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State University Tuition Hike Raises Student Hackles

Brian Doherty — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 07:24:01 -0800

The Board of Regents have officially approved a 32 percent rate hike in undergraduate tuition, and generated protests at UCLA campus that resulted in 12 student arrests.

The L.A. Times profiled some of the protesters of the hike, which will add around $2,500 to most full-time students' yearly education bill at the UC system:

A raucous crowd of about 2,000, including students and labor union activists who traveled from other UC campuses, faced a large force of UC police and CHP officers in riot gear outside UCLA's Covel Commons....Across campus, about 40 demonstrators occupied a classroom building, Campbell Hall, locking themselves inside until Thursday night.....

After the vote, some of the regents were trapped in the building and in vehicles as about 100 demonstrators surrounded the garage...Earlier, a group of students marched into Westwood Village and briefly blocked traffic

Colin Williams, an English major at UCLA, said that as a fourth-year student he would be mainly spared from the financial pain that younger students face, but protested in solidarity...."We're all the same person; we're all in the same boat," said Williams, who complained that the regents were hiding "behind closed blinds."

Busloads of students and union activists from other campuses descended on Westwood. Among them was Tommy Le, a fourth-year student at UC Santa Cruz, who left his campus at 3 a.m. Thursday on one of two buses. The American studies major said he was worried about not being able to afford the higher charges, beginning with an extra $585 for the rest of the school year.

"It's adding more stress and more burden," said Le, who added that he works two part-time jobs and sends money to his family.

This account from LAist has more arrests reported than the Times account:

Protests began yesterday morning before a Regents' finance committee voted to push the tuition increase to the full board today. At yesterday's meeting inside Covel Commons, 14 were arrested, 12 of them students. Outside, protesting students gathered around the building resulting in various quick scuffles with police caught on video. A UCLA statement said two officers used tasers "in light stun mode" against two protesters, though they were not hurt. Two other students sustained minor injuries for unknown reasons.

Video of the protests at UCLA:

The image associated with this post was taken by Flickr user Chris Radcliff. It was used under user Creative Commons license.

Main Breaks: The Fault of Mother Nature?

Brian Doherty — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 15:01:41 -0800

The Department of Water and Power issues a report on why L.A. saw so many water main breaks in the past few months. It's inconclusive, but a combination of corroded old iron and unusually high reservoir levels and pressure are likely to blame.

The L.A. Times's account stresses the nature part of the story:

Corroded pipe also is more susceptible to breaking when subjected to minor increases in pressure. A cluster of leaks in July and August, for example, coincided with an increase in reservoir elevation -- and a corresponding increase in static pressure of about 4 pounds per square inch -- at the Lower Franklin Reservoir.

The report said the pressure was still "within the normal operating range," but that it could have been enough to stress already aging pipes.

The report did seem to debunk a theory, discussed earlier here at City of Angles, that the city's use restrictions on sprinklers might have created days where too much water was being used at once.

The Daily News's reporting on the same study doesn't talk about the reservoir angle, but does discuss citizen anger at the DWP's pipe replacement strategies:

the DWP had focused primarily replacing pipes only when they ruptured. "However, that replacement rate corresponded to a replacement cycle for water mains of well over 400 years," the report said. "This means it would take over 400 years to replace all the pipes in the DWP water system."

The new program will replace 200,000 feet of pipes each year between now and 2012 - reducing the replacement cycle to 180 years.....

The report noted that the utility has added staff, but needs to do more - a factor which might cost ratepayers more money to repair all the pipes that are needed. The report drew criticism from Jack Humphreville, who serves on the Neighborhood Council Oversight Committee of the utility. "The problem that we and all the public have is the lack of credibility of the DWP," Humphreville said. "A report like this just shows, again, why we need a ratepayer advocate at the DWP."

In other water news this week, the L.A. Times has an interesting summation of the state's new comprehensive water use and regulation plan, in which:

more than $1 billion of the money is earmarked for projects that have little or nothing to do with quenching the state's thirst.

The bond proposal includes funding for bike paths, museums, visitor centers, tree planting, economic development and the purchase of property from land speculators and oil companies -- all in the districts of lawmakers whose key votes helped it pass the Legislature.

Earlier City of Angles blogging on the new state water plan.

The image associated with this post was taken by Flickr user Chim Chim. It was used under user Creative Commons license.

Stuck on you: You're Great!

Ophelia Chong — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 14:43:15 -0800

How a small step from one site then crossed over to Facebook and went viral. This is an interview with the creator of the "You're Great" Sticker Laura Shape.

I first encountered Laura when I wrote about Giveback.net. And now Laura has a new project called "You're Great".

1. What spurred the viral message? Where was ground zero?

It actually happened in two stages and I can't personally take credit for either one. A close friend changed her profile picture on Facebook to include a "You're great!" sticker and another close friend then suggested that everyone do the same. Within two days, word had spread and at least 10 friends had changed their profile pictures to include the "You're great!" message. The most fun part of this was that many of them used the "You're great!" image from the Hopeful Art website, but then created their own interpretations of it for their profiles. You can see those images in the "gallery" section of www.hopeful-art.com. They're wonderful.

During that four day period I got about 50 visitors to the Hopeful Art website, which was actually a large amount compared to the volume I'd seen since I launched the site three years ago. However, someone amongst those 50 people, and I still don't know who, must've posted a link on a few websites that advertise where to get free stuff and that's when it really exploded. In the four weeks since that happened, I've had over 11,000 unique visits to the Hopeful Art website. I've also received more than 2,300 emails from people in 21 countries asking me to send them "You're great!" stickers.

It's amazing to look at the traffic graph for this website. It's flat, showing just a couple of visitors per day, for the past three years and then all of a sudden one day it jumps up to over 2,500 visitors and then climbs even higher the next day!

2. Why do you think people are responding to the message?

That's a really good question, and I've been wondering about it myself. I've actually tried to bring in traffic like this before. I've posted links on Facebook and on a few free stuff sites in the past, but with no luck. So it seems like the difference might be in the timing of the message. It just seems like maybe now is the right time and that people around the world are feeling in need of a smile and a few kind words.

I also think that with so many people living in financial hardship right now, people are grateful that a stranger would want to send them even a small gift for free. I've received some very moving responses along those lines from people in their emails.

There's one that breaks my heart every time I read it. It's from a woman named Kelly, from Idaho, who wrote:
"I volunteer at the local food bank. I'd love to slip some of these into boxes of food we distribute. A lot of folks are humiliated about having to ask for help. They deserve a reminder that they're still great people."

I can't imagine a more touching sentiment.

And some people have done more than just ask for free stickers. A few have donated money to Hopeful Art to help send stickers to others! I find that the most amazing part of all. I'm astounded by people's generosity.

3. What message is next? Do you plan on more sticker projects?

I'm not sure, but before I move on to the next message, I'd definitely like to take this one a little further. For instance, it would be really fun to put the "You're great!" message on billboards in a few cities where millions of people can see it. Imagine making that many people smile all at the same time. That would be like a miracle!

Nothing is more viral than a Smile :O) Thank you Laura for sharing with us your story.

To get your own "You're Great" Sticker go to: HopefulArt

Image: "You're Great" Sticker

86. August, Cal State Long Beach

D.J. Waldie — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 07:04:53 -0800

August Coppola has died. His obituaries began, brutally, by listing his relations: Carmine Coppola (father, composer of The Godfather score), Francis Ford Coppola (director, arts entrepreneur). Talia Shire (sister, actor), Nicholas Cage (son, actor), Christopher Coppola (son, director, producer), Roman Coppola (nephew, director), and Sofia Coppola (nice, director, actor, writer). In his obituaries, August recedes in this crowd of celebrities and the nearly famous. The implication is that he never was as notable as they are,

August Coppola was my teacher for most of three years. Although “teacher” is not exactly the right word.

Coppola taught Comparative Literature and headed the General Honors Program at Cal State Long Beach in the late 1960s. Long Beach was an educational factory, exactly the kind of industrialized producer of degrees that California’s master plan for higher education intended for state colleges. It took the sons and daughters of aerospace and refinery workers and made them the first in their family to earn a college diploma, the first in their family to become reliably middle-class. They became school teachers, engineers, middle managers, dentists, lawyers, entrepreneurs, and government bureaucrats. I’m one.

Coppola was something else. He was a member of the intelligentsia, one of the avant garde at a time when both of those cultural tribes were beginning to be suspect. He was experimental in the way Dada and Surrealism had once been experimental, in the way Calder was and Pollock and the Beats had recently been, and at a time when authority in all its forms was imploding like a slow-motion film of an abandoned building being demolished. His effrontery would seem old-fashion now.

Other students could tell you better stories of August Coppola. I wasn’t a very good student of his. I didn’t have the fleetness of his thought.

By some measures, Coppola wasn’t a successful academic. He spent his career at state schools; Long Beach was particularly a backwater then. He didn’t write his era’s defining work of literary criticism or set a new course for the discipline of Comparative Literature. His students, as far as I know, aren’t passing on his intellectual heritage to a new generation of students.

Coppola did a great many interesting things in a great many different ways, in ways that were fairly radical once, although they did not result in an edifice of scholarship or a body of memorable art works. His purpose, it seems to me, was to do something else.

Coppola was an instigator, a flagrant intellectual. He was a popularizer of the visionaries, cranks, and poets of the previous generation who were just then passing into history. History, it turned out, did not treat all of them well. Some of the cranks were crazy. Some of the visionaries had nothing new to say. Some of the poets were bad.

Which is not to say that encountering them at working-class Long Beach State in the late 1960s was a mistake or that Coppola’s “everything connects” style was mere exuberance. Coppola wasn’t making a canon. He wasn’t making disciples. He was making minds. In large measure, he made mine.

The image on this page was made by Flickr user Alejandro Cortes. It was used under a Creative Commons license.

Coming Up: Sharon Lockhart

Holly Willis — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 18:13:28 -0800

Breathing and soft, almost guttural grunts of hard work: these are the sounds that stay with you a few days after viewing Sharon Lockhart's newest film, Double Tide. The immediate experience, though, is sublime visual pleasure. The film follows the work of a woman digging clams at low tide early in the morning and then again at sunset in the same cove on the Maine coast. The morning is foggy, a soft grey landscape; the afternoon features sunset and illuminated clouds. Lockhart's camera remains still throughout the film, framing the woman at a distance and creating an incredibly captivating portrait that unfolds gracefully in real time, a space opening into duration. The LA-based Lockhart has been making these evocative films with specific formal constraints for several years. Pine Flat from 2005 is made up of 12 unmoving 10-minute shots, each of which features the sound and/or images of children from the town of Pine Flat in the Sierra Nevada foothills. Here, too, the effect is dramatic as the details that would normally be lost instead resonate powerfully. More recently, Lockhart has studied workers in Maine, with Lunch Break and Exit, both of which were shot at the Bath Iron Works shipyard earlier this year. Lockhart, who is on the faculty of the Art School at USC, invites us to reconsider cinema with these projects by paring it back to an essential core, leaving room for us to think.

the details:
Double Tide
Thur., Nov. 19, 7:00 p.m.
Hammer Museum
10899 Wilshire Blvd., LA

D.A. on Pot: No Way

Brian Doherty — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 07:31:05 -0800

The City Council gets closer to a new medical marijuana ordinance, rejecting key elements of the suggestions from the City Attorney's office. D.A. Cooley says that he doesn't care if the City Council wants to make over the counter sales legal for medical pot dispensaries--he'll ignore them.

L.A. Weekly reported on the hearings of the joint council committee yesterday, and on the lawsuit threats that arose:

Americans For Safe Access on Monday stated the courts in California have supported the sale of pot to patients with doctors' approvals and that if the council moves forward with is sales ban it will take City Hall to court.

"The City Attorney has consistently argued that medical marijuana sales are illegal," said ASA Chief Counsel Joe Elford. "Neither the Los Angeles City Attorney nor the City Council has the right to ban activity that is protected under state law. Medical marijuana sales have been deemed legal by the state legislature, the courts, and the California Attorney General."

The city attorney's office has argued that state law only allows for nonprofit collectives with members and a limited amount (five pounds) of the drug on-hand.

A joint meeting of two council committees today, however, watered down Trutanich's language with the caveat that any city regulation allow pot sales. The committees also supported regulation that would not force dispensaries to turn over the names of patients to authorities. (The names "shall be made available by the collective to the Police Department upon request," according to the older language).

The meeting was impassioned, with Council members Dennis Zine and Jose Huizar especially clearly ready to get an ordinance passed--but not one as strict as the city attorney's office's proposal. Over a hundred pro-medical pot citizens filled City Hall meeting room 340 and clapped for statements they liked, and booed one's they didn't; in the public statement period people against the severe ordinance outnumbered those for at least 10 to 1.

D.A. Cooley's rather heated and uncollegial reaction to the Council's amended the City Attorney's recommendations to openly permit sales, via the L.A. Times:

"Undermining those laws via their ordinance powers is counterproductive, and, quite frankly, we're ignoring them. They are absolutely so irrelevant it's not funny," Cooley said. Cooley said state law and state court decisions have made it clear that collectives cannot sell marijuana at dispensaries.

He reiterated his view that most, if not all, dispensaries in the county were in violation of the law. "We don't know of one that's not engaging in just over-the-counter sales," he said. The district attorney said his office was already prosecuting some dispensaries, and he promised to step up efforts next month. Cooley said he decided to weigh in today because he was irritated that the council had ignored the advice of the city attorney, Carmen Trutanich.

"What the City Council is doing is beyond meaningless and irrelevant," he said.

Past City of Angles blogging on the medical pot conundrum here and here.

The image associated with this post was taken by Flickr user epape. It was used under user Creative Commons license.

The Art of Possibility

Erin Aubry Kaplan — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 08:57:04 -0800

Who knew that Inglewood has a burgeoning arts scene in the northeast corner of the city?

Of course I did, but I have to admit, I didn't give it much thought. Not nearly as much thought as I've given lately to police misconduct, development, homelessness, tagging wars or even the incidence of stray dogs that directly correlate to the rising number of foreclosures and otherwise empty houses popping up in my picturesque neighborhood like dandelions. Nearly every day, I check the curbside lawn outside my local 99-cent Store to see if people will forego throwing trash on it for once; if it's relatively free of plastic bags at the end of the day, I notch a victory. Silly stuff, overly NIMBY stuff, but in my ongoing psychological battle to keep Inglewood normal (for utter lack of a better word), these are the aesthetics I obsess about. My concern with visuals has been limited to clean lawns, paved streets and graffiti-free walls--concern with what isn't there versus what is. I feel I have no choice. Real art is lovely and welcome, but I didn't see it as a solution to anything. It could wait

I'm very happy to say that I've been entirely wrong. This past weekend, I and my husband and a couple of friends took the third annual Inglewood Open Studios art tour, which exposes residents and clueless others to the vibrant art scene in the small-townish, quasi-industrial part of the city that borders tony Ladera Heights on the north and the rougher Crenshaw corridor on the east. Artists living in loft spaces or working out of their homes invite the public to check out painting, photography, woodwork, sculpture, video installations and other media that I probably missed on Saturday. Among the more memorable things my group saw were jarring but compelling conceptual pieces by Dustin Shuler, including a rack of shiny automobile "hides" and a seated skeleton with a dog carcass, head and all, draped carefully in its lap. In a house down the road from Shuler was a series of paintings by Luke Van Hook consisting entirely of tiny, hand-painted circles on raw burlap and canvas.

As impressive as the mix and breadth of art is the mix of the artists themselves: young Otis grads and more grizzled vets who've been laboring obscurely in Inglewood twenty years or more. Black and white artists who seem genuinely united in their efforts to jump-start a scene they see as they belonging to them all. At the Saturday reception at the 703 gallery on Hyde Park Boulevard, I certainly felt like I belonged, as did my non-Inglewood resident friends and everyone else in the room who stood sipping wine and happily noshing on catfish and Jamaican fritters. Normal? This felt way better than that. Empowering, even. Better than I've ever felt looking at even a spotless lawn in front of the 99-cent store. Art, indeed.

This image was taken by flickr user Roadsidepictures. It was used under the Creative Commons License.

The Week in Review 11.13.09.

Maxwell Strachan — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 16:30:17 -0800

SoCal Week in Review gives you the week's best Southern California links, articles, and web-related curiosities.

After a prolonged break, we're starting back up with a string of typically absurd Los Angeles stories. Most unfortunately, it's time to rethink your allegiance to the Spider Man, as Peter Parker--or some much less intriguing imposter--was arrested and charged with battery on Hollywood Blvd this week. Suspiciously, Mike Tyson is facing similar allegations after the ex-heavyweight champion was also on the attack at LAX. Coincidence? We think not.

But hey, don't think you can trust regular Joes, either. Not these days, anyway, especially after the arrest of a Riverside local who decided it was a good idea to parade around in stolen military garb. Not such a big deal? Federal authorities would beg to differ. In fact, those Navy Crosses and Purple Hearts attached to his breast pocket might just land him in jail... for a year.

Yep, we're telling you, you can't trust anyone these days. Police even nabbed a real life conman this week. I mean, really, could you make this stuff up? The alleged crook seems to have proven that all you need in order to pull off large-scale heists is a suit, a clipboard, and some confidence. Before his arrest, the conman had stolen $10,000s of dollars from salsa bands, Israeli basketball teams, Mexican soccer teams, and even the detectives themselves. Quite the coup, indeed.

Not all of our ragtag richies are so bad, however. Even David Beckham is starting to get some love. Who would have known that all it took was a little bit of effort from the man who has thus far been paid $250 million to sit courtside at Laker games? Our love for celebrities, of course, seems admittedly less hilarious after reports surfaced that Mr. Jackson's funeral (the smaller one) cost an absurd amount of money ($1 million). Gah!

Still, you have to feel worried when Kareem Abdul-Jabbar drops the news that he has a rare, albeit treatable form of leukemia. Though he remains one of the city's most under appreciated athletes, Kareem's understated manner does at least make him one of the its most loved.

So it's with Kareem in mind that we express our concern over the news that blacks in Los Angeles are not getting those free H1N1 shots at quite the same rate as the larger Los Angeles community. Although blacks do make up nine per cent of the L.A. population, they have thus far received only 2.5 per cent of the vaccinations thus far. Of course, reasons abound--as you can imagine.

Ex-Police Chief Bratton has just left the building, but people are already dissecting the reasons why crime decreased over the course of his Los Angeles tenure. And sure, smart policing played a role, but these other factors. An aging population? An influx of criminally-averse illegal immigrants? Whatever the reason, one thing's certain: criminals continue to hate prison. Many hate it so much, in fact, that inmates are beginning to prefer the death penalty to a lifetime in county jail.

Speaking of criminalization, it's worth wondering whether the all-out legalization of marijuana might reduce use among teens. Joel Stein of Newsweek Magazine certainly thinks it could. And we have to admit that buying some pot does seems easier for a 14 year-old, these days, than obtaining liquor.

Of course, you might remember that the reason pot legalization is making so much headway is because, well, California has no money! Unfortunately, that $700 billion in federal stimulus money isn't really helping either. Why? The city's decentralized approach to federal bills is making managing grants utterly impossible! Even San Diego has received more money than Los Angeles, and we're the second biggest city in the country!

Anyway, Californians don't really need a bar graph to understand things aren't going well. A string of polls conducted by USC and the L.A. Times has indicated, sadly, that most Californians believe the state's best years have already come and gone. With a 53% increase in applications for the Cal State University system this year, you'd have to think that many administrators and soon-to-be rejected students must agree.

So, could the imposition of a "Millionaire's Tax" increase state-level revenue and save the state? Some think the tax could have the wealthy heading for income tax have, otherwise known as Nevada. Personally, we'd guess that our richie neighbors enjoy the beach a tad too much, but, hey, a mass exodus of dystopic proportions? We wouldn't be surprised. Not these days, anyway.

This image was taken by flickr user erjkprunczyk. It was used under the Creative Commons license.

85. I’m walking

D.J. Waldie — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 16:28:22 -0800

I didn’t walk or take a bus to the 18th Street Arts Center on Wednesday evening to participate with other carless Angeleños in presentations connected to Diane Meyer’s photo exhibit: Without a Car in the World: 100 Car-less Angelinos Tell Stories of Living in Los Angeles.

I didn’t have to. Diane Meyer had arranged my ride to Santa Monica. She brought me back to Lakewood.

It would have been possible to walk-bus-train- bus to the art gallery, but the 34-mile trip from my office would have taken me almost two-and-a-half hours. There isn’t any easy way back at the hour the panel discussion ended.

I could have – as some of the carless in Diane’s exhibition do – spent the night in Santa Monica and returned in the morning. I could have spent $40 or $50 for a cab ride to the Blue Line station downtown. I could have asked a former L.A. Times transportation reporter, who was there, to take me to a bus stop in Belmont Heights in Long Beach, where he lives. He might even have been given me a lift all the way home to Lakewood. It’s sort of on the way. If I could see well enough at night, if I were fearless, if I were properly equipped, I might have ridden a bike back home.

Some of the carless in Diane’s show do just that, and they explain how and why in brief quotes that accompany their photograph. The attitudes of the carless range from earnest to desperate: Not driving is liberating. Not driving is a curse. I’m saving the world. I’m lost in L.A. I’m better than all of you who drive. I don’t belong here because I won’t ever be like you, who drives.

The carless are great improvisers, even of their reasons to remain carless. They are a spectacle of contradiction in Los Angeles, but no one notices. They alone hear the sound of their footsteps on our empty sidewalks.

My bit came at the end, after a panel on not owning a car (More bikes! More Zipcars!) and after presentations that covered the iconography of walking in L.A., the history of sidewalks, and the accounts of two academic pedestrians who have crossed L.A. on foot like a modern Lewis and Clark.

I just said that you should learn to wander. I said become an expert flâneur and acquire pedestrianism as a vice. I said acquire the desire to walk into your neighborhood with the purpose of expecting something – Wonderful! Offensive! – to occur to you as wandered into an undiscovered place.

The image on this page was made by Flickr user cobalt123. It was used under a Creative Commons license.

Muertos

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 15:22:55 -0800

Day of the Dead's come and gone, one more year on its march toward becoming this country's newest holiday.

That's what Rutgers University professor Regina Marchi argues in her new book. You can find Dia de los Muertos/Day of the Dead celebrations across the U.S. because there are now significant populations of Latin American immigrants in most states. And the celebrations are attracting non-Latinos, who are picking up the tradition as their own.

We need to go back to the Chicano civil rights movement, 40 years ago, to trace the current growth of the observance. Mostly U.S.-born Mexican American artists in the late 1960s and early 1970s started these celebrations in California cultural centers after trips to Mexico, where it was purposefully forgotten in large cities.

In the 1950s and 60s, Marchi said in an interview, Mexico's ruling class saw Dia de los Muertos as a backward tradition that had no place in large cities undergoing post-World War Two modernization. That changed in the 1970s when Day of the Dead was folded into national tourism campaigns, becoming one of many stops on an extensive cultural tourism trail carved out by the Mexican government.

It was the artists at Chicano cultural centers who showed that Day of the Dead can build community among unrelated people as it does a nuclear family. Thematic altars dedicated to deceased civil rights leaders and to victims of foreign wars became popular. The technique has remained the same: marigold flowers and petals cover tiered steps, the favorite food and drink of the deceased is placed prominently, surrounded by sugar skulls.

Long established Chicano art galleries in California such as the Centro Cultural de la Raza in San Diego, Self Help Graphics in East L.A. and Galeria de la Raza in San Francisco, have staged Day of the Dead altar making workshops, public altar viewings and parades for decades.

The decade-old Dia de Los Muertos festival at the Hollywood Forever cemetery attracted several thousand people, about half of them non-Latinos, said Adela Marquez, a native of Mexico who's lived in the U.S. most of her life. Marquez and her younger, U.S. born sister began the celebration, - which now includes Latin alternative bands, Aztec dancers and lots of thematic altars - to make sure their heritage didn't die out. "We started it because we wanted to bring the old traditions to the new generations here in the United States that have not had the opportunity to experience this incredible ceremonies that happen in Mexico and Latin America."

The holiday's growth and subsequent commercialization - Marchi includes in her book a picture of Starbucks Day of the Dead product shelves - doesn't signal a demise. Think about it, just because Christmas is the most commercialized holiday in the world doesn't mean there aren't people who don't observe it as a deeply transformative event.

This transformation makes me think of the first and second line funeral processions in New Orleans. They're somber and festive celebrations of the dead that take place in the city's public spaces. They've become part of the cultural patrimony of all New Orleans residents.

Some Chicanos are upset about the migration of Day of the Dead to communities outside the traditionally Latino neighborhoods. In conducting research for her book, Marchi said she interviewed Chicanos who have seen their worst nightmare come true: Day of the Dead Happy Hours. Non-Latinos are grateful, she said, that Chicano artists a generation ago began making altars at cultural centers. "It was a gift that they gave to the larger U.S. society in terms of offering a forum that people could adopt and identify with as a way to remember their loved ones and connect with their past and their histories in a very public way and in a very joyous, positive way."

Chief Beck Makes His Political Debut

Brian Doherty — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 14:59:02 -0800

L.A. police chiefs don't need to win over the public before they get the job, but new LAPD head Charlie Beck is trying to do so in the face of accusations his appointment was too much of a mayoral power play, under departing Chief Bratton's influence.

The L.A. Weekly reports on the discontent:

In this sometimes-bizarre city, prospective chiefs don't meet and greet the public before they get the job. The campaigning happens after the mayor has made a selection from a short list created by the Police Commission. Beck's an insider, sure, but one whose own evolution took him from company man to reformer -- and he isn't a problematic choice for most.

Rather, for some City Hall critics, a problem lies with a backroom process that was so rapid and, perhaps, so prejudiced toward the man backed by Bratton that few outsiders applied for what is the brass ring of the police world....

While tiny Beverly Hills conducted a three-month, nationwide search just for a new city manager, the nation's most prestigious policing job was all but filled after about a month. Community meetings to gather input for the mayor-appointed Police Commission, which chose three finalists, were not half as well-publicized as Beck and Villaraigosa's after-the-fact town hall meetings....

While two anonymous outsiders were on a list of semifinalists, such big-gun names as San Francisco Police Chief George Gascon and Miami Police Chief John Timoney did not turn up as finalists. The process was seen by some as a mayoral ramrod down the public's throat of Bratton's favorite soldier.

Ron Kaye at his website of local news, politics, and commentary has more on discontent over the Beck selection process:

There was no nationwide search by a headhunting firm as has been the practice (and is being done to find someone to run the DWP) and it only took a month or so to pick the next chief based on a couple of interviews each with the mayor.

Bratton indicated for months that Beck was his favorite and made it perfectly clear in the end that the Chief of Detectives was his first and only choice for a successor.

His top cronies from the Police Executive Research Forum, Chuck Wexler and Miami Chief John Timoney, formerly chief in Philadelphia, also apparently weighed in with their own advice to help Beck move up the list where he ranked well below a host of other candidates based on overall command experience.

Timoney slipped into LA late in the process and met with commissioners with the story being put out that he was applying for the job. Yet, he didn't make the cut despite credentials far more impressive than any of the LAPD candidates, raising suspicions he wasn't there as a candidate but as an adviser.

Past City of Angles blogging on Bratton's leaving and Beck's arrival as LAPD chief.

(Photo: Getty Images)

OCD: Snow Day

Ophelia Chong — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 09:22:10 -0800

I came back to Beijing from Seoul and there was 6 inches of snow on the ground.

Before I left, Beijing was dry as dust and looked it. The Gobi Desert blows a fine layer of yellow dust over Beijing, leaving it looking like a house that has been closed up for years. It has been a dry year, not unlike Los Angeles, Beijing has had below normal rainfall.

Until now. While I was in Seoul, the government shot rockets filled with silver iodide pellets, which made Sunday's surprise snow was the earliest for 21 years in Beijing, and came six weeks before the first snowfall last year; and dumped enough snow and ice to bring the city to a standstill.

The snow was unusual, but what caught my interest was the lack of protest about the unannounced seeding or the that that they seeded in the first place. If this had taken place Stateside, there would have been court injunctions, protests, law suits, enough to put off seeding till the next decade or two. Amazing what you can do in a country controlled by a government. And scary too.

Image: Ophelia Chong / First Snow Day

Gold Line Extension: Sneak Peak

Jeremy Rosenberg — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 18:45:33 -0800

TTLA's blogger boarded an MTA Gold Line train earlier this week, part of a group taking in an advance tour of the six miles of track and eight new stations that make up the long-awaited "Eastside Extension."

TTLA's predictions: The bridge out of Union Station and over the 101 Freeway will be written about on this website; next year's Self-Help Graphics Dia De Los Muertos event at the East L.A. Civic Center will have 50,000 attendees; and the Extension will exceed ridership estimates, barring fare increases and a continuation of nonsensical inter-line ticketing policies.

The new route opens to the public Sunday, November 15. As many as 40,000 people are expected for a celebration at Mariachi Plaza.

(The Plaza's been more or less shut down for way too long. Here's a brief piece from the summer of 2008.)

Journalist Alissa Walker was also on board the gold line advance trip and filed this smart dispatch for the Architect's Newspaper blog.

And ex-L.A. Times transportation beat writer Steve Hymon -- now working for the MTA -- wrote up his observations from a ride he took two weeks ago.

Photo Credit: The image accompanying this post was taken by Flickr user waltarrrrr. It was used under Creative Commons license.

A Different Schuller Daughter

Jeremy Rosenberg — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 07:27:40 -0800

Patt Morrison's current Asks L.A. Times Q&A features a chat with Sheila Schuller Coleman, the recently ordained pastor who is the co-head of her famous father Robert's Reformed Church in America, headquartered at the Crystal Cathedral.

Four years ago, TTLA's blogger spoke to a different Schuller daughter, Carol Schuller Milner. The subject? Creation, the new Cathedral pageant she was helming.

The resulting O.C. Weekly feature is here.

Here's a brief excerpt:

"Throughout Creation, the word "God" is never spoken.

"Instead, Milner has substituted "the presence." She says the George Lucasian phrasing is intended as a term of intimacy.

"It's also supposed to be a term of endearment," Milner says. "My husband is named Tim, and I probably call him Tim three times a year. Otherwise I call him 'Honey.'"

Photo Credit: The image accompanying this post was taken by Flickr user BK59. It was used under Creative Commons license.

City Attorney vs City Controller

Brian Doherty — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 07:22:35 -0800

The city controller's office--currently filled by Wendy Greuel--may be deprived of the legal power to audit other elected officials programs if a current court decision is finalized.

It's a convoluted story, summed up in this Daily News account:

A judge on Tuesday again postponed finalization of a ruling that could set a precedent for elected officials to avoid having their programs audited by the city controller. Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Mark Mooney decided to hold another hearing on Nov. 20, though Chief Deputy City Attorney William Carter argued a delay would be pointless since a settlement seems out of reach.....

In his preliminary judgment dated June 23, Mooney sided with then-City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo's argument that then-City Controller Laura Chick had no authority to audit the workers' compensation program in his office.

Mooney has repeatedly postponed finalizing that ruling, however, to give their successors, City Attorney Carmen Trutanich and City Controller Wendy Greuel, time to reach a settlement.

To date, they have been unsuccessful. The sticking point is who should pay lawyers' fees amassed by Chick and Greuel, estimated at $200,000.

Speaking of lawyers' fees amassed by the city, see this other Daily News story for more grim news for our city in budget crisis:

The city of Los Angeles shelled out $137 million over the past two years for legal costs - nearly two times more than the previous two-year period and enough to hire nearly 1,300 police officers and cover most of the public works budget, according to a report released Monday.

The study by California Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse also found the amount of money Los Angeles County spent on lawsuit verdicts, settlements and outside counsel rose from $138 million to $190 million in the same period.

California Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse website.

The image associated with this post was taken by Flickr user David Markland. It was used under user Creative Commons license.

An Ex-Pat's Berlin Years

Jeremy Rosenberg — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 08:04:33 -0800

James Weekes was TTLA's longtime Berlin Bureau Chief. Now based stateside, Weekes e-mailed us his reflections on what's happened since the Fall of the Wall:

"Twenty years have now passed. The skin heads still roam much of the far eastern parts (just mention Marzahn to any foreigner), now joined by the more menacing Russlanddeutsche contigent who joined the scene thanks to the quirks of Germany's past (Catherine the Great, no less, played a role here). The heart of the city is now firmly in the hands of west Germans, who have transformed much of the derelict east into a vibrant, if somewhat generic, playground. And, after all those years of isolation, it is now even possible to seek refuge from the crushing uniformity of German gloom. New and innovative architecture is sprouting up around the city, unlike the path taken by Manhattan to create its very own Charlotte-on-the-Hudson. Some mistakes have been made, like the current attempt to relive past imperial glory in rebuilding the Stadtschloss on the site of East Germany's former parliament (itself built on the ruins of the Kaiser's former residence), but overall the city has done an admirable job.

"For an American, the most amazing part is the level of solidarity with which all was accomplished. For all the comments and complaints about the German lack of social graces, they did something this country will never accomplish: form a cohesive and (somewhat) unified national identity, while leaving aside gripes about the tremendous costs involved to raise up a poorer neighbor. To sum it up, the city gave me a decade of entertainment where, had I stayed here, I would be complaining that my Wall Street bonus was down 10% off last year's number. For that I will be ever thankful."

Photo Credit: The image accompanying this post was taken by Flickr user werkunz1. It was used under Creative Commons license.

New Transport Plan: Too Westside?

Brian Doherty — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 08:55:58 -0800

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority's new 30-year "Long Term Transportation Plan" has a lot for the Westside, but other constituencies aren't thrilled.

The L.A. Weekly reports on the plan, and the controversy:

when the MTA several days ago approved its eye-popping $298 billion, 30-year Long Range Transportation Plan, with Measure R's $40 billion sales-tax injection as its engine, it was an unpleasant surprise for many. Critics say the day-to-day needs in densely packed Los Angeles County were swept under the bus in favor of vanity projects that include not one, but two trains to Santa Monica....

To some, it reflects Villaraigosa's ego and desire for a monument -- the "subway to the sea" -- to himself.....

The majority of L.A. County's transit users take bus lines, which are far cheaper to expand and -- unlike totally inflexible rail lines -- are extremely easy to reroute when populations and jobs shift. Existing rail in L.A. is already being heavily subsidized, and despite all the hype, existing lines are underutilized.....

The plan remains just that--a plan--and not a done deal, and politicians outside the MTA and Villaraigosa circles are doubtful it's the right move:

The plan is essentially a vision statement by the current politicians on the MTA board; it's also an official hope that the unknown politicians who control the MTA board five and 10 years from now will raise $298 billion by 2040, and will spend that money to fund the current board's vision....

....the Long Range Plan's emphasis on a Westside subway that does not actually go near the sea and a Westside light rail that may not ever reach Santa Monica was so pronounced that members of Congress, Sacramento legislators, and the Bus Riders Union pressured the MTA's board to agree to protect non-Westside projects.

A rare bipartisan delegation of Southern California congressional representatives urged "a more inclusive, regional and long-term strategy" than the Villaraigosa-favored blueprint. Several state senate and assembly members argued in a separate letter that with the new sales-tax bite affecting all county taxpayers for the next 30 years, not just Westsiders and L.A. urbanites, the plan "must be geographically representative of the entire region."

Streetsblog on Villaraigosa's late October announcement that he wants to speed up Measure R transportation spending from a 30-year plan to a 10-year one.

Ted Balaker of the Reason Foundation (which owns Reason magazine, where I work) on how L.A. would be better off spending transportation money on freeways than on light rail.

The image associated with this post was taken by Flickr user Daniel Greene. It was used under user Creative Commons license.

Tanks on the Fall of The Wall

Jeremy Rosenberg — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 08:12:08 -0800

Today, November 9, 2009, marks the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

RAND's website notes the occasion by showcasing a publication from the org's RAND Reprints series: "The Cold War, RAND, and the Generation of Knowledge, 1946-1962."

Written by David Hounshell, the volume tells of the think tank's early, Cold War days, prior to a subsequent branching out to working on social issues. The abstract and a free-of-charge download of Hounshell's work are each here.

From the .PDF:

"The Cold Ware had profoundly altered the course of national development in both he United States and the Soviet Union as vast sums were expended to create national security complexes that insinuated themselves into virtually every corner of American and Soviet societies with profound behavioral and psychological consequences. This was especially true in the realms of science and technology where the pursuit of knowledge became increasingly an instrument for ensuring national security. At no time in human history had such abundant resources been devoted to scientific and technological research and development, albeit it the pursuit of largely military interests."

Also available from RAND online: "Morale in West Berlin After 'The Wall,'" by H. Hurwitz.

Reason's post marking the wall's fall begins, "Communism was the greatest catastrophe of the 20th century...."
American Enterprise has Newt Gingrich co-authoring a feature.
And Brookings has Strobe Talbott on "The Four Who Ended the Cold War."

Photo Credit: The image accompanying this post was taken by Flickr user aharvey2k. It was used under Creative Commons license.

Domesticated Weirdness

D.J. Waldie — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 14:38:31 -0800

Those madcap jokesters – Anthony R. Lovett and Matt Maranian – have updated their bestselling L.A. Bizzaro for the new millennium. It’s the “All-New Insider's Guide to the Obscure, the Absurd, and the Perverse in Los Angeles,” and it’s now in color.

The 1997 edition delivered all the L.A. weirdness the lurid green cover promised. In a review in the Times, I said that “L.A. Bizzaro continues the tradition of seeing Los Angeles as a toxic playground, best observed slightly unconscious. The book is largely about body parts, cracks (wise and otherwise) and drinks. L.A. Bizzaro! approves of consuming them all.”

Censorious and prurient, like a Calvinist at the Pussycat Theater, the L.A. Bizzaro of more than a decade ago was appealingly plastered for a post-earthquake, post-Rodney King city. Just below the cheerful pornography, however, was a cranky satire of hipsters in search of authenticity.

Back then, before the Bobos were lured downtown by the “noir adjacent” vibe, the bars on the fringe of skid row weren’t sanitized for your protection the way motel toilets are. “Cole's has always reminded me of a filthy stinking Parisian public urinal trough, the kind you can't flush,” Maranian noted of one past and present landmark. “If you like the acrid aroma of a real honest-to-goodness dive, you’ll absolutely adore Coles.”

Time and domestication have changed Cole’s and the authors. The new edition of L.A. Bizzaro isn’t as shrill as it was. And there’s real regret in it too, as if a melancholy Ralph Story (“Things That Aren’t Here Anymore”) had teamed up with the authors to mourn vanished alligator farms, shuttered burlesque museums, and other lost roadside attractions.

‘The quintessential 'Bizarro' place, Maranian told a Times reporter recently, "is really hard to get to, slightly disappointing upon arrival and pretty much unlike anything you're likely to stumble upon anywhere else.” Which is pretty much all of L.A., lost seekers of the real city would agree.

The image on this page was made by Flickr user jericl cat. It was used under a Creative Commons license.

Changing of the Guard?

Erin Aubry Kaplan — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 17:06:11 -0800

What am I missing here? What are we all missing?

At first glance, nothing. Last week marked the gentlest transition of LAPD police chiefs in my lifetime--Bill Bratton to Charlie Beck. That was partly because tensions between the cops and the black and brown neighborhoods they police (and sometimes terrorized) have eased notably during Bratton's tenure, partly because crime has dropped by many percentage points across the city.

For all that, the chief-designate was admirably humble. He praised the progress but was candid about the work left to do reforming the paramilitary culture of department. The media that hung on every word breathed a big sigh of relief as it looked around and saw that race appeared not to be an issue this time around--the fact that Beck was one of three white finalists for the job evinced not a peep from any black organizations who consider police conduct a bread-and-butter issue in black communities. The city council and other members of the political establishment were equally silent. Maybe the country isn't post-racial, but the whole selection process of L.A.'s top cop seemed to qualify. Not bad, considering that the treatment of Rodney King at the hands of the LAPD nearly twenty years ago ignited a firestorm of resentment amongst black residents and others that burned for a long, long time.

I won't argue with improvement. But improvement is not the same thing as success or full justice. The game is not over. Bratton promised more transparency, especially in the case of controversial police shootings; let's just say he has both given and taketh away. A master of PR, Bratton got ahead of public anger after police cut down 13-year-old Devin Brown in 2005, but he ultimately found that shooting in policy. And while crime may be down, racial profiling continues to be a huge problem in the city; of the hundreds of complaints filed against the LAPD in the last several years, none have been sustained by the department. Post-racial? Depends on what side of the blue line you're on.

But what disturbs me most is how the black establishment, notably the black press, has succumbed whole hog to the Bratton charm offensive. A recent exit interview with Bratton in the L.A. Sentinel could find no fault nor mount any challenge to the chief or his history here. Over at the Wave, a weekly columnist/watchdog who has been a fierce critic of the LAPD since the '65 Watts Riots dropped that stance completely after Bratton asked for a public audience with her. When I asked her about the change of heart, she groused that my problem was that I needed to be more optimistic--this from a woman whose professional demeanor could never be described as optimistic.

But is keeping public servants accountable to their constituents incompatible with optimism? To the contrary; one can't exist without the other. All I'm saying is that we need to keep up the scrutiny even as we applaud. Civil rights attorney Connie Rice, a Bratton advocate, issued a post-Rampart report on the department in 2006 that warned of an occupying-army, us-against-the-streets mindset that still persists in the rank and file. That was three years ago. Just because we've stopped looking for that mindset doesn't mean that it's gone away.

This image was taken from flickr user kevindean. It was used under the Creative Commons license.

New Water Policy for California

Brian Doherty — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 13:17:53 -0800

After much tense and longwinded day and night negotiations, the state legislature comes out with a new water policy for the coming decades, including over $10 billion in new bonds and new restrictions on water use and new political councils to help manage the state's water.

Political victory required the paying of political costs, as detailed in the Los Angeles Times' account:

The size of the bond worries some liberal Democrats, conservative Republicans and public employee unions. It ballooned as legislative leaders sweetened the financing with something for every part of the state and every major water interest.

"There's no arguing in many ways it's a political document," conceded Sen. Dave Cogdill (R-Modesto), who drafted the bond measure. "It creates constituents of support as we go to the polls. That's not anything new."

The bond issues would be staggered, and backers said debt payments will not kick in until some existing bonds are retired. But when fully issued, the debt service will amount to more than $600 million a year, potentially taking money from education and other programs supported by the general fund.

The bond will have to be approved by voters in November 2010. Capitol Weekly has more details on how the money is being spread around the state to ensure political support:

The bond contains more than $1.7 billion in water quality and watershed protection funding - all of which is earmarked for specific agencies and groups. The bond includes $100 million for the Lake Tahoe Conservancy, $100 million for Salton Sea preservation and $250 million for a dam removal project near Lake Shasta.

The Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy is in line to receive $75 million to "protect the Los Angeles River watershed," and another $25 million for Santa Monica Bay watershed projects. In Speaker Karen Bass's backyard, the Baldwin Hills Conservancy is set to receive $20 million if the bond is approved. There's also $125 million earmarked for the California Department of Forestry for forest restoration and "to provide for climate change adaptation."

George Skelton in the Times details the basic shape of what the bill will try to do:

Basically, the legislative package creates a new, streamlined governing structure for the delta. It provides a pathway leading to probable construction of a newly designed peripheral canal, plus a dam or two. It enables ecological restoration of the delta, mandatory statewide water conservation, monitoring of groundwater and a crackdown on illegal diversions of water.

The image associated with this post was taken by Flickr user calwest. It was used under user Creative Commons license.

OCD: Candy Colored

Ophelia Chong — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 11:32:30 -0800

The view from my hotel room in Seoul is filled with palaces and office buildings. If you minus the palaces, I could be anywhere in Asia. Taxis make a blur on the roadways, people criss cross across the streets, the smell of charcoal and noodles fill the air, I feel at home and I miss home.

In the shopping area of Myoung-dong, there is a department store with a food floor to end all food floors. The Lotte Department store is the Neiman Marcus of Korea. I walked in and my mouth started gaping like a fish out of water. Where to go first? Cosmetics? Korea has the best cosmetics, and being Chinese it was made for my skin type. I quickly made a dent in the cosmetics, bags full, but I wasn't done yet.

Now to the Lower Level, I take the escalator and I smell it first. A swirling tantalizing cloud of drool inducing smells. Noodles, mochis (sweet rice cakes), sushi, waffles, bread, pastries, barbeque and more. I was in the candy store of my dreams. Food everywhere. There was endless aisles of candy colored foods, I could pick and choose whatever I wanted. I was struck dumb, where to start?

A few miles from where I was standing is the Korean Demilitarized Zone. It is 155 miles long and approximately 2.5 miles and the most armed border in the world. Across that border that cuts Korea in half is a population that can't even imagine what I was looking at. North Korea is a country that has pushed their might behind an army, and taken from the plates of their people to feed that military. North Korea suffered with the changes in Russian (collapse of Soviet Russia)and China (monetary), their farming culture suffered a massive failure in 1995-96, expanding to a wide spread famine by 1996-99. An estimated 600,000 died of starvation (other sources have estimates from 200,000 to 3.5 million).

Here I was standing in a food court 30 miles south of the DMZ, watching people throw uneaten food into the trash. The clatter of food trays followed me as I left the store and looked up and the colors began to fade to match the grey skies outside, the same sky on both sides of the border.

Image: Ophelia Chong / Ice Cream Mochi, Lotte Department Store, Food Level

Think It Like Beckham

Jeremy Rosenberg — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 18:30:19 -0800

A TTLA reader points out that, yeah, we noted Baseball's Think Tanks and Basketball's Think Tanks in two recent posts, but asks, "What about soccer?"

That was a rhetorical question, as it turns out, since the same reader notes the publication of Soccernomics, said to be a cross (not the kind you head in, far post low) between Freakonomics and Moneyball.

The New York Times' Goal blog had this report last week.

By the way, the New Republic's Franklin Foer wrote this book a couple years back about the beautiful, global game -- if memory serves, Barca comes out a winner.

And, if only we'd known, we could have joined in. Pick-up soccer and a Roman think tank.

P.S. -- Mia Hamm on a Milken panel.

Photo Credit: The David Beckham image accompanying this post was taken by Flickr user pink_fish13. It was used under Creative Commons license.

Happy Birthday, Rachel Rothenthal

Jeremy Rosenberg — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 14:33:53 -0800

A grand dame of the Los Angeles performance art and avant theater scene is scheduled to be feted Saturday night, November 7, at "Rachel Rosenthal's Birthday Bash 83."

The fundraising happening will take place at Track 16 Gallery, in Bergamot Station. Ticket information is here.

The ever-conceptual Rosenthal famously retired from the stage a dozen or so years back, but continues to mentor emerging talent. Saturday's 'Bash' is to serve as the coming out for her new troupe, the TOHUBOHU! Extreme Theater Ensemble. (It's pronounced just like it's spelled, we figure.)

Eighty-three mostly L.A.-based visual artists have donated portraits of Rosenthal, which will be auctioned to raise money for TOHUBOHU!, via the umbrella non-profit, Rachel Rosenthal Company. The artworks are by the likes of Mike Kelley, George Herms, two great Saars, Patssi Valdez, and Ed Ruscha.

Also on the bill: Performance by John Fleck, live music, cake, and champagne. Presumably, no meat for the well known vegan and animal activist.

Related: Here's what Steven Leigh Morris, the LA Weekly's theater critic, wrote this week about Rosenthal.

Photo by Annie Liebowitz, courtesy Green Galactic.

Yes Sushi, No Sushi

Jeremy Rosenberg — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 11:50:38 -0800

Planning on going to Little Tokyo or Sawtelle or your neighborhood convenience store tonight?

Thinking of ordering Unagi?

Or Hamachi?

Consider, then, the "Ocean Friendly Sushi" guide produced by the Blue Ocean Institute, an advocacy org founded by MacArthur winner Carl Safina and author Mercedes Lee.

The wallet-sized foldout offers advice on how to best consume sushi, and then, when flipped over, has a simple red / yellow / green key showing which regional varieties and fishing and farming techniques lead to BOI-approved dining.

Here's an example from the guide, of the red-flagged Kuro Maguro (Atlantic Bluefin Tuna):

"Highly valued by sushi connoisseurs, Atlantic Bluefin Tuna have been exploited heavily since the 1970s and are extremely depleted. Since 1996, the World Conservation Union has listed the western population of Atlantic Bluefin Tuna as critically endangered and the eastern population as endangered. Bluefin Tuna can also be caught as juveniles and fattened in net pens. This "farming" method prevents the fish from spawning, further reducing Bluefin numbers."

Here's the word about Sake (Alaska Wild Salmon) a green-lit morsel, complete with a Marine Stewardship Council logo:

"With good management and a fairly healthy habitat, Wild Alaska Salmon remain abundant. There are concerns, however, that more needs to be done to protect natural spawning habitat and to properly manage hatcheries. This ranking also applies to roe from these fish."

The Institute (motto: Fresh Inspiration for Ocean Conservation) also has a text messaging service and cell and smart phone apps that do the same as the paper guide.

Find all the info. here at the Institute's website.

Illustration copyright and courtesy Richard Neilson, 2009

Coming Up: Lewis Klahr

Holly Willis — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 10:15:49 -0800

Mix the detritus of a Robert Rauschenberg collage with the excess and veiled social commentary of a Douglas Sirk melodrama and you might come close to a film by Los Angeles filmmaker Lewis Klahr, who makes his collage animations from images snipped out of books and magazines; these pictures are moved inch by inch beneath a camera to create movement, resulting in powerful visual artworks and deeply engrossing, if enigmatic, stories. Klahr, who teaches at CalArts, will present his work twice this week, starting with the seven-film series Engram Sepals at USC on Thursday night. The word "engram" refers to the place in the brain where fragments of memory are engraved, leaving traces that can never be completely retrieved, while "sepals" names the part of a flower stem that holds the petals in place. The phrase nicely describes the series of animated shorts in which Klahr chronicles the post-World War II decades almost as if to uncover the past and hold it in place. One of my favorites from the series is Altair, which is set in the late 1940s and follows a woman's descent into alcoholism. The melancholy deep blue backdrops, the elongated lines drawing the female form, and the rain of objects that envelopes the character point to the sense of restriction and longing that the film beautifully embodies. In Downs Are Feminine, Klahr romps through '70s sexuality with pictures torn from an illustrated porn novel, while Pony Glass imagines the tortured, secret life of Jimmy Olsen, comic book sidekick to Superman. On Saturday (November 7), Klahr will screen and talk about several of his films from the 1980s, including the masterful The Pharoah's Belt, with film scholar Tom Gunning. Klahr's work is remarkable, and he speaks about it with clarity and a reflectiveness that is entirely engaging.

the details:
Lewis Klahr at USC Cinematheque 108
Thursday, November 5, 7:00 p.m.
SCA 108, George Lucas Building, School of Cinematic Arts Complex, USC
900 W. 34th Street

From 45 to 33: Lewis' Klahr's Films About Childhood
Conversation With Film Scholar Tom Gunning
Velaslavasy Panorama
Saturday, November 7, 8:00 p.m.
1122 WEST 24th Street
213-746-2166

It's Charlie Beck for L.A. Police Chief

Brian Doherty — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 09:57:40 -0800

Deputy Chief Charlie Beck moves into the top spot at LAPD, unsurprisingly--but the decision to name him wasn't as simple as some expected.

The L.A. Times details the forces for Beck, and his virtues. Departing Chief Bill Bratton wanted him, City Council head Eric Garcetti approves, and he has a decent history of accomplishment:

He first made a mark as an up-and-coming commander by rehabilitating the LAPD's Rampart Division, which had been at the center of a corruption scandal, and later earned praise as head of the department's forces in South L.A. During that time, Beck has managed to win kudos from both cops and onetime critics of the LAPD for blending a tough stance on crime with a progressive approach to bettering the LAPD's relationship with city residents.

In a different story, the Times reports that the L.A. Police Commission ranked Beck last of their three finalists for chief, and that Bratton's support for him hurt Beck, not helped. Villaraigosa was said to be torn between the three finalists--Beck, Assistant Chief Jim McDonnell and Deputy Chief Michel Moore--and didn't finalize his choice until Sunday.

Local media gadfly Ron Kaye sees the selection process as a sign of Villaraigosa's feckless reliance on Bratton's crime record as one of his few mayoral laurels:

With his public standing so low he can't run for governor, was the mayor really going to take the risk of choosing his own chief instead of Bratton's?....

Moore, the Valley chief, is smart, studied hard in Bratton's school of police and hard-working to the point his subordinates call him Micro-Mike. He was the star of the auditions and his performance appear to have forced the mayor into the uncomfortable position of thinking about his choice rather than just doing what Bratton told him.

McDonnell, the LAPD's No. 2 cop, has the most experience, actually was running the department during Bratton's many absences and was far and away the most popular choice with the public and police. But it was always Beck's job because he was Bratton's choice.

City of Angles on Bratton's awkward farewell to LAPD.

(Photo: Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images)

Newsom Drops Out of Governor's Race

Brian Doherty — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 09:27:13 -0800

No one officially wants to be the Democratic governor for California next year--leaving "exploratory" former Governor and current attorney general Jerry Brown heir apparent to his old throne.

What caused San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom to run away from the race to lead our troubled state? Calbuzz has the skinny on Newsom's lack of fire for the fundraising part of politics:

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom's publicly-stated reason for dropping out of the Democratic race for governor was the absolute truth: "With a young family and responsibilities at City Hall, I have found it impossible to commit the time required to complete this effort the way it needs to -- and should be -- done."

....Despite his charisma, policy depth and breezy communication skills, Newsom found himself behind Attorney General Jerry Brown by 8-to-1 in campaign cash and 20 points in the polls because of three key problems: his utter lack of discipline, his inability to manage his City Hall staff and his faulty judgment about the practical operations of a statewide campaign.

Last week, with about $375,000 in the bank, Newsom finally realized he would have to put City Hall on maintenance mode and commit to at least 20-40 hours a week on the phone, schmoozing donors and political shakers, raising money the old-fashioned way - a task he simply could not make himself do....

He would find one excuse after another to blow off scheduled time for fund-raising, even when his campaign staff arranged for an office across the street from City Hall. He could not be made to make the phone calls -- even in the car during drive time -- for a senator's birthday or a labor leader's new baby....

Newsom believed he could fundraise using such new media tools as Facebook, which proved not to be the case. His campaign staff and mayoral staff were also constantly at loggerheads on how to sell the candidate-that-won't-be.

Meanwhile, in the camp of the Last Democrat Standing, not-yet-officially-running Jerry Brown's spokesman at the AG office resigns for illegally taping phone calls from reporters.

So does this mean our mayor Villaraigosa should renege on his commitment to not run for governor?, the L.A. Times asks.

City of Angles has been following the gubernatorial race on both sides of the aisle here and here.

The image associated with this entry was taken by Flickr user jdlasica. It was used under user Creative Commons license.

Somewhere, west of Doheny

D.J. Waldie — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 11:39:05 -0800

The Ferrari California convertible test driven by Jerry Garrett of the New York Times was red – Corsa red, the red of a bad girl’s lipstick or a bankrupt’s bottom line. Based priced at less than $200,000, this Ferrari is the least expensive model from a very expensive maker. Even with extras – including handstiched leather rear seating and a computer-controlled suspension – the California is almost an economy car.

That makes the California a dilemma for Ferrari, the same dilemma every luxury brand faces: either democratize to improve profitability and dilute the brand’s exclusivity or ratchet up the mystique of the brand and achieve near unobtainability. Either can turn out to be a trap. Open any edition of Vogue and you can see luxury brands lurching to one pole or the other and without any guarantee of making the right choice in today’s woozy economy.

Brand anxiety isn’t what I find interesting about this Ferrari. Its name is. The California restores a designation that was applied to Ferrari 250 GT export models beginning in 1957, a time when the California brand promised youth and freedom and desires fulfilled – a sort of vast, half-adult Disneyland, Autopia without limits.

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art once sought to sum up the extravagance of the brand – why Ferrari borrowed California to sell a car – in an art exhibition: Made in California: Art, Image and Identity, 1900-2000. Robert Hughes in a Time Magazine review of the exhibition pointed up the obvious problem with the California brand. The image of California by 2000, he said, was “luscious and poisonous at the same time,” an emblem of “a flawed and contradictory ex-paradise.”

If that’s California, why name today’s Ferrari after a failed state of mind?

Purists have complained that the California isn’t enough of a Ferrari. It has fake tailpipes, a front-mounted V-8, and an automatic transmission. That it’s a car – not an obsession. Perhaps that’s why the management chose the name – the California is a Ferrari for the disenchanted.

California isn’t the brand it once was, but the California Ferrari is selling. The company wants to assemble about 3,000 cars a year – more than a 50 percent increase in the company’s overall production. There’s even a waiting list for the California. It’s 18 months.

The image that accompanies this entry is from an ad for the Jordan Playboy. The company assembled adequate vehicles in the 1920s, but it wrote wondrous advertisements:

SOMEWHERE west of Laramie there's a bronco-busting, steer roping girl who knows what I’m talking about. She can tell what a sassy pony, that’s a cross between greased lighting and the place where it hits, can do with eleven hundred pounds of steel and action when he's going high, wide and handsome. The truth is - the Playboy was built for her. Built for the lass whose, face is brown with the sun when the day is done of revel and romp and race. She loves the cross of the wild and the tame. There's a savor of links about that car - of laughter and lilt and light - a hint of old loves - and saddle and quirt. It’s a brawny thing - yet a graceful thing for the sweep o' the Avenue. Step into the Playboy when the hour grows dull with things gone dead and stale. Then start for the land of real living with the spirit of the lass who rides, lean and rangy, into the red horizon of a Wyoming twilight.

The MAK's 'Polymath'

Jeremy Rosenberg — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 16:49:15 -0700

The exhibition, "Otto Neurath. Gypsy Urbanism," opens this Tuesday, November 3, at the MAK Center in West Hollywood. The show runs through the end of January, 2010.

From the particularly interesting press release:

"At a time when contemporary culture is dominated by mass media and we are all glued to many screens, it is fascinating to contemplate the career of little-known Austrian sociologist, Otto Neurath (1888-1945), a polymath whose intellectual and moral compass - forged in the embers of World War I - led him to predict the dramatic growth of the knowledge economy and to develop tools for a universal pictorial language. Ever in the interest of advancing participatory forms of democratic exchange, Neurath was by turn an academic, economic minister, housing administrator, museum director and philosopher of science. He collaborated with the leading planners, designers and artists of his time, - among them Adolf Loos, Josef Frank, Le Corbusier, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy and key New Deal intellectuals - and his work had a profound influence on a range of disciplines, including architecture, philosophy, economics, urbanism and graphic design."

The MAK Center is famously located at the Schindler House. The MAK team are also the curators of the ongoing Urban Future Initiative, of which TTLA is a longtime fan.**

Image courtesy MAK Center

**Disclosure: TTLA's blogger has, at another gig, booked various UFI fellows to give public presentations.

The Color of the Great Pumpkin

Holly Willis — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 12:40:47 -0700

The 1966 animation It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown had everything a Peanuts cartoon should have: cheery music, kid's humor, philosophy, the angst of Linus, the exploits of Snoopy and the officiousness of Lucy. According to LA-based animator Justin Hilden and his essay "Color Design in It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, however, it also made terrific use of color. In the images here, for example, we move from day to night, from cheerful pumpkin-picking to the moody hues of evening. "While we have been busy watching Linus wrestle his pumpkin homeward," Hilden writes, "the very air around the characters has changed and we can feel the coolness of night and a hint of the excitement that darkness will bring to Halloween." Hilden's essay gives readers a new way to enjoy the film and understand how it achieved its particular kind of emotional power. Thanks to Motionographer for the tip, and happy Halloween!

The Asynchronous City

Holly Willis — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 12:03:48 -0700

The city is growing ever more sentient, snapping photos of our misbehavior at intersections and tracking our movement past banks and federal buildings. Our phones let us connect with that sensing data, pointing us to the nearest Thai restaurant and illuminating the freeways in rivers of red, yellow, or, on occasion, green. As we grow accustomed to the data-driven, real-time city, though, what do we lose? That question forms the foundation for LA-based designer and research Julian Bleecker and researcher Nicolas Nova's intriguing essay, "A Synchronicity: Design Fictions for Asynchronous Urban Computing," a Situated Technologies Pamphlet recently published by the Architectural League of New York. The essay asserts a provocation, namely to rethink the fetishization of the real-time data-enabled city in order to "stretch out the space of possibility and the space of possible imaginings." What does this mean? In short, the pair is less interested in how data delivered immediately and orchestrated bureaucratically in a top-down approach may "help" city-dwellers, and instead ponder the potential for more speculative and poetic layers of information, and for a notion of the city that's not static and fixed but rather in process. In the later part of the conversation, Bleecker describes a series of objects that were designed to provoke different ways of interacting with the city, moving beyond the expected and the screen-based. "We're in the realm of epistemological monkey-wrenching broadly conceived," he explains. "Creating objects that shift meanings and provide new, unexpected points of view. Or, they may just show you the obvious, but do so in a more legible way..." Check out the essay to read about these objects, and to get a glimpse of alternative ways of considering the sentient, asynchronous city.

OCD: Savoring A Moment

Ophelia Chong — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 06:22:08 -0700

All this week, Ophelia Chong will be touring China, all the while recording her observations, thoughts, and insights right here for you. To view more of her online diary entries, click here.

After I climb the chill mountain's steep stone paths,
Deep in the white clouds there are homes of men.
I stop my carriage, and sit to admire the maple-grove at nightfall,
Whose frozen leaves are redder than the flowers of early Spring.

Du Mu (803--852 AD)

Tang Dynasty (June 18, 618 - June 4, 907)

China in its quiet moments is a beauty to behold. If you stand still at a busy intersection and just watch the world fly by, you can catch a single moment that will astound you - a bird will land at your feet and peck at a fallen crumb from a bun cradled in a child's hand or the scent of fresh soap on the woman that just passed on your right.

I was at the Great Wall, at Mutianyu, it as quiet, no tour buses, no bustling stalls full of plastic miniature replicas of the Great Wall, no wandering flocks of snapping cameras and fanny packs, it was a silent day.

As I climbed a local path to the Wall, I took in the colors of Fall, the leaves dancing across the path, carried by a breeze the leaves swirled and fell like words from a poet's brush. I could smell the smoke from a charcoal stove, I imagined the kettle on the stove heating up water for tea, ready to warm a farmer's hands after a day of cutting wood for the winter. Piles of branches laid neatly along the path, ready to be used in the next few months to warm the houses. This is a silent still China, one that you find everywhere, if you opened your heart.

Images: Ophelia Chong / Mutianyu 10.28.09

Citizen Activists Win With Council

Brian Doherty — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 15:13:55 -0700

A proposed fee hike to $500 for citizens challenging development decisions before the City Council seems to have been derailed for now.

Details from the L.A. Weekly:

Peeved at the less-than-transparent ways of downtown politicians...environmental justice groups, homeowner associations and neighborhood councils joined forces to stop the passage of a steep new fee hike charged to those who want to oppose developments in their area.....

"Everyone said we did not receive notice" that existing fees paid by citizens who challenge development plans were about to be doubled, or in some cases sextupled, from $74 to as much as $500, says Daniel Wright, a land-use and environmental attorney and board member of the Mount Washington Homeowners Alliance....

Wright and other community activists such as Hollywood Highlands Democratic Club Vice-President Bob Blue, were alarmed that the City Council was thinking about jacking up "planning appeal" fees for ordinary citizens -- while decreasing and capping those same fees for real-estate developers.....

Why are citizen activists so concerned with this potential hike?

Planning appeals are used by people to voice concerns about everything from strip malls to skyscrapers, in the hope that Planning Department officials will then require the developers to make the proposals more neighborhood-friendly....

But to get to that point, Angelenos still have to go through a costly and time-consuming process that involves paying the appeal fees, taking time off work to attend appeal hearings -- almost always held during the day -- and constantly talking with Planning Department officials, City Council members and their aides.

"The system already seems to favor developers," says Blue....At press time [last week], Wright expected council members to vote to lower and then cap the appeal fees paid by developers but retain the $74 charge for average citizens who want to challenge a project.

Ron Kaye also came out against the proposed fee hike, and against Council member Greig Smith (District 12) and his support for it.

The image associated with this post was taken by Flickr user Alexbcthompson. It was used under user Creative Commons license.

You Got A Problem With That?

Erin Aubry Kaplan — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 09:28:23 -0700

I don't know the man's name, like I don't know the name of so many other people at the El Segundo dog park. My icebreaker question a month ago was what was the name and breed of his dogs; I didn't get around to asking his (name, not breed). That isn't considered rude in the tiny social bubble of the dog park, where canines are the real news and objects of interest and humans aren't that important. Still, this man stood out for me. I'd know his mussed white hair, ruddy face and hearty, gravelly voice anywhere. I figure he's Irish; he lit up when I told him my first name, calling it a fit one for an Irish girl.,

Yes, I told him. My mother had a thing for Irish names. Lucky me.

He laughed at that. I did, too. I'm not sure we were laughing for the same reason, but I didn't give it much thought. The more good cheer in the park, the better for the dogs' state of play. Dog owners take cheer with no questions asked. Peace at the park is imperative, for obvious reasons.

I'll just call him George. Last Sunday I saw him, per usual. After an upbeat chat about college football and the progress of my rescue pup, Honey, he paused, like he wasn't quite sure how to say what he was going to say next. "I'm trying to figure out your shirt," he said.

My shirt? I glanced down. I was wearing a t-shirt with a logo that read, "Black Girl, 'Nuf Said." One of a hundred t-shirts I wear to the dog park on Sundays. It's self-explanatory to me, if maybe a little cheeky, like most logos and bumper stickers. What was he asking? I felt an instant tension, a familiar racial wariness and human distance that I did not want to feel. Not at the dog park. Although now that I thought about it--now that I had to think about it--this was El Segundo, famously white and cloistered, population sixteen thousand, nice little burg by the ocean that people like me couldn't venture into after dark for decades, let alone live in, or even walk a dog through..... "Figure out what?" I said, cheerfully.

George kept smiling and went on to say that perhaps my shirt was saying that being black was all there was, and I was excluding other things about me that were also important? I fought more tightening and wariness. No, I said evenly, not at all. But being black was certainly as important as anything else. He nodded, satisfied, or done with his questions for now. We drifted apart to search for our animals, came back together, talked a bit more about Honey and her terrible allergies and what to do about them.

I warned him about a volatile dog owner who had lost his temper a few days before and roughed up my golden/shepard mix, Toby. Picked him up by the collar and threw him in the dirt.

George looked shocked. "That's terrible!" he said. "Who was this guy? What'd he look like?"

I almost said, he was white. I wound up saying, young and blondish. Seemed okay on the surface, smart and all, but he wasn't. Dangerous. You know the type.

George nodded. More than 'nuf said.

This image was taken by Flickr user swirlspice. It was used under Creative Commons license.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/swirlspice/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

OCD: Humor Chinese Style

Ophelia Chong — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 04:44:11 -0700

All this week, Ophelia Chong will be touring China, all the while recording her observations, thoughts, and insights right here for you. To view more of her online diary entries, click here.

You would think by my previous posts that the Chinese (including me) don't have a sense of humor. You have to have one to be a driver or passenger in a car, it's your first line of defense when there's no rule book to go by and if there was one, no one's read it.

Road Kill

In the last few days that I have been here, and I have been coming to China for over thirty years, I have witnessed the subtle moments of levity. Today I found the motherlode. I went to the art district called 798 or Dashanzi Art District, a sprawling mini-city of galleries. The area was originally set up for factories during the 1950's which were large machine shops that are now massive art galleries, bookstores, cafes, local fashion shops, schools and contemporary theater spaces.

How much is that dead doggie in the window?

As I wandered down alleys, and through galleries I came upon a small shop, The Beijing Happy Sheep Art Area. What grabbed my eye was the stuffed pets, a small lap top dancing on a world globe, a white furry dog reading a book, guinea pigs holding up the Olympic rings to the small black dog playing tennis.

Even though there was a "No Photos" sign, the very sweet salesclerk let me take photos. I was in heaven. Where else could you find a dog playing tennis? What mind could come up with this and not laugh all the way through the taxidermying? Only a local Chinese could. Not that the Chinese have weird taxidermying locked up, a website called CrappyTaxidermy.com requests submissions from readers of their weird sightings from across the globe, but the Chinese has brought it up to a level of high art. This Beijing Happy Sheep Art Area is across from the international gallery Pace.

Pedestrian Rule No.1: Look both ways and run

A few years back in Shanghai, I witnessed an accident, a cyclist was hit by a concrete truck and it was ghastly. And the Chinese did what the Chinese do best, they gathered around and stared at the aftermath. No screaming, no wincing, just the quiet observation of life and death. It's not that they take dying lightly, it just happens more often and in public because of the amount of traffic.

Stat: The total number of cars for civilian use stood at 24.38 million, up by 24.5 percent, of which private-owned cars numbered 19.47 million, up by 28.0 percent. (From the National Bureau of Statistics of China, 2008)

Driving Rule No.1: The First One to Blink Looses

Only in the last five years has the majority of the car drivers been on the road. So if you can imagine a country full of drivers sort of obeying the rules, you have China. Hence the numerous traffic mishaps. Its a country of "oopps". If you can't sit back and just realize that this is the way it's going to be, then you will just drive yourself into an early grave, even if you can't laugh at it, at least roll your eyes and move on.

Rule No.2: Just keep moving, the other guy will get out of your way.

You have to have a sense of humor here. If you didn't you would never experience the daily joy of just being alive. And I think I found out where all the Feral Lap Dog go to Heaven.

Images: Ophelia Chong / 798 Art District 10.29.09

Basketball's Think Tanks

Jeremy Rosenberg — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 10:27:17 -0700

A wise man asks, "Is there a game tonight?"

A wiser man replies, "There's always a game."

With that in mind, while it seems like only last week TTLA noted a handful of baseball-related think tanks, now the Aybars and the Loneys are all done and the Bassy's and Mbengas and their fellow NBA'ers have started another regular season.

So, the day after the Clips at least held their road opener close, here's a quick starting five of baller-related tanks and theorists:

82games.com, where work like this resides: "College to NBA: Which Schools Deliver?" and "Individual Defensive Ratings."

APBRmetrics (motto: The statistical revolution will not be televised"), cousin to baseball's SABRmetrics.

Basketball Reference, which is the CHIS of roundball, quantitative not qualitative.

John Hollinger and his Player Efficiency Ratings.

And, of course, Bill Simmons, thanks in part to his 'Dork Elvis' obsession.

The rest of our early season rotation:

Via Freakonomics, from Wired, a profile of hoops' Bill James. (R.I.P., Sonics.)

"The Economics of Discrimination: Evidence from Basketball."

Reason on eminent domain and the would-have-been owner of the New Jersey Nets.

Prometheus on "Athletes' Salaries Reflect the Market."

And video from Duke University and U.S. Olympic coach Mike Krzyzewski at the Milken Institute's most recent Global Conference.

P.S. -- Hall of Fame status to author, thinker, and Foundation leader Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

Photo Credit: The image accompanying this post was taken by Flickr user K.Luu. It was used under Creative Commons license.

Can Our Legislature Improve Itself?

Brian Doherty — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 12:14:25 -0700

California's Committee on Improving State Government has its first meeting, as the state legislature struggles to show an angry state populace that it can reform itself.

George Skelton of the L.A. Times' Capital Journal reports that most legislators, unsurprisingly, blame their ineffectiveness and voter discontent on the fact that they can't keep their cushy jobs longer:

Term limits was the most commonly cited culprit at the hearing, from the political left to the right. Six two-year terms in the Assembly and two four-year stints in the Senate simply aren't enough to gain policy expertise, legislating skills, leadership strength and bipartisan relationships, several said.

"Term limits is just an awful thing," asserted Assemblyman Tom Berryhill (R-Modesto), speaking publicly as few Republicans would have dared until recent years. "When you're first up here, you're just terrified. If you don't have a good staff, your career is over before it starts."

But California voters, alas for the politicians, have shown they love and support term limits and reject amending it when given the chance. And there are things even term-limited politicians should have time to do:

Self-enacting reforms are not hard to find and several were mentioned: Speed up the committee hearing process so lawmakers don't just cool their heels through winter. Give committees more power over major bills and reduce the dominance of the power-hogging "Big Five" -- the governor and top four legislative leaders. Enact two-year budgets and constantly monitor the money flow. Begin "performance-based" budgeting so failed programs can be scrapped.

Most of all, as state treasurer Bill Lockyer told the committee, our state legislature needs to remember that they are not going to be getting more tax money out of Californians anytime soon, and need to be smarter with what they have.

Past City of Angles blogging on Sacramento's problems with governing and the economy and a potentially "failed state."

The image associated with this post was taken by Flickr user Miss Sophistifunk. It was used under user Creative Commons license.

OCD: Gone Feral

Ophelia Chong — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 07:40:52 -0700

All this week, Ophelia Chong will be touring China, all the while recording her observations, thoughts, and insights right here for you. To view more of her online diary entries, click here.

Day 4 / Beijing, China

I rode through a small village on the Fifth Ring Road in Beijing. The entrance to the village is marked by a sign "Pomegranate Cafe. Beer. Coffee.Here"

The village is on the other side of a small creek, the smells from the creek aren't of wild grasses, but of human excrement and trash. I peddled my bike down the dusty road into the main drag, passing a massage parlor and small noodle cafe filled with men watching a television while the chef cooks outside, cutting noodles into a boiling pot fueled by a propane tank.

I dodge a few dogs, and what caught my eye was that they weren't mutts but purebred dogs. A Dachshund was digging through a pile of garbage, a Lhasa Apso scooted across the road chasing a small beagle. They were all filthy and with no collars. They might be homeless or they could have homes where they rest at night in the village, it was hard to tell.

I was riding a bike through a village of feral lap dogs.

A few years back, when China's middle class rose up in prosperity, the item to have was a small dog. They were expensive and a badge of "I am now wealthy enough to have a pet". But the thrill of lugging around a pet faded, and the dogs were let go, dropped off by the side of the road. The ones who were smart enough survived through the bitter winters by finding warm spots to sleep and marked out their favorite spots where the trash was plentiful. This village was paradise to those lost dogs.

The Forgotten Ones

There is a parallel with the feral lap dogs and China's ADHD. The architecture has gone from loud glitz to high end glamour (the architects of the new Beijing, Rem Koolhas et al). What was once the epitome of elegance is now the Bourgeoise's best forgotten shame, like the first crush we had in grade school that has come back to haunt us. China is growing up fast and discarding old loves even faster. What was once hot is now colder than a Gobi Desert winter gust rushing down Tianammen Square.

Do you like me now?

China is like your wallflower friend who has come into her own, discarding the plain brown smock and now sauntering down the avenue in Chanel. She has power and an iron will that will not be told that she cannot do what she wants when she wants. But she leaves in her wake a trail of refuse and waste. The scent she leaves is not sweet but sour.

The Next Chapter

The feral dogs like the discarded will survive and mutate into stronger mutts that will one day form a pack, and that pack will rule the land.

Images: Ophelia Chong/ Beijing 10.2009

$50 Million From Soros For New Tank

Jeremy Rosenberg — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 16:01:48 -0700

George Soros will give $5 million annually for the next ten years to the Institute of New Economic Thinking, a new think tank.

Joseph Stiglitz and Jeffrey Sachs are among the luminaries affiliated with the org.

OCD: Day 3 of the Locusts

Ophelia Chong — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 19:36:10 -0700

All this week, Ophelia Chong will be touring China, all the while recording her observations, thoughts, and insights right here for you. To view more of her online diary entries, click here.

Homer Simpson: "Oh, Lord, forgive me for harboring such unworthy thoughts, but sometimes I wish I could tear it all down! " - Day of the Locusts by Nathanael West, 1939

I took a 5k walk around Houhai yesterday, a small lake in the 2nd circle of Beijing. I even saw a few hardy swimmers in the lake.

Trans Pacific Fat

Walking through the Hutongs (small enclosed neighborhoods of traditional chinese houses, one story multi-family compounds) I got a glimpse of daily life, the smell of charcoal burning to cook their meals, roaming dogs, vendors selling local leek pancakes and snake liquor to one really chubby kid. So far he's the biggest person I've seen here. Everyone has been of normal weight, hard considering KFC is their favorite fast food, most likely their income prescribes their trans fat intake.

The Drum Tower

I bought a 20RMB ticket and climbed up the Drum Tower, the same tower that a crazed migrant worker stabbed Todd Bachman, the CEO of a 123-year-old Minnesota-based home and garden center, father of an US Olympic volleyball player last year. They are still cautious, I had to walk through a scanner and have my bags x-rayed. The view from the tower was minimized by the charcoal smoke and the burning of waste by the locals. And they installed a fence on the balcony, you can no longer see the city from the original landing, but from a fence 8 feet away. The murderer jumped to his death. I imagined his tortured climb up the steep stairs to the top of the tower, each step 14 inches high at an angle of 20˚, a climb that mirrored his life.

The Counter Weight

Later that day I was at China World Hotel and took a photo of the CCTV building designed by Rem Koolhas. Next to it was the burned out hulk of the hotel that was set on fire by an errant firework (who gave the okay to have fireworks at a construction site is up for debate). The fire took place during Chinese New Years, February 2009.

They say it is an indictment of the overwhelming grip that CCTV has on media control in the country, it's black heart is there to see everyday. The hotel serves as a counter weight to the CCTV building and cannot be torn down, they just have to figure a way to re-engineer the building.

The two events, seemingly dissimilar, yet tied together. The Drum Tower announced the time of day during the Imperial reign, CCTV beats the drum of the controlled media of the present government, both suffering a tragedy that is symbolic of the underlying emotions of the people listening to that drumbeat.

Silent Moments

Yet there is joy in small moments throughout China, like the calligraphy, you have to be still and discover the subtly of water colored dioramas.

"Yet, despite his appearance, he was really a very complicated young man with a whole set of personalities, one inside the other like a nest of Chinese boxes." - about the main character Tod. The Day of the Locust

Images: Ophelia Chong / Beijing 2009

82. Hockney and L.A.

D.J. Waldie — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 15:34:37 -0700

I once went to All Saints church in Pasadena to hear Lawrence Weschler give a talk. We are acquaintances, and we like each other’s work. (He is a man of many enthusiasms.) Weschler had recently written about David Hockney and in particular Hockney’s blue/gray/green Yorkshire landscapes. Hockney and his partner, John Fitzherbert, came to hear Weschler speak.

I had gotten to the church on Colorado Boulevard by foot, bus, train, and subway (in various combinations). The walk from the Gold Line station wasn’t far, but it still would be daunting at the hour when the lecture would be over. I hoped that Weschler might give me a lift back to the station, or that he or someone with enough time to kill might even take me back to Lakewood (about 45 minutes away).

It turned out that John Fitzherbert and David Hockney gave me that ride – to the Del Mar station of the Gold Line. Weschler had asked Hockney on my behalf.

It was a little odd to take the ten minute ride to the station with the officially declared “greatest living painter” in England. Our conversation was brief, commonplace – the unexpected fact that I’m unable to drive and that driving is a defining characteristic of Angeleños (and could I be one, if I don’t drive).

A mild, older man, hard of hearing but less so then, reminding me of my uncles. A man with an accented voice, but nothing more than in the treatment of a vowel or the duration of a consonant. Actually, a pleasant voice. We said our goodbyes when they dropped me at the head of the stairs down to the train platform, well lighted but empty at that hour. (Later, another passenger or two joined me, reassuringly.)

Hockney is in England now, in Yorkshire, perhaps for good, apparently because his partner is barred from traveling here. But Hockney’s delight in the light there and the seasons (and family connections) hold him to Yorkshire, too.

Hockney is considered a painter of surfaces . . . of the presumed superficiality of Los Angeles. And he is of Los Angeles, and not because of superficiality. He says that California taught him space, that new ways of looking at the space that expands west and east of Los Angeles – the Pacific and the Mojave – played a part in breaking down the former constraints of perspective for him. That and Polaroid snapshots and Photoshop. Which seems, to me at least, to have something to do with southern California and within the capacities of this place to make itself anew.

The image on this page was made by Flickr user nutted/nick. It was used under a Creative Commons license.

The SoCal Spin 10/23

Maxwell Strachan — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 14:13:52 -0700

SoCal Week in Review gives you the week's best Southern California links, articles, and web-related curiosities.

Please, is it possible for this city to make it through a single week without some sort of public relations nightmare? Obviously not, as TMZ's Harvey Levin might tell you after the Managing Editor of the gossip site--without a touch of irony-- declared that he will be pursuing legal action against the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department after police apprehended his personal phone records last month. So what do authorities hope to find, exactly, in these tapes? The plan is to discover how Levin was able to recover classified information concerning Mel Gibson's 2006 drunk-driving arrest.

That whole "balloon boy" story certainly took a dive into the bizarre this week when the Henne family's one-time landlord came forward to describe the father of the "weird" ex-tenants as an "angry" person and general "opportunist." And what of the fact that the parents had once moved to Burbank with acting aspirations? Well, let's just say this whole thing feels increasingly like another Wife Swap audition.

Of course, rare bits of honesty do remain here and there in Southern California. Echo Park artist Shepard Fairey, for one, admitted his illegal use of an AP-licensed photo as the basis for the "hope" poster that now famously depicts President Barack Obama in red, white, and blue. But is honesty always the best policy? It did hurt, after all, when soon-to-be ex-Police Chief William Bratton quite forth-rightedly stated his preference for the East Coast last week, a place where "things get done." Los Angeles, Bratton explained, has more or less remained "a city that doesn't work" throughout his tenure here. Ouch.

At least the "city that doesn't work" is inching closer to having itself a new NFL stadium, with Gov. Schwarzenegger signing legislation this Thursday exempting the proposed stadium from state environmental laws. Depending on your disposition, I suppose this could be either a win or a loss, but at least it doesn't appear to have involved the foul play allegedly endured by Staples Center owner Tim Leiweke this past June. According to Leiweke, L.A. City Attorneys threatened to "go after" the AEG President if he didn't agree to foot the bill of Michael Jackson's funeral. Talk about big government.

If corruption does continue to poke its head, it might well be time to turn over to the oversight page of the LAPD playbook. City Council themselves are already hot on this idea, proposing that a third-party inspector begin to regularly audit the Department of Water and Power. But could an audit of LAUSD also be in order? With veteran substitute teachers now being kept out of the classroom against their will, maybe so.

By the way, it's not 1980 anymore, so that whole thing between Northern and Southern California? Forget it; our problems no longer revolve around catty regional loyalties. Instead, we've got to figure out how we'll be dividing this finite water supply of ours among all too many lawns and fish. Got to believe this could be an important (first?) step towards thinking of this state as a single entity. Well, that or the ever-present fear of quakes.

And, really, it's been all but impossible to ignore the current national coverage of our local marijuana tribulations. Proponents of hyperbole are even suggesting the use of the word "war" to describe forthcoming events--a little extreme, I have to say---but regardless of your positioning, it's no doubt a surprise to hear that 74% of L.A. County voters support the use of medical marijuana (54% are in support of all-out legalization). So who are we fighting again? If you want to get caught up on all this drama, KCET's Brian Doherty synthesizes this kind of info better than anyone.

Elsewhere on the health front, H1N1 clinics have been set up around L.A. County for the uninsured, so get the word out to the youngins please, because it's them who'll be getting sick. And as for last week's AIDS Walk, I'd like to attribute the 20% drop in donations to a temporary decrease in disposable income, rather than some sort of declining awareness.

However, we don't want to leave you on the regular downer, so if you're searching for something brighter, check out this wonderful collection of fantastic Los Angeles street art. Yeah, there might be a lot going wrong these days, but at least the people throwing this stuff up are holding the whole culture thing together.

This image was taken by flickr user erjkprunczyk. It was used under the Creative Commons license.

OCD: The Donkey and I

Ophelia Chong — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 16:52:04 -0700

All this week, Ophelia Chong will be touring China, all the while recording her observations, thoughts, and insights right here for you. To view more of her online diary entries, click below.

OCD: The Road to Incheon

OCD: The Donkey and I

OCD: Day 3 of the Locusts

OCD: Gone Feral

OCD: Day 2 / Beijing

Thirteen hours on a plane rolls by quickly when you time your Ambien intake. Take one half an hour after taking off, and the second the moment you wake up. So in essence you are really only conscious for 45 minutes.

I landed at 9:40 am Beijing time. The airport is massive, it was built for the Olympics and is the largest airport in the world. I took the monorail from my gate to the baggage claims area, it was just over half a mile. Fast, efficient, the size of a small town.

There are two sites you cannot access here, Facebook and YouTube. Both for reasons that are obvious. Communication. Both are megaphones that can blast out information quickly and to individuals and groups. Before the National Holiday on October 1st, there were 14 million registered Facebook users, the day of the holiday there are now only 14K who can access their Facebook pages. Also in China there are only two mobile phone companies. On the national holiday, all the ring tones were changed to the national anthem, whether you asked for it or not.

China has one foot planted in the past, another in the future, both firmly planted. That leaves the head to turn back and forward at any given time. Comfortable, yet it will eventually strain. Like the donkey standing without fear on the side of the highway, China is comfortable in its embrace of the future and its past.

Image: Ophelia Chong / Donkey vs. Condo

L.A. Medical Marijuana Scene in Tumult

Brian Doherty — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 08:57:36 -0700

The medical marijuana scene in Los Angeles gets more uncertain, with judges knocking down the existing moratorium, the city attorney threatening a severe crackdown, and the city council ready to act on a new wave of restrictions.

First on the court action, from the L.A. Times account:

A Superior Court judge concluded today that Los Angeles' moratorium on new medical marijuana dispensaries is invalid and granted a preliminary injunction against enforcement of the ban sought by a dispensary that had sued the city.

Judge James C. Chalfant determined that the city failed to follow state law when it extended its initial moratorium. "The city cannot rely on an expired ordinance," he said.

Green Oasis and a number of other medical marijuana collectives sued the city last month, challenging its efforts to control the dispensaries. The lawsuit argued that the City Council violated state law when it extended the ban until mid-March and that it is unconstitutionally vague.

Although the injunction applies only to Green Oasis, the judge's ruling calls into question the city's power to enforce the moratorium against hundreds of dispensaries that have opened in the last two years. The ruling could inspire other dispensaries to join the lawsuit or file similar actions.

Of course, many city politicians are annoyed that the moratorium in issue in that court decision hasn't really worked to stop new medical dispensaries from going into business in L.A. And that's why City Attorney Trutanich has proposed a new set of medical pot regulations for L.A., as noted in this Daily News story:

A day after a judge invalidated the city's ban on new medical marijuana collectives, City Attorney Carmen Trutanich released a new ordinance that would better spell out how the facilities can operate and create safety standards for their product. Trutanich also vowed to continue a crackdown on illegal operators of dispensaries.

"If you are illegally selling marijuana or supplying it in the city of Los Angeles, you should get out of business," Trutanich warned. "I don't need a new ordinance to go after you."

Trutanich said the [Superior Court] decision will not affect enforcement of existing city laws dealing with the clinics, but City Council members said they felt a need to get a new ordinance on the books quickly. The moratorium overturned by the judge had been intended as a temporary measure while city officials spent two years debating and drafting a permanent ordinance.

The new draft ordinance, the fourth considered by the City Council since 2008, is the toughest version brought before the body and seeks to strictly control the dispensaries.Under the measure, the shops will be open only from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., will be allowed to have only five pounds of marijuana on hand and no more than 100 plants. Also, all the marijuana provided must have been grown by the collective.

LAist reproduces Trutanich's proposed ordinance, and his attempts to get neighborhood councils behind him on the crackdown effort.

The L.A. Times highlights the severity of the ordinance, which the City Council might act on any day now:

Under the latest proposal, most dispensaries would be required to close immediately and could not apply to reopen for six months. The 186 dispensaries that registered with the city when it passed its moratorium in 2007 would be allowed to remain open for six months, but then would have to meet the ordinance's requirements.

The ordinance could effectively outlaw most dispensaries in the city by prohibiting sales of medical marijuana. Both City Atty. Carmen Trutanich and Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley maintain that state law does not allow over-the-counter sales, though they say collectives owned by the members are allowed to recoup their expenses. Dispensary operators say the sales, usually in 1/8 -ounce increments, are meant to cover their operating costs.

The L.A. Weekly reports on who is taking which side in the local debate over pot dispensaries.

An L.A. Times chart of operating medical pot dispensaries in the L.A. area. And an L.A. Times report on a poll showing that most voters don't want to see the dispensaries prosecuted or forced to close.

On the national front, the Obama administration has sworn it won't target federal enforcement efforts on medical users--but that might not mean a thing when it comes to what the federal DEA has always been doing, which is targeting dispensaries of the stuff. See my Reason magazine colleague Jacob Sullum for a skeptical take on the administration announcement.

Past City of Angles blogging on the city and medical pot here and here.

(Photo by David McNew/Getty Images)

Before Balloon Boy

Jeremy Rosenberg — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 17:21:16 -0700

Like many people around the web, our KCET.org colleague Ophelia Chang astutely followed the recent new media circus saga of Balloon Boy & His Reality Show Familiy.

Sixty years before Falcon Heene, thirty-eight years before Baby Jessica fell down a well, came the tragic Southern California story of Kathy Fiscus.

As USC Professor Bill Deverell recounts in an incredibly riveting lecture he's given at the Huntington and Farmlab* and hopefully elsewhere, Fiscus fell into a shaft and died.

From this death, Deverell posits that live, eyewitness television was born.

From the 'About the Salon' information provided last April by Deverell to Farmlab for his talk, titled, "Little Girl Lost: The Kathy Fiscus Tragedy and Modern California":

"On a bright Southern California day sixty years ago, a little girl playing in a field tumbled into an old well. Kathy Fiscus was three years old. Her tragic ordeal caught the attention of the world, as would-be rescuers worked around the clock to save her. Any number of unusual ideas were posed, tried, or discarded in the feverish hours of digging rescue shafts. Hundreds, if not thousands, of spectators came to the site, and television cameras and reporters invented live t.v. from the scene of the accident. This talk will explore the Fiscus tragedy in all its fascinating detail, as well as pose some questions and ideas about how post-World War II California saw itself and was in turn seen by the nation."

Deverell is Director of the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West. If memory serves, his Fiscus lecture is soon to be a book.

Photo Credit: The image accompanying this post was taken by Flickr user Dave Friedel. It was used under Creative Commons license.

*Full disclosure: TTLA's blogger was the longtime co-organizer of the Farmlab Public Salon series, including the Deverell program mentioned here.

OCD: The Road to Incheon

Ophelia Chong — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 14:09:55 -0700

All this week, Ophelia Chong will be touring China, all the while recording her observations, thoughts, and insights right here for you. To view more of her online diary entries, click below.

OCD: The Road to Incheon

OCD: The Donkey and I

OCD: Day 3 of the Locusts

OCD: Gone Feral

OCD: Ophelia Chong's Diary / Day 1

Oct. 21, 2009: I leave for LAX, my flight is at 12:20 AM. The airport is busy, people traveling to Mexico, France, England, and me, to Beijing China by way of Seoul, Korea. As per my usual obsessive compulsiveness I am there 2 hours early. After checking in and going through security, I had about an hour to fritter away.

I pulled out my iPod touch to see if I could Wi-Fi. I could if I wanted to pay for it. Besides being OCD, I am also thrifty to a point; I refuse to pay for something I think should be free in airports.

On the plane.

The stewardess asks me if I would like to move to another seat, because the video display is broken. I decide to stay in my seat, there are only so many times you can watch "Wolverine" and not grow back hair.

Free Treats with a BTW

I take Vitamin C religiously, I got my flu shot, I avoid shaking hands unless I really have to. I get my blood panel down once a year. I even send in a sample of my you-know-what to check for colon cancer (my grandmother had it). All to avoid giving other peoples' germs a free ride. I spin at least twice a day. To put it in a few words, I am obsessively healthy.

After a dinner of BimBamBop, the lovely stewardesses hand out Sleepy Eye Patches, tooth brushes and slippers. I did into the bag and place the Eye patch on my eyes. I notice a smell, a very weird chemical smell. However I had just taken my first Ambien and I was not in a very take action mood. About ten minutes into the Eye Patch session, I felt my blood pressure drop and I started to get chills. Then of course I had the 13 hour flight travelers' nightmare; abdominal flip flops. I get to the lavatory and I proceed to wonder what the hell I ate before I got on the plane.

I get back to my seat and I am chilled and shaking, a light sweat covers me. I remember in Girl Scouts that if you feel dizzy, you put your head between your knees. I did this and felt much better. I spent about 4 hours there. The guy next to me must of thought I was his nightmare seat mate, and is probably telling his friends about the woman who spent her flight with her head examining her shoes. So what was the cause? The eye patch. I must have some new allergy. Oh great. something else to obsess about.

Landing in Incheon

Its 5:30am and the airport has a silence about it that is quite comforting for such a large space. The closest I can equate it to is to being in the Duomo di Milano. A 500 year old cathedral with soaring ceilings and a sense of peace about it, even though it is filled with hundreds of silent people much like airports.

I'm Connected

Korea is the country with the fastest broadband in the world, the airport offers Wi-Fi free. Seoul is the only city in the world to offer DMB, a digital mobile TV technology and WiBro, a high speed internet service. Their fiber-optic broadband network runs at 100Mbps and will be upt to 1Gbps by 2012. Compare this to the US the FCC definition of broadband is 768 kbit/s (0.8 Mbit/s). Back home my internet service Road Runner Standard promises speeds 7x faster then 768k DSL.

I will be back in Seoul for 3 days, and one of my highlights besides the spas will be a trip to Yongsan Electronics Market, the largest of it's kind in Asia. I will compare this to Beijing's version (as you can guess which one will have the most pirated items).

Almost time to get onto the next and final leg of my flight to Beijing. I wonder how the internet fares there?

Image: Ophelia Chong / Inchon Airport 2009

Baseball's Think Tanks

Jeremy Rosenberg — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 17:56:10 -0700

If original and independent research, statistical analysis, and position papers are among the hallmarks of think tanks, then the national pastime is lousy with 'em.

Let's start with Bill James, the sort of one-man-RAND of hardball wonks.

James -- and certain substances and naked pull-ups -- helped bring the Boston Red Sox two recent World Series titles. In think tank terms, that's like the Center for American Progress getting national health care reform through.

James and the people he influenced also led to this Michael Lewis book, and of course, to the drafting of Nick Swisher and the Greek God of Walks.

In addition to James, other key baseball tanks might be said to include: Elias Sports Bureau, Baseball Prospectus, Daniel Okrent and the advent of Rotisserie, and the Society of Baseball Researchers*. On a less quantatative bent, up in Pasadena, there's the Baseball Reliquary.

Related: Reason's editor-in-chief Matt Welch has written plenty about various nines, including this quick paen to Howie Kendrick and this deeper piece about Cuba.

Photo Credit: The image accompanying this post was taken by Flickr user jondoeforty1. It was used under Creative Commons license.

*Disclosure: TTLA's blogger wrote a chapter in this baseball book which is posted at sabr.org.

Angry About Supergraphics

Brian Doherty — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 16:01:12 -0700

City Attorney Trutanich actually threatens City Councilwoman Jan Perry with possible jail time on a dispute over a big billboard on the Regal Cinemas in the downtown L.A. Live complex.

Details from the L.A. Times:

Los Angeles City Atty. Carmen Trutanich allegedly threatened to prosecute city building officials last week if they issued permits for six wall signs at the L.A. Live entertainment complex downtown....

AEG, which owns L.A. Live and is seeking to place large signs on the outside walls of its new movie theater, called Trutanich's actions "bullying and political thuggery."...

"I'm going to enforce the law. There's a ban," Trutanich said. "I told them what the consequences were. Nobody got threatened. Absolutely not."

Trutanich confirmed, however, that in a meeting last week he vowed to file misdemeanor charges against Raymond Chan, interim general manager of the Department of Building and Safety, if he approved permits for signs on AEG's Regal Cinemas....

Trutanich declined to discuss allegations that he threatened Councilwoman Jan Perry....But Perry said the outdoor advertising ban -- which bars new digital signs, supergraphics and billboards facing freeways -- does not cover projects already approved and underway, including the AEG's theater at L.A. Live. Perry said that when she made her case to Trutanich earlier this week, he threatened to send her to jail. ["Trutanich Ups the ante in battle over L.A. Live signs," L.A. Times]

Blogdowntown has more on Perry's reaction to Trutanich's threat:

Perry emphasized that she was simply asking about why the final permits had not been given when Trutanich made his threat. "I was merely doing my job and making an inquiry," she told blogdowntown today. "It's a legitimate question to ask."

Her motion -- CF 09-2559 -- asks that Building and Safety report "whether it intends to exercise its duties ... to act on pending building permit requests for the Los Angeles Sports and Entertainment District." The motion would normally go to the Council's Planning committee, but Perry said that it may instead come before the full Council this week.

Past City of Angles blogging on the supergraphics war in L.A.

The image associated with this post was taken by Flickr user James Trosh. It was used under user Creative Commons license.

The Wrong Stuff

Erin Aubry Kaplan — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 11:52:40 -0700

I haven't gone yet, but I plan to. Soon. For now I'm satisfied with catching a glimpse it as I drive past the Slauson exit in Culver City on the northbound side of the 405. Actually, I've been glimpsing it for a couple of years, as construction crews erased the mall's west parking and erected more anchor stores and shops that promised to take the old Fox Hills Mall upscale (I never liked the corporate chain name, Westfield) and a food court that promised the same.

I should have been happy about this, or at least interested. Even in terrible economic times in which the phrase 'steady money' has become an inherently conflicted idea for most people (especially for those of us in journalism), I'm a hopeless consumer at heart. There's hardly a mall or shopping district in L.A. county that I don't know or haven't checked out. Merely looking at stuff makes me happy, or at least more optimistic than I was before I saw it. Even if I walk away empty-handed, I feel like I've participated in the flow of the modern-day marketplace. I've communed with my fellow consumers, even had brief but meaningful conversations ("Where'd you find that?" "On the table over there, on the purses marked forty percent off. Really good deals over there.") I should have been among the first to visit the transformed Fox Hills mall, especially since I live about fifteen minutes away-- ten if I hop on the 405 and it's clear.

But that's just the problem--I'm too close to the mall. Fox Hills is one of those rare malls that was never just a place to shop for me: it was a crossroads in more ways than one. It sat at a juncture between affluent Ladera, working-class black neighborhoods like Inglewood, white middle-class Westchester, sleepy, pre-redevelopment Culver City, and LAX. The resulting shopping demographic was a singular mix of all ethnicities and expectations, including slightly bewildered tourists who might have wound up at Fox Hills on their way to Rodeo Drive. Despite the mix, Fox Hills always had something of a black image--the old Robinsons-May sold cosmetic lines for black women--partly because the Fox Hills corner of Culver City is notably black. The stores were never luxe or high-profile; the food court was unspectacular. But that was its appeal. It was a real neighborhood mall. People actually went there to shop at their regular spots, not to be seen or to be romanced in store aisles by vendors of the latest pricey designer perfume. You could get that at Macy's, but just across from Macy's was a beauty supply store that was much more practical

Fox Hills also figures prominently in my personal history. When I was I college in the early '80s, I used that vast parking lot to stow my car while I hopped the bus to UCLA (without a campus parking pass, being a commuter student was always a creative endeavor). For years, I met my mother and sister in the food court on Saturdays, our lunches serving as a kind of huddle before we broke up and went our separate shopping ways. I was reunited with an old friend in Macy's in the sale section of the women's department; it turned out that she, like me, had been a Fox Hills regular for years. We called the store and its sale section "our" Macy's.

My friend Marilyn has been to the augmented mall,and she hates it. Not the same, she says. They should have left it alone. It's bigger without being better. More stuff without there being....more stuff. I'll go in one of these days. But one of the advantages of living here is having the option of driving by. I'm not advocating isolation, but sometimes a glimpse is really all you need.

This image was taken by flickr user Metro Library and Archive. It was used under the Creative Commons License.

Milken's Big State Conference

Jeremy Rosenberg — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 11:23:51 -0700

The Milken Institute's 2009 annual State of the State Conference is scheduled to take place Tuesday, October 20. This year's theme is, "California's Road to Recovery."

Outgoing LAPD chief William Bratton is listed as the keynote speaker. Politicos past and present including Gavin Newsom, Pete Wilson, and Gray David are among others on the bill.

For more information about State of the State, see the Milken site.

Watch

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 22:00:37 -0700

Sunday, 2:00 p.m., San Pedro.

For about 30 minutes I've been sitting in my folding chair between palm trees at Point Fermin Park. Earlier, I took out my bicycle from the trunk of my car, rode left on the street that hems the coast, turned right on Western Avenue and felt like I coughed up a lung going up the steep, curvy road toward 25th Street. I returned 45 minutes later. I'd come to Pedro to have breakfast with R, my buddy from college.

I'm facing the ocean, looking at the chest-high concrete wall that divides treacherous cliffs from a long sidewalk and healthy green lawns. A continuous row of Arabic-style stars are cut out from the concrete wall and give ticker-tape peeks at the overcast ocean.

A few minutes ago I saw walk past an Asian couple, a man and a woman in their mid forties. Maybe they're Filipino. They walked with a deliberate aimlessness. The man wore shorts, a t-shirt, flip-flops, and smoked a cigarette. The woman wore a bomber jacket vest and walked a few yards behind the man, making sure he'd not missed anything. The man bowed his head into an oil drum trash can. He found nothing. He moved on to the other trash can, diagonally to his right, and found disappointment.

About 15 minutes before I'd seen a white woman in her early 50s, dressed very casually, clothes clean, shiny purse under her arm. She bowed her head above the trash can in similar adoration. She'd found three beer bottles, held them in her hand with a split-finger grip and spilled the remaining beer onto the grass.

And five minutes before that I'd seen a gray-haired man in a ponytail walk from his car and dump the bottles into the trash can. He shoved his glasses up the bridge of his nose and walked back to his car.

To my left there's a woman with wide hips, faded blue jeans and an amethyst-colored shirt sitting on a concrete bench with her back to me, reading a book.

To her right a Spanish-speaking family of five has laid out their aluminum foil lunch on the concrete table. Their orange and lime green soda bottles keep the wrappers from flying away. The mother's pulling meat from bones, laying it on tortillas and dripping a dark red salsa on it. The daughter's about 16. She wears tight dark blue jeans, a sweatshirt, primped hair and very high heeled shoes. The grandma wears a black veil that doesn't cover all her gray hair. The father's wearing a frumpy, white button down Oxford. The boy, about 9 years old, wears a basketball tank top. The girl's black high heels bother me. The are totally out of place. They're inappropriate.

Much farther to the left of these picnic tables a woman and a man embrace at one of the concrete tables in the nook of the concrete wall. Their kid, maybe four years old, plays with something under the table, on the table and moves to the grass. They French kiss. The man's sitting on the edge of the table top, facing her. The woman's sitting a bit below on the bench puckering up to kiss him, hungry.

The boy looks at the gliding birds, tries to climb the wall, and walks away in a slow zigzag.

The woman's gotten up. The man sits on the bench, she turns around and sits on his lap and leans her shoulders forward while still on his lap. Their part of the park's nearly empty. A person walks by every 5 minutes. She rubs her hips counterclockwise on his lap. His hands are wide open along the top of her legs. She turns her head slowly from side to side. She can't see the boy. She gets up dutifully. He points down the sidewalk. "¡-ando!¡Vamonos!" The boy turns around and walks back.

The couple starts kissing again. She's now sitting on the narrow edge of the table and opens her legs. He moves forward to kiss her. A group of about 9 people, several adults led by 3 teenagers, leaves their minivan and walks toward the wall. They head toward the nook with the French-kissing couple. The lovers are surrounded by the family, jelly-fish tentacles. As the couple and the kid walk past me I realize they're much younger than I thought, maybe 20 and 21 years old.

The woman in the amethyst shirt gets up and carries her book like a server does a tray, and takes out her car keys from her pocket.

Chief Bratton's Awkward Goodbye

Brian Doherty — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 14:00:08 -0700

Police Chief Bratton finally leaves L.A. for New York, amid recriminations over police hiring and the actual use of a trash fee hike that citizens believed was meant to hire new cops.

Details from the L.A. Weekly:

Bratton came out swinging on October 6, when he told a swarm of reporters that "once again the political leadership of this city has told a lie. ... They told the public we were going to grow this department with your tax dollars. If they're going to shrink the department, well, they better give those tax dollars back."...

City Council members who sit on two powerful committees -- Budget and Finance, and Public Safety -- wanted to cancel a November LAPD cadet class for recruits and halt the LAPD's largely successful recruiting efforts. Council members insisted it's merely a "temporary" hiring freeze to help plug a $405 million budget shortfall....

The budget battle...calls into question whether city leaders publicly lied when Villaraigosa, City Council President Garcetti and then-Councilwoman Wendy Greuel in 2006 pushed through an exceedingly controversial trash-collection fee hike, and then in 2008 a near-unanimous City Council pushed through another trash fee hike....Downtown's pols assured Angelenos that the extra cash raised would not vanish into the general fund but would be used to hire 1,000 additional police.

Now, with trash bills soaring to $435 per year for an average household....Council District 8 representative and former chief Bernard Parks, a longtime Bratton critic, goes so far as to say the chief "does not understand" the legalities of the trash tax, saying "it's illegal to raise (garbage) fees for specific allocations."...

To tap into the trash fee, the City Council would mine perfectly legal loopholes included in the language approved in 2006 -- fine print L.A. residents didn't hear about until former L.A. City Controller Laura Chick released an eye-popping 2008 audit. Chick discovered that only $47 million, or about one-third of the new trash-fee revenue then pouring into city coffers, went to hiring cops, and 366 officers were hired instead of the promised 1,000. The rest of the money -- another $90 million also tacked onto residents' trash bills -- paid for LAPD overhead and raises.....

Now, City Hall appears to be abandoning all pretense that the tax was ever meant for LAPD. The chief spokesman for the latest spin appears to be Koretz, [who says]: "The tax-hike fee is not an earmark (for police)."

Ron Kaye on another Bratton departure issue--whether there is a conflict of interest related to his being hired by Michael Cherkasky, who also helped release LAPD from its federal consent decree. The problem, as Kaye quotes Tim Rutten from the L.A. Times, is that "the monitor [Cherkasky] gave the court advice that helped cement Bratton's reputation as the country's leading police chief, then just weeks later the two enter into a lucrative business arrangement built on that very reputation."

Past City of Angles blogging on Bratton's departure.

The image associated with this post was taken by Flickr user Ericrichardson. It was used under user Creative Commons license.

The SoCal Spin 10/16

Maxwell Strachan — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 12:22:58 -0700

SoCal Week in Review gives you the week's best Southern California links, articles, and web-related curiosities.

It only took one hot air balloon and a couple minutes for Falcon Henne to launch into internet infamy this Thursday, as reports stated that the six year-old from Colorado took to the sky by means of his father's hot air balloon. As we all now know, the reports were off base--the child was instead in the attic--but, as KCET's Ophelia Chong notes, the most remarkable aspect of "Balloon Boy" might just be the speed with which that news spread.

Back in the Golden State, disillusion with our government is running rampant, although you already knew that, didn't you? A Field Poll this week reported that approval of the state legislature is now set at an utterly abysmal 13%, with the Governor's 27% not doing that much better. Yep, things are reaching a crisis point. So should we expect some bi-partisan ventures in the near future? Don't get ahead of yourself.

Maybe you're of the disposition that the government remains fundamentally sound and that it's Californians themselves that are politically incompetent. Well, you would then be in disagreement with the Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court. Yes, Ronald M. George went on record this week officially assailing our "dysfunctional" government up in Sacramento, stating that anything short of fundamental reform would render the state ungovernable in the future. Could this be a strike against complacency?

Schwarzenegger, to be fair, did indeed buckle down at his desk this week, as the Governor sifted through hundreds of bills and vetoed a good number of them in the process. A bill honoring gay-rights activist Harvey Milk and the first piece of explicit anti-paparazzi legislation are among the notables that made it through, although the latter does seem to hint at Arnold's implicit Hollywood bias.

We know this is getting repetitive, but with the financial belt of the entire city tightening more every week, various officials and experts are considering increasingly, err, creative means to place a couple extra bucks in the city's pocket. One study has surprisingly indicated that leaving homeless persons out on the streets--as is our tendency in Los Angeles--costs the city more than putting them up in a housing shelter. If that's the truth, then it's definitely time to provide the struggling with some long overdue public service.

Additionally, KCET's Brian Doherty reports that some relief is on the way to Los Angeles schools in the form of federal subsidies. Unfortunately, the city's Chief Financial Officer believes that "this is a crisis averted but [only] delayed," a sentiment seemingly in agreement with a new UCLA proposal to increase tuition for some of the school's more lucrative majors. Desperate times do seem to call for innovative measures.

And, shock and awe, even Hollywood is suffering in this economic climate, with the number of production days down 14.3% this year. All those fears of Hollywood bolting out of Los Angeles do sadly seem to have some bite to them. City Council, however, has instead turned its attention away from Hollywood and towards a newly proposed idea to ban convenience stores in South Los Angeles, a suggestion that has quickly drawn criticism as unnecessarily paternal and maybe just a little racist?

Finally, if you like your overviews in the form of policy memorandums, then check out this annual report just issued by the Pat Brown Institute of Public Affairs. Topics include Economic Development, Housing, Health Insurance, and the DREAM Act. In just thirty pages, you'll be transformed from laymen to Los Angeles expert. Or, at least, you'll feel like you have been, and isn't that good enough?

This image was taken by flickr user erjkprunczyk. It was used under the Creative Commons license.

UCSB Tank on 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell'

Jeremy Rosenberg — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 17:41:49 -0700

The Palm Center (motto: Blueprints for Sound Public Policy) at UCSB is all over the U.S. military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, which has been much in the news this week.

Here’s a link to the free-of-charge .pdf download for “How To End ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’: A Roadmap of Political, Legal, Regulatory, and Organizational Steps to Equal Treatment.”

Here’s a blog post from Palm’s director, political science professor, Aaron Belkin, from earlier this week.

More about Palm is here.

Photo Credit: The image accompanying this post was taken by Flickr user Fr Antunes. It was used under Creative Commons license.

The Lessons of Balloon Boy

Ophelia Chong — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 13:35:11 -0700

It's still going on, the saga of Balloon Boy. A six year old boy was reported to have crawled into a compartment on a small hot air balloon and flew away across Colorado. The mystery of Falcon Henne is still to be solved.

Across the Twittersphere people commented on the wild flight of the small helium balloon. Once it landed the authorities did not find the small boy. For two hours the focus was on the careening balloon flying across Colorado fields. Then it shifted.

All eyes then turned to the family. News crews interviewed wandering neighbors of the family. "They are nice" "...a family of storm chasers" "...was on Wife Swap last year"

The force of the internet moved like a rogue wave to keyword searches on the family and their reality television past. More tidbits about the dad popped up. More about the kids slid into view. From one moment they were an obscure trivia question to now a 24 hour news cycle "Breaking News" item. For a moment our thoughts on the Health bill were pushed aside for "Balloon Boy".

Oct. 15/09 Google Search Results 1 - 10 of about 5,210,000 for balloon boy.
Oct. 17/09 Google Search Results 1 - 10 of about 139,000 for heene family hoax.
Oct. 17/09 Google Search Results 1 - 10 of about 4,290,000 for balloon boy hoax.

The internet is a double edged sword, it can inflate and deflate as easily as a balloon. What you will be remembered for is the last keywords used to describe you.

Update: 3:11 pm The young boy has been found alive hiding in the garage attic. Guess who's not getting dessert tonight?

Update: Oct. 17/09 Its a Hoax says 25-year-old researcher Robert Thomas, friend of Heene Dad.

Update: Oct. 17/09 10:30 PM PDTCNN Authorities in Colorado say criminal charges are expected to be filed against Richard Heene

81. The constant fan

D.J. Waldie — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 16:58:46 -0700

Blue is the color of true love, to twist a lyric sung by Donovan and Joan Baez. Dodger blue, in this particular instance. And no, I’m a not a fan. But I'm a friend of fans. And they know another fan of heroic proportions. He’s a fan of the Dodgers – a big fan – from Belfast, County Antrim, Northern Ireland, etc., etc.

I’ve been to Belfast, been to neatly gridded neighborhoods of semi-detached villas where Dodger fans today are as rare and unlikely as Catholic householders once were in those neighborhoods, Belfast being Belfast. And Irish hearts there beat fast for Manchester United football and the red and the black. Dodger blue doesn’t figure in at all.

But Conor Caldwell of Belfast bleeds the truest blue of City Terrance, Boyle Heights, East L.A., El Monte, Maywood, Bell, Rosemead, and everywhere that the voice of Vin Scully reaches the mind’s ear and conjures some essential part of what means to be of our wonderful and terrible place. Vin via the Internet and cable TV wings over the world to cool and rainy Belfast even.

Conor Caldwell is a musician, a traditional fiddle player, a teacher of the art, and pending an advanced degree in music. He’s also a first rate Gaelic football player – a game that combines the physicality of soccer, rugby, and (I’m told) basketball. Conor’s team is St. Agnes.

But this week, his team – his home team – is the Dodgers. Still jet-lagged from his discount flight, he’ll join my friends on Thursday and Friday at the opening games of the Dodgers/Phillies playoff series. He’ll have come 5,100 miles to see a baseball game that he could watch, I suppose, at some unholy hour of the morning in the comforts of Belfast. But it wouldn’t be the same for a true Dodger fan.

Welcome, Conor Caldwell of Belfast, to Dodgertown. Paint it blue.

The photo on this page is courtesy of Conor Caldwell.

The Other Side of the Story

Ophelia Chong — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 16:27:39 -0700

I will be on the road to Beijing and Seoul next week, and reporting about all the cool stuff we don't get here. And what they don't get there.

I will be going from China's Fire Wall to Korea's open connectivity. From China's knock off phones to experiencing Korea's internet frenzy.

Korea's internet usage jumped from 40% in 2000 to 70.7% in 2008, whereas the US went from 44% in 2000 to 74% by 2008. Both countries are neck to neck in the race to internet usage. China lags behind at Internet users as of Jun/09, 25.3%, one reason being that estimates are that only 45 to 60 million people have computers or instant access to computers (the workplace or school), but 1/10th of the population use IM to communicate through their cellphones; an estimated 680 million mobile phone users in 2009. In China, the cellphone is the computer.

"South Korea dramatically improved the speed, quality and availability of its Internet service in 2009, pushing past Japan, the former worldwide leader, according to a team of business students from the University of Oxford in England and the University of Oviedo in Spain." - CNN Money Oct. 10.09

According to Cisco, in a study of 66 countries and 240 cities, the ranking included the number of homes connected to the internet. South Korea had 97% whereas Hong Kong had 99%, near complete city wide connectivity. South Korea ranks #1 in broadband leadership, and the US is ranked #15.

What does it mean to be 97% connected? And how does that reliance affect their social interactions?

So what applications are they using in China? In Korea? What information is filtered and what not? Throughout my trip I will be posting photos and a diary of my personal observations, from the airports to the street corners.

See on the other side.

Image: Ophelia Chong / Flying Man

L.A. Schools Fall Back on Federal Money

Brian Doherty — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 15:21:36 -0700

L.A. Unified School District expects to use federal stimulus money to make up for a $400 million shortfall in money they expected from the state.

As the Daily News reports:

Los Angeles Unified officials said they can make up for a recent $140 million cut in state funding by using federal stimulus money - but they'll feel the pinch next year.

The $140 million cut, the equivalent of closing seven high schools, follows Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's weekend veto of a bill that would have temporarily retained special funding for school districts that serve low-performing students.

Those funds, totalling $400 million statewide, were initially taken away in July by lawmakers who argued the school districts could use stimulus money to make up the difference.

While LAUSD plans to use stimulus money this year to cover the $140 million cut, officials say they might have to accelerate cuts that are not budgeted to hit for another two years. "This is a crisis averted but delayed," said Megan Reilly, LAUSD's chief financial officer. "It creates a bigger hole for us next year."

Gov. Schwarzenegger was openly encouraging the schools to take this "let the Feds handle" it approach--not exactly the sort of firm and tough leadership that will keep California solvent in the years to come. Without some new arrangement to permanently cut costs or expenses, the school district will still face an unavoidable fiscal crisis soon.

A September 2006 state audit of LA USD's "reorganizations and its procedures for evaluating performance and setting salaries for managers" which "concludes that LAUSD did not consistently achieve reductions in support services positions proposed in its 2000 and 2004 reorganization plans."

Past City of Angles blogging on the early stages of area schools' plans to tap into federal stimulus funds.

The image associated with this post was taken by Flickr user bryan.norwood. It was used under user Creative Commons license.

Cinema, Live Onstage

Holly Willis — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 13:19:34 -0700

"It's about ritual," says Finnish live cinema artist Mia Makela (aka Solu) talking about why she chooses to perform live with moving images and sound rather than simply create a linear film or video project to screen in theaters. "It's about sharing an experience with an audience." The artist performed Kaamos Trilogy last Saturday night in LA, and as a surprise, invited the group DuoDenum, comprised of Carmina Escobar and Scott Collins, to perform along with her. The effect of their collaboration was nothing less than riveting, mainly because it was indeed live and very much improvised. Makela, Collins and Escobar met only hours before the performance, and had to hope that their sensibilities would mesh onstage. They did. The musicians brought an array of objects with which to make sound, the most powerful being a large dish of water that sloshed and dripped as the story's heroine waded through waves. Escobar's clear, haunting voice also captivated, and while you'd think that watching the musicians in tandem with the mix of video imagery would catapult you right out of the story, it instead created a sense of greater acuity. But why?

That question will get asked again tonight when the group known as Cloud Eye Control performs its own mix of live performance and multimedia. The LA-based group is made up of Chi-wang Yang, Miwa Matreyek and Anna Oxygen, and tonight (and through Sunday) they will present Under Polaris, described as "an epic journey into an Arctic wonderland," mixing projected animation, electronic music and theater. While I haven't yet seen the performance, I think the same tension will exist between a story unfolding in front of you alongside an awareness of the artists creating that experience. There's something so powerful about sliding back and forth between the story and the awareness of its telling. Read more about the group and the performance here, and buy tickets here. Image: from Under Polaris.

Newsflash! It's Raining in L.A.!

Gary Dauphin — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 13:04:11 -0700

The folks at LAist share some timely comedic takes on the recent rain:

It rains and all of the sudden there are crashes everywhere. In fact, there were 186 between midnight and earlier this morning. All this ridiculousness means fodder for comedians and the like[.] [full item]

Visit Curbed LA, L.A. Now and LA Observed for more.

Thursday is Great Shake Drill

Jeremy Rosenberg — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 06:04:34 -0700

Editor's note: For more on how to get ready for the Big One, visit KCET's Earthquake Preparedness resource area.

Thursday morning at 10:15am is the Great California Shake Out, a mass earthquake preparedness and response drill.

A handful of past seismic-related research by Calif. tanks and guilds include:

*A Critical Look at Earthquake Preparations in the Los Angeles Basin, by Robert L. Patrick (RAND)

A Balanced Earthquake Engineering Program, by Edward W. Merrow and Kathy Rosenblatt (RAND)

After Shock, a collaborative online post-quake simulation (Institute for the Future, et al.)

Long Beach Earthquake: 75th Anniversary (Southern California Earthquake Center at USC)

Global Earthquake Model Survey (Earthquake Engineering Research Institute)

The image associated with this post was taken by flickr user isotaupe.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dianekay/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Shots Fired

Erin Aubry Kaplan — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 09:16:32 -0700

I was on the phone when I heard them, about five rapid-fire shots not a mile off. Or maybe, I thought hopefully, a string of firecrackers.

At 8 ' o 'clock, the darkness and habitual quiet of my street made it easy to believe the sound was benign, one of many mysterious but ultimately innocuous sounds particular to the night. Violence or some other hard reality wasn't possible; in my mind, all that had retired for the day.

"I heard something," I said to my brother into the phone. "Like shots. How about that."

My brother lives in North Carolina, though in L.A. he had lived for years in Baldwin Village, a dense apartment district otherwise known as the Jungle. It's the most notorious gang enclave in the Crenshaw area, even though it sits at the foot of affluent Baldwin Hills. He forbade us from visiting him. From his window he had once watched a guy who worked at the local grocery store get shot and then stagger around, crying up to the window for help. The guy survived.

"Shots?" my brother said sharply. "Where?"

I looked out my window out into the street. It was reliably quiet. No more sounds. "I don't know," I said. "Not far. Maybe I should go out and take a look."

"Do NOT go outside. Stay in the house. Where's Alan?"

My husband was gone to a meeting. "Stay inside," my brother repeated. "Don't be stupid."

We finished our conversation. As the night wore on, I heard nothing else. More to the point, I didn't hear the wail of sirens, which would have confirmed my brother's fears of the worst. I wasn't in the Jungle but I was Inglewood, after all. But there were no sirens, no helicopters, no blare of megaphones. Just the night as it usually was, a curtain dropping down evenly on the day with every passing hour. Nothing had happened.

A couple days later I came across a story in the paper of a 21-year-old who had been shot dead on 118th Place, near Crenshaw and Imperial--about a mile from me. My heart sank. The victim was an aspiring musician named Kevin Harris; he'd been working at a recording studio that night. He'd been shot sitting in his car for no reason anybody could discern. Kevin was not a gang member, his grieving mother and Inglewood PD were quick to point out. He was a straight arrow, a young black man with clear ambitions. He'd played sports in high school and gone to church regularly. In his photo he was serious-looking and wore glasses. "I raised him preppy," his distraught mother said.

Meaning, she consciously raised him outside the deadly gravitational pull of gang life and general nihilism into which so many young black men fall. But he had fallen anyway, because though he was fine, the world in which he lived and which sometimes exerted the bad gravity, was not.

The fact is, that world is fine sometimes. Plenty of times. But not every night.

This image was taken by flickr user Tony Webster. It was used under the Creative Commons license.

Coming Up: Ken Jacobs

Holly Willis — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 15:07:09 -0700

"It's very hallucinatory," says avant-garde icon Ken Jacobs, frankly describing the effects of viewing one of his Nervous Magic Lantern performances. He continues, "It sounds very slow, but there is endless, uncanny and unusual amounts of motion and depth taking place. People inevitably Rorschach. They're absolutely convinced that they've seen things, but it's really a combination of what I'm projecting and what they're projecting." Jacobs, who came of age as a filmmaker in the 1960s in New York (where he and his wife, Flo, founded the Millennium Film Workshops) and participated in the wild East coast film scene alongside radical filmmakers such as Andy Warhol and Hollis Frampton, returns to LA next week for one of his incomparable performances and several screening events. On Monday, October 12, Jacobs will present the Nervous Magic Lantern performance Towards the Depths of the Even Greater Depression at REDCAT in which he manipulates projectors to create intense optical events. He has described the experience for his audience as one of group hallucination, and having seen one of his performances many years ago, I can verify that it is indeed unlike any other visual or cinematic happening I've witnessed. At once ritualistic with regard to the sense of shared experience, riveting in being totally unpredictable, and wonderfully psychedelic, Jacobs' live events reimagine cinema in honor of its key elements, namely image, time, space, motion and light. Jacobs will also screen several digital shorts at the UCLA Film & Television Archive on Thursday, October 15; on Saturday, October 17, Jacobs will co-present two shorts, one of which was made by his son, Azazel Jacobs, at LA Filmforum, and his new 3-D digital feature Anaglyph Tom (Tom with Puffy Cheeks) will screen at LA Filmforum on October 18.

REDCAT Film and Video Schedule

Holly Willis — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 12:52:15 -0700

"The unifying theme is artistic vision, especially from an experimental end of the cinematic spectrum," explains REDCAT Film and Video co-curator Steve Anker describing the fall season's wonderful line-up of Monday-night screenings at the REDCAT theater. REDCAT, now in its sixth year and described as a "vibrant laboratory where innovating artists from throughout Los Angeles and around the world gather to push the boundaries of creative expression," has become a key aspect of LA's art scene, and the film and video screenings extend the emphasis on avant-garde film and video at CalArts, bringing many of the school's visiting artists into downtown LA. The line-up for the fall includes several live cinema events, including an upcoming performance October 12 by acclaimed filmmaker Ken Jacobs, who uses two projectors to create unique 3-D effects. "We also have a fine artist/animator form China - Sun Xun - whose work critiques Chinese culture and politics, a program curated by Cindy Keefer of recent animations from around the world that explore abstraction and continue in the footsteps of such pioneers as Oskar Fischinger, a screening and exploration of the historical importance of Jack Smith's seminal underground classic Flaming Creatures with noted critic J. Hoberman, and a screening of documentary portraits by Mexican artists that explore contemporary rural life and artistic responses." Anker notes that this theme has been central to the curatorial vision he shares with co-curator Berenice Reynaud, noting, "In every case the artist is expressing his/her own vision and personal absorption into both the medium and the subjects at hand." LA's film culture is lucky to have REDCAT! Download a PDF of the Fall 2009 schedule here.

80. Constant complaint

D.J. Waldie — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 17:50:15 -0700

We who are of this place are continually approached by provincials who complain that Los Angeles isn’t like ________ (insert the name of someplace with blizzards). Departing L.A. Chief of Police Bratton is the latest exile who says he is returning east, in part, because the climate here is “too constant.”

That indictment is one of the oldest on record. Richard Henry Dana, working aboard a merchant ship from Boston, arrived in southern California in 1834 and stayed nearly a year tanning hides. He hated the climate and condemned the Californios because of it. The memoir of his voyage – Two Years Before the Mast – became an American bestseller in 1840.

Dana’s distain for southern California entrenched the view that indolent, sun-addled Angeleños were spoiled by the climate, which contained none of the moral rigor found in Boston’s foul weather. Bostonians (Chief Bratton is another one) have been telling this climatological fable for 170 years.

A century before Dana, Bostonians suffered the contempt of their British cousins, who bitterly complained that the highly variable weather of New England was a brutal parody of the gentle rains, breezy summers, and generally mild winters they were used to in the English Midlands. Boston’s answer was to redefine terrible weather as Providence, which provided Puritan backsliders with a daily reminder that they were sinners in the hands of an angry God. England had constancy in its climate; New England had weather that revealed divine attention.

Chief Bratton can button up his overcoat in the sure and certain knowledge that lousy weather brings him closer either to God or pneumonia.

And in my indolence, I’ll feel – as an electric current – the change from season to season in Los Angeles in the subtle shifts in the quality of light, the ebb of on-shore and off-shore winds, the cyclical replacement of birdsongs, and the scents (still there!) of the chaparral fading or blooming.

The image on this page of the Huntington Gardens was made by Flickr user P M M. It was used under a Creative Commons license.

The SoCal Spin 10/9

Maxwell Strachan — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 14:28:57 -0700

SoCal Week in Review gives you the week's best Southern California links, articles, and web-related curiosities.

Believe me, the Golden State is a mess in more ways than your fingers can count. And if you're hoping to brush-up on the state's larger trending topics, check out this fantastic summary on the current state of California. Sadly, its less-than-fantastic conclusions will leave you wondering if California could become the country's first failed state.
At least Sacramento is attempting to capitalize on the continued slow growth of the stock market, as it plans to sell $4.5 billion worth of government bonds to those searching for a more secure investment. As long as Wall Street remains unpredictable, expect people to bite at these bonds fast.
Of course, the central question concerning this bankruptcy we are trying to lift ourselves out of is whether taxes remain too low or spending has run too high. Does the possibility of sending an aging Roman Polanski to prison demonstrate a fiscally unsound desire to imprison criminals when we can't afford it?
Outside of state government, more waste could be looming alongside an initiative war. Are these initiatives legitimate efforts to enact change? Or are they political tools meant to injure political opponents?
That Gavin Newsom hasn't quite hit his stride yet could be considered an understatement, and some see his call into Bill Clinton as a cry for help. Let's be honest, the man has been less than a fundraising machine since his declaring his decision to run for governor. So is an implosion impending for the San Francisco Mayor?
Hey, kudos to him anyway, as Newsom signed onto the US Conference of Mayors initiative to limit greenhouse gas emissions alongside Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. Is anyone else surprised that it's been city mayors who have take the environmental lead in recent years? Can someone wake-up the senate house?
Los Angeles city government hasn't taken pro-green ground on all fronts, however. District Attorney Steve Cooley recently declared all medical marijuana dispensaries to be illegal and, with over 800 flourishing dispensaries city-wide, might be readying a cultural war of sorts.
Conversely, there's another industry in Los Angeles that city officials are bending over backwards to accommodate. Fears of the film industry outsourcing increasing amounts of work have city council scrambling to create incentives to remain in L.A. All the fuss, to be honest, still seems a tad premature.
Educational reform of any sort, however, is more than overdue. One school's decision to divide classrooms into distinct male and female learning environments hence has researchers and parents alike intrigued as to the results. Are boys and girls developmentally hindering one another?
Finally, if you think this texting while driving debate only hinges on the actions of your teenage daughter, think again, as the Metrolink has installed cameras into its trains to dissuade its employees from putting the lives of hundreds of people at risk. Hm, I guess it's not all the fault of those irresponsible adolescents.

This image was taken by flickr user erjkprunczyk. It was used under the Creative Commons license.

Lead

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 09:48:37 -0700

The assimilation of Gustavo Dudamel is playing well on the red carpet. Walking into Disney Hall Thursday night, Quincy Jones told me Dudamel reminds him of a young Leonard Bernstein. Andy Garcia said he's proud Dudamel's Hispanic but loves him for being a great conductor. Angela Bassett said she admires his humility and "of the earth" background. And Eli Broad gushed, "He's brought young people together, he's brought the Latino community together, he's brought us all together." And you know that Broad with his billions in philanthropy has as much power to anoint and legitimize as anyone in Los Angeles.

Gustavo Dudamel's Simon Bolivar- tinged declaration on Saturday opened the door even wider. Several on the red carpet repeated his words. Remember Dudamel said he's proud to be Venezuelan, Latino and American. And the echo of those words appears to be in a pinball machine bounce off the Hollywood Hills, the San Gabriel Mountains down to the Anaheim Hills.

But can we consider this list: Salma Hayek, Robert Graham, Gustavo Dudamel, Lupillo Rivera, George Lopez, Julieta Venegas. All are accomplished artists or performers, all either Latin American-born or Mexican American, and all at various stages of personal assimilation and mainstream acceptance. I suppose Lupillo Rivera is the one who sticks out the most. Is it because banda music remains on the fringes of American mainstream culture? When will it join zydeco? When do we wear our foreign nationalism proudly and when do we couch it in larger multi-ethnic terms? When is it OK to be Mexican first? How do the doors of mainstream acceptance open and close depending on how you express your national identity?

Millions of first and second generation immigrant students are grappling with that question right now. You're likely to get one answer from students attending Santee Learning Complex south of downtown L.A. Some of their teachers - members of the militant Association of Raza Educators - are trying out carve out a safe space for a Mexican identity in an American context. And how does this compare to the identity dilemma of immigrant students who attend schools in well off suburban schools?

On Thursday night Dudamel conducted a symphony by a European composer who likely grappled with similar issues but who's now in the mainstream classical music canon. Gustav Mahler was born Jewish in Bohemia, performed in Prague, and other European cities and at one point converted to Catholicism to get a plum conducting position in Vienna. In 1909 he became the New York Philharmonic's conductor. Talk about fluid ethnic identity!

Real Time Live: Solu

Holly Willis — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 12:04:42 -0700

A dark delirium of images, a disintegrated vision of a complex world - a digital version of William Blake's poetry...

This is how the work of media artist Solu (aka Mia Makela) has been described. Makela is an internationally acclaimed leader and innovator in the field of live cinema, by which I mean the live, real-time mixing of images and sound for an audience, where the sounds and images no longer exist in a fixed and finished form but evolve as they occur, and the artist's role becomes performative and the audience's role becomes participatory. The Finnish artist is fascinated by editing and argues boldly in her essay, "The Practice of Live Cinema," that "live cinema is not cinema" at all. Her assertion rests on the idea that cinema privileges storytelling, but for Makela, live cinema thrives in the exploration of the transitions between bits of storytelling sequences. Referencing the haunting shots of the dark asphalt that stretches through parts of David Lynch's Lost Highway, she writes that these kinds of shots "are the basic material for live cinema performances: the transitions, the movements, the pure visual beauty and intrigue, the atmosphere." Makela's work is rich with lush, stuttering imagery flecked with information and graphics rendered live, in real time, and in response to the audience.

I'm delighted to say that Makela will present Real Time Live, which is both a two-part, hands-on workshop at USC starting Friday, October 9, as well as a live performance on Saturday night! Get the full details after the jump...

In the two-part workshop on Friday and Saturday, October 9 and 10, 11:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m., Makela will offer an overview of the history, tools, techniques and craft of live cinema. Makela has written extensively on live cinema, and her workshop has been offered to artists all over the world. The first Blur+Sharpen reader to express interest in the workshop with an email (to hwillis (at) cinema.usc.edu) will be welcome to attend.

On Saturday evening, beginning at 8:30 p.m., Makela will perform live, giving viewers a wonderful opportunity to see live cinema at its best. The evening performance is free and open to all. Please come!

Real Time Live
Real Time Live Workshop
Friday & Saturday, October 9 & 10, 2009
11:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m.
Institute for Multimedia Literacy
746 West Adams Boulevard, Los Angeles
Real Time Live Performance
Saturday, October 10, 8:30 p.m.
SCA 112, George Lucas Building
School of Cinematic Arts Complex
University of Southern California
900 W. 34th Street, Los Angeles, CA 90007

Pitch

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 09:27:08 -0700

The end is near. That's what my senses told me Sunday at Chavez Ravine. The cool air fluttered the flags to the east. The Santa Ana winds retreated to hibernation. Many of the seats on the west side of the stadium were in the shade. No sizzling sunburns on this day. The zig-zag canopy shading the top deck created a moon-curve shadow on the field below, just a few feet from the pitcher's mound.

The one o'clock game felt more like a late afternoon, early evening game. The top row in Reserve 14, above first base, had a tail wind from the ocean. Clouds form above the shark-tooth ridge of the San Gabriel Mountains. The winds and the clouds remind us that the coming winter rains will wash away the sins of summer. The trees in the hills where the parking lot ends plead for rain. Maybe the houses from 50 years ago left some roots. Maybe the trees think that with some water the neighborhood will return, and the kids will climb their branches.

With a nearly slow-motion breaking ball Vicente pitches himself into the third slot of the team's playoff roster. Pockets of rhythmic clapping, from tribes large and small in different sections of the stadium, urge on Padilla and his buddies in white uniforms.

What's the metaphor for baseball? It's not the clashing of armies as in football, in which either brute force or passing finesse win the game. Is baseball the stage for the rugged individualist - the batter - struggling it out in the face of innumerable odds and constant failure?

Ronald's pitched himself into a bases loaded mess. The cars stream out past the thirsty trees. We had our summer fun in the sun and during plenty of after-work games. I wrote the date of the Mannyslam on the bobble-head box we were all handed that day. We were entertained. That's the fragile promise made by each ticket.

Ping

Ophelia Chong — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 09:23:29 -0700

Silence. I love the quiet, no sounds, no pings, no jumping alert icons, nothing but silence.

Have you ever clicked on a link sent to you by a friend only to have ear shattering noise blast out of your computer speakers? I have. And I expect it to happen at least once a day until I finally leave this mortal world and go into the silent abyss where I will float on cool waves and quiet clouds.

Noise invades our spaces, we can control it by turning off the television, the stereo, the phones, shutting the doors and windows, but the noise coming from our computers are at times needed, to alert us to emails, chats, urgent Yammer messages, whatever we need to be connected to the outside world. But when does it get to the point where you are trained like a drug sniffing dog to perk your ears up when you hear the low decibels of your computer's needs? I can hear a ping from across the house, even when the sound is set on low. My ears filter out sounds of cars and barking dogs, but a low ping can have me running to the laptop.

Silence. As much as I need to be connected there are times I just want to be sitting in the garden staring at a leafy plant. But if it wasn't for that ping, I would not be able to afford to sit and stare. So I have come to an agreement with noise, I let it invade my space as long as it agrees to leave me time to be tone deaf and mute.

Image: Ophelia Chong / Underwater

Alegria

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 02:04:40 -0700

The Dude clinched it! And he did it an hour before our boys in Chavez Ravine.

Really, Gustavo Dudamel and the L.A. Philharmonic brought the house down Saturday night. He did it while conducting more than a hundred South L.A. students who'd feverishly rehearsed Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" this summer through the L.A. Phil's new youth orchestra program. The performance wasn't up to par to the discriminating classical music ear but it was a great achievement given the cards they were dealt. And it was a seed planted in the arid working-class flatlands.

Dudamel had us 18 thousand people in his pocket leading the white-tuxed L.A. Phil musicians in Beethoven's 9th Symphony. The composition is a plea to leave divisions and to embrace thy neighbor in brotherly love. It sounds to me like the composer's last gasp, knowing the end is near, and calling out what's important.

And did I tell you the Bowl's closest seats, the Pool Circle, the seats usually occupied by the crema y nata de la sociedad, nestled students' family members?

It was an unusual concert night at the Hollywood Bowl in several other respects, from the Mexican cowboy hats, yellow-blue-red Venezuelan shirts and hats, and a kaleidoscope of Spanish accents that joined French, Russian, and Armenian hovering toward the brush in the Hollywood Hills arm in arm.

Lots of kids in the audience kept the night from feeling stuffy. At one point, after the end of a movement, a toddler's sweet voice of approval was a fitting transition to the symphony's next part.

The L.A. Phil played up the night's inherent biculturalism and bilingualism. The 9th's German lyrics were translated in subtitles on the Bowl's large video screens. So for this moment Spanish was given its due. "Joy, beautiful spark of the gods." Was followed by "Alegria, Hermosa Luz Divina." "This kiss for all the world." "Un beso para todo el mundo."

Copping Out

Erin Aubry Kaplan — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 17:41:05 -0700

It was all too predictable. After months of local speculation about why the city of Inglewood wasn't releasing a report on the practices of its police department, a department that became infamous last year for fatally shooting four black and Latino men in four months, the city announced last week that we're all going to have to wait some more. A city spokesperson said that the report, which Inglewood hired an outside body to do well over a year ago, could violate attorney-client privilege and therefore had to stay under wraps for the time being. What sort of attorney-client privilege? No details. When would the report be released? "Eventually," said the city spokesperson.

Excuse me? Such vagueness reeks not just of incompetence, but arrogance. The whole point of the report was for Inglewood officials to demonstrate transparency, accountability and expediency in the wake of a string of highly controversial shootings by its police force last year--among its victims were a 20-year-old man sitting in a car at a drive-thru, a homeless man with a toy gun and a postal worker roused in the middle of the night by cops who had a wrong address (also a dog, Topaz, that happened to be in the line of fire of the 48 shots unloaded on the homeless guy--but at least the dog survived). Last year's constellation of shootings wasn't the first time Inglewood made national news for questionable police conduct, but it was certainly the most sensational, and with good reason. Faced with so much negative attention and palpable public anxiety about the next shooting, Inglewood city officials had little choice but to act; the council hired the county's Office of Independent Review to assess what exactly was going wrong and how to fix it.

That was just about a year ago. Rumor has it that the report was completed in the spring and the city council had been sitting on it ever since. Inglewood Police Chief Jacqueline Seabrooks told me last month that that's an exaggeration, but she didn't say what was holding things up. She did say that there's nothing in the OIR report that she doesn't know and no problem cited that she isn't currently working to correct.

Great--so why not let taxpayers in on what they're entitled to know, on what they need to know, on what they've paid to know? I suspect that the report, despite Seabrooks' confidence in the progress of the department, is still damning enough to have Inglewood civic leaders in a panic about lawsuits emanating from the families of the shooting victims, and any other victims of police misconduct in Inglewood over the last, oh, 20 years. Hence the vague but telling concern about breaching "attorney-client" privilege.

Not even the city Police Oversight Commission, a citizen watchdog group that the council put together in the wake of the shootings, has seen the report. Nor does the commission have the power to demand it--actually, it doesn't have the power to do a lot of things that it should be doing. Which makes me and a lot of other people in town wonder if the whole police reform push in Inglewood is mostly a charade.

But let's not forget that the IPD is also being investigated by the Justice Department, another development last year after the fourth-in-four-months shooting made Inglewood a national model for what police ought not to be doing, especially in neighborhoods of color. Whatever the misgivings of our city fathers, make no mistake that the truth will out--eventually.

This image was taken from flickr user kevindean. It was used under the Creative Commons license.

79. Forget it, Jake, It’s LA

D.J. Waldie — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 17:15:08 -0700

I rode up to USC on Friday by bus and train to hear Bill Boyarsky. He is a 30-year veteran of the Los Angeles Times, a member of multiple Pulitzer Prize-winning teams of reporters, the writer of several books about California politics, and a columnist now for TruthDig.

Bill was to talk about his new book and take questions from what is always an idiosyncratic audience – the members of the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities. (I am a member of the LAIH, and both Bill and I are published by Angel City Press in Santa Monica.)

Bill’s book is Inventing LA: The Chandlers and their Times, a companion – but not exactly – to the new PBS documentary by Peter Jones. Inventing LA: The Chandlers and their Times documentary will be broadcast on KCET on Monday, October 5 at 9:00 p.m.

Bill sketched in his talk the outline of the entangled Times and Chandler family stories: from General Harrison Gray Otis, to his son-in-law Harry Chandler, to his son Norman Chandler, to his son Otis Chandler, and then to Otis Chandler’s successor, Tom Johnson.

Bill was blunt about the general and his son-in-law, and truly there’s nothing appealing in their part of the story except the exhilaration they both shared in selling Los Angeles into existence between 1880 and 1920. Bill didn’t dwell in his talk on handsome, polished, Pasadena-rich Norman Chandler, who oversaw a family business in which the Los Angeles Times was run as just another subsidiary.

Bill lingered on Otis, the last Chandler. Bill knew him as his boss but not particularly well. Otis Chandler was big, athletic, in love with speed, and – Bill wryly noted – almost a monster of self-regard. His decision to turn to the paper over to a publisher from outside the family, in part out of self-indulgence – was as close to classical tragedy as an American story can get.

Otis Chandler made the Los Angeles Times almost great through the 1960s and 1970s, and every fall from that achievement can be threaded back to Otis’ decision.

Bill was guarded about the future that the story of the Times and the Chandlers led to. I found the Peter Jones documentary, with its somber music, to be wrenchingly melancholy. But one luncheon guest complained to Bill that this is only the Times, only the Chandlers, only a marginal story far from the places of real significance.

Like clueless Jake Gittes at the end of Chinatown, we’re always being ordered to ignore what we need to know best.

The image on this page was made by Flickr user Pieter Edelman. It was used under a Creative Commons license.

The Birdshot Effect

Ophelia Chong — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 12:24:56 -0700

Another Facebook rant, yes I know, it's a weekly occurrence, like the swallows returning home to Capistrano or another increase in my waistline. This rant came about after a Skype conversation with Simon Gornick of Spotcher.

But here's my beef. Why oh why do people put their Twitter feed into Facebook? And what is really irritating is that if I comment on their Twitter feed, they don't know or care because I know they are feeding their social network comments on just about every social network site possible.

Gripe.

So why does it bug me? Well, it's all about them getting their message out without interaction. All they are doing is clicking options to feed it to all their social networks. There was a study released about the two types of Twitter users by Mor Naaman and Jeffrey Boase, what they found was that 80% of Twitter users were "meformers", breaking it down into an easy bitesize nugget, it's all about "Me". The other 20% are "informers", who tend to share information that is useful to their followers. Women were more apt to post about themselves as opposed to men. This study applies to social network users who post to all their SN sites. Its all about us knowing what they are doing without them really caring about what we are doing. Of course there are a few that do interact on all their networks, but that is a minority.

Rant.

Back to why I hate Twitter on Facebook, its all about "Me", and the birdshot strategy of hitting as many targets as possible fails, because you cannot engage on every platform. After a while the postings become just background noise and eventually hidden from Facebook users' streams.

Snort.

If you want to social network then social network. If you post everywhere the same message it is the equivalent of flying over a city and throwing out a million flyers, its just tomorrow's garbage.

Okay I feel better now. Back next week with another rant.

Today's feelgood palate cleanser: "Follow your dreams because they are stalking you" - me

Image: Ophelia Chong / Birdshot Rant.

SoCal Week in Review 10/1

Maxwell Strachan — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 16:29:52 -0700

SoCal Week in Review gives you the week's best Southern California links, articles, and web-related curiosities.

This week's arrest of Director Roman Polanski on charges of rape has Hollywood up in arms, exhibiting a deep and almost bizarre divide between the entertainment industry and Middle America. Should a tarnished career be punishment enough for "great artists" like Mr. Polanski? Or are celebrities receiving unfair preferential treatment in the court of law?
Either way, Polanski would be far from the lone sex offender in the Golden State. In fact, California's disturbing number of recently-released sex offenders has become somewhat of a logistical nightmare for law enforcement officials, who annually oversee the discharge of 120,000 inmates--a national high.
Unable to get a word in edgewise on that hot button issue, City Council has instead reverted back to the safer issue of tagging, proposing a bill that would require all new buildings to have an "anti-grafitti coating." Any chance they're a little annoyed with this bit of anti-Villarraigosa vandalism?
But let's not think that the bigwigs downtown are only going after the little guys, as Federal Judges upheld a ban this week on those hideous digital billboards we saw springing up all over town this summer. A small victory against corporate obstruction.
Not all federally-related news this week has been so light-hearted, however, as American Apparel was forced to fire 1,800 employees amid a sweeping immigration crackdown by the Obama Administration. The company's downtown factory had been one of the largest remaining in Los Angeles.
Just in case you forgot, the Los Angeles economy is still tanking, with nearly six unemployed persons for every job opening. Can you see a correlation between the dragging economy and UCLA's recent recognition as the most "economically diverse" top-tier university in the nation? We can. And by the way, are you wondering how that stimulus money is helping the city?
So yes, the economy is falling apart, but that's not the only thing. As our very own Brian Doherty so eloquently relays, pipes throughout the city aren't holding up either. Potential causes? Too many to count. But isn't that a bad thing?
At least MOCA has some elevating news: they'll be staying in business. The contemporary art museum reported that they have raised $60 million since last December, a month when their endowment fell as low as $6 million and they temporarily toyed with the idea of becoming a contemporary foreclosure exhibit.
And just in case you thought Los Angeles was running the way of a second-tier city, let's present a power-player counterargument. Google and Microsoft are currently in a (probably fierce, right?) battle to take-on the city's extensive e-mail list, a highly-prized asset thank you very much.
Finally, Laker fans--surprise, surprise-- enjoy getting rowdy and illegal when they win championships. Oh mob mentality, when will you ever leave us?

This image was taken by flickr user erjkprunczyk. It was used under the Creative Commons license.

Coming Up: Yvonne Rainer

Holly Willis — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 14:27:43 -0700

If you want a glimpse of brilliance, take a look at the six-minute Hand Movie, a short film made by Yvonne Rainer in 1966. The image? A somewhat gangly hand against a white background. The action? The fingers wiggle and touch each other, they furl and unfurl, they line up tall, they stretch outward, they dance a bit... The result? Delicious! I can feel the hand in my hand. The angular line of the thumb asserts strength. The hand then becomes contorted and entirely unfamiliar. Minimal, conceptual, beautiful. Rainer began making longer films in 1972 after having already established a vibrant career in modern dance in New York. She went on to become one of the most prominent experimental and feminist filmmakers, with a slate of complex and intriguing features that altered the history of the avant-garde in the U.S. Over its coming season, Filmforum will present a full retrospective of Rainer's work, starting this Sunday, October 4, 2009, with a screening that includes Hand Movie, as well as four other shorts and the 2002 video titled After Many a Summer Dies the Swan: Hybrid. Rainer will be in attendance, and will discuss her work with Lynette Kessler, Executive Director of Dance Camera West.

the details:
Bodies, Objects, Films: An Yvonne Rainer Retrospective (part 1 of 8)
Sunday October 4, 2009
7:30 pm
Egyptian Theatre
6712 Hollywood Blvd. at Las Palmas
Presented by Filmforum

The Future Flyped

Holly Willis — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 17:15:51 -0700

Flyp "is a proof-of-concept experiment in digital storytelling," says Jim Gaines, editor-in-chief of the Web-based publication that is trying to reinvent journalism online. "What we're trying to do is show how all the media that the Web can accommodate can be used at the same time in the service of one story," he continues. "It's about using video, audio and information graphics and Flash animation in service to a storytelling experience that's much like a magazine storytelling experience but uses more than paper, ink and still photographer." The wonderful new project resembles a magazine in gathering timely information and offering it in multiple formats, with short- and long-form reporting. However, the publication is rich with media, incorporating photography, video, sound, graphics and music in a compelling design very attentive to what works - and what doesn't - in an online forum. Thanks to its focus on an emerging form of journalism, Flyp will join nine other projects (including KCET's own Web Stories) this Friday, October 2, 2009, as part of the National Arts Journalism Summit, dedicated to interrogating the future of arts writing. I'll be presenting a new software application called Sophie, and my colleagues Ana Shepherd and Gabe Peters-Lazaro created the 10 videos that will showcase each entry. The event will take place at the Annenberg School at USC, and will stream live starting at 9:00 a.m. Please join us to see the future of journalism!

Image: from "Science Project: Make Up Your Mind," a story in the current issue of Flyp.

It Blew Up

Ophelia Chong — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 15:51:24 -0700

Lately in the news there have been one water main cracking up after another. Some speculate that it is the DWP's water restrictions causing it, by allowing sprinkler use Mondays and Thursdays, the water mains are pushed past their maximum.

What if it happened to your information super highway? What if that "pipe" coming into your computer burst from all the information surging through it? When does it become just too much for the invisible binary airwaves above our heads?

When I first went online, way back in 1994, I had a 2400 baud modem. The sound of the handshake was soothing, after a few bings, pongs, and zzzaps it connects. Don't even think of anything other than text and maybe an image on your screen. You were lucky even to get to a few pages after a minute or three. Hop scotch a decade and a half and I can download music, while sending a 9 mg file, not to mention watching a video of a cat in a tissue box. I had no doubt back in 1994 that we would be leaps and bounds ahead, but I did not realize how much we would depend on the speed of connectivity.

Ever have the misfortune of having your internet access go down? It's like loosing a limb. "I can't get your email, so that's why I am calling". We are forced back into our old ways, the phone call. The hardest part of phone calls are the fact you can only do one at a time, unlike emails where you can get your point across by hitting reply all. When you think of it, we are only saving minutes of time, which we then sit and wonder what to do with ourselves.

The local residents that were affected by the water main break had to do without water, they made do by showering at the gym, buying bottles of water, they were inconvenienced but they had work arounds. When our internet goes down we work around by using the phone or head out to a working network, or even just go offline and taking a break from the constant buzzing. But like all "breaks", we expect it to be fixed and back to normal eventually. We sit patiently tapping our fingers, our mantra "it will be back soon, I just know it."

Water will always travel the same way to our homes, but the internet has the advantage where it will evolve into newer and faster ways to deliver information to us. The only small fissure in the pipeline is the power source that pushes it through to us, and as long as we rely on that singular source of power, our internet pipeline is as fragile as our water mains.

Image: Ophelia Chong / SuperTrain

Socal Week in Review

Maxwell Strachan — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 15:19:05 -0700

SoCal Week in Review gives you the week's best Southern California links, articles, and web-related curiosities.

Backing down on the state park issue after several months of vehement criticism, Gov. Schwarzenegger has requested that the Department of Finance minimize the number of total park closures and cut alternative areas of the budget instead.
And in life after the Governator, former eBay CEO Meg Whitman has thrown herself into the gubernatorial race, vowing to cut 40,000 state government jobs and lower state taxes on behalf of the Republican Party.
Whoever does "win" the title of California Governor will have their hands full, as the unemployment rate in California arrived at a seventy-year high this month. What's to blame? Take a look at our state's strong ties to the recently-decimated construction industry.
With the economy in disarray, the federal government supposed this is the time to bust a mob. A thousand law enforcement officers descended on and indicted 88 suspected members of the infamous Avenues gang. The suspects' criminal activity allegedly reaches back into the 1990s.
But could it be that the true battle against crime should be waged in the classroom, rather than the streets? A study this week found that criminally-prone high school dropouts cost the state $1.1 billion annually in additional law enforcement.
So all we have to do is curb the dropout ? Doesn't seem that easy, especially as recent budget cuts now have kids sitting on floors in classrooms with fifty students to a single teacher.
Even in the midst of this budget mess, some kids are trying to do good, launching a website to combat obesity through increasing awareness. And they still say these kids these days are all a bunch of good-for-nothings.
Actually, doesn't it seems like it's the older crowd that is increasingly obsessed with 'mindless' social networking sites these days? At the Skirball this week, it was adults who gathered for a two-day conference focusing solely on, you guessed it, Twitter.
Someone is still angry at ACORN about their, er, ties to prostitution. Graffiti reading 'ACORN Funded Prostitution Zones' popped up throughout Echo Park this week, but we'll do our homework before believing it, thanks.
Finally, the idea of building a NFL stadium right outside of Los Angeles is now much closer to reality. With the Trojans and Bruins already dominating the region's football landscape, does the city have room for another team?

This image was taken by flickr user erjkprunczyk. It was used under the Creative Commons license.

Interview with "Militant Angeleno"

Yoli Martinez — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 12:17:49 -0700

Welcome back to "Better Know a SoCal Blogger" on KCET.org! Every week we will be featuring one of the city's many fascinating and first-rate blogs. This week we are speaking with the anonymous writer of Militant Angeleno, a mysterious blogger who offers readers a native's view on L.A. in hopes of making them all more militant fans and citizens of the region.

The Basics

Blogger Name: Militant Angeleno

Official Blog Name: Uh... "Militant Angeleno" :)

When did you start blogging? The Militant actually started blogging in 1994. However, there were no such things as "blogs" back then, but he was definitely writing, and people were reading his adventures and observations in Los Angeles back then. The Militant Angeleno blog, as we know it today, goes back as far as June 2007 though.

Do you have a day job? He may or may not have one...

How many hours do you spend online/ on your computer? Far too much to mention. It also helps (or doesn't help) that he now has a smartphone with 3G internet access...

Where do you do your blogging from physically? The Militant blogs from the Militant Compound. He cannot specify an address for privacy and security purposes, but he can tell you that it's within a 5-mile radius of the KCET studios.

What are you reading? This email!

Link to your first post: Here

The Lowdown

What is your blog about?

Militant Angeleno is about Los Angeles, seen from the point of view of a native who was raised in an unspecified ethnically diverse neighborhood in the city and shares his perspective through his own eyes. He loves to write about places and subjects that most other Los Angeles blogs don't even have on their radar.

Who is your ideal reader?

Well, there's two ideal readers -- one is the similarly militantly-inclined native Angeleno who also feels like a foreigner in his or her own blogosphere. Many of them are excited that the Militant represents their voice. The other ideal reader is the recently-transplanted hipster who thinks they live in "The Eastside" and is entitled to everything, and thinks they know all they know about Los Angeles. The Militant really likes to piss 'em off.

Besides your own, what's your favorite Los Angeles blog?

He has a few. One that stands out is laeastside.com, because, like the Militant's blog, it represents local voices and perspectives that don't normally get heard. The Militant feels at least partly responsible for inspiring those folks to get out there, and is glad they are on the blogosphere. We need more diverse voices out there, especially from parts of town where you don't expect bloggers to live in. The Militant also reads laist.com. He used to *really* hate them a couple years back but recently they've gotten more in touch with the real Los Angeles, its history, cultures and issues in its posts. They deserve much Militant props for turning it around.

What is a one misconception people have about you from your blog?

That the Militant doesn't own a car. He does, but he doesn't drive it as much as everyone else. He's yet to visit a mechanic!

Here is a screenshot of the Militant Angeleno's blog.

You refuse to reveal your identity; how has this helped you when it comes to writing blog entries about L.A.?

Oh tons! The Militant can get away with so much stuff. :) He is also insult-proof. A few years ago on another blog, someone called the Militant a certain ethnic slur. The Militant just laughed because that slur may or may not been so far off the mark. No one knows what the Militant is exactly, so ad-hominem attacks really won't work!

There is a downside, in that there are limits to the extent that he can connect with people. It's like being Batman, or (more Los Angeles-specific) Iron Man - except that the Militant isn't rich. It can be lonely being a Militant sometimes. But that's the price a Militant must pay.

As a native born Angeleno, what were topics you thought the media or other blogs were not covering?

There's a multitude of layers to this City that most people are unaware of. There's many cultures and sub-cultures here that don't get much recognition, yet the Militant already sees how they contribute to our urban tapestry. People who are ignorant about Los Angeles love to stereotype it, but really, you can't. It's not one thing, it's many things.

What is a "militant" Angeleno and how does being militant improve our city?

Militant Angeleno (small "m") is one armed with a sense of local history, civic knowledge and participation, and local pride. A militant Angeleno does not let people's ignorance or denigration of the City go unchallenged. A militant is also constructively critical of what does go wrong in this City, but is more involved in making things happen and making things work than placing the blame. A militant knows the past, works in the present and is always looks toward the future. And a HUGE Dodger and Laker fan too. :)

You bike and take public transportation a lot, do you believe this is really a growing trend for Angelenos with a future, or is it still out of the norm?

It is a growing trend. Or not even a trend, but a lifestyle shift. He sees more people bike, and not just hipsters on fixies, but teenagers. That's encouraging since they can get around and explore the city before they know how to drive (and the ability to drive doesn't necessarily help one know the city, as we all know...). There was no Red Line or bike culture when the Militant was a teenager. There's still a psychological barrier to cycling, but it will gradually erode. There used to be a huge reluctance to take transit when Metro Rail started nearly 20 years ago, now taking the train is less of a big deal that it used to be. We already have one of the largest transit systems in the US. not bad for just 20 years.

Who has been your favorite Dodger?

Right now, it's Orlando Hudson. O-DAWWWGGG!!! He's got a great attitude. Kemp, Manny and Kuroda are also faves. The Militant's all-time favorite Dodgers growing up were Steve Garvey and Fernando Valenzuela.

Your blog seems to really capture the essence of Los Angeles, but: How do you make time to attend all the events?

Thanks! But even the Militant knows his limits! Not even he can attend all the events! But it just goes to show how much activity and vibrancy is going on in this city.

The ever mysterious blogger, the Militant Angeleno gave us this picture of his workspace.

Who is the ultimate militant Angeleno in your eyes?

There is none really, But if you combined Huell Howser's curiosity and historical knowledge, Edward James Olmos' dedication to community service, Tom Bradley's heart, Ruben Salazar's courage, Ed Begley Jr's environmental dedication, Patt Morrison's intelligence and wit, Fr. Gregory Boyle's soul and Tommy Lasorda's passion, that would be the ultimate militant Angeleno right there!

The Militant hopes that some of these kids today will be true Militant Angelenos when they grow up.

What is you favorite corner, neighborhood, or spot in Los Angeles?

The Militant has many. He loves his own neighborhood, and is very active in it, but obviously can't reveal where it is. He can tell you that he digs Downtown Los Angeles, Leimert Park, Eagle Rock, Highland Park, East Hollywood, NoHo, Boyle Heights, Mid City, Little Tokyo and Koreatown.

Finally, what is it about L.A. that inspires you to blog?

It's diverse, it's dynamic. Nothing's set in stone yet. There's way too many opportunities. A lot of people complain how "Los Angeles doesn't do _____ right," but really we're still learning.

That's exciting stuff for a Militant.

We'd like to thank the Militant Angeleno for participating in this installment of Better Know a SoCal Blogger. Make sure to check out his militant blog!

Heart Like a Wheel

Erin Aubry Kaplan — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 20:03:07 -0700

With all the political tumult of the recently completed summer, I'd almost forgotten about a loss in the middle of the season that hit me as hard and unexpectedly as the loss of a relative who hadn't been sick. Tired, maybe, but not sick. Not to my eyes.

I remembered the loss yesterday, driving through town, though I actually remember it every week, sometimes more; the regret comes in spasms that I expect will decrease over time. Although since I'm almost sure nothing will replace what was lost, that expectation might be wishful thinking. I might hurt a while.

I lost a garage. It was a general automotive repair place called Manchester Brake & Auto, an unassuming, almost old-fashioned looking place on Manchester and 3rd avenue on the east side of Inglewood. Every car I ever drove or owned, starting with a '73 Dodge Dart Swinger that I inherited from my grandfather and used through college, spent some time at Manchester Brake. The place opened in 1965. I went there because my parents took their cars there, but I quickly came to appreciate the family who ran the business, a father and two sons who were all mechanics. One brother was short, cheerful and outgoing, the other one was tall and taciturn, and the father kind of split the difference on all counts. But they were all famous for their honesty. If they couldn't fix your car or if it didn't need fixing, they'd tell you right away. They'd send you to somebody who could do the job that they couldn't, and do it well. There was never any tension or haggling at Manchester Brake; a garage isn't a place where customers hang out, but it often felt like they did as they lounged on wooden school chairs set on the driveway outside the hydraulic lifts (Manchester didn't have an office or lobby) waiting for a diagnosis or to pick up a car.

What fascinated me most about the place, as time went on and my social awareness took shape, was its perfect ordinariness and reliability in a neighborhood that had undergone huge transformations since 1965. The Manchester guys were white; '65 was not exactly an auspicious year to open. After the Watts Riots, South Central and nearby places like Inglewood emptied out of white folks almost overnight. White-owned small businesses went with them. Manchester Brake not only stayed, it settled. It was definitively Inglewood in a town that was rapidly losing its touchstones and searching for new ones. Through uneasy times in Inglewood up to and including this year, Manchester was one tiny measure of reassurance that we all were living a life good enough to have within reach a place we could drop off a beloved car at a moment's notice and know it would be taken care of. It countered the occasional but jarring threat of urban chaos with middle-class predictability.

And then, unpredictably, it wasn't there. One day in July, I drove to Manchester in the morning to have the guys (two of them--the father died many years ago) check out my tires, which they had done two weeks earlier. This was just a follow-up. I hadn't called beforehand; I'd never needed to. What I pulled up to was a shuttered garage door and a hand-lettered sign that said Manchester had closed for good due to retirement. The departure looked hasty, or maybe just humble. The sign thanked all the customers for their business the last 44 years.

I sat idling in my Chrysler for many minutes, unbelieving. I had no idea where to take my car next. And for a very brief moment, I didn't know where I lived.

This image was taken by flickr user phxpma. It was used under the Creative Commons license.

78. Apologia

D.J. Waldie — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 18:19:17 -0700

The hullaballoo of my retirement has ended, the Long Beach Press-Telegram has had its say, and if I may, I’d like to add a few more words about Lakewood and the purpose of my work there.

Successful communities aren’t handed their residents ready-made. Success requires patience and the constant mending of relationships, including relationships between community members and their city government.

Over more than three decades, I’ve focused my work on making and sustaining a sense of shared responsibility for the city in which I live. I’m proudest of my part in working with city council members, the city manager who has served Lakewood through my 32 years, and city staff members. We have sought to bring community members and their city together.

In our fallible way, we have made and mended relationships.

Trust between institutions and those they serve isn’t easy, particularly in a time of deep distrust of all governments. But it is imperative that cities reach out to their residents and give them reasons to be loyal to the place they call home.

It has been my privilege to explain why loyalty to Lakewood is deserved. I’ve had help from city officials and staff who hold Lakewood in the same high regard and whose work is far more significant than my own. They have done the hard part. I’ve done what I love to do. I have been a storyteller.

And as a storyteller, I’ve found the words that articulated values and hopes, that framed the issues of the day for citizens to appreciate, and that may even have led voters to make good choices for Lakewood’s future.

I’ve mourned Lakewood’s losses and I’ve celebrated its milestones. I did good work.

I share a tradition of faith that emphasizes the acceptance of a vocation. The work that was given to me has been my vocation. What I have done is my witness to my beliefs.

All cities are like Troy in their potential to mingle tragedy and the commonplace, Homer knew. Even a nondescript suburb may claim someone’s allegiance, answer his longing, and persist in his memory. And Homer knew such places are as sacred as they are vulnerable.

The image on this page was made by Flickr user lavocado. It was used under a Creative Commons license.

Disparate Parts

Maxwell Strachan — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 15:48:30 -0700

The SoCal Week in Review gives you the week's best Southern California links, articles, stories, and other web-related curiosities.

If you've got a sweet tooth for scandal, then there's seemingly no better time to be alive, what with Joe Wilson hollering, Serena mouthing off, and Kanye, well, being Kanye. But don't be deceived, it's not just celebrities that are having all the fun. Reports of Wells Fargo executives throwing "lavish" parties at a repossessed beachfront Malibu home have infuriated tax payers, who you might remember bailed out the struggling business last year to the note of $25 billion.

But don't think for a second that it's only the financial sector that is doing a less than perfect job of adhering to company protocol. Tapes have surfaced of the community organizing group ACORN willingly guiding two disguised vigilante activists through the legalities of creating a prostitution establishment in San Bernardino , giving rise to mores issues than you can count.

Some are doing their best to bring burglary back into fashion, albeit in different ways. Nabbing ten original Warhol paintings (count 'em!) from a dedicated and now surely depressed art connoisseur? Check. Robbing a San Diego bank with tubes up your nose and an oxygen tank in hand at the tender age of seventy? Double check. No wonder watchdog journalism is all the rage.

Also, with the Station Fire all but over, the repairing and rebuilding will now commence. For its parts, the federal government is doing right in providing low interest loans to the 26 commercial properties and 66 homes damaged by the flames--Sit'n Sleep ain't offering a bad deal either--but watch out for amoral illegal contractors willing to take advantage of the already victimized. As for the next potential natural disaster presenting a clear and present danger? Mudslides, coming this winter.

Speaking of disasters, Ben Bernanke is saying that this recession is over, technically speaking, but I don't think Californians could honestly say they agree. The housing market? Throughout California prices are down 11% from July, with some blaming the "thinning inventory of foreclosure properties." And don't get us started on jobs, as our OC Register reports that the number of persons working part-time when they would rather have a full-time job increased 80% this year. Even Kobe said he would consider outsourcing his jump shot to China. There's still quite some work to be done.

Luckily, City Council is trying to get to business. Give them some slack on that budget thing; they are cutting into their vacation time, after all, to get something through sometime soon. For that matter, at least they can agree on some things that are just too important to push back, namely limiting the number of roosters per citizen and finally figuring out just how many people ride their bikes.

On the environmental front, Gov. Schwarzenegger is insisting on switching 33% of our electric utilities over to renewable sources by 2020. Good on him, but do you get the feeling he is putting off closing those state parks for as long as is politically possible? With fifteen thousand Heal the Bay-ers set to march to the shores this Saturday, he might be right to wait another week. Oh, and remember how we're running out of water? A new idea has us looking into wastewater south of the border.

Finally, don't expect to find much good news if your looking in Sacramento's direction right about now. Increasing numbers of furlough days and a potential 30% tuition hike for UCs next year (you read correctly) have workers protesting in San Francisco. That and a proposal for a new and surprisingly regressive tax system have us thinking its going to get worse, not better. Well, at least the Legislature voted to reduce our prison population by some 17,000 inmates this year. If some obscure datasystem can't prove our educational system deserves federal aid, we'll need all the chump change we can get our hands on.

(Gulp.)

This image was taken by flickr user erjkprunczyk. It was used under the Creative Commons license.

Coming Up: Year Long Loop

Holly Willis — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 12:56:13 -0700

An algorithm is "a machine for the motion of parts," says Alexander Galloway very elegantly in his book Gaming: On Algorithmic Culture. He writes extensively about video games, arguing that they offer us insight into the structures of today's information culture. I wonder, though, if the rise in video projects that call attention to their structure isn't also a reflection of that information culture... Why? Because these projects overtly invite us to think about how information is organized...

Anyway, these thoughts are sparked by the upcoming screening of LA-based artist Cindy Bernard's film Year Long Loop, which screens at USC Thursday night (September 17, 2009). The film compiles a series of video recordings collected by Bernard, whose work includes photographs and projections that explore the relationship among cinema, memory and landscape. Captured between October 2004 and September 2005 from a ridge in Mt. Washington, the video in its full length version is made up of 12 two-hour segments in a continuous 24-hour loop. Each five-minute shot captures a day; you'll be relieved to know that the shorter, two-hour version of the film will screen at USC; in this version, the five-minute shots are reduced to 24 seconds. Find out why Bernard felt compelled to make the video, and why it can be so neatly shortened...

"I live in Mt. Washington at the top of a natural amphitheater of sound," explains Bernard when asked what compelled her to make the project. "Ice cream trucks, parties, car horns, coyotes, fireworks and of course helicopters combine with owls, hawks, crows and other bird species, buzzing flies, my dog and other sounds from my ridge to create an mix that's in constant flux. I'd been wanting to document the mix for some time when a friend (Raymond Pettibon) gave me a video camera to shoot The Inquisitive Musician. I then realized I had the perfect tool to record my little ambient video."

Bernard adds that she had been watching the films of LA avant-garde filmmaker James Benning, much of whose work is highly structured, at the same time, and had also just worked on a CD compilation called soundCd no. 2 for SASSAS (The Society for the Activation of Social Space Through Art and Sound); the CD includes John Cage's 4'33" as performed by James Tenney. Says Bernard, "These works and other similar pieces are important to me and I decided to do an homage." She continues, "That's what determined the structure - but of course it's not really about the math; it's more about attentiveness and small shifts which result in aural and visual surprises."

Asked how this project connects with her other work, Bernard makes a key observation: "Some would say that absence plays a role in much of my visual work - the emptied spaces of Ask the Dust or the "Location Proposal" works, the empty and soundless bandshells, etc. And in Year Long Loop, you are presented with a seemingly blank vista which of course isn't vacant at all..."

The video, like the work of Benning and Cage, asks you to pay attention, actively, and to note and celebrate the surprises that occur when we focus. However, that kind of attentive viewing is in tension with an awareness of structure - the number of shots, their organization, and so on. The project, then, is in a sense algorithmic, but it's also just as keenly attuned to the serendipitous events - the honking horn or buzzing fly - that within this rigorous form spark all kinds of strange pleasures.

the details:
Thursday, September 17, 2009
7:00 p.m.
USC's School of Cinematic Arts
Room 108, George Lucas Building
900 W. 34th Street
Los Angeles
Free

Dependence

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 09:36:43 -0700

Manny, the Dominican, is up to bat in Monday's Dodgers game. What song blasts as he walks up? "El Rey" the classic, I'm-down-but-not-out, you'll-miss-me-when-I'm-gone song and which next to the Mexican national anthem stirs up the strongest emotions in Mexicans. That's how my Mexican Independence week started.

So does this mean the Mexican is now universal? In L.A. the embrace of the Mexican has been a rollercoaster ride. The minority Eastern seaboard immigrants who arrived in the mid 1800s loved Mexican culture, so they told their rich, future father in-laws. It kind of went downhill from there for Mexicans. In the mid 1900s "Spanish" food restaurants with sleepy, sombrero and serape wearing Mexicans symbolized the safe Mexican image. At around the same time, some giants of political and cultural thought spent time in the area, like Ricardo Flores-Magon and Octavio Paz.

There are so many layers of Mexican identity to peel back here, right? The 1932 anti-capitalism "American Tropical" mural - whitewashed after it was painted by Mexican muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros - rises slowly. Mexican immigrants and the children of immigrants, like Antonio Villaraigosa and Antonia Hernandez, rise to the prominence of the offspring of L.A.'s other immigrants.

These accomplishments exist at the same time that city leaders in nearby municipalities attempt to enact ordinances keep Mexican immigrants from living whithin their city boundaries.

One night, in mid-September of 2002, driving north to my place in Arcadia, I made that soft turn on the northbound I-5 near Santa Fe Springs that reveals the downtown L.A. skyline. The Library Towers, the tallest building west of Chicago, had its top lights in green, white, and red. I took it as a welcoming beacon.

Immigration researcher Roberto Suro at USC tells me the current recession is bound to change what constitutes Mexican identity in Los Angeles. The extent of the change depends on the length of the downturn. Fewer jobs mean less Mexican immigration. The influx of Mexican immigrants won't stop, though. Once the economy picks up again, the immigration will pick back up again. In L.A. that leads to a complex mix of Mexican identity, with people with strong Mexican-American identity whose ancestors arrived a century ago. And recent immigrants puzzled that the dark-skinned man in a suit who looks like him, doesn't speak Spanish.

Loyola Marymount University's David Ayon remembers it was a mystery to him as a boy growing up in El Paso how crossing a bridge leads you to a place that's supposed to be different, with different rules. OK, so now he's an expert on cross-border politics but he says there's something to the idea that neighbors often have more in common and should spend less time building fences than working out how they're going to live happily next to each other.

Coming Up: Logorama @ Flux

Holly Willis — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 15:37:20 -0700

Ronald McDonald is the gun-toting badass wreaking havoc on a Los Angeles depicted as - and inhabited solely by - logos in H5's ecstatically apocalyptic short animation Logorama. The red-headed clown tyrannizes the city, the Michelin Man tries to counter, but they're well-matched, and soon, it looks like a lot of logos are going to die. The hilarious short by the directing team from France revels less in the wild antics of its characters and the superb 3-D animation spun by its makers than in the dizzying, thrilling effect of insouciant trademark violation. And it doesn't stop - the story unfolds, the city splits into pieces, and still the logos continue, well into deep space. The not-so-subtle commentary deftly punctures consumer culture, managing to dazzle at both the low and the high end; it also marks the Flux Screening Series as, again, the place to find the best in contemporary moving imagery. The next show, coming up Tuesday, September 15, at the Hammer Museum, also features work by Jonathan Glazer, Spike Jonze, Synola and more. Oh, and if you want to read a bit more about Logorama, check out this nice interview with the makers on the Creativity site.

the details:
See the Flux site for RSVP details
the screening is free
Hammer Museum
screening: 8:00 p.m.; party: 10:00 p.m. Billy Wilder Theater
10899 Wilshire Blvd.
310-443-7000

Flesh

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 09:54:50 -0700

Fernando Botero's disasters are ours too. From Colombia, a colonial country racked by violence and destruction for decades, Botero depicts images Southern Californians are all too familiar with.

One hundred of Botero's paintings, drawings and sculptures are on display through December at the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana.

The rolling hills near Gorman could have easily inspired the landscape in the 1989 painting "The Picnic." In it a couple enjoys the outdoors; the man lays his cheek on the tablecloth across from two red nail-polished hands, one holding a drink, the other a cigarette. And in the distance - maybe fed by the Santa Ana winds - a plume of smoke rises from a mountaintop. The couple embraces nature's beauty, even as tragedy looms nearby.

In "The Earthquake" Botero turns the viewer into a witness of destruction in progress: colonial churches topple, wood balconies fall, a woman screams from a window for help. The buildings may differ from those destroyed in Northridge in 1994 or Long Beach in 1933 but the piles of rubble and lives lost are the same.

Drug trafficking-related murder has put a stranglehold on Colombia in recent decades, similar to the gang and drug-related killing we see in the Southland's impoverished neighborhoods. In "The Wall (Execution)" Botero depicts a man falling as bullets pierce him and gives top billing to a principal protagonist in this drama, the bullets. The projectiles are have unsettling, and cartoon-like detail. As they float in mid-trajectory, they're equally harmless and deadly.

No reproduction does justice to the original artwork and that's particularly true for the Botero works on display at the Bowers Museum. Many of the paintings are large scale (some 6½ feet by 5½ feet). In "After Velazquez" in which he paints one of the Meninas - the vibrancy of the paint convinces the eye that it's looking at a brilliant fabric.

There are plenty of the fleshy, large portraits on display, the ones that have made Fernando Botero's work unmistakable in the last 40 years. His rotund aristocrats are painted on horses - a traditional colonial technique - some under the shade of banana trees, others with intricately coiffed hair. Are they on their way to their garden box seats at the Hollywood Bowl?

77. “Who wouldn’t want to own the Los Angeles Times?”

D.J. Waldie — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 17:05:04 -0700

On the blustery spring day in 2000 when the Los Angeles Times was sold to the Tribune Company under the guise of a merger, Kathryn Downing – picked to be the publisher of the Times by its hapless CEO Mark Willes – answered a question which she thought had an obvious answer. A Times staff member, standing in a packed Chandler Auditorium to hear news of the sale, asked why anyone would want to buy the Times

“We are a crown jewel,” Downing answered. “Who wouldn’t want to own the Los Angeles Times?”

“Inventing LA: The Chandlers and Their Times,” (a documentary airing on Monday, October 5 at 9:00 p.m. on KCET), answers that question in bleak detail and long after the paper and the Tribune Company passed into the hands of the even more hapless Sam Zell and into bankruptcy.

Most of the 170 members of the extended Chandler family would have a smiled sardonically if any of them had read Downing’s answer in the LA Weekly a few days later. Who wouldn’t want to own the Los Angeles Times? The Chandlers wouldn’t, although three generations of Chandlers had run it.

By then, some Chandlers had done everything they could to profit by ridding themselves of the newspaper. They no longer wanted this most visible symbol of their place in a city they no longer needed. Embittered by Norman Chandler’s decision in 1960 to turn over the paper and leadership of the family trust to his son Otis Chandler, two generations of family members had spent more than thirty years maneuvering for that day in late March 2000.

They had hired Mark Willes five years before to spruce up a troubled asset, not to publish a newspaper. Willes’ job was to boost the value of the shares in the Chandler trust, ironically designed by family patriarch Harry Chandler sixty years earlier to prevent the sale of the paper. When Willes’ work was done, and the Chandlers completed the torturous stock deal needed to transfer ownership, the Tribune Company possessed a nearly great newspaper about which Tribune managers knew next to nothing in a town they strove to dislike almost as much as a majority of the Chandlers already did.

Characteristically, the deal was poisonous for everyone involved except the Chandlers and their financial advisors. And now you can add Sam Zell to those who wouldn’t want to own the Times; he now calls his takeover of the Tribune Company a disaster.

The image on this page was made by Flickr user Kansas Sebastian. It was used under a Creative Commons license.

Doug Aitken's Migration

Holly Willis — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 15:15:08 -0700

"Beaver! Beaver! Beaver!" shouted a rowdy group of tourists in a Starline doubledecker cruising Santa Monica Boulevard last night. They were cheerfully heckling the crowd gathered outside the Regen Projects II gallery in West Hollywood watching Doug Aitken's dual projection of a 24-minute video titled Migration, which features luscious close-ups of a bevy of wild animals - including a beaver - all of whom are uncomfortably poking around various roadside motel rooms, pawing at the ugly carpets, romping in the scratchy bedding and, in the case of the beaver, enjoying a bath. "Video installation can be this workshop where ideas can collide and combine and be released again," Aitken said to me in an interview a few years ago. "And I think that's what I'm always striving to do - to use these opportunities to engage a series of challenges and questions." But what are those challenges and questions now with this new project?

Aitken, who was born in Redondo Beach in 1968 and attended Art Center College of Design in the late '80s, began his career shooting photographs, and then turned to video installation in the early 1990s. His previous work has explored the unfolding of time, the disruption of spaces, the role of the physical body and notions of being, and he has typically used video installation - with multiple screens inviting new ways of experiencing a story - as a way to explore these ideas. You could say he spatializes time, and temporalizes space; he returns to the origins of cinema and its frame-by-frame march through temporality but he juxtaposes that breakdown with the seamless ebb and flow of video; then he asks us to ponder these two versions of time by meandering around a series of screens in darkened spaces, gleaning fragments of story and character through our own experience of fragmentation and reconstruction.

Some examples: Aitken's Sleepwalkers is what the artist dubs a "broken screen" narrative in a book he wrote of the same title; it consisted of gigantic projections onto six facades of New York's Museum of Modern Art in January and February of 2007. The silent story, told in exquisite imagery, chronicled the lives of five characters as they moved through the city. Visitors strolled around the block to see the silent film's 11-minute segments and the large images, with many of them close-ups that exacerbated the sense of enormity of the faces and figures of the characters, were visible from blocks away from the museum. In essence, the characters became the city, and the project offered a provocative consideration of city as a space of multiple, mutable information flows.

In his 2005 project titled A Moment, Aitken united a series of vaguely linked moments across 11 screens suspended from the ceiling of the Regen Projects gallery space. They were positioned at eye level and in a gently curving S-pattern, with mirrors on the backs of each screen. The video footage showed images of people sleeping and then waking, and these shots then drifted into those of empty parking lots and the arching lines of telephone wires stretched across the sky. Anonymous grids of mirrored skyscraper windows and empty bedrooms were intercut with close-ups of eyes, skin and torsos. All in all, the project suggested liminal, refracted moments, places hovering between other places, and a shared psychic vulnerability.

With the video installation Blow Debris Aitken similarly played with storytelling with a narrative of sorts, but once again fractured the story with multiple projections and spaces. Viewers followed a group of nude wanderers in a desert landscape littered with detritus - rusting shopping carts, smashed televisions, gutted cars. The characters meandered about, and you could almost feel the dusty sand and the dry wind, as well as the erasure of a grounded sense of time and space. And then things exploded, time reversed, and Aitken achieved a kind of psychic vertigo; watching the reversal, you felt compelled to walk around some more, back and forth through rooms of temporal and spatial dislocation and relocation.

Finally, with electric earth, which won the International Prize at the Venice Biennale in 1999, Aitken staged a loose, 9-minute narrative across eight screens; viewers followed a single character who leaves his bedroom to wander through an empty urban landscape at night. He responds to the city's invisible pulse - the electric earth - through his body, which shakes and undulates. In turn, we wander through the installation's numerous screens, glimpsing a detail here, a gesture there. There is a story, in the sense of a linear progression of events. However, our experience is far more ambient, with repetition and variation replacing the rising action and forward thrust of traditional narrative.

Reflecting on these earlier projects, then, it's clear that Aitken's latest project is less centered on the multiplication of screens and the possibilities of nonlinear narrative of his earlier work, and instead settles down to consider the relationship between the natural and cultural as they meet both within the video and on the street where it's projected. With the outdoor projection at Regen II, the shadows of viewers merge with the images on the exterior walls, and it's impossible not to ponder our connection. Aitken zooms in on the animals - the soft feathers, luscious fur, delicate rabbit ears - and spectators frequently sighed audibly in response to beauty and cuteness. But the video is not about sentimentality as much as the juxtaposition of unlikely things designed to prompt thought.

the details:
outdoor projection, sunset - sunrise: Regen Projects II
9016 Santa Monica Boulevard
indoor projection with soundtrack
Regen Projects
633 North Almont
Through October 17, 2009

Urban Screens: Anne Bray and Jon 9

Holly Willis — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 11:55:54 -0700

Corporate imagery surrounds us, especially in LA, so it's a pleasure to find great big moving pictures made by artists on the walls and screens usually dominated by advertising. Projections on Lake brings artist-made videos outside as projected images on a giant wall on Lake Avenue in Pasadena, and tonight's screening features a live performance by LA artists Anne Bray and Jon 9, who will mix their visuals live through the inspiration of music by Eve Beglarian. Bray is the founder of LA Freewaves, a 20-year-old media arts festival, as well as an artist who often works with video. "The arts are a place to experiment," Bray said two weeks ago at a seminar at USC. She went on to explain that she's interested in the ways in which art can communicate ideas and get people to think; in her own work, she functions primarily through right-brain provocation, using the senses and bringing together personal and political notions in spellbinding performances. Jon 9 also works with video, and describes himself as a multi-screen video designer and technologist. Together, the pair will liven up Pasadena tonight - don't miss it!

the details:
Saturday, September 12, 2009
8:00pm - 11:00pm
413 South Lake Ave, Pasadena
(between California and Del Mar)
Free
Projections on Lake

School Me

Erin Aubry Kaplan — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 22:25:39 -0700

Call me un-American, but I've feared the word 'choice' for a long time. It's the preferred euphemism for not addressing inequality or monopolies or greed or social reform, or general indifference to all of the above. What better word to make it sound as though you're putting everyone on a level playing field, or more precisely, a level harvesting field where all anybody has to do is reach up and pick fruit that's roughly the same distance above their head as anybody else's?

It's just a matter of how fast you pick the fruit. Of course, if one person has an automatic fruit-picker, or if somebody can hire other people to pick their fruit and then some, or if somebody's close fruit turns out to be rotten because the tree is bug-infested and the next tree is accounted for, or if somebody isn't able-bodied enough to pick at all and somebody else takes advantage...well, you see the problem with the field thing, even if it's level. 'Choice' gets hollow in a hurry, like a bug-infested trunk.

There's a lot of hollowness in the so-called School Choice Plan recently passed by the L.A. Unified School District. What's being touted as 'choice' and a plum opportunity for community empowerment (another favorite euphemism for a power grab) is really something opposite. The district sees potentially giving away 50 new campuses to the most qualified operators--more than likely charter-school operators--rather than keeping them in-house as the kind of big change local education needs. But there's no guarantee that new casts of characters produce new results; less oversight is not such a good thing if people, even well meaning people, don't know what they're doing.

'Choice' is actually the problem I have with charters, even the successful ones. Charters can select kids, and then use their own criteria to keep selecting them; public schools have to take everybody. Call me a socialist--please--but there's something noble in the obligation to serve everyone. Lest anybody forget, schools are more obligated than most public entities to do that because schools are the oldest purveyors of inequality in our history. How many studies of modern-day segregation do we have to read to realize that? How many crappy, all-colored schools do we have to write about before we decide to do serious intervention?

The district plan might go down better with me if it included some provisions to serve the most underperforming group of students in the district, black students. But it doesn't. The plan does mention English Language Learners, as it should, but no one else as a group. Why not? I know that African Americans are barely ten percent of the student population, but they are the most imperiled. They always have been. The district that serves them owes them a plan, and a course of action, that takes that into account once and for all.

This image was taken by flickr user Pip R. Lagenta. It was used under the Creative Commons license.

The Blindness Series

Holly Willis — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 16:41:54 -0700

Lines of text float against a milky white background, the words hovering just beyond perception and remaining images of text rather than words to be read. The images in turn embody a handful of ideas - about language, metaphor, communication and the ability or inability to see - all of which constitute the 10-minute video by the LA-based video artist Tran T. Kim-Trang called Alexia. The term designates "word blindness," a condition that afflicts stroke victims and prevents them from perceiving individual letters. Rather than explaining the condition, Alexia instead enacts it through its visuals, its sound and its use of text, and the video becomes a means for exploring a nexus of ideas without culminating in a polemic or concise conclusion, and it contributes to Tran's stature as a videomaker who works with care on complex ideas. The video can now finally be found easily - it was just released by Video Data Bank, the great Chicago-based distributor of video art; it's one of the eight videos that constitute Tran's The Blindness Series, which, as a whole, embodies a video genre know as the "essayistic," a term used since the early days of cinema to designate films and videos that follow in the footsteps of the written essay and the work of writers such as Montaigne, who eschewed the careful arrangement of a convincing argument in favor of loosely structured explorations. The cinematic essay boasts a long and venerable history, with some of the most respected filmmakers tackling the genre and crafting extraordinary films. The video essay has enjoyed a shorter lifespan but also claims a significant segment of overall video production and critical attention, especially from 1980 onward with the eruption of autobiographical video pieces offering insight into notions of identity and subjectivity. Tran has played a key role in the evolution of the essayistic, both as a maker who has shown her work extensively at festivals and museums around the world, and as an Associate Professor in the Art Department at Scripps College. The two-DVD boxed set showcases her contributions to the genre, highlighting especially her attention to the role of text-as-image...

76. Muttering retreats

D.J. Waldie — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 14:24:36 -0700

I met Robin Kramer only once, more than a year ago. When she resigned as Chief of Staff to Mayor Villaraigosa in August, Ms. Kramer was memorably called the city's chief grown up and the levelest head in Los Angeles politics in the Los Angeles Times. Before she left the mayor’s office, she had a distinguished career serving men with demanding personalities – Councilmember Richard Alatorre, Mayor Riordan, Eli Broad, and Mayor Villaraigosa.

She had called and invited me to City Hall, I suppose because I had written occasionally about Mayor Villaraigosa, sometimes hopefully and sometimes skeptically. I had hoped that the city’s first Latino mayor since the 1870s would be a sign of something. I had feared that Villaraigosa’s short tenure in the state Legislature was exactly the wrong experience to lead Los Angeles.

Still, I’m pretty naïve. I took a bus, a train, and the subway to City Hall because I was flattered to be asked by Ms. Kramer. If she had an agenda, I was oblivious to it. It turned out that she wanted to show me the mayor’s office.

The rooms the mayor has are grand and a little worn, like a great hotel that has had negligent owners. The conference room where the media gather for press meetings is large but crowded. The oversize furniture didn’t seem to fit. The mayor’s ceremonial office has a brave and optimistic mural on the far wall, but it’s dully colored, indistinct. I could see why Mayor Villaraigosa rarely uses this high, ornate room. It’s imposing but pointless – designed to impress the little men who were elected to serve in it and his visitors from the sticks.

Kramer showed me the room where Tom Bradley kept his exercise equipment. I thought of the two-bit chiselers who had sat there in the 1930s and 1940s – political hacks who had run the mayor’s extortion and bribery operations from that little room where Bradley’s stationary bike rested.

Ms. Kramer wished me well after our brief tour. She went to a meeting. I went down through City Hall’s cool marble loggias, triumphantly in the style of 1920s democratic totalitarianism.

I wondered then – have always wondered – how place matters in the shaping of a mind. I should have asked if the muttering of the building – its dozens of incised mottoes – had suggested anything of interest to the mayors Ms. Kramer served. If the white, middle-class, Protestant, and Republican future imagined in the fabric of City Hall in 1928 still touched anyone in passing.

The image on this page was made by Flickr user calwest. It was used under a Creative Commons license.

75. Perfectly ordinary

D.J. Waldie — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 17:23:35 -0700

Los Angeles lacks the kind of official warning we’d see on any other consumer product. Perhaps those illuminated Caltrans signs along the freeway can be reprogrammed to read “Get out now! While you still can!”

Today’s news is wildfires. Tornadoes, flood, and earthquake can’t be far behind.

Los Angeles is a dangerous city. As Mike Davis took pains to point out in Ecology of Fear, where we live is hardly fit for habitation. Any reasonable assessment of risk would limit development here to a single story of wood frame construction – and only in the few areas above a 100-year flood and below the quick burning chaparral. None of it would be safe from earthquakes, but a small house is least likely to kill you when it twists off its foundation. Then there’s earthquake liquefaction, when the ground beneath your feet turns into cream of wheat. And drought. And mountain lions. And plague, which swept in during a warm October in 1924.

If Los Angeles were built to fit its hazards, the city would be village about the size it was in 1850 when it became an outpost on the margin of Manifest Destiny (and seen as monstrous, even then). It was a lethal little town. With a population of less 4,500 by 1860, Los Angeles suffered a murder a day.

The lethality of our home has always been high. But not uniquely so. America is a hard country and abounds with places to be wretchedly dismembered, dispossessed, knocked off, or driven to extremes by solitude.

Of all of hazardous America, Los Angeles is singled out. As Susan Orlean notes in her New Yorker blog entry on the August burning, “It underscored the essential absurdity of Los Angeles – a city of far too many people, perched on wobbly geology, without water, and perfectly flammable.”

That “perfectly” is perfect. As if Los Angeles only becomes itself in its capacity to be obliterated. And this awful perfection is “essential.” It cannot be abated. Those scary movies about relentless monsters and ever returning terminators are really about Los Angeles.

The city’s shortcomings in both of its aspects – as heaven and as hell – explain why we imagine it coming to an end, over and over. It’s the story of our disappointment in a city that never delivers ultimately on the extravagance of its dreams or its nightmares.

I think our home is perfect. Perfectly ordinary in its mix of joy and tragedy.

The image of the Station Fire on this page was made by Flickr user Kansas Sebastian. It was used under a Creative Commons license.

Wish You Were Here

Erin Aubry Kaplan — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 23:46:44 -0700

The post-vacation bubble didn't last long. L.A. and Maui are separated by five hours in a plane, two hours of time zone, ocean dynamics (trade winds versus coastal fog), and so much, much more than that.

Driving home from an errand, I make the last turn onto my street and see just past it a phalanx of police cars. There's yellow tape and flashing lights. It's nothing I haven't seen before; more than once in the last four years I've come home only to find out I can't come home because the cops are searching for this or that suspect who's fled from Crenshaw Boulevard into the surrounding blocks. The blocks are cordoned off and there's nothing to do but wait until they're not.

It's a strange feeling, the waiting around until the ban is lifted from your own street. You think about the things you have to do around the house when you get back, like wash dishes and pay bills, and not about the fact that your house is a potential crime scene. I resent that potential. I resent it because it mocks my stubborn but very necessary and mostly valid idea that I live in a normal house on a normal block. On the other hand, how else am I supposed to live? How are any of us?

My neighbors don't fume about this intrusion into their sense of normalcy: It happens frequently enough in this stretch of Inglewood to be considered normal in its own right. When the police sound the all-clear, they go back home and resume what they were doing, shake the dust off their shoes and forget about it until the next time. This particular corner of the earth opens up and swallows what just happened, erases the last several hours of history. My neighbors might tut-tut or even laugh about it, like a SWAT lockdown was a funny thing that happened after church on a Sunday. I don't like this kind of minimizing or denial, though I understand it. I've been guilty of it more than once.

This time, it isn't our block that's roped off, but the one just around the corner. I'm instantly relieved about that, in a selfish way- I'm free, those folks aren't. Cheered by my liberation and intact sense of normalcy, I take my usual dog walk and head down the inconvenienced block, which is part of my usual route. I'm in full, civic-minded denial: I'll be damned if another Inglewood crime-scene sweep will keep me from my daily claim on the neighborhood. If the pleasures of Maui were mine to take home, surely home is a good place to take them. A safe place for dreams, wish-you-were-here photographs, good feeling. It has to be.

The police tape is gone, though people are still milling about in the street, talking. Turns out this was no search, but something far worse -somebody was killed. The victim was a pleasant man of about 30 that I knew from my dog-walking. Shot five times in the heart, a guy tells me soberly, by somebody who was more than likely in a gang. Died on his way to a trauma center that used to be closer, but isn't anymore. I'm stunned. Was Otis in a gang? I ask. The neighbor looks at me, but past me. "Not to my knowledge," he says.

I walk on with my dogs, chastened, outwitted again by some force I can't describe or make go away. The neighbors on the unfortunate block eventually disperse and go back inside. The peacefulness of this street that normally reigns returns. The earth closes up. Knowledge? Normalcy? How little we know, or care to know. Maybe that's best. Maybe that's a kind of death. I need another vacation already.

74. Newspapers and fried eggs

D.J. Waldie — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 17:46:26 -0700

I ate breakfast every morning in the mid-1950s before going to school. My mother fried four eggs (over easy) and four strips of bacon. My brother and I got two of each. She poured a glass of orange juice for my brother and another for me. He had toast. I rarely did. He didn’t read the Los Angeles Times, I always did. Or rather, I assembled my own newspaper from the kit of parts the Times presented daily. My father, who walked to the bus stop to get to his job at the gas company, left the paper behind on his chair at the kitchen table.

I read the non-political columnists. Jack Smith, of course, whose five-a-week slices of suburban life began in 1958. Matt Weinstock, with more of an edge from his own days at the Daily News. Jim Murray, the sports columnist. Although I wasn’t much interested in sports, I was interested words. And voices.

I read the movie reviews, largely because mine wasn’t much of a movie going family. I read the comics. Dick Tracy. L’il Abner. Orphan Annie. Gasoline Alley. I read the city news – just the headlines and the story ledes; rarely to the end. I didn’t read even that much of the national and world news, except to glance at the front page last. Or almost last, I looked at the editorial page for the editorial cartoon. Not for the paper’s cranky Republicanism, in its editorials and selection of right-wing columnists, famous but unreadable.

My famioy subscribed to the Times and the Long Beach Press-Telegram, then an afternoon paper. My father would sometimes bring home a copy of the Herald Examiner he picked up on the bus on the way home from work. Two papers every day – sometime three.

And the experience, in retrospect, wasn’t much different from the experience of “new media” . . . finding the stuff you wanted to read every day in the welter of stuff you didn’t care about. Finding the voices that came alive in your mind’s ear. Making my own “newspaper” of many newspapers, even from the Times, which was widely considered one of the worst newspapers of that era. It was easy. A part of the morning that delivered the satisfaction of the two fried eggs and bacon made by my loving mother.

Maybe all that the old media needs is more breakfasts and more mothers.

The image on this page was made by Flickr user Martin Cathrae. It was used under a Creative Commons license.

Surviving Los Angeles

Harry Pallenberg — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 11:09:57 -0700

Editor's Note: The last installment of producer and director Harry Pallenberg's guest blog was delayed by our coverage of last week's fire. (Apologies, Harry!) He closes out his guest blog with everything you need to know to survive L.A.....

So after the stunning success of SHOTGUN FREEWAY - theatrically released on three screens across the nation, a run on the Sundance Channel... and just over 8 YEARS to break even! - well, let's just say I realized I needed a paying job. Luckily, Morgan (co-director of SHOTGUN ) was ready to change jobs, so I literally replaced him at Huell Howser Productions, where I became one of two producers for Huell. It's great. I love doing research on California, learning its strange and varied history, finding un-findable photos and films, tracking down distant descendants of Donner Party survivors (for the Wedding of the Waters episode - one of my favorites), and just generally checking out places that viewers suggest.

Stuff like that has filled my days for the past 13+ years.

I am also the "all things tech" person. I helped bring Huell Howser Productions out of the age of linear editing on 1 inch videotape machines -

- and into the world of digital video editing with Final Cut Pro. (That thing is literally 6 feet tall.) I also enjoyed bringing us on-line adding MySpace , YouTube , iTunes, Facebook and now even Twitter into the fold.

The worst part of my job is that people are always asking me where to eat or what to do. (You don't show you doctor friends your boils, do you? With that in mind, here are a few L.A.-centric places to eat and things to do.

DRINKS: Too many to list. Also, I'm not really a bar kind of guy, so if I've been there it is probably OVER. But, if I have to, I like Yamashiro for drinks or MOVIE NIGHT, and there's also the Tiki-Ti if in Hollywood. It is tiny, but literally under my office window. Or better still Tonga Hut if in the Valley. Seems like some roller-derby vixens were there last time - always a good thing.

You might be able to tell I'm partial to sweet drinks with umbrellas.

PIZZA: As a former New Yorker (who has embraced all things L.A.), I still have an odd kinship with pizza, so I won't say what's best. But Mulberry is fine for a plain slice and the sausage at il Capriccio on Hollywood is pretty darn good.

GENERAL EATS: Musso & Frank's is a true classic, oldest in Hollywood. Red leather booths. Do not order pasta - this is a meat and potatoes kind of place. I usually get this: Hearts of lettuce salad with the Roquefort vinaigrette, filet mignon, Cottage Fries (order right away as they take 40 minutes) and creamed spinach... Martini, or Bloody Mary. Unless it's Thursday when the special is Chicken Pot Pie. There's also Barney's Beanery, which sports over 130 some odd beers, a few pool tables, and the 2nd best Chili in L.A.. ....Can't tell you about #1.

BREAKFAST: Dukes used to be at The Tropicana, former hotel to music legends touring through LA. Now only the Cafe exists at its new location by the Whiskey. GREAT for breakfast, make sure you add a Banana Shake to your order. Then there's Good Neighbor. Maybe not as good as Dukes, not as much history, but its family run: Mom & Pop are managers and some of their kids are wait-staff. Great low prices, and spicy pico de gallo added to omelets make this a favorite of mine. The parking can be a pain, if you are coming from the west - just grab the first spot on the street half way between Lankershim and the next block.

THAI: Sanamluang Cafe. No Thai Elvis (that's at Palms Thai) but it's the best Thai around. Open till 4AM... crazy good Noodles (Pad Kee Mow), but sometimes you just gotta get the crunch Garlic Pepper Beef over rice. Chase either down with a HUGE Thai Iced Tea.

WAT THAI - R.I.P.

MEXICAN : It's almost too hard to figure out what to post... For Tamales go to La Mascota buy a bunch and freeze 'em - only $1.35 each! For a non-dive / non-taco truck experience try some mole at La Cabinita. Best dive type, maybe not so safe depending on the time and if you are alone is Carnitas Michoacan... The al pastor or carne asada are great as long as you get it with LOTS of the smoky red salsa, and a horchata. Best 'Gringo-Mex' (aka totally safe, not autentico) is Poquito Mas. I still like the original in the Chauenga Pass - same mini-mall & parking issues at Good Neighbor. This is L.A. so, if you can't park, I recommend driving on to the next hole in the wall you see - probably not too bad.

Want to go SALVADOREAN? El Amanecer Salvadoreno. Only 1 review on Yelp, but I love this place Beef stew - ropa vieja-ish - is very good.

BURGER: I am a true In-N-Out kind of guy (animal style, please), but The Counter just opened up close to my house and I must say it's a bit spendy - but damn good. Get the onion strings and sweet potato fries 50/50 basket.

MIDDLE-EASTERN: Carousel - the one on Hollywood Blvd. Not as fancy or 'nice' as the Glendale one, but the food is insane. Lentil soup - YES; walnut paste thingy - YES; everything - YES! Next up - even if it is just for the Iraqui Laffa bread, and multi-salad sampler - The Hummus Bar & Grill

Eaten your fill? On to THINGS TO DO:

Half do / half eat: Take a horseback ride past the Hollywood sign and have a Mexican dinner then ride back over the hill.

Another half & half: Walk around and eat free fruit.

Lots of tours, and they are not only for tourists, even the ones that are and are actually in Japanese can be quite fun... get out and take some. ESOTOURIC, The Neon Tour, and Starline are a few of the better ones. Otherwise try this.

Spring is when you can see an amazing thing. Spain has its running of the bulls, but we have the Grunion Run. It's a late night, but the kids love it.

At Laurel Canyon Dog Park you can maybe see some movie stars. Last time I saw Mindy Cohn (Facts of Life) and Jessica Alba. Or better yet, maybe you'll get to see dogs and coyotes fence fighting.

Franklyn Canyon - I had been going here for years, feeding the ducks, but it wasn't until we did a show on the place that I found out it's literally the center of L.A.. Here the marker in case you get lost.

Ever wanted to fly a plane? Well you can fly a scale model with the L.A. Valley Flyers they have there own mini air-field and fly under the take-off pattern for Van Nuys airport. Another good one for the kids.

LAist always has good current info.

Want to see a game, or go to a game and people watch? Go to Dodger game when they let you on the field & watch fireworks - usually on a Friday night. The only bad thing is that Dodger Stadium is the only baseball stadium in the USA with NO public transportation going to it. In fact, L.A. has a TON of sporting options: Dodgers, Angels, Lakers, Clippers, Galaxy, Chivas USA, Sparks, Kings, Ducks, UCS, UCLA, Auto racing at Irwindale Racetrack, Calif. Speedway. Horse Racing at Hollywood Park or Santa Anita, LA Marathon and the easier / funner Bike-a-thon as well as various and misc other colleges, minor leagues and strange events - like The Derby Dolls Roller Derby.

Want some more history? Visit Campo de Cahuenga - the "Birthplace of California." Then there's the best hidden gem ever: The Zanja Madre. It's over by Olvera Street. which is crazy touristy (although it is close to Phillipe's.. yum), but if you fight your way over to the Avila Adobe you can find some herringbone patterned brick that marks the Zanja Madre or Mother Ditch - which was made to bring water to the 1st Angelino's. You can actually still see some of it sticking out of the steep embankment along Broadway. It was still around in Mulholland's time, in fact one of his early successes was covering the top so animals would not foul the water! Pretty cool bit of old LA history.

Last to do - SEE A MOVIE! Hollywood is the movie capitol of the world, so after you Nextflix SHOTGUN FREEWAY - you should see some other films... and don't just see them at a multi-plex get out there. The Thom Andersen film Los Angeles Plays Itself. A documentary on how Los Angeles has been used and depicted in the movies. Here is a YouTube clip.

You can also go to some of the many outdoor screenings like Cinespia at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery. Across the street from my office is The Hollywood Outdoor Cinema. You can also still do it the old fashioned way - at the drive in. My favorite is the MISSION TIKI. Regular drive-in too blasé? How about a drive in that DRIVES IN like the Hollywood MobMov? Along the same lines is The Angle City Drive-in. Hope to see you at the Sept. 12th screening of Fast Times At Ridgemont High!

Now speaking of all these movies, tune in to my latest movie WOMEN IN BOXES - The Documentary Film About Magic's Better Half!

You can set your Tivo's for Friday Sept. 25 at 9:00PM on the Documentary Channel, or Log onto http://www.fancast.com or http://www.snagfilms.com in early September. You can also wait till October and catch us on iTunes.

South

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 10:48:34 -0700

The Stars and Bars is dancing a reluctant merengue with the flags of Simon Bolivar.

A nice vacation earlier this summer to visit the in-laws in North Carolina revealed this interesting juxtaposition: along my daily morning walk I passed by the old cemetery in Statesville, set aside in 1756 to inter the remains of the town's pioneers and the dead from the Indian Wars and later the brave men who died in Civil War battles defending the Confederacy.

The burial ground is in the old part of this small town, across the street from the massive Greek-revival Presbyterian Church and a stone wall away from the still-active 19th century synagogue that's cute in its modest design and size, compared to the nearby churches.

A couple of blocks away, Statesville's downtown seems straight out of Main Street USA central casting: a jewelry store, the old bank, the 19th century city hall (with arches reminiscent of L.A.'s much larger city hall of the same era)

I was jolted to see - for the first time in the decade or so I've been visiting - the red, yellow, and blue of the Colombian flag. Those South American colors filled storefront windows, at one establishment respectfully next to the more proportioned North Carolina flag and the Stars and Stripes. I'm a bit slow to see the change. Between 1990 and 2000 the Hispanic population in North Carolina grew nearly 400% to nearly 400,000 people. Most are foreign born Mexicans, with a small portion from South and Central America.

So in Statesville, it's the Colombians who've planted their flags on Main Street and are waiting for someone to join them at the dance.

Better Know 'SoCal Minds'

Maxwell Strachan — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 09:05:22 -0700

Welcome back to 'Better Know a SoCal Blogger' on KCET.org! Every week we will be featuring one of the city's many fascinating and first-rate blogs. This week we are speaking with Craig Matsuda of SoCal Minds, a blogger focusing on Southern California's most "intriguing research, ideas, activity, [and] people."

The Basics:

Blogger Name: Craig Matsuda
Official Name of Blog: SoCal Minds
When did you start blogging? This past March
Do you have a day job? I'm a consultant, free-lance editor-writer, job hunter
How many hours do you spend online/on your computer? 1-12 hours
Where do you physically blog from? My home office
Can you provide a link to the blog's first post?
This is the first one I can find.

The Lowdown:

So, what's your blog about?

It's a search for intelligent life in Southern California --it brings you word about intriguing research, ideas, activities, events and people found at the myriad of universities, colleges, think tanks and cultural and intellectual institutions

Why did you decide to start blogging?

To prove I could; to see if content counts in cyberspace.

And who is your ideal reader?

Smart, engaged, engaging folks with a sense of curiosity, humor and balance.

Can you explain your decision to deal exclusively with Southern California research institutions?

As someone who spent a career in fact-based mainstream media, I'm not great at overt opinionizing. I didn't want to tell you what I think; I'll save that for good friends at the bar. I did want to tell about folks who are doing amazing, long, hard work -- in labs, classrooms, libraries, practice rooms -- digging out stuff, analyzing and testing it and presenting it to the world for civil consideration and discussion. Their efforts are provable, arguable in fact; they often undergo stringent peer review before they publish. The institutions take great efforts, by hiring some talented journalists, to present information in clear, compelling ways. It's all stuff of great value, usefulness to the public discourse.

SoCal Minds performs the commendable service of providing broader context for newsworthy events. Do you believe other journalistic outlets do not adequately address the larger issues at stake when--for example--two journalists are returned from North Korea?

Honey, they shrunk my media. That's what I fear and feel too often when I see the products of the craft I've worked in for a career. It's tough. So I hope my tiny effort can help those who wish to put the news into context for themselves; they can get the expertise, research, detail and depth that will really make daily events make more sense by tapping into these terrific institutions of knowledge. And, by the way, many of them, they're paying for with their tax dollars.

Conversely, do you ever find yourself frustrated with a lack of research in an area that you personally consider worthy of investigation?

I'm rarely frustrated on this account; there's so much intriguing stuff to wander through and wonder about, why be unhappy?

You deal with the research findings of both privately-funded Think Tanks and Public Universities. Do you prefer one to the other?

I'm glad and grateful we've got both public and private research going on and that they find their own unique approaches and funders.

Ever wonder where these blog posts come from? Craig does the majority of his writing here:

Everyone has on opinion on if journalism is dying. Do blogs have anything to do with that?

Journalism, I hope, is changing its delivery method and finding a new business model after a catastrophic collision of new technologies, bad industry choices and leadership and a dire need to maintain traditional news values in confusing, uncertain times. Blogs have great merits of their own; some add journalistic value--that's just not the aim of many.

Can you give us an example of a L.A. Blog that does add journalistic value?

I'm afraid I'm addicted to LAObserved, but I'm learning daily about the great stuff out there on Chance of Rain, Zester Daily, and many, many more.....

And lastly, what's your favorite thing to do in L.A., outside of cyberspace?

I love encountering all the different people, cultures, ideas, experiences that coalesce and clash in the Southland. Everyone knows these, good and bad.

A screenshot of SoCal Minds:

We'd like to thank Craig again for taking the time out of his busy schedule to answer our questions. When you are looking for a quick intellectual fix, click on over to SoCal Minds, a fantastic source of SoCal insights. For more about think tanks and research institutions, check out our own Jeremy Rosenberg, who blogs for KCET at Think Tank LA.

73. The abandoned city

D.J. Waldie — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 18:14:50 -0700

Robin Rauzi in an essay in today’s Los Angeles Times finds her way finally to the Watts Towers. Perennially facing one catastrophe or another, the towers might be the perfect metaphor of Los Angeles – a place that many see as a bright but broken assemblage of disordered bits ready always to fall into ruin. The towers are labeled “baffling” in the headline to Rauzi’s piece, which is true enough about the city for some Angeleños as well.

Add that Sabato (Sam or Simon) Rodia arrived, built the towers, handed them over to a neighbor when he was finished, and then left Los Angeles forever. If you imagine that Los Angeles is always reached from the east, Rodia’s story might serve as another metaphor for the city – a place where you arrive after arduous travel, find insubstantial pleasures, ultimately find the city wanting, and finally abandon.

But if Los Angeles isn’t the terminal city of the East, but the leading edge of everything south of us, then the metaphor doesn’t work.

The towers are in trouble again. As Rauzi notes:

If Watts Towers, like Lady Liberty at the mouth of the Hudson River, was positioned in a prominent locale (say next to the intersection of the 10 and the 405), more Angeleños might demand it get sufficient attention and care from the tangle of government agencies it's been entrusted to. The skinny pie-slice of a lot and adjacent park are owned by the California State Parks but administered by Los Angeles' Department of Cultural Affairs, under a lease that lasts another 20 years. Since 1990, the site also has been on the National Register of Historic Landmarks, but that means it's worthy of protection, not that there's cash set aside to do it.

Just last month, two city commissions – Cultural Affairs and Cultural Heritage – met at City Hall to face dogged complaints of inadequate maintenance and poor conservation at the towers. There's talk of asking for help from the Getty Conservation Institute or from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and of soliciting private donations. It'll take an estimated $5 million to get them back in prime condition.

No truer metaphor than that – the towers and the city both governed piecemeal and badly maintained, but beloved intermittently . . .

. . . a place that was arrived at after an arduous journey from the westside, was briefly enjoyed, found wanting, and then abandoned again.

The image on this page was made by Flickr user The Photographer. It was used under a Creative Commons license.

Kennedy: "We are not going to let you down, my friend"

Yoli Martinez — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 13:56:57 -0700

As KCET programmer Bohdan Zachary reminds us, those of you looking for ways to remember the late Senator Ted Kennedy, can find a broad range of resources on KCET and PBS:

A rebroadcast of American Experience: The Kennedys follows the Kennedy story from Jack and Jackie Kennedy's White House through the national tragedies of the assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy. It can be watched on KCET beginning at 8pm, or you can stream it online here.
The Newshour offers a special tribute to Kennedy, including footage of the tribute to the Senator at the 2008 Democratic National Convention.
Lastly, Tavis Smiley discusses the legacy of the U.S. Senate's "liberal lion" with Georgia Rep. John Lewis and civil rights attorney Vernon Jordan. The tribute also features clips from Tavis' past conversations with the patriarch of the Kennedy dynasty.

Pixeltown remembers the late Senator Ted Kennedy the only way it can: via embedded viral podcast. Below is a clip in which Kennedy speaks to popular Spanish-language radio personality Piolin in East Los Angeles. He sings in that famous Massachusetts accent, and his last words are words to live by:

Pioke622-t
by hotternews

We'll try not to let you down, Senator Kennedy. Rest in peace.

Poll: Should the L.A. City Council take a pay cut?

Yoli Martinez — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 14:16:18 -0700

KCET Local's Brian Doherty has been blogging about City Council member's pay. So we wondered what you thought about it. Should Council members get a pay cut?

Should Los Angeles City Council members take a pay cut?(polls)

72. The unbuilt subway

D.J. Waldie — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 17:31:07 -0700

Symptom: the unbuilt subway that would take riders from the core of downtown west, past an invisible separating line.

That line isn’t diagnostic of our unease. Every city is a puzzle of lines through personal geographies. On my own block, I almost never walk on the west side of the street, even if westward is my destination. I’ll cross at the end of the block. Why? I don’t know. Habit or distrust of the unordinary. Forty feet away for 60 years, and there’s the other side of the street, which I know by sight as well as any 1000 feet of suburban street might be known. But I rarely go there.

Not the dividing line – which could be drawn anywhere, which has been redrawn repeatedly in the city’s history – but the unbuilt subway. The missing subway is symptomatic. It stands for what Los Angeles has not wanted, and it has little to do with public transit. What we do not want is a mingling and hybridization of our geographies. A miscegenation of space.

The image on this page was made by Flickr user Victoria Bernal. It was used under a Creative Commons license.

For the Life Of Us

Erin Aubry Kaplan — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 18:18:37 -0700

When is a health care reform debate just a debate? Just about all the time, though the likelihood of something actually happening in this post-millennial moment are high enough to drive people to town-hall meetings where they passionately defend their American right to once again do nothing.

I know much of this passion is straight political theater--unconvincing theater, at that--scripted by business interests and the right wing. But just below all the antics is a genuine though unfortunate uneasiness on the part of Joe the Plumber about the prospect of everybody--black, white, brown, working, nonworking, whatever--having access to something we've all come to equate with a nice McMansion and two cars in the garage. Politicians can insist all they want that health care is a right and a necessity; we all know that it's something you buy, like a good education, right? Which means that only certain people are supposed to have it. Deserving people, people who work full-time, people in neighborhood associations whose elected officials actually listen to them on a regular basis; everybody else can go hang. That's the real American way, this divvying up of privileges and status that almost always fall along lines of color, class and credit history. Democracy and equal outcomes and all that jazz run a distant second.

And yet. Sometimes the ideal is bigger than the reality, even when reality wins. Recently, the Forum (Great Western? Fabulous? I lose track) in Inglewood hosted a weeklong free clinic to people who needed services but couldn't afford them--i.e., people without health care. Offered by the traveling nonprofit Remote Area Medical, the clinic was the first to be staged in a big American city rather than the Appalachians or some isolated part of a third-world country, where RAM normally operates. I spent a few hours in the Forum during that time and was truly moved, and angered, by the scope of need we continue to ignore at our local and national peril. I know all the damning statistics--millions of Americans uninsured and under-insured, an old trend that accelerated under Reagan and the Bushes and that now, in the so-called era of change, seems to have finally reached a critical point.

But stats are abstracts, one more thing we've become inured to in this information age. People are not. And the people who covered the floor at the Forum last Thursday, patiently waiting for everything from root canals to eyeglasses, defied all the easy ideas about health care on both the right and the left. I talked to a young black college student who has a bright future but no health coverage to ensure she makes it to that future; a staid white Republican and Vietnam vet from Orange County who told me that politics is cold comfort to somebody whose teeth hurt but can't get them looked at; a sixty-something Cuban immigrant who was so happy to get a set of dentures, he crunched pretzels with the wonder of the former puppet Pinocchio trying out his flesh-and-blood body for the first time.

It was all heartening and even humorous stuff, from the fixit stories to the dedication of doctors and others who made the clinic happen. Despite the enormous lines that formed hours before the clinic opened its doors every day, good cheer prevailed. Many grateful clienteles said that RAM ought to set up camp in Inglewood and elsewhere on a regular basis.

But if that happens, we will have lost. If we need to call upon the selfless actions of RAM ever again, that means we will have decided to once again do nothing.

Photo credit:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/waynewhuang/ / CC BY-NC 2.0

Your Los Angeles Crime Tour

Harry Pallenberg — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 17:38:59 -0700

Editor's Note: This installment of producer and director Harry Pallenberg's guest blog looks at crime. First up, the crime chapter from Harry's film SHOTGUN FREEWAY, then Harry's crime tour of Los Angeles.

Shooting the fourth chapter of SHOTGUN FREEWAY about crime (seen above) was the most fun we had on the film. I mean, we got to hang out with James Ellroy for a whole day - and I mean ALL DAY! We were filming as Ellroy got off a plane, and he stayed with us until almost midnight. Then, "Jigsaw" St. John (also in CRIME) showed us an amazing place, one I keep coming back to and that is a great way to begin this week's post on L.A. crime: The Los Angeles Police Revolver and Athletic Club - a.k.a. the Los Angeles Police Academy.

The Police Academy is tucked away in Elysian Park and is, surprisingly enough, a good spot to grab lunch. The Cobb Sandwich is actually pretty tasty, but you are not really going here for the food.

That noise you hear is LAPD target practice - you can look, but not shoot. Below is the shooting range, and a few helpful signs:

The next picture IS NOT Hef's grotto:

After lunch at the Daryl F. Gates Lounge & Dining Center, you can walk off the fries by paying a visit to the Academy's amazing rock garden - compete with waterfalls. In fact, while you're there think of a reason to have a party because it's available to rent! Weddings come to mind.

Finally, before you leave don't forget to stop in the gift shop. They have everything from T-shirts and LAPD trinkets, to real guns & tactical riot gear!

Jack Webb's guns are right by the entrance for those of you old enough to remember him.... He sure scared the hell outta me as a kid.

After the Academy, you can pay a visit to in at the LAPD Historical Society. While we were making SHOTGUN FREEWAY, the Society was trying to get a museum off the ground, so we cleaned and restored dozens of hours of old LAPD training films in exchange for being able to use them. Now they have a cool little museum and store, where the kids will enjoy sitting on a motorcycle or in the copter.

For a much darker tour of LA Crime history sign up for the ESOTOURIC Crime Tour. As their website explains:

Esotouric bus adventures debuted in May 2007 and soon was offering more than a dozen provocative tours into the secret heart of Los Angeles and the incredible personalities that made the city great, from the mad scientists of Pasadena Confidential to literary lions like Raymond Chandler and Charles Bukowski.

Don't want to get out of your armchair to actually take a tour? Then here are a few virtual ways to brush-up on historic L.A. crimes.

One crime for each day... of 1947.

1947 too current? Here are some older mysteries, solved and unsolved.

If you want something more - check out the last 7 days worth of crime right in your 'hood with (former) Chief Bratton's L.A. crime map. There are generous helpings of additional stats to be found there, but don't believe everything you find on a map... if you believe this L.A. Times story: Los Angeles Police Department's interactive crime map is full of errors, Times analysis finds

Speaking of the L.A. Times and believing the LAPD: The Times helped bring to light one a sad case involving a FOAF (friend of a friend): Bruce Lisker, who has been in jail for 26 years for a crime he did not commit - the murder of his mother. He will probably (I hope) be free by the time you read this, but his whole crazy story is here.

Bruce and his Mother in happier times.

Closing crime thought - hope you never need this.

Looking for serialized episodes from SHOTGUN FREEWAY: Drives Thru Lost L.A.? Episode 1 is here. Episode 2 - The Auto - is here.

Recite

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 17:07:38 -0700

At MOCA, L.A.'s poetry old-guard held out the torch to the young bucks and said... psych!

It was youth's night at the museum's auditorium several weeks ago. That's what the young poets said. Then Luis Alfaro stepped up to the podium, saying he had inaugurated some of the first poetry readings at the museum in the early 1990s and that he was there to represent the youth. Some of the night's poets weren't in kindergarten when Luis first read at MOCA.

Luis's poem sped the audience into the driveways and crashed through the fences of his Pico-Union, Mexican/Chicano upbringing and reminded you why he's decided to write plays for a living. His poem ended with a shaving of the mustache that reminded him of his Mexican father.

19 year-old Dante Mitchell threw down a poem that zipped the audience from "gangsta Bush," to women's basketball, to mother's angel eyes. Dante's a recent high school graduate who's cut his teeth in the Leimert Park scene with Project Blowed. Dante and several of the other poets who read at MOCA credited L.A.'s Mike the Poet with inspiring them to write and perform.

Longtime poetry and arts promoter Mario Davila organized the reading through LAartlab and called it "METAPHORIA." What was unique about this reading was the overlapping of various schools of poetry. Dante's young bucks performed their rapid spitfire, rapped social analysis, Alfaro made the audience feel the tearing of the soul and body torn by three Chicano cultures, while the poetry of Karla Diaz and Linda Gamboa echoed the melancholy voice of the late, great bulldozed barrio poet Manazar Gamboa. Linda and Karla, while about 15 apart in age both took Manazar's writing workshops.

Add to the mix Kelly Zen-Yie Tsai, whose performing roots go back to the mid 1990s Chicago, the birthplace, she says, of poetry slams. She helped everyone in the audience tap into their inner Asian American woman.

More of these kinds of readings are needed, a mixing and matching of styles, generations and backgrounds. It's not easy to put on this kind of reading. As a poetry organizer you need experience outside your comfort zone, you need to recognize good writing that doesn't sound like your crew's own. Most of the poetry readings these days are neighborly, tribal endeavors. There's nothing wrong with that. Leaving the neighborhood, hearing other voices, hearing the beauty of complete sentences and storytelling can only improve everyone's writing. Right?

Interview with 'Green LA Girl'

Yoli Martinez — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 12:16:28 -0700

Welcome back to 'Better Know a SoCal Blogger' on KCET.org! Every week we will be featuring one of the city's many fascinating and first-rate blogs. This week we are speaking to Seil Ju, the person who started one of the city's best 'green' blogs trying to recycle a broken DVD player.

The Basics

Blogger name: Siel Ju
Official Name of Blog: greenLAgirl
When did you start blogging?
July 2005 -- I just celebrated my 4th blogversary!
Do you have a day job?
Yes -- blogging!
How many hours do you spend online/ on your computer?
About 6.
Where do you do your blogging from physically?
I usually blog at home, though I sometimes bike over to use the free wifi at the LEED-certified Santa Monica Main Public Library.
What are you reading?
Infinite Jest. I've signed up for infinitesummer, and so far, have stayed on schedule!
Link to your first post
Here.

The Lowdown

What is your blog about?

green LA girl's my personal blog about living green in L.A., with news about eco-fashion boutiques, new restaurants serving local and organic eats, green-themed news and events, and a lot more.

Who is your ideal reader?

Anyone interested in living a healthier, happier life in L.A. or beyond. Environmentalism isn't really about sacrificing personal freedom and fun for the sake of the environment, but actually improving your quality of life by rethinking old assumptions about the American Dream. Especially with the economy and housing market the way it is today, many people are discovering they don't really enjoy being financially jailed into isolated homes in the 'burbs that require them to waste hours of their lives stuck in traffic every day. I'd like to think green LA girl helps show people life doesn't have to be that way.

Why did you continue blogging after your first post?

I guess I had more to say -- or really, more to do. green LA girl's partly a way for me to keep track of the changes I'm making in my life and my thinking -- and change just keeps happening.

As a former head of the L.A. Times environmental blog, Emerald City, how do you feel about the death of journalism?

Journalism isn't dead.

Besides yours, what is your favorite Los Angeles blog?

That's a tough question. I like LAist a lot, partly because it simply breaks a lot of useful local news -- much more so than the L.A. Times blogs -- and partly because Zach Behrens and Lindsey Williams-Ross often write about environmentally-related issues, from new storm screens to reduce ocean pollution to farmers' market yummies. I also like Streetsblog L.A. for the same reason except specifically related to car-free living. And I enjoy reading Spouting Off, written by Mark Gold of eco-nonprofit Heal the Bay, simply because Mark's always so unrelentingly angry. His tirade-posts can actually be pretty funny, in a spur-you-into-action-while-laughing kind of way.

What is a one misconception people have about you from your blog?

People like to apply whatever meaning they usually attach to the word green to my blog. For example, I've had a number of Green Party members complain that my blog "should" be about their party and support their candidates (I'm a registered Democrat and have never voted for Nader, though I like the guy when he's not throwing elections).

You present a lot of eco-friendly products on your site, have you tried them all?

I've tried most, but not all, the products I've written about -- and whether or not I've tried a product's usually pretty evident when you read the post. If I'm writing about a new fashion line that's coming out next season, for example, I'm unlikely to have tried on the clothes myself. But I do try to stick to personal product reviews, partly because I don't want to be the kind of shill blogger that simply repackages corporate press releases, and partly because I don't want to inadverdently encourage a reader to buy something I haven't tried that ends up being an eco-dud.

Best bike route?

Riding toward the beach on California -- a residential street a block north of Wilshire in Santa Monica. That street has a big wide bike lane, lots of trees, a nice ocean breeze, and few cars. Plus it's a slight downhill! I've figured out that the people who complain about how the City of Santa Monica isn't bike friendly are for some reason choosing to duke it out with the cars on Wilshire or Santa Monica Blvds. instead of simply cruising down California or Arizona a block away.

Is it easy to be green?

Yes, with caveats.

What is the one "green" activity that anybody in Los Angeles can do?

Go to the farmers' market and enjoy a fresh piece of local, organic fruit.

Is green your favorite color?

No. My favorite color is dark red. I actually can't even wear most green hues without looking vaguely Martian --

Finally, a view of the Green Girl's Workspace:

Pixeltown thanks Siel for participating in our segment 'Better Know a Blogger!' Check out her blog here.

Poll: What do you think of the new L.A. Times website?

Yoli Martinez — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 14:05:40 -0700

As a reader, what do you think?

What do you think of the new L.A. Times website?(trends)

Split

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 23:34:44 -0700

Six year-old Nathan Zamora is mad at his dad. Both are soccer fans. Nathan cheered for Mexico. His father, Juan Zamora, rooted for the U.S. saying it played more cohesively as a team, not as a group of individual, prima donna soccer stars.

Juan wants me to know he's not a Malinchista, the reference to the ultimate traitor in Mexican culture: La Malinche, the indigenous woman who translated for Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortes and became his lover. He's from Mexico City, Juan adds, a metropolis with four (Right? America, Pumas, Cruz Azul and Atlante) professional soccer teams.

The Zamoras: Juan, his wife, and four kids took in the game at Guelaguetza restaurant in L.A.'s Koreatown. The kids did a good job of keeping the mole off their clothes, Nintendos, and cel phones. And Juan stayed cool as Mexico shut out top U.S. forward (and L.A. Galaxy star) Landon Donovan and beat the U.S. two goals to one.

Guelaguetza is huge. For nine years it has occupied a former Chinese restaurant near the corner of Olympic and Normandie. The high end mezcal and the michelada beers were flowing and the tacos de chapulines crackled in the molars.

I was there filing some stories for the KPCC newscasts. I interviewed Cal State Northridge economics student Eder (rhymes with header, really) Soriano as he chowed on some clayudas. He was born in the U.S. to Mexican parents and screamed with everyone else after Mexico's two goals. Fernando Lopez's kids were a hoot. He's the founder and owner of Guelaguetza. The "kids" are in their mid to late 20s and grew up in the restaurant's postage stamp-size first location on 8th Street. Paulina, 28, roots for Mexico. Bricia, 24, roots for Mexico. And Fernando Jr., 22, you guessed it, roots for Mexico. But, I counter, you've spent at least half of your lives in the U.S. ¿Qué les pasa?

Bricia jokes that she sees Mexico as her mom and the U.S. as her dad. Father can bring home the bacon and loundly proclaim he wears the pants in the family but when the go head to head, Bricia will always back up her mom. She delves into the cultural with a self-described Pacific Palisades accent (that's where she went to high school while growing up in Culver City) that she quickly abandons when switching to Spanish to talk about Oaxacan food.

Fernando, her brother and a recent U.C. Santa Cruz graduate, snickers that I'm reading too much into what the U.S.-Mexico soccer match means to Mexican Americans (as he describes himself). In Los Angeles, Fernando and Bricia tell me, the game is far from an international match, it's a home game, since so many people here cheer for both sides, think of it as a Cubs-White Sox or Mets-Yankees match up. And you know what, all I have to do is look at six year-old Nathan Zamora and his dad to realize they're probably right.

A York Blvd. Derive

Harry Pallenberg — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 09:58:52 -0700

Following Margaret Crawford's suggestion in the previous post (a.k.a., chapter 2 of my film, SHOTGUN FREEWAY: Drives Thru Lost L.A.), I took a derive in 1994 or '95 and found York Blvd. (Derive is the Latin de revie - to drift; the Situationists were big fans.) I was actually already there, doing research for the film at the LADP Historical Society, but had no idea about the area otherwise.

Recently, I recreated that initial journey and - boy! has York Blvd. changed. The hip is now well established in Highland Park, but its nice to still see auto junkyards andpiñata supply stores side by side with a new gym called Anatomy Repair. What follows are some of my favorite York Blvd. stops. (You will notice a theme... food!)

Galco's (5702 York Boulevard Los Angeles, Ca (323) 255-7115) has been a family biz for over 100 years. Now they pretty much just focus on sodas, beer and old-fashioned candy. (where else can you still find Wax Lips & Bubble-gum cigarettes with powdered sugar smoke?)

As you can see from the photos above, my family has been working on a root beer float competition. So far Olde Rhode Island is the best, and a few of the unworthy bottles did not make the photo. You can also pick up real Coke & original Dr. Pepper. (100% cane sugar baby!)

After you grab your sodas at Galco's, head a few blocks down to the Huarache Azteca Restaurante (5225 York Blvd Los Angeles, CA 90042 (323) 478-9572). It's a tiny place, and really the best thing to get is the Huarache - and no: it is not a shoe, but a flat bread, bean, cheese and meat concoction that's REALLY good!!!

(Thanks to EXILEKISS for the Huarache photos!)

If that sort of footwear scares you, or if sitting at a table is too fancy for you, try Taco La Estrella - its just down the block a bit, it is literally a full-time parked taco truck - with permanent signage. The Carne Asada Tacos ($1.25 each!) are AMAZING - make sure you get the smoky, spicy red salsa on the taco - just order it 'con todo'

(A lot of Yelpers & Chowhounders give props to the El Pique taco truck which is literally 40 yards from La Estrella, but I'm 2 for 2 with less than stellar meals.)

Those of you looking to land on the gentrified side of the blvd, you can be hip & cool and well fed on a burger & beer (15 or so on tap) at The York on York (5018 York Blvd. LA CA 90042 323-255-9675.) Yummy, fun and a bit $pendy. This is the vibe much of York Blvd. will have in a few years, but in the meantime, you can keep up to date on all things York Blvd here

Looking for serialized episodes from SHOTGUN FREEWAY: Drives Thru Lost L.A.? Episode 1 is here. Episode 2 - The Auto - is here. Worried about CRIME? (The episode, that is.) You can watch it here.

Interview with 'Loteria Chicana'

Yoli Martinez — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 13:02:18 -0700

Welcome back to 'Better Know a SoCal Blogger' on KCET.org! Every week we will be featuring one of the city's many fascinating and first-rate blogs. This week we are speaking to Cindy Mosqueda, who blogs about L.A. through the lens of family relations, Chicano culture and loteria.

The Basics

Blogger Name: Cindy Mosqueda
Official Name of Blog: Loteria Chicana
When did you start blogging? November, 2001
Do you have a day job? Yes, I'm a PhD student in education. I also work for an academic support program for college students in the sciences.
How many hours do you spend online/ on your computer? Too many.
Where do you do your blogging from physically? I do most of my blogging from home. Sometimes I'll get an idea at work and will post from there.
Do you have a picture of your desk? I don't have a photo of my desk. It's way too messy. [It's okay Cindy, our desks here at Pixeltown are not so tidy either!]
What are you reading? I just finished reading David Sedaris' "When You Are Engulfed in Flames." Now I'm reading "The Prodigal Tongue: Dispatches from the Future of English" by Mark Abley. He interviewed me for a section on Spanglish, so it's fascinating to read what I said a few years ago.
Do you have a link to your first post? Here. I later purchased my domain and moved my blog [to loteriachicana.net], the first post is here.

The Lowdown:

What is your blog about?

My blog is mainly autobiographical with a sprinkling of some opinion and news about current events. I love re-telling stories about events in my and my family's life. I also like writing about little known aspects of Mexican and Chicano culture. For instance, I recently wrote a post about "arracadas jerezanas" a typical earring worn by women from Jerez, Zacatecas. I also post a lot of photos.

Who is your ideal reader?

That's tough to answer. My ideal reader would hopefully be engaged and be able to relate to the topics I write about. He/she would also comment and continue the discussion. I really enjoy the feedback. In a sense, it keeps me going.

Why did you start blogging?

I've always enjoyed writing and have kept a journal since I was in middle school. I liked the idea of blogging and the quickness with which I could write something on my computer. If I tried to write as fast as I typed, I'd get a hand cramp. I'm a pretty open person and enjoy sharing, so blogging seemed like a natural fit.

Loteria is a game comparable to Bingo, do you feel that blogging is just another version of journalism?

My first instinct is to say no (but there are parallels to opinions writers). Journalists strive for objectivity, but as a blogger I don't feel the need to cover all sides of an issue. If I want to talk about immigration, I'm going to discuss my family's story and experience. I don't need to include a quote from some conservative anti-immigrant group. Most blogs are not filtered by an editor and most bloggers do not get paid for their words. Many of us don't run ads.
In some sense, there are parallels. Bloggers are telling stories about their communities and covering events that might not be covered by the mainstream media.

Besides yours, what is your favorite Los Angeles blog?

Chanfles! and Chimatli . I also really enjoy LAEastside (I'm also contribute to this group blog).

What is the one misconception people have about you from your blog?

That I have it all together.

You family pops up on your blog a lot, how much do they influence what you write about?

I have several family members who regularly read the blog, so I steer clear some of topics I don't feel like sharing with my mom or uncles. I also consider their thoughts and feelings when I write about something family-related. Sometimes, I'll fact-check in an effort to do a little triangulation and make sure my I'm retelling the story as it happened.
They also provide a lot of material and sometimes suggest "you should write about the time that we..."

Where is the Chicano movement heading now?

I'm not sure. There was a lot of momentum a few years ago in the push for immigration reform. It's died down a little bit, but hopefully with the new administration it will begin again. I think Chicanos are still facing many of the same issues we faced at the height of the movement. Workers are still exploited. Our schools are still underfunded. We're still underrepresented in state colleges and universities. On top of that, there's new things to address, like the physical health of our youth. We've made inroads in electoral politics, but we need to keep our representatives accountable.

Do you still play Loteria?

Yes! Last time I played was on Father's Day. We played for money (a quarter per game) and I won a few dollars.

Pixeltown would like to thank Cindy for contributing to our 'Better Know a Blogger' series! Check out her colorful blog here.

True to Your School

Erin Aubry Kaplan — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 21:16:30 -0700

My 30-year reunion wasn't what I expected. In some ways it was entirely opposite of the high school experience I had gone to the Long Beach Hilton to celebrate, which in my particular case was satisfying, encouraging and about as optimistic a time in my life as I've ever had.

I realize that in itself is entirely opposite to the typical high school experience of many of my peers and for pretty much anybody who was oriented by the 60s and then lived its consequences through the 70s (I can't speak for the 80s and later, when the acquisitive, America-first Reagan era set in and high school dissolved completely as a touchstone for me). But I believed without a shred of irony that being a 17-year-old senior was the pinnacle of sophistication, that 1979 was what I'd been preparing for since kindergarten, and that my moment had come. Yes, the system was corrupt, society was unequal and the government was untrustworthy. But I was going to ride roughshod over all that--literally forge a new path-- with the talent and passion I had been cultivating in public schools for the last dozen years. The time was nigh. The world was my glittering disco ball, and it would know me. Things would change.

Et cetera, et cetera. One of the first things I realized at the reunion was how alone I was in my grandiose thinking (which, mercifully, I always kept to myself). The bash at the Long Beach Hilton saw plenty of conversation, but almost none of it was about taking the world by storm or falling short of dreams or assessing where people are now versus where they envisioned being 30 years ago. Instead, this lot of earlyish middle-aged people looked around eagerly for who was there and whether they recognized them. Who was alive? was the most pressing question of the evening, and the departed were represented by a single candle that burned on a small table on the dance floor throughout the night. We were instructed to bow our heads in a moment of remembrance for the Mohicans who had gone on to God (I cheated on that head bow, just like I'd cheated mostly every time we were called to do the pledge of allegiance during high school assemblies and the like. Who were we remembering, exactly? Allegiance to what?)

But back to the party--because that's what the reunion was. Not an adult party where people chat over wine and exchange business cards and war stories related to their line of work. That's not what the Stars of '79 (our class name) came to do. No, we came to illuminate the past for a night, to break away from all the war stories that accumulated too quickly after high school (jobs, marriage, kids, illness, divorce) and sink back into the blissful feeling of what it was like to only have to worry about cleaning out a locker or getting to practice on time. Or, in our most reckless moments, taking the world by storm.

People remembered me, which was surprising. Though Gardena was a happy experience, I was by no means popular or well-known or especially well-dressed. In a graduating class of 900, I lived in that big, comfortable netherworld between prom queen and outcast. I had odd but acceptable interests, like drama club. I sat in the back of many a room and doodled cartoons and logos on xerox paper. Yet people saw my face and lit up, becoming young and hopeful again as they remembered.

"Erin Aubry!" they cried. "You look the same! You haven't changed a bit!"

I smiled back with all the brilliance I could muster, and returned the hug of somebody I didn't know especially well in school, maybe not at all. That I meant something to that somebody now, maybe even then without ever knowing it, was a discovery worth making 30 years down the road.

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