Somewhere in Koreatown, there's a health inspector who's taking either bribes or naps, I'm not sure which.
I dined at this huge Korean barbecue buffet joint the other day and was amazed and disgusted to find that a) the place was appallingly filthy and b) it still earned a "B" card from the Los Angeles Department of Health Services.
No (visible) rats or roaches among the gory details, but still pretty shocking:
I was unsure whether to file this under "Neighborhoods" or "Environment." I chose Neighborhoods because this is a telling example of how long we will tolerate blight before we clean it up.
Somewhere along my daily commute down La Brea, north from Stocker, lies a humble mattress. It rests slumped across a dirt path that runs parallel to the boulevard on its east side.
Lying at the magnetic head of the LA/LB Mega-Port axis, the bellwether if you will, is San Pedro. Ostensibly the port and southwestern extension of the City of Angels, such is in name and politics only.
As place, San Pedro is singularly separate from the City of Los Angeles, from the County of Los Angeles, from Southern California at-large, and ultimately from the State of California and even the Western United States.
Hyperbole? Hardly. etâs take a quick albeit, cursory tour.
I love sailing time. After these past couple days of hubbub, the angst, the expecteds & unexpecteds, the sheer absurdities, this ship now briefly at rest from it all is, to me, nothing short of beautiful.
Itâs now 0100 hours on Wednesday, this morning past. The petcoke loading ceased aboard the M/V FUNDAMENTAL TEMPER at precisely 2340 hours yesterday. The draft surveyor has carefully calculated the amount of cargo loaded, the hatches are closed, the behemoth LAXT conveyor loader, the praying mantis, is massively silent.
Itâs as if, despite the intense industrial cacophony of just a little over an hour ago, that it all never happened. Now the yellow hue of deck lights and soft hum of machinery deep within the ship provide such a pleasant lull, accompanied by the gentle lapping of waves against the piles of the dock. On deck, thereâs not a soul in sight. Itâs rest time. Itâs sailing time ...
The M/V FUNDAMENTAL TEMPER is now into its final loading cycles of petcoke from the vast LAXT backlands. The shipboard tempo & tenor has thus picked up. Once again I bang on the door of the Masterâs Office.
âHUAANNH! Mister Agent! Please come in!â Captain Go has recovered from this morningâs tribulations admirably. Perhaps alarmingly so.
Sitting around the conference table are several infamous (per numerous faxed LAPD All-Points-Bulletins) notables from Korea-Town, all sucking loudly on impossibly neon-green popsicles.
âCaptain? Captain?" Bang-bang on the door. "CAPTAIN!?â Iâm winded after dashing up the six decks to get here.
âHUAANHH!,â comes the grunt from his private quarters as I take my usual seat on his office settee. Itâs now almost 0900 today. The ship is almost half full of petcoke and the sail boardâs been set for 2100 tomorrow, Saturday.
âHUAANHH <hack><hack><hock><long hock><thphhhh><splash>â The curtain thus draws back and out comes the venerable Captain Go, still stupefied with sleep, his hair standing straight up, rigged out only in his soiled, ragged skivvies and his flap-flap bath slippers, scratching his privates, oblivious to due modesty.
Itâs about an hour later and Iâm just thinking In-n-Out Double-Double Animal-style as I pass the Carson & Vermont intersection when my cell phone titters.
I snatch the phone up, drop it, swerve to avoid yet another SoCal SUV with those Laker-Player, mega-bucks, glittery-chrome 22-inch wheels (todayâs version of my eraâs lowered âCrystal Blue Persuasionâ 1963 Impala), pick it up again, finally thumbing the little green button. I press it to my sweaty ear.
âHector? Dave. OK.â Three simple, sweet words. Inspector Reynoso has come through, big-time.
Iâm still a bit flustered as the SUV driver has ranged abeam to bird me emphatically. âF*CK YOU TOO, MUTHAF*CKA!,â I scream.
âBesides the Captainâs letter, youâre gonna need an I-259, an I-160 and . . . lemme see (as I hear papers shuffle) oh yeah, better give me an I-408 too, just in case. Oh! And an I-95! And donât forget the 65 bucks . . .â
Iâve lucked out this Sunday morning and have netted perhaps the only decent, competent and fervently-hoped-for compassionate INS inspector in the Long Beach U.S. Immigration & Naturalization (INS) Seaport unit, Inspector David Reynoso. Iâm on the phone with him, setting up my visa waiver application on medical/ humanity grounds for Captain Goâs hapless AB seaman with the 10-centimeter bloody extrusions from his anus.
âYeah, OK, Dave, I think Iâve got all that. You gonna be around there for awhile?"
In the vast, albeit dusty oeuvre of sea literature, it is common in the memoirs of master mariners to come across repeated medical references and anecdotes. Some captains even profess a fondness for the âhobbyâ of medicine â a stimulating diversion to the usual ennui of horizon-to-horizon emptiness that is, and perennially has been, the fundamental essence of seafaring.
Patrick OâBrian has alliterated this dichotomy brilliantly but with two individual characters, Aubrey & Maturin. For most master mariners outside the Royal Navy, the role of doctor and medical provider has always, since time immemorial, fallen to them alone. Afterall, itâs just a part of the life and duty of command. However, every once in awhile a master just takes to medicine with uncharacteristic enthusiasm.
âMister Agent! My seaman has very bad hemorrhoids! 10-centimeter extrusions from his anus! From his ANUS, Mister Agent! Very bloody, very bloody,â as Captain Go holds up his right hand rounded forefinger and thumb, then having the audacity to peer through it.
My ship has just finished tying up â all fast. Panama-flagged, Swiss-owned, Japanese-operated, American-chartered, with a crew consisting of a Korean Master and Chief Engineer, the remaining ratings Filipino, the MV FUNDAMENTAL TEMPER, is truly exemplar of todayâs world-fleet of mega seven-hatch Panamax bulk carriers, right down to its queer, semi-sequitur of a name.
These huge droguers, carrying the worldâs basic materials, can just squeeze through the Panama Canal (thus âPanamaxâ). They perform unglamorously and cheaply, carrying cargoes halfway around the world for pennies per ton. As such, theyâre not up there in terms of extras and frills, not like the break-bulk liners and chemical tankers â no elevators, for example.
Southbound on the Harbor Freeway at 0300 on any given morning is most exhilarating.
Not in returning home from the Lakers game to Palos Verdes shit-faced, one eye closed to compensate for the Heineken-then-Johnnie-Walker double-vision. Just the opposite â up & braced from an early evening nap. Full of vim & vinegar, if you will. Reasonably sober with wits about & functioning.
If youâre thus going to work down in the Docklands, you canât beat it.
Despite the sun and ocean breezes, the day felt bleak, infused with reports of impending war. The President, refreshed no doubt by his trip to the Azores was going to address us that evening.
As bad as things were, it seemed the appropriate moment for a long delayed trip to the supermarket--we were out of soap, low on tissues and orange juice and could use some ice cream to stave off doomsday thoughts.
Walking to my car, I heard more sirens than normal for a Monday morning, and soon saw a bit of white smoke rising from the building on the corner of Brooks and Ocean Front Walk.
Before I moved to Reseda three years ago, I viewed it in the way many of you probably still do. I thought of the congested intersection of Reseda and Sherman Way, tinny Mariachi music blaring from discount storefronts, mile after mile of tune up shops, oil change chains and auto parts stores. It seemed perpetually run-down, an Eeyore of a community, wearing a "woe is me" cloak of self-pity.
Bleary-eyed on yet another Sunday morning, I stomp around my rented condo in complete fury. Another sleepless night, another headache, and another day where I wake up and vow to get the hell outta here asap. In other words, another night of not being able to fall asleep until well past 3AM, and Iâve had it.
I work in an office seven floors up in the Trizec towers in Marina del Rey, and every day I can see the traffic streaming down Lincoln Blvd - getting thicker and thicker by the month.
For years now, I have heard all the hubbub about how Runyon Canyon in the Hollywood Hills is the place to "
, checked out Google Maps and made the thirty minute walk to Vista north of Hollywood.
Today mad props go to Beverly Hills City Manager Roderick Wood (a shortened version of that is certainly someone's porn name) for articulating my nagging unease with my recent forays into Mr. Wood's fair city. It is, apparently, those oh-so-pedestrian sidewalks. Mere concrete, it seems, is not sufficient to differentiate Rodeo Drive's extended collection of incredibly overpriced shops from anyone else's, and so Mr. Wood has fashioned a remarkably appropriate solution.
Wary homeowners and incurable paranoids take note: Tuesday night is National Night Out, and the LAPD has 
Driving to my usual West Hollywood laundromat late Saturday afternoon, I overshot Crescent Heights cause I was daydreaming about my home away from home: 
Listen up: If you own or rent in L.A., then the 
If this thing ever gets manufactured, the future will change radically for masons, day laborers and Home Depot cement aisles across Los Angeles: 
Back in 1989, about four months after Reagan had finally turned over the reins to Bush the Elder, I had been assigned to do a stakeout in Bel Aire. As far as neighborhoods to have to stake out, well, there are pluses and minuses. While you arenât going to have to deal with some crackhead smashing the window and carjacking you, the Bel Aire Patrol can be a real pain in the ass, coming by every couple of hours and rousting you as you suck bad coffee and try to work the line for the 49ers v. Rams game. 
My gorge rose yesterday as we tried to eat lunch on the Santa Monica Promenade. The place was crawling with stinking, lurching bums and crazies. Oh, excuse me, "the homeless."
