Slate's Witold Rybczynski Writes Single Stupidest Sentence In History Of Architectural Criticism!!

Normally reliable architecture critic Witold Rybczynski (and superb writer, to boot) has somehow coughed up a staggeringly inaccurate sentence that manages to get every single 'fact' in it dead wrong - and no one seems to have noticed! The overall story in SLATE concerns the lack of any kind of innovative architectural movements in San Francisco - and he's on his usually fairly firm ground there.

But then he tackles Los Angeles and fumbles... badly:

The West Coast suffered by comparison to the East Coast, though there have been at least two significant architectural movements in Los Angeles in recent years: the first in the 1960s, represented by Richard Neutra, Charles and Ray Eames, and Craig Ellwood, and the second today, dominated by Frank Gehry, who moved to the city when he was 17 and has become L.A.'s—and the country's—leading architect.

I mean - where do I begin? Well, to call Charles and Ray Eames part of the 1960's architecture movement is beyond lunacy when virtually every single significant building they created was designed - and built in... the 1940's. And Charles Eames started work as an architect in... 1930.

So what about Craig Ellwood? Well, he started in the 1940's and almost all of his masterpieces were done starting with the Hale House in 1949 between then and the late 1950's. By the early 1960's his career had peaked creatively and his firm was by then doing mostly corporate work until it closed in the 1970's. He was one of the quintessential 1950's architects.

And what about the claim that Richard Neutra was part of the 1960's architecture movement in Los Angeles? Well, you be the judge; Neutra attended architecture school during... World War I in Vienna - plus what many people consider his finest building was designed in Los Angeles in... 1927 and finished in 1929. Plus there was the minor problem that in the 1960's he was in his 70's and his finest work was done in the 1920's, the 1930's, the 1940's and the 1950's.

Part of the 1960's architecture movement?

Ironically, each of the named architects was a product of the 1920's Bauhaus/International style of architecture which reached its Los Angeles climax in the 1950's with the Case Study Houses and the almost exclusive use of the glass box in commerical office buildings; then in the 1960's, a variety of reactions to that style developed.

Still even more ironically, though, the only architect mentioned who can be legitimately described as being part of the 1960's movement is... Frank Gehry.

Gehry developed much of his style due to his interaction with the artists of that era. Gehry's use of provocative shapes and unusual materials was also already in evidence in his 1965 Danziger Studio and other designs of the era - plus he set up his office in 1967. He was a creative child of the 1960's in every way.

But Rybczynski is correct in that there was a significant 1960's - and 1970's - architecture movement in Los Angeles.

He just gets the names wrong.

Among the real members of that now fabled generation, besides Frank Gehey, were Cesar Pelli, Tony Lumdsen, Charles Moore, Craig Hodgetts, Tim Vreeland, Robert Mangurian, Thom Mayne, Peter De Bretteville, Ed Niles, Roland Coate, Frank Israel, Michael Rotondi, Coy Howard, Fred Fischer, Eric Owen Moss and many others.

The other flaw in the piece is an extreme example of East Coast myopia:

It's hard to know exactly why some cities develop an architectural sensibility. Clearly, having a local star serves to raise the level of public consciousness of good architecture. In the 1960s, Mies van der Rohe in Chicago and Louis Kahn in Philadelphia attracted and trained a generation of talented young architects from around the world, many of whom stayed to open their own offices. A strong architectural tradition helps, too. Chicago got a running start with Louis Sullivan and Daniel Burnham at the end of the 19^th century, Boston had H.H. Richardson, and during the Gilded Age New York City had McKim, Mead & White.

The West Coast suffered by comparison to the East Coast.....

Suffered by comparison??

What he neglects to mention is that in the early 20th Century, Los Angeles had an architectural tradition that equaled or exceeded any of those cities from 1910 to 1950. In addition, no other city in the world had as varied a list of architects - and architectural traditions - as did Los Angeles during that era.

Starting with the Japanese influenced bungalow styles of Greene and Greene and Alfred and Arthur Heineman and other craftsman architects, the Mission and Spanish style of numerous architects such as John Byer, the early modernism of Irving Gill, the unique style of Frank Lloyd Wright's LA homes, the Bauhaus informed houses of R. M. Schindler and Richard Neutra, rivalist stylists such as Myron Hunt, the older Roland Coate, Sumner Hunt, Paul Williams, Robert Stacy-Judd, S. Charles Lee and Wallace Neff and the ranch houses of Cliff May, the era came to a close with a parade of modernists who appeared in the 1930's and 1940's such as John Lautner, Harwell Hamilton Harris, Thornton M. Abell, Raphael Soriano, Pierre Koenig, Lloyd Wright, Walter Wurdeman, Rodney Walker, Charles Luckman, Douglas Honnold, John Rex, Thornton Ladd, Carl Maston, Gregory Ain, Welton Beckett, J. R. Davidson, William Pereira, Edward Killingsworth, Gordon Drake, Frederick E. Emmons, A. Quincy Jones and many, many others.

Again... suffered by comparison?

Comparison to... what?

Article On How To Improve LA Times - Gets Name Of Project -- WRONG!

On the front page of the OPINION section webpage - the headline is supposed to say that the old name of 'Manhattan Project' is now the 'Spring Street Prtoject. Alas - below is what the headline says:

Opinion L.A.: Manhattan Beach Project, we hardly knew ye. Welcome to the re-branded Spring Street Project.

Does not bode well for the future of this project....

What Part Of A Fourteen Year Old Male's Mind Did This Woman Not Understand?

Alexis Luz Garcia, 40, of Corona, was cited for a misdemeanor in May after she allegedly gave the boy, her neighbor, a full-frontal view as he played basketball in the yard next door.

The charge carries a maximum sentence of one year in jail and requires the defendant to register as a sex offender.

Garcia had complained to the boy that he was making too much noise as he played. When he didn't stop playing, she went out onto her sundeck.

"He looked up at her, she looked down at him, and she disrobed," Norton said.

The boy ran inside and told his parents, who complained to Garcia. When she threatened to do it every time he played basketball, his parents called police, Wyatt said.

All I can say that if a women threatened to disrobe everytime the guys I grew up with practiced basketball - we'd have all ended up on the Lakers.

Free Opera At The Place Theater Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday!

There are four more performances of a wonderfully sung production of Verdi's second opera, a rarely performed comic masterpiece. See below for details.

And if you go to will call - just say you are with the Brady Westwater party and say how many tickets you want - and they will be free! All I ask is that you donate in the box in the lobby after the opera whatever you feel like giving.

Lyric Opera of Los Angeles presents

Un Giorno di Regno (King for a Day)

by Giuseppe Verdi

September 1733. The rightful heir to the Polish throne, Stanislas, is in
hiding because of a War of Succession. When he decides to return, he
sets up a decoy in the person of a French officer to lodge at the castle
of Baron di Kelbar.

Meanwhile, the Baron di Kelbar has arranged alliances with important
members of Society by marrying off his daughter and his niece. But, to
their grief, the women have other loves.

On the day the real king is maneuvering to regain his throne, the false
king is maneuvering to block the arranged marriages and deliver the
women to their true loves.

This is a 19th century comic opera replete with mix-ups and
misunderstandings. The story was so popular that Verdi was commissioned
to make a new musical setting of this existing text. In only his second
opera, we hear the young Verdi begin to emerge from contemporary musical
models to forge the language that was to become his own.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Performed in Italian with English Supertitles

Director - Arthur Freeman * Conductor - Robert Sage
with the LOLA Opera Orchestra & Chorus

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

PERFORMANCE DATES/TIMES
(4 performances remaining)

* Wednesday, October 11 - 7:30pm

* Friday, October 13 - 7:30pm
* Saturday, October 14 - 2:00pm

* Saturday, October 14 - 7:30pm

Performances are taking place at the historic DOWNTOWN PALACE THEATRE,
630 S. Broadway, Los Angeles, 90014

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Ticket Prices range from $15-$60
Visit our website to purchase your tickets, or buy yours at the door
http://www.lyricoperala.org
800.471.9515

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Cast
(see website for each artists performance dates)

Aram Barsamian - Cavaliere Belfiore
Roberto Gomez - Cavaliere Belfiore
Joyce May-Tobin - la Marchesa del Poggio
Rebecca Sjowall - la Marchesa del Poggio
Matthew King - Edoardo
Patrick Layton - Edoardo
Amber Erwin - Giulietta di Kelbar

Adrien Roberts - Giulietta di Kelbar

William Goldin - Barone di Kelbar
Cale Olson - il Signor la Rocca

Bruce Wright - il Signor la Rocca

Is New Los Angeles Times Publisher - David Hiller - The Best Of All Possible Worlds?

While not wanting to put too much of a Panglossian... gloss... on the situation - it is possible that what happened today is the best possible thing that could have happened to the Los Angeles Times.

But, first a word about the dead.

Jeff Johnson knew he would likely be fired when he publicly backed Dean Baquet in refusing to make the staff cuts the Tribune headquarters had ordered. But he still made his stand with Dean. He came here a dyed in the Brooks Brotthers suit company man - but left the Los Angeles Times a genuine journalistic hero.

Now for the good news.

Every person I know in Chicago has nothing but not just good - but great things to say about David Hiller. And while he can not be expected to go native as fast as Jeff Johnson did, with the LAT's staff's suspicion and anger towards the Tribune right now - it is impossible for Hiller to start his tenure with the massive cuts that had been previously demanded of Johnson.

Additionally, Hiller has a lot more leverage with Chicago than Johnson ever did. Hiller led their showcase property and is rumored headed towards running the entire show.

He is not expendable. He can not be fired as easily as was Johnson. So if he decides that these proposed cuts will hurt more than they will help - he is in a lot stronger postion to enforce his opinion.

Michael A. Hiltzik
Times Staff Writer

October 6, 2006

... Hiller, 53, is described by friends and former colleagues as a personable, funny and intellectually engaged executive who understands journalistic traditions. But he is not shy about stating that the challenge for newspapers is to do "the absolute best job you can for readers and online customers and still be a strong business."

In the industry's quest to balance economic concerns, investor demands and journalistic mandates, Hiller now occupies one of the hot seats. The Chicago native and Harvard-trained attorney took over Thursday as publisher of the Los Angeles Times, following the resignation of Jeffrey M. Johnson, who had publicly questioned the strategy of parent Tribune Co.

And...

Hiller has been a rising star at Tribune, most recently occupying the publisher's chair at the Chicago Tribune after serving as senior vice president for development and subsequently as head of Tribune Interactive, where he was responsible for the company's Internet strategy.

His background has been varied, including a stint as law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, two years at the Reagan Justice Department (where his colleagues included current Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani) and work as a lawyer at the Chicago firm Sidley & Austin, where his assignments included first fighting, then settling, the landmark federal antitrust case against AT&T that resulted in the telecommunications giant's 1984 breakup.

And...

Along the way, Hiller acquired a cadre of admiring colleagues and devoted friends.

"He's a man with catholic interests," said John Zeglis, a former partner at Sidley & Austin who later became AT&T's general counsel and then chief executive of AT&T Wireless.

Hiller, Zeglis and several friends kept up an annual tradition of backpacking in the Rockies or other wilderness areas at which Hiller characteristically displayed the campcraft he learned as an Eagle Scout and maintained the group's travel journal.

"We'd notice that he'd read newspapers cover to cover, even before he got into that business," Zeglis recalled...

And....

At the Chicago Tribune, where he became publisher in November 2004, Hiller quickly became a familiar figure in the newsroom — not the most natural haunt for a publisher. He arrived on election night that year and spent hours observing the operation at a time when a newsroom is at its most frenzied, and later sponsored a series of well-appreciated brown-bag lunches for staff members at which "no questions were off-limits," said Tribune Editor Ann Marie Lipinski.

"We didn't always see eye to eye on things, but he was comfortable with disagreement," Lipinski added.

Whether, or how much, Hiller will stand between The Times newsroom and what newsroom employees see as Tribune Co.'s unrelenting demand for cost cuts is unclear. Tribune editors note that his engaging personality and his sensitivity to newsroom culture don't obscure the fact that he is unmistakably a corporate manager.

"At the end of the day, he's a business guy," said one newsroom executive who asked not to be named. "On budget issues, he'll make the decisions he has to make as part of management."

That said, a Tribune newsroom source noted that in reducing costs, Hiller tended to try to avoid cutting personnel, instead seeking operational savings elsewhere, "and that was appreciated by the staff...

Now there are those at the Times who feel that this change is merely a short term turnaround to put some lipstick on the pig by cutting costs, raising net income - and then selling the LA Times.

But I don't think so.

I can not imagine the Tribune selling the Times when it brings in the revenue it still commands nor can I imagine David Hiller taking this job if it was just to conduct a close out sale.

Under Johnson, Baquet and Martinez - the Times has dramatically improved in the past two years. Now with a publisher with more clout in Chicago at the helm and one willing to explore more ways for the paper to engage the public along with more creative ways of cutting costs - he just might be the person to not just finish turning around the LA Times creatively, but also - finally - financially.

Chicago Tribune Coverage Of Los Angeles Times Turmoil!

Pretty straight coverage at the Chicago Tribune on the LA Times defenestration of Jeff Johnson:

L.A. Times publisher asked to resign

Chicago Tribune publisher stepping in

Tribune media columnist

October 5, 2006, 2:04 PM CDT

Jeff Johnson is out as publisher of the Los Angeles Times, asked to resign today by Chicago-based Tribune Co. a month after he publicly backed Times Editor Dean Baquet's defiant protests against the parent company's demand for staff reductions.

Tribune Publishing President Scott Smith said Chicago Tribune Publisher David Hiller has replaced Johnson as publisher and president at the Times. Smith, a former Chicago Tribune publisher, will temporarily supervise that paper's operations in addition to all of Tribune Co. publishing concerns.

"Jeff and I agreed that this change is best at this time because Tribune and Times executives need to be aligned on how to shape our future," Smith said in a statement. "We thank Jeff for his leadership of important advances at the Times and his significant contributions during his Tribune career."

Later, in a note to Chicago Tribune staff, Smith said, "The strong management teams in place at the Chicago Tribune and the publishing group will allow me to effectively oversee both."

Whether Baquet will remain in charge of the Times newsroom was uncertain, though Times employees suggested it would be difficult for him to stay if Hiller asked for the same staff cuts that Johnson resisted.

Now below, it seems they are referring to the LAOBSERVED:

Baquet was meeting with senior executives at the paper, as word of Johnson's exit leaked out. One Times newsroom source said he heard Baquet would stay.

Lastly:

Tribune last month announced that it would consider restructuring the company, potentially selling assets or breaking the media conglomerate into pieces. Tribune bought the Los Angeles-based Times Mirror Co. in 2000.

Dean Baquet To Remain Editor Of LA Times!

LAOBSERVED reports that LA Times Editor Dean Baquet and new Los Angeles Times publisher David Hiller sniffed each other's butts over coffee this morning, liked what they smelled and agreed to work together:

Baquet staying

Kevin Roderick

Times editor Dean Baquet told an editors meeting at 11:30 that he can work with new publisher David Hiller. Baquet had coffee with Hiller this morning and apparently was told to make his strongest case for the Times fending off deep newsroom cuts. Hiller is expected to address editors this afternoon.

But can Andrés Martinez work with Hiller? I've no reason to think not, but the publisher of the Los Angeles Times directly oversees the editorial and op-ed page editor. It was Johnson who encouraged Michael Kinsley to leave, installed Martinez and signed-off on (or more) the removal of longtime columnist Robert Scheer and reinvention of the editorial page and the Current section.

Check it out: Mark Lacter has background on Hiller at LA Biz Observed.

Edited post

And Just Who The Hell Is This David Hiller - New Publisher Of The Los Angeles Times?

Well, according to the Washington correspondent of The Nation - new LA Times publisher David Hiller at least isn't totally the spawn of Satan. Some quotes from a panel discussion they both served on:

John Nichols, Washington correspondent for The Nation, followed with an account of the responsibilities of the press in a democracy, harkening back to the writings of the Founding Fathers and the conception of the media as an “essential check and balance on executive excess, especially during war.”

And...

David D. Hiller—president, publisher, and CEO of the Tribune—defended his paper’s independence from the government, citing the Tribune’s history as an “equal-opportunity discomforter.” He emphasized that accessibility to free news on the internet is pressuring newspaper business models.

And...

The Chicago Tribune is a major daily newspaper lauded by Nichols for its “robust conservatism [in its editorials] in a time of neoconservative drift,” as opposed to the “crooks, conners, and thieves who currently use the name.” Nichols also lauded the Tribune for its expose journalism on such issues as the death penalty, and Warren reiterated the Tribune’s commitment as a government watchdog.

Hiller would seem to fit the mode of a social liberal who is conservative on economic issues (he clerked for Justice Stewart at one time) and that would fit in quite well with the new LA Times of Jeff Johnson and Dean Baquet.

Wikipedia also seems to be impressed by the Tribune's move to the center:

Apart from electoral endorsements, the Tribune has taken on a centrist editorial position in recent years. It has, for example, criticized the Bush administration's record on civil liberties, the environment, and many portions of its foreign policy. At the same time, it has remained economically conservative, being widely skeptical of increasing the minimum wage and entitlement spending. In many ways, this has given the modern Tribune editorial page a libertarian bent.

At the local level, the Tribune has long been -- and remained -- the chief antagonist of the Chicago Democratic Machine, particularly the system of patronage. It has written dozens of editorials criticizing former Cook County Board President John Stroger, for example, and while it has endorsed Mayor Richard M. Daley, it has been strongly critical of hiring policies and other allegedly corrupt deals, including the Hired Truck Program, in his administration. The newspaper has also devoted considerable reporting resources to investigating the machine, running large investigative pieces on irregularities in campaign finances, the delivery of city services, and governmental contracting.

Other hopeful signs (and... admittedly.... we are grasping for straws here...) are that he was in charge of interactive media and also recently oversaw their Hispanic - Chicago-speak for Latino - media.

http://www.hispanicbusiness.com/news/newsbyid.asp?id=13942

Tribune Publishing's David Hiller Expands Responsibilities, Group CFO Jerry Agema Promoted

PR Newswire

CHICAGO, Dec. 8 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Tribune Publishing today announced that David Hiller, president/interactive and senior vice president/publishing, will expand his responsibilities to include oversight of The Baltimore Sun and Tribune Publishing's Hispanic media. In addition, Jerry Agema, vice president/administration and chief financial officer, has been promoted to senior vice president, effective immediately. Agema will continue in his role in administration and finance, and will also oversee strategy and development, human resources and technology within the publishing group.

"David and Jerry are two of the most talented and experienced individuals in Tribune Publishing," said Jack Fuller, Tribune Publishing president.

Hiller is currently responsible for Tribune Interactive, Tribune Classified Services, Tribune Media Service, The Hartford Courant and CLTV. His expanded role will add responsibility for the Pulitzer Prize-winning Sun and Tribune Publishing's Hispanic media division that coordinates group activities among the company's Spanish-language newspapers, including the New York and Chicago editions of Hoy.

Hiller was appointed senior vice president/publishing in February 2003, and president of Tribune Interactive in May 2000. From 1993 to 2000, Hiller served as Tribune Company senior vice president/development, with responsibility for strategic planning, acquisitions and new-venture investments. He was Tribune's vice president/general counsel from 1988 to 1993...

Los Angeles Times Publisher - FIRED! Jeff Johnson Out!

LAOBSERVED.COM has the story:

http://www.laobserved.com/archive/2006/10/johnson_fired_as_times_pu.php

Just when the gradual improvements at the Los Angeles Times have reached a critical mass point and the paper is once again not only worth reading to find out what is happening in this city - but mandatory reading for anyone who cares about Los Angeles - one of the two people most respsonsible for this happening has been fired by the Chicago Tribune's bean counters.

Now the only question is - will the Tribune's death wish for the Los Angeles Times be completed if Dean Baquet now resigns?

UPDATE!

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-100506johnson,0,3972238.story?coll=la-home-headlines

LA Times reports that David Hiller new publisher of Los Angeles Times. Still no word if Dean Baquet will quit.

James Rainey
Times Staff Writer

11:20 AM PDT, October 5, 2006

The Tribune Co. forced out Los Angeles Times Publisher Jeffrey M. Johnson this morning, a little more than a month after he defied the media conglomerate's demands for staff cuts that he suggested could damage the newspaper.

Tribune Publishing President Scott C. Smith was huddling with top managers at the newspaper and was expected to announce after the meeting that David Hiller, publisher of the Chicago Tribune, would immediately replace Johnson as chief executive at the 125-year-old newspaper. Hiller would become the 12th publisher of The Times.

Hiller was expected to ask Times Editor Dean Baquet to stay on the job, despite the editor's sharp protests against further job cuts by the Chicago-based parent corporation. Friends of Baquet said the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist had not yet decided to remain with the paper....

Suck.Com Comes To LATimes.Com!

Tim Cavanaugh most recently of REASON, but most noteworthy for his tenure at the pioneering (1995 - 2001) , fabled and never since equaled media site of www.suck.com - is now running the opinion section of the LA Time's website. This was reported today by FishBowlLA, one of the few worthy successors to the old Suck.

Tim was, for those not old enough to recall the early days of original online (and hopefully... advertiser supported) free content, was the infamous ... BarTel D'Arcy... before he left for Reason. Once there, he then shamelessly purloined Suck's 'Hit and Run' feature for only slightly less evil purposes.

And despite Suck's occasional and thoroughly misguided comments about my personalty and writing qualities - which I am certain were, of course, only meant in the most ironic of ways.... its wit and intelligence and irreverance - which can still be read courtsey of GOOGLE - is as fresh today as it was back in the days of the first internet boom.

Now if the Times can only get former Suck illustrator and artist extraordinaire - Terry Colon- to come onboard - profitable advertiser supported free on-line content might no longer be an oxymoron.

http://www.suck.com/fish/contributors/cavanaugh/

Trona May Be Hell On Earth - But It's Still One Up On Los Angeles!

Once a prosperous and tidy company town with desert vistas, Trona is in decline, cherishing its memories but living with crime and blight.

By David Kelly
Times Staff Writer

October 4, 2006

TRONA, Calif. — Fed up with the crime, congestion and cost of Orange County, Fred Hermon went looking for a place where he could be alone, a place so remote, so unappealing that few would ever want to live there.

His strategy was simple: Locate the popular, pricey towns on a map and move steadily outward. That's where he found Trona.

When he searched the Internet for information, the word "hell" kept popping up — 'Is Trona Anywhere Near Hell?," "Where the Hell Is Trona?," "Long, Lonely Ride Through Hell."

Hermon didn't actually expect to find perdition as he descended through Poison Canyon into Trona three years ago, but the smell of sulfur, the blast-furnace heat and barren landscape made it feel uncomfortably close.

A real estate agent showed him a neighborhood with block after block of burned-out homes.

"I said, 'Oh my God, no,' " he recalled. "Another area looked like Los Angeles after the riots.

Pretty bad - huh? But even Trona has one thing Los Angeles for all its attractions does not have - a musuem dedicated to its history.

The pride of Trona is the Old Guest House Museum, a shrine to the town and the minerals that made it. There are old photos of John W. Searles. His violin sits behind glass. Small bottles of potash, borax and fly ash are displayed, along with maps, history books and assorted mining and railroad paraphernalia.

Margaret Brush, 79, is curator and the town's most energetic promoter. She recently won funding for a kiosk along the road to Death Valley offering information about Trona.

"We needed something to attract people to Trona and to our museum," she said.

So if even Trona can support its own museum - why can not the City of Los Angeles?

Eric Garcetti Saves Hollywood Landmark!

City Council President Eric Garcetti found a way to allow a major development to go forward at Hollywood and Vine while also allowing a part of Hollywood's increasingly vanishing history to be saved. Hopefully, this will establish a precedent in requiring new projects to incorporate hisoric buildings within their developments rather than just taking the expendient route of bulldozing our past.

One upcoming example would be to save the old Workman Building, which is now the current MJ JHiggins Gallery Building, on Main Street by building the new police garage around the last 1890's commerical building left on that part of South Main Street.

Hollywood Luggage Shop Won't Have to Pack Its Bags

Owner wins his fight against the plan to raze his luggage store, so a massive development at Hollywood and Vine will be built around the 1928 landmark.

By Bob Pool
Times Staff Writer

September 28, 2006

Hollywood's luggage king refused to pack his bags and go when Los Angeles officials tried to seize his 60-year-old family business to make room for a high-end hotel development.

Shopkeeper Robert Blue fought back by blasting the city's use of eminent domain with a mocking billboard atop his Bernard Luggage store on Vine Street just south of Hollywood Boulevard.

Then he filed a lawsuit alleging a violation of his right to due process, and in the process became a symbol of what some residents considered Hollywood redevelopment run amok.

And on Wednesday the luggage man bagged a victory.

The city and Community Redevelopment Agency leaders announced that Blue's business will stay — and the largest commercial development in Hollywood history will literally be built around the historic 1928 building containing his valises, suitcases, trunks and travel accessories.

The planned $500-million Hollywood and Vine project will include a glitzy, 300-room luxury W Hotel and 150 condominiums, 375 modern apartment units and 61,500 square feet of upscale retail space.

Tucked into it will be the Bernard Luggage building, set back from the street an additional 12 feet and restored to its original, vaguely Spanish Colonial Revival glory.

Architects changed the plans for the sprawling development to notch in the building, which will be bordered on two sides by the new construction.

Blue, 46, will retain permanent ownership and use of the one-story, 5,475-square-foot structure, originally called the Herman Building.

The structure cannot compete with Hollywood's more glamorous architectural landmarks like the El Capitan Theatre, Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel and Capitol Records building.

But fans see it a symbol of Hollywood's golden era. It was designed by architect Carl Jules Weyl, who also drew the plans for the now-destroyed Hollywood Brown Derby restaurant next door. Weyl went on to win an Academy Award for art direction on the 1938 Errol Flynn-Olivia de Havilland classic "The Adventures of Robin Hood."

"This is a proud day for Los Angeles!" Blue shouted over the noise of a 12-story crane parked a few steps away on Vine Street. It was hoisting building materials onto the roof of a former Broadway department store building that is being converted into posh condominium units in another city-sanctioned redevelopment project.

The fate of the luggage store had become an issue of much debate in Hollywood, which is in the midst of a major revitalization and building boom. Hollywood and Sunset boulevards, both symbols of decay in the early 1990s, have seen a string of new retail and housing projects rise in the last few years as the neighborhood has become a hip destination again.

But some merchants and community activists have expressed concern that rebirth has come at the expense of Hollywood's past, including several movie houses and TV studios. Preservationists have battled to save the Florentine Gardens, the Hollywood Palladium and CBS Columbia Square.

Blue credited Hollywood-area City Councilman Eric Garcetti for setting up negotiations with developers and the city's redevelopment agency that led to Wednesday's breakthrough. But he still got in a dig at eminent domain.

Such government land seizure should be reserved for public projects, not commercial developments like the one that will rise around his tiny shop, he suggested. "You can't always count on a good City Council president" being there to help the small property owner, Blue said....

LA Alternative Article on Neighborhood Councils....

Now that the LA Alternative Press is about to be no more - I assume it's on-line back stories will soon vanish; so here is the article it did awhile back on neighborhood councils...

While L.A.’s neighborhood councils cry that City Hall is leaving them in the dust, others complain that election delays, infighting and conflicts with the city have slowed up the neighborhood council movement. The battle for the future of neighborhood councils is now in session.
by Seth Meyer
illustration by Dan May

Who would want to move into a neighborhood where drug dealers-50 of them in a row-sit in front of your building?” says Brady Westwater, president of the Downtown Los Angeles Neighborhood Council, as he walks past the intersection of Spring and 5th streets. “An art gallery, and that’s about it. Artists think it’s edgy.”

Westwater is a fixture of downtown-on the streets and at City Hall. The fourth generation in his family to live on Spring Street, he’s not only the president of DLANC, but also chairman of the Los Angeles Neighborhood Council Congress, an umbrella group that has served to unite neighborhood councils from across L.A. since they were created in 1999 by the revamped city charter. Neighborhood councils, it was decided, would be a way for those with no experience in government to participate in decisions affecting their neighborhoods. People like Brady Westwater.

A wiry man with short silver hair, he wears a black T-shirt, black jeans and black cowboy boots as he strides from one gallery to the next, greeting owners, discussing upcoming meetings, and digging for the good candy in their candy dishes.

In 2004, the downtown neighborhood council’s Art Committee conceived of Gallery Row: an area of empty retail spaces and drug dens that would be converted into art galleries. Westwater and the council began looking for spaces and encouraging galleries to move in. What started with five galleries has grown to 27. Nowadays, the Downtown Art Walk is bustling every second Tuesday of each month when galleries open their doors from noon to 9 p.m. With the galleries came small boutique stores and restaurants, and suddenly a forgotten strip of urban blight looked more like a burgeoning art scene.

“People were kind of curious to come downtown, and their understanding was that it was scary as shit,” says Bert Green, director of Bert Green Fine Art located at 5th and Main. “And they weren’t really far off, actually. A lot of people came down here and flipped out. But in a two-year period, it has completely transformed. It’s still rough around the edges, and there’s some crazy stuff that goes on, but mostly people come down here and now they remark how cleaned-up it is.”

“Everybody who’s moving in downtown, people who are doing the neighborhood council, people who live in the lofts, we are forming a very tight and very connected community. We all know each other,” Green says.

Proponents of neighborhood councils would say this is exactly what they were designed to do: bring more people into local government, improve neighborhood conditions, and create a more connected community.

Neighborhood improvements like this, both big and small, have grown out of neighborhood councils throughout Los Angeles. A DWP rate increase was trumped. A deal was made with Adelphia cable to provide an affordable basic cable rate for low-income residents. Trees have been planted, parks cleaned up, port-o-potties installed and gym equipment purchased. Streets have been widened, graffiti removed, noise pollution abated and sidewalks repaired.

If you knew nothing else about neighborhood councils, it would seem that these independent little bodies of grassroots democracy are thriving, having accomplished much in the six years since their creation. But conflicts with the city over election procedures and the right to weigh in on important issues before they are decided by the City Council have slowed progress to a standstill in several neighborhood councils. Some neighborhood council leaders contend that Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is attempting to limit the powers of the councils, and that he has installed one of his own “Antonio-istas” as interim general manager for the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment, which oversees neighborhood councils. Others warn that neighborhood councils are turning into ineffective extensions of the city’s bureaucracy because of restrictive, newly imposed election procedures and rigid guidelines that govern their meetings.

“We’re just baffled why it’s become so adversarial,” says Westwater. “Why we can’t sit in a room together and work out the election procedures. There’s no communication between us and DONE right now. And if there’s no communication, how do you solve problems?”

The entire system of nearly 90 neighborhood councils stands at a crossroads while the charter-mandated 912 Commission begins a year-long process of reviewing the system and making recommendations to the City Council.

The battle for the future of neighborhood councils is now in session. On one side is a group of neighborhood council advocates who firmly believe in their ability to empower those who traditionally had no say in their government. DONE should be facilitators only, they say, supporting and assisting neighborhood councils, rather than mandating strict guidelines or punishing the councils that make mistakes.

On the other side sits DONE and the city, who say neighborhood councils are advisory, and that they do not have as much power as some might believe. They say civility, both toward each other and toward DONE, remains an issue, and that in order for the neighborhood councils to be effective, outreach within the neighborhoods aimed at recruiting more, diverse stakeholders must be achieved.

Mountain Bikes and Twinkies

It was 1992, before the Rodney King Riots,” says Greg Nelson, former general manager of DONE, as he recalls his neighborhood council epiphany. “I was riding my mountain bike to the top of this mountain in Orange County. It was like a mile high. I got up there, and was sitting under a tree up there enjoying the view and my Twinkie.”

It sounds almost like divine intervention. Nelson wanted to figure out a way to improve many of the social problems Los Angeles was experiencing after the Carter Administration-and the federal dollars associated with it-was replaced by Reagan’s failed trickle-down economics. And it hit him.

“The answer was you have to get more people involved in both doing good things to help their neighborhoods and to hold their elected officials accountable,” Nelson says. “And the only real way to do that is to give people a meaningful role.”

Nelson went to the library and was surprised to find that three Tufts professors had written a book about successful neighborhood councils in other cities, including St. Paul, Minn. and Dayton, Ohio.

“At first I was ticked off because I thought it was my idea. Then I thought, ‘Well, now I don’t have to sell this wild-eyed idea because it’s actually been done in other cities.’ But the problem was, can something like this work in L.A.?”

Nelson sold the idea to his boss, then Councilman Joel Wachs. He liked it so much that he made it the centerpiece of his bid for mayor.

Wachs lost to Richard Riordan, but he didn’t forget about Nelson’s idea. An opportunity to revive the neighborhood council premise arose later, when Riordan began squabbling with City Council, prompting the mayor to propose a rewrite of the city charter in hopes of gaining more power. A Charter Reform Commission was formed, and Wachs and Nelson set out to sell it on the merits of neighborhood councils.

Riordan realized that in order to get the new charter passed, he needed the neighborhood council initiative. “The rest of the charter was boring,” says Nelson. “The mayor’s office knew that they needed to give it some sex appeal.”

Also motivating some to support the neighborhood council model was the fear of secession created by the San Fernando Valley, Hollywood and others, and the hopes that neighborhood councils could hold the city together.

The charter passed in 1999, laying the broad and nebulous groundwork for a system of independent neighborhood councils. Things moved slowly at first, as DONE struggled to invent itself and find the best way of assisting in the formation of the councils.

In 2001 everything changed when Jim Hahn became mayor and hired Nelson as the new DONE general manager. Hahn also allocated $50,000 a year for each certified council to use for neighborhood projects.

Nelson saw neighborhood councils as “public lobbyists” that would hopefully someday be as influential as highly paid special interest lobbyists.

“I envisioned that the neighborhood councils would educate themselves to the point that they were knowledgeable, responsible and creditable within their own neighborhoods, so that the local councilman had no choice but to listen to them,” Nelson says.

The primary concern at this time was building and certifying neighborhood councils, leaving neighborhood leaders to experiment with the best way to run their councils. While this experimentation allowed some neighborhood councils with past experience in homeowner or advisory groups to thrive, it created vicious infighting for others as they attempted to organize many different neighborhood factions around one table. Several neighborhood councils, including Lincoln Heights, had to call the police to break up heated arguments.

“Some folks were showing up, and they accused some of the old board members of stealing from the neighborhood council and using the money for personal benefit,” says David Galaviz, the current president of the Lincoln Heights Neighborhood Council. “A fistfight almost broke out…we had our meetings at the senior citizen center in Lincoln Heights. The person who ran it came in and said, ‘Everybody out, you’re not welcome here anymore.”

“I never thought I would find myself quoting Donald Rumsfeld, but democracy is messy,” Nelson says. “And the way that this thing came together so fast guaranteed that it was going to be messy.”

What’s Good In the ‘Hood

It’s difficult to label the neighborhood council system as a success or a failure-even now, more than six years in. Some councils have excelled at creating diverse boards, serving their constituents and offering the city council constructive input on issues important to them. However, others continue to be bogged down by election mishaps and infighting over what their priorities should be.

Neighborhood councils are currently struggling to figure out their role in city government. This development period has been pockmarked with contentious interactions between the councils, DONE and the City Council. Where in the beginning councils were free to run their own elections, now strict requirements mandated by the January 2005 citywide election procedures, and the rigid enforcement of these rules by DONE, has soured many on the efficacy of the system. This has left some stakeholders wondering just what DONE’s role is: a facilitator that assists through difficult times, or an enforcer who punishes when councils make mistakes?

According to the Los Angeles Neighborhood Council Congress, 39 elections-nearly half of all the neighborhood councils-have been delayed or cancelled. While there have never been this many election problems before at one time, this is not the first time neighborhood councils have experienced such issues.

Anyone who is a stakeholder in the neighborhood has the right to vote in an election; this is any person who lives, works, owns property or runs a business in the neighborhood. But the ambiguity of the term in the early years led to some interesting problems. In one instance, a candidate was rumored to bring an entire high-school class to cast ballots. And in Venice, a woman famously marked a ballot on behalf of her dog.

“Two years ago we decided our next project was to make the election process easier,” says Nelson. “We came up with some standardized citywide election procedures that gave neighborhood councils the widest variety of ways to pick their leaders, but said whatever method you take, here are the things you must do to ensure that it’s fair and open.”

The City Council adopted election procedures in January 2005, but because of glitches and delays, they didn’t take effect until the start of this year, Nelson says. “What we were trying to do in the department was make sure the neighborhood councils knew what they needed to do without being heavy-handed about it.”

Nelson retired earlier this year, and Lisa Sarno, a former city council staffer to Mayor Villaraigosa, became the interim general manager in April.

“When Lisa Sarno became the general manager, she had a different approach, says Nelson. “I think her words were, ‘We have to bite the bullet. We’re just going to make them comply to the letter of the law, and if they don’t they’ll just have to delay their elections and put them off to another day.’”

While DONE has shouldered much of the criticism for the election delays, Sarno says the neighborhood councils knew that the election guidelines were going to be put into place.

“The election procedures were not just recently presented to the neighborhood councils,” she says. “This is actually something that was crafted by a committee of neighborhood council representatives and has been out there for over a year and a half. The department informed and relayed to neighborhood councils over the course of several months that the citywide procedures would become effective early this year.”

Sarno says there’s no specific entity that was at fault for the delays. “When you enact something that’s new, it’s never a good time,” she says. “There’s always going to be challenges in making a transition to a new policy.”

Jason Lyon, vice-chair for the 912 commission and Silver Lake Neighborhood Council member, says that while DONE has tried to pin the election debacle on the neighborhood councils, it’s DONE’s job to correct those problems and get the councils organized. “If DONE sees that they’re not together with paperwork, that project coordinator ought to be jumping in and saying, ‘We’ve got to get this together.’ And that’s not happening.”

City Council President Eric Garcetti says that neighborhood councils have a right to be upset, but that DONE raises very important issues about fair elections. “You can’t let the ‘perfect’ be the enemy of the ‘good,’” he says. “And I hope that we can resolve that so we don’t chase people away from that entry point of participation, which is those elections.”

Earlier this year, Councilmen Dennis Zine and Garcetti proposed a moratorium on all neighborhood council elections until DONE and the councils could resolve the problem.

Lyon says the moratorium is a good idea. “At the time Zine called for the moratorium, DONE did not have the staffing in place to implement their part of the rules. There were no independent election administrators, I think there are now three, which still isn’t enough for 87 neighborhood councils.”

Sarno says that five independent election administrators to assist the councils in running their elections now exist, and four more are in the pipeline. According to her, the moratorium is not needed.

“Many of our neighborhood councils have already adhered to our citywide election procedures,” she says. The best thing we can do is work with them to see what we have to change, and get through this election cycle so we can move on to the next year, Sarno says.

“We’ve already looked into next year, and we’re not going to experience the situation again.”

“I never dreamed people would be so frustrated that the department was oppressive, that they were being forced to follow the rules,” says Councilwoman Janice Hahn, who has long been a proponent of neighborhood councils. “I never envisioned neighborhood councils like that. I really saw them as being sort of a liberated organization that behaved differently than other organizations in the city of Los Angeles, and I feel like that hasn’t happened.”

N.C v. C.C

As neighborhood councils begin to learn how best to wield their power, one area of contention revolves around a charter mandate that requires the councils’ input before important decisions are made by the City Council. This doesn’t always happen, leaving some neighborhood councils to believe that they are purposefully being left out of the process. A controversial ethics reform/term limit extension proposal rushed through the council last week is the latest example.

According to several neighborhood council advocates, the city council lumped together the two issues and pushed them through the council in an attempt to bypass the neighborhood councils and Ethics Commission and to disguise the true nature of the proposal. City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo told the Daily News, “The people of Los Angeles have been cheated.”

Nelson says Lyon contacted Garcetti to write the opposition argument for the proposal, and was initially told he was too late before the councilman reversed his position and appointed Lyon and Jeff Jacobberger, a stakeholder in the Mid-City West Neighborhood Council, to write the argument, which was submitted to the council on Monday.

Nelson considers this a victory for neighborhood councils, not because all neighborhood councils oppose the measure, but because it demonstrates what can happen when neighborhood councils work. “This is a big turning point for neighborhood councils, and I think it will be an action that will unify them because hopefully they now have found a common foe, which is the proposal and the way it got on the ballot,” Nelson told the Daily News.

But Garcetti says media interpretations of the situation are askew, and does not see how this can be interpreted as a victory for neighborhood councils. “The Daily News wrote as if [Lyon] had been told, ‘No, you can’t do it,’ and then turning it into a symbolic victory for the neighborhood councils,” Garcetti says. “I couldn’t disagree more. I mean, this is a couple individuals who happen to be with neighborhood councils; there’s a ton of people in neighborhood councils that are for this, who have written us and want to be a part of the argument on the other side.”

One reason that neighborhood council notification has been a problem is because of the vastly different speeds at which the two groups move. “I think the neighborhood councils are experiencing just how huge the volume and how rapid the velocity of city government is and has to be,” Garcetti says. “If somebody ever wants to find that there’s not enough process, they can do it consistently on anything. We vote on probably 400 to 500 different items between committees and full council every week.”

Dr. Robert Gelfand of Coastal San Pedro Neighborhood Council says because councils meet usually once a month, they cannot weigh in on issues in a timely matter; items that require a vote must be referred to the appropriate committee before it is put on the agenda, meaning the quickest turnaround time for a resolution is 30 days.

“On Monday morning, we read about something that’s going to be put on the Thursday agenda,” Gelfand said. “Well, we’re not going to have a meeting that week, and even if we were, we couldn’t put it on the agenda because of the Brown Act and its requirement of 72 hours notice. Neighborhood councils have been wrestling with this for five years.”

Many in neighborhood councils see DONE as the main culprit for the problems in neighborhood councils. They say that election templates are constantly shifting, that election officials are sparse at best, and that low employee morale leads to rapid turnover within the department.

“The biggest problem is that they (DONE) don’t have enough people working in the field with us,” says Westwater.

Independent election officers are supposed to help plan elections and make sure election procedures are in accordance with the city and the council’s own bylaws.

“We’ve had one election administrator to handle everything until recently, so the guy’s having a nervous breakdown. So you miss one date, if he’s not available for 90 days, you have to add another 90 days because there’s only one person available.”

Lyon says he’s concerned with the morale level within DONE. “We’re literally on our fourth project coordinator in four months,” he says. “One was reassigned, two quit because they were miserable, and we have a new one who seems committed and great.”

“Council members have long said that (DONE field deputy) is the hardest job in politics here,” says Garcetti. “You’re out late, you’re running around different places, it’s a seven-days-a-week thing.”

Sarno asserts morale has improved since she got there. “We actually have had folks…that have been offered positions (outside the department) who have declined because they want to stay within the department because they see the new direction that it’s going in,” she says.

The main criticisms of neighborhood councils revolve around a few key issues: that more outreach must be done to increase diversity on the councils and make sure that all constituents are represented, and that neighborhood councils need to learn how to better work with each other and the city at large.

“I believe that our neighborhood councils need to be inclusive of renters, of seniors and of the youth,” says Sarno. “I think everyone needs to do a better job of incorporating those voices into our neighborhood councils.”

“This is a city on the move that really embraces everybody, and we’ve got to make sure neighborhood councils reflect that,” says Garcetti. He also says that while a lot of people have made huge sacrifices, participation rates still were not what “any vibrant democracy should have.”

“Apathy and lack of participation and exclusion of huge chunks of the population are a part of the political system in America,” says Lyon. “So the idea that we would have somehow figured out how to fix that in seven years is unrealistic. I do think the neighborhood councils in theory are perfect for addressing those problems.”

Newly discouraging for the councils is a tabled proposal written by Lyon that would have allowed neighborhood councils to introduce policy motions in City Council. Both the Education and Neighborhood Committee and the Rules and Elections Committee had approved it, but on Aug. 17 City Council refused to grant neighborhood leaders that policy power.

Dun Dun DONE…

What does the future hold for neighborhood councils? The 912 Commission is just underway, and no one, not even the commissioners, really know what’s going to happen. Also in progress is the search for a new, permanent general manager of DONE. The Education and Neighborhoods Committee has held several forums for the public to discuss what they would like in a new general manager, and the consensus seems to be someone who will fight for the neighborhood councils.

“For me the number one quality is that this person isn’t a bureaucrat,” says Hahn. “A general manager who has the guts to fight City Hall.”

Hahn also suggested at the Educations and Neighborhoods meeting last Monday that a sort of “junior Brown Act” might alleviate some of the constrictive guidelines that prohibit the councils from being more successful. “I think it sometimes prevents them from being relevant on certain issues,” she said. “We move pretty fast at the City Council.”

There are signs that neighborhood councils are improving. Remember Lincoln Heights, the neighborhood council that almost turned into a brawl? Since Galaviz became president, the council has done a complete 180-degree turn, electing a new board and getting together a quorum for the first time in a year and a half. They’ve even allocated funds for a Lincoln Heights holiday parade and the fireworks display for this year’s Fourth of July celebration.

In the meantime, disenchanted neighborhood council-ers and frustrated DONE-ites might want to take a page out of Nelson’s book: Go for a mountain bike ride, and treat yourself to a Twinkie. Who knows, maybe the solution to all the problems rests in neighborhood councils’ original, cream-filled catalyst. LAA

ABC's Nightline Host Martin Bashir Is A Fucking Idiot!

Why is it that so many arrogant, pompous twits from New York or London insist on mispronouncing - Los Angeles? Then when you get a Brit who lives in New York and reads lines on late night TV for a living, I guess the intellectual inability to correctly pronounce Los Angeles is preordained.

But can't anyone at ABC let him know he is mispronouncing the name of the second largest city in the country?

Three Skid Row Editorials Today! Two By Me - One By LA Times!

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-compromise20sep20,0,3933682.story?coll=la-news-comment-editorials

First my LAT's Op-Ed, with typo's corrected:

Handing Skid Row to Drug Pushers

The city's plan to legalize overnight sidewalk encampments protects the dealers who prey on skid row's homeless.

By Brady Westwater
BRADY WESTWATER is a neighborhood council activist and writer for citywatchla.com.

September 20, 2006

AS SOON AS this morning, the most vulnerable homeless of Los Angeles — those who live on the sidewalks of skid row — could be handed over as sacrificial offerings to Southern California's worst drug lords. If the City Council approves a secretly negotiated settlement with the ACLU today, the sidewalks of skid row will be turned into private property between 9 p.m. and 6 a.m. for anyone — including drug dealers — who claims to be homeless.

The council discussion will be held behind closed doors, and the details will be unveiled only after the fact. So unless the City Council musters the political courage to reject this compromise, the people of Los Angeles will lose control of their own streets to a federal judge.
I've seen drug dealing and violent crime in my neighborhood near skid row explode since April. That's when the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with the ACLU's widely ridiculed legal argument that enforcing a city ordinance against sleeping on sidewalks is "cruel and unusual punishment" if the person claims to be homeless. The result was the "privatization" of the streets because police agreed not to intrude on anyone in a street tent between a specified period of time each day.

The case, and subsequent mediation that led to what's being voted on today, rests on the ACLU's claim that the homeless are forced to sleep on sidewalks because there's nowhere else for them to go. But, to begin with, there are empty beds every night on skid row, despite the teams of people who go out not just asking but begging people to come into the shelters.

Second, anyone who does not wish to use a shelter can find public and private places to sleep discreetly. I have been homeless (because of a dopamine malfunction that I still battle), so I know this firsthand. I also know, though, that many on skid row are too medically ill, mentally ill or drug addicted to care for themselves or to make the right decisions in their lives. And it is these people who will suffer most by being herded into one small ghetto along with the drug dealers who prey on them.

Because of the now-discredited policy of containment, skid row is the only place where the homeless have access to seven free hot meals a day, free showers, free haircuts, free clothes and free medical care. That concentration has created a market — and legal cover — for drug pushers.

Legalizing encampments will only make it harder to get the homeless off the streets, while making their lives more dangerous. During the police-free hours every night, the tents will offer private office space for dealers and pimps, and the police will be powerless to intervene. During the day, these tents will be folded up and leaned against a fence until the clock strikes 9 p.m.

The tragedy is that the city attorney has advised that an appeal of the 9th Circuit decision would be easily winnable, because the constitutional argument is shoddy and because the judge was never shown that there are empty beds on skid row every night. Keeping this bad decision on the books opens up the likelihood that someone will use the same legal reasoning to erect tent cities on the sidewalks of Venice, Hollywood or anywhere else a homeless "advocate" can complain about insufficient shelter beds.

Part of the concern about anti-camping laws comes from fear of indiscriminate sweeps. Yet no one today is arrested just for sleeping on the sidewalk; you have to commit another, far more serious crime. The jail system doesn't have the capacity to process legitimate criminals, let alone homeless roundups. Worries over potential police abuses and protecting the property rights of the true homeless — both of which are important — can and should be addressed by passing specific city laws.

But we cannot afford to sign a settlement that locks the city — forever — into a process that will create permanently protected havens for drug dealers. We can't let the ACLU forcibly privatize public sidewalks for anyone who wishes to live on them.

The side effects of this case have already been devastating to the residents of skid row. It is obscene that the City Council can even think of allowing the sovereignty of our public spaces to be sacrificed behind closed doors, thus endangering the lives of those who are unable to protect themselves. The city's right to protect all its citizens must be defended in court, and if any settlement is to be done, the City Council must insist that it be done in public, with informed public debate.

To do otherwise is a terrible betrayal of the citizens of Los Angeles.

Then the LAT's Editorial:

EDITORIALS

Unsettling Skid Row

City Council should approve the enforcement guidelines, but keep its legal options open.

September 20, 2006

ALL LEGAL SETTLEMENTS ARE IMPERFECT, even to the parties that agree to them. But the city's proposed settlement with the American Civil Liberties Union over how the police can enforce the law on skid row gives away too much — in practice and in principle — and brings the city too little in return.

The compromise, which goes before the City Council today for a vote, has much to like — especially across-the-board support from Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, Police Chief William J. Bratton and the ACLU. The latter two have been feuding for nearly four years over how best to alleviate crime and homelessness downtown. The ACLU won a decision in April in federal court that the city's ordinance against sleeping on sidewalks amounted to cruel and unusual punishment when enforced on skid row.

Since then, the police have essentially thrown up their hands, and the area has devolved into even more chaos, while a court-appointed mediator has worked with the two sides to craft a settlement. It is tempting to see the compromise as a last-chance effort to get the parties on the same page.

The deal would allow crime-ridden skid row a looser set of laws than the rest of the city, allowing for sleeping on public sidewalks between 9 p.m. and 6 a.m. This double standard would be acceptable if the city could continue its legal challenge against the court decision, but the terms of the settlement require that the appeal be dropped. Because there is no guarantee the ACLU or other parties won't use the precedent of this case to challenge enforcement elsewhere in the city, that's a compromise too far — especially when it's unclear that the deal will improve the culture of lawlessness downtown.

Councilwoman Jan Perry, whose district includes skid row, has introduced a thoughtful alternative. Essentially, her proposal would accept the settlement's terms but continue the city's appeal, while also continuing work on drafting a sleeping ordinance that all or most parties can tolerate. Whereas the current settlement is a leap of faith with no safety valve if it fails to work as promised, Perry's plan would allow both sides to reassess in several months' time.

Bratton contends that ditching the appeal and agreeing to the nighttime exception is worth it. He would finally have a clear legal tool to help bring the area under control and persuade treatment-resistant street dwellers to accept housing and services.

Maybe so. But it's also possible that this experiment won't work and that the homeless and the criminals they attract will find they can survive just fine with their tents up only at night. Then the city will be left with an inadequate tool, a homeless problem as bad as before — and no legal options.

Solving this dispute will not solve skid row's homeless problem. As Bratton said earlier this week, the police "are not the solution to the problems of skid row. It is a much larger social and societal issue." But it's also true that no progress can be made on skid row until crime is brought under control.

Later, will link to www.citywatchla.com for third editorial....

Misleading Headline on LA Times Internet Site!

The article itself not make the below mistake - but the article also does not describe why the below headline on the front page of the LA Times website this morning is dead wrong.

11th-Hour Bills Quietly Become Law

By Evan Halper

State lawmakers may make big changes late in the game. Watchdog groups don't have time to counter.

In reality, none of these laws passed at the last minute without any public - and often - legislative - oversight (like Prop R was recently passed by the Los Angeles City Council without anyone actually reading it) - will become law until either the Arnold signs them or allows them to become law without his signature. And many of the worst will likely be vetoed by Arnold.

And even then - they do not become law until next year.

Times Misses BIG Story in LAUSD Bill Passing - But Daily News Gets It Right!

When I read the LA Times coverage on two Republicans crossing the aisle to suport the School Board takeover by the Mayor - nary a word was said about the real issue of the day - the "severability clause".

Luckily - the Daily News was able to realize what the real news was.... and tells us what really happened:

Harrison Shepard

Daily News

SACRAMENTO - Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's bid to take control of the Los Angeles Unified School District passed the state Senate Monday morning on a narrow vote, leaving the mayor one step away from his vision of reforming the city's schools.

The bill was approved on a 23-14 vote - just above the 21 votes needed to pass - on an almost party-line vote with just two Democrats in opposition and two Republicans in support.

"I can tell you that the work's not done yet," Villaraigosa said minutes after the vote. "We still got an Assembly battle. But my hope is tomorrow we'll be able to declare victory there as well."

And....

One of the Republicans to cross over to voting in favor of the bill was Sen. George Runner, R-Antelope Valley, who had been leading opposition to the bill as recently as Friday.

Runner said he still opposes the concept, and prefers a breakup of the Los Angeles Unified School District, but when the authors removed a legal provision that he most objected to, he agreed to vote in favor.

That provision was a "severability clause" which tells courts if one portion of the bill is struck down, the rest should remain law. Runner was concerned that in the event of a successful lawsuit, that clause would leave a half-measure in place, which in his view was worse than the entire bill becoming law....

UPDATE!! Almost 7 PM and LA Times is still running its before noon story - with three credited writers as opposed to the Daily News' one - that does NOT even mention the meat of the real story - that the bill passed was a severe below to the Mayor since it was amended to say that if one part of the bill loses in court (as many people think will happen) - the entire bill is dead.

UPDATE!! At 8:40 PM LA Times - finally - addresses the minor fact that the change to the bill will - likely - make the entire bill null in paragraph 30 of... 32. And it just barely addresses that fact:

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-lausd29aug29,0,3429715.story?coll=la-home-headlines

To garner votes from Republicans Runner and Sen. Roy Ashburn of Bakersfield, Nuñez on Friday amended the bill to remove a "severability" clause that would have allowed portions of the law to remain in effect even if other sections were struck down by a court. Runner pushed for the clause's removal because, he said, he did not want parts of the bill that were concessions to unions to remain if Villaraigosa's powers were limited by a court.

True Los Angeles Hero - Charles "Bud" Hayes - Passes.

In a much too short a story, the life of Bud Hayes is celebrated in today's Los Angeles Times.

It is tragic we have lost him far too soon at the age of 55 just when his leadership is needed now that Los Angeles is - finally - focused on how we can safely (and that is the key word here) house those thousands who are sleeping on our sidewalks.

I can only hope that the Times will give his life and his accomplishments far more coverage in the days to come and that the city will find appropriate ways to commerate him. In other cities, they honor dead heros by having them lie in state in the rotunda's of their city halls and I can think of no more deserving person that Charles Hayes for Los Angeles to start that tradition here.

Much more later.

Jocelyn Y. Stewart
Times Staff Writer

August 25, 2006

Charles "Bud" Hayes, a sometimes controversial advocate who spent a decade working on downtown Los Angeles' skid row as executive director of the nonprofit SRO Housing Corp., died Aug. 12 from injuries suffered in a motorcycle accident. He was 55.

In a 25-year career, Hayes was also a consultant for scores of substance abuse prevention and treatment programs in the state. His credentials included personal experiences with addiction and recovery.

"He had an enormous amount of credibility not only with me, but with the people he fought so hard to represent," said Los Angeles City Councilwoman Jan Perry, whose district includes skid row. Hayes was born April 2, 1951, in Los Angeles and attended what is now Chaminade College Preparatory, a Catholic school in West Hills. After high school he fell into addiction, went through recovery and built a career.

In 1986, Hayes founded Social Model Recovery Systems, but it was through his work at SRO Housing that he helped change the landscape of skid row and the lives of its residents.

A century ago, single-room-occupancy hotels housed men who worked on railroads. But decades later the dilapidated hotels had become housing of last resort for the poor.

SRO Housing Corp. purchased many of the hotels, transformed them into attractive affordable housing and filled them with formerly homeless people who were trying to turn their lives around.

"If we just painted the place and left it like it was, the message would be, 'You're not worth very much,' " Hayes said in a 2001 article in Mother Jones magazine. The extensive work done on the former hotels "implies something different," he said.

For several years Hayes also served on the Los Angeles County Beach Commission and volunteered with surfing groups and ocean protection organizations.

"When he couldn't surf as much because of certain chronic health ailments, he started back on motorcycles," said Ruth Schwartz, executive director of Shelter Partnership Inc. "He always liked to have fun. That was Bud."

Hayes, who was not married at the time of his death, is survived by his mother, Nancy Hayes; brothers Bob and Bill; sisters Alison Berlin and Nancy Williams; and a stepson, Kyle Oram.

Downtown News Exposes Guilty Party In SkidRowGate At LA Times!

The mystery of how an unknown writer within the Los Angeles planning or writing communities (and who had apparently briefly visited Los Angeles only twice in his life) was hired by the Los Angeles Times to write a major 'expose' of the conditions of Skid Row - and then who got almost every single 'fact' in his story dead wrong - was finally solved by Jon Regardie of the Downtown News!

Or least Regardie has exposed the name of the guilty party. But exactly how guilty he is still an unanswered question that the Times itself will - hopefully - address once their internal investigation into SkidRowGate is finished.

It all started less than three weeks ago when English college lecturer Slater wrote the lead story in the Sunday Opinion/Current section where he libeled the Central City East Assocation when he falsely claimed they had physically hosed the homeless off the sidewalks, a claim that was completely contradicted by an article in the LA Times only weeks before. I'll let Regardie tell the rest of this part of the story:

Jon Regardie

On the morning of Sunday, July 30, Estela Lopez did something many people in Los Angeles do. Before going to church, she opened the Los Angeles Times.

Unlike most people, however, Lopez was aghast at the lead piece in the "Current" section (formerly known as "Opinion"). Splashed prominently across the front page of the section, complete with a large graphic, was an opinion piece written by Tom Slater, a lecturer in urban studies at the University of Bristol in Britain. It began with a line that cast the Central City East Association, the organization Lopez heads, in a nearly draconian light.

It read (the capital letters appear on the Times website): "THE STEAM CLEANING of the streets of skid row a few weeks ago - when homeless people were literally swept and hosed out of their makeshift encampments in downtown Los Angeles by employees of the local "business improvement district" - was a troubling moment in the battle over the neighborhood's future."

There was a problem, however: The CCEA never "literally swept and hosed" anyone out of an encampment (a second reference to people being "hosed out of the way" appeared later in the piece). Instead, the organization has been working with the LAPD and other entities to clean the streets.

In an ongoing and carefully controlled process, the CCEA distributes leaflets the day before a cleaning occurs. Once the time comes for pressure washing the sidewalks - in some locations encrusted with syringes, trash, human waste and other biohazards - CCEA workers help move the homeless campers' possessions. The tent dwellers often return to the sidewalks after the washing is completed.

All of which explains why Lopez was stunned by Slater's column.

"The images that were conjured up were of the darkest days of the Civil Rights movement," said Lopez last week. A woman who spends her days working in and around Skid Row, Lopez is known for being tough. But talking about the Current column, she became emotional, her voice halting.

"I was absolutely mortified," she said before apologizing for her tears.

What the Downtown News article does not address in too much detail is exactly how many other statements in Slater's article were equally fraudulent.

http://lacowboy.blogspot.com/2006/08/la-times-op-ed-page-publishes-single.html

I will refer you to my above first post on the subject where I describe how Slater (or whoever plied him with his 'facts') lied about Bunker Hill, affordable housing on Skid Row, rent control in Los Angeles, SRO's, loft conversions and numerous other things - and how he also chose to not just ignore, but also contradict all latest research in his supposed field of expertise - gentrification and its affects on the poor living in gentrifying neighborhoods - plus he even ignored all the current research on the history of the name Skid Row.

And this is from some who is - or at least was - going to have a book published on this subject.

So exactly how did Slater come to write on LA and LA's Skid Row - two subjects he clearly knows nothing about - and exactly where did he obtain all of his false information? Well, the answer may - or may not - surprise you. Slater says his source for the 'facts' in the article were from... an editor at the LA Times:

In a carefully worded email to Downtown News, Slater wrote: "As someone who has researched and published on gentrification, I was invited by the LA Times to place recent events in downtown in the broader context of gentrification. The information re: street cleaning given to me by the paper turned out to be incorrect. The mistake was due to a miscommunication and an editing error: it has since been duly noted and corrected, and apologies have been made by both the LA Times and myself to CCEA for misrepresenting their actions, which CCEA have accepted."

That is his bowdlerized version to the press weeks after the story hit. Below is his earlier and likely... far more accurate... response to the CCEA:

However, in emails given to Downtown News by Lopez, Slater had harsher criticism for the Times. After the piece ran, Slater, said Lopez, reached out on his own to CCEA. He wrote (the text is unedited):

"You and your organisation have every reason to be angry. The Times completely misinformed me about what had happened with regard to the street cleaning - I was led to believe by the newspaper that "homeless people were literally swept and hosed out of their makeshift encampments", and I was asked to write an article situating these events within the broader context of gentrification. I was mortified to learn that sentence was factually inaccurate, and would like to apologise for this error. My mistake was that I trusted a respected newspaper; I should have checked the facts."

Lopez responded, thanking Slater and offering some context for the current state of Skid Row and describing CCEA's efforts in the neighborhood. Slater wrote back, and included the lines (again unedited):

"Thank you for your reply. Again, I am so sorry that I was unwittingly involved in misrepresenting your organisation. I am upset with the Los Angeles Times for putting me in this position, and they have refused to admit their error in public, which is disappointing."

So the Los Angeles Times lied to him - and then refused to admit in public that they had lied to him with false information! So I guess there is no honor among thieves - or lying journalists.

So - who is the guilty party? Who is it who - apparently - not only hired Slater, but then fed him false information - and then signed off on and approved the printing of that false information?

Why, none other than Los Angeles Times Op-Ed Editor - Nick Goldberg!

More from Regardie:

Reached last Thursday, while he was on vacation, Times Op-Ed and Current section Editor Nick Goldberg, who worked with Slater on the piece, addressed the line in question.

"It was a mistake," he said by phone. "As soon as it appeared in the paper we realized it was a mistake. We were very sorry to have done it. We ran a correction and we ran a letter about the subject. We feel very bad for having misrepresented what happened. The error came about because of a misreading of the story the Times had printed by Cara Mia DiMassa. I think that the error was the Times' fault - not Tom's. The information came from us."

Part of what spurred the controversy is the article to which Goldberg referred; DiMassa's July 12 report on the CCEA's street cleaning included an interview with a man, Nelson Ware, identified as having lived in the Skid Row area for 20 years. DiMassa wrote, "Asked about the sidewalk-cleaning efforts Tuesday, Ware said that it had been done correctly, with fliers distributed in advance and a crew that did not take anyone's belongings."

Somehow, DiMassa's findings did not make it into Slater's Current piece.

Well, duh!

What is really fascination is how Tom Slater put quote marks around the most damning of the lies he told - almost as if these were the exact words fed to him by his handler. And one wonders exactly how all the other many lies were fed to him - and to what degree they were written out for him by his 'editor'?

And while I would like to think that the truth of this will all eventually come out, that would be a considerable break from the Op-Ed sections's history which even over a year after the fact still refuses refuses to correct such blatant lies as when Mike Davis said that the housing market had already crashed in San Francisco - even though it was hitting - and continued to hit - record high prices.

And though the single worst of Slater's errors was - finally - corrected in the on-line edition - it still took three phone calls from me to three different departments to get the actual story - finally - corrected on line, long after the correction itself printed. And as for all the other lies - lies that did not expose them to a multi-million dollar libel suit if had they had not been instantly corrected - not a single one of them has yet been corrected by the LA Times.

Nor has any explanation of SkidRowGate - or an apology - yet been issued by the Los Angeles Times.

Now as for why this all is so imporant - ignoring for a moment that what Nick Goldberg did is a far more serious breach of journalistic ethics than, say... making some on-line posts under fake names - well, that will be the subject of my next post.

Stay tuned!

New York City - The Show Me City! Or - Nothing LIke That Good Old Team Spirit!

The New York Times decided it was time to cash in on Hollwyood's need for material with a move that could potentially enrich some of its writers. The NYT's writers - or at least one of them - is somewhat.... less optimistic....

Times Hires Talent Agency

The New York Times has hired a Hollywood talent agency to help shop film and television projects based on articles appearing in the newspaper. The Broder Webb Chervin Silbermann Agency, which is to merge with the larger International Creative Management this month, will represent The Times in dealing with producers seeking the rights to its content.

Previously, the paper handled requests through its legal department. Movie and television producers have long turned to magazine articles for inspiration — “Saturday Night Fever,” “Urban Cowboy,” even “Coyote Ugly” all began life in the pages of glossy publications — prompting publishers to strike formal relationships with Hollywood agencies to capture a piece of that revenue.

But few of the projects optioned ever make it to the screen, big or small, and these deals rarely become lucrative.

LORNE MANLY

Now that should get those offers pouring in!

12,000 Ballots - Or 12,000 Polling Places? LA Times Can't Seem To Make Up It's Mind!

Sam Enriquez
Times Staff Writer

4:26 PM PDT, August 9, 2006

MEXICO CITY -- Elections officials on Wednesday began recounting nearly 12,000 disputed ballots from July's presidential election while supporters of second-place finisher Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador expanded their civil disobedience campaign to a blockade of three bank buildings.

The recount was ordered last week by a seven-judge tribunal that has the final say over election matters. They must declare a new president within a month, or throw out the results of the July 2 election.

Lopez Obrador and his lawyers filed appeals to the Federal Electoral Tribunal shortly after the election, claiming errors and fraud steered the election to Felipe Calderon, who won by less than a percentage point. Lopez Obrador has since waged a campaign of civil disobedience to support his demand for a national recount.

The tribunal appeared to close the door on a full recount Saturday, after justices said the law allows the recounting of ballots only at polling stations that appeared to have made arithmetic errors or show other irregularities.

Lopez Obrador so far has offered no proof of fraud.

The partial recount, which must be completed by Sunday, will require opening ballot boxes from 11,893 polling stations, about 9 percent of the 130,000 voting sites.

So which is it - almost 12,000 ballots or almost 12,000 polling places?

UPDATE!

The results are in! Early this morning the LA Times finally voted for.... almost 12,000 polling places as the correct answer!

Another Bonehead Business Error In LA Times!

The myth of the vanishing middle class continues to be dead horse territory - a reliable target to beat. But rather than delve into the lack of logic in these arguments at this time, I will instead merely point out one momumental factual error by Peter Drier. And there is, of course, never any less reliable place to obtain facts from than a University professor.

Drier makes the incredibly bonehead statement that Los Angeles County has more billionaires than any other part of the country. But when one looks at any list or any set of statistics, New York has far more billionaires than LA both within its city limits or within its metroplitan area.

It's not even close.

And the overall San Francisco Bay Area also has as many - if not more - billionaires than Los Angeles.

Below is the latest figures I could find, though they are a little old.

There are now 313 billionaires in America, up from 262 counted last year; it's the largest number of billionaires ever on the list, the magazine said. The list shows California has the most resident members with 98, twice the number of the New York state, which has 49. But New York City still has the most 400 list members per city with 38, followed by San Francisco with 22 and Los Angeles with 19.

And while it has been over two weeks since this article was published (July 23rd) - there is still no correction in the Los Angeles Times.

Do You Think Guitar Center, Inc. Is A Fortune Five Hundred Company?

Well, I sure didn't and... evidently... neither does Fortune Magazine which ranks it at #861 in their 1,000 (and not their 500 list) list:

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune500/snapshots/2366.html

But somebody should tell the LA Times this:

Gregory W. Griggs
Times Staff Writer

August 8, 2006

Agoura Hills. Thousand Oaks. Westlake Village. Their names are a tribute to the rolling hills, trees and lakes that dot the landscape.

So proud were they of their surroundings, the three Conejo Valley cities lobbied for several years to have a 16-mile stretch of the Ventura Freeway designated a scenic highway.

The state turned down the request because there were too many billboards, industrial parks and gas station signs lining the road. That was more than a decade ago.

Although the corridor that connects Los Angeles and Ventura counties is still known for its dramatic topography, these days, corporate headquarters and luxury homes define the valley. Further enhancing its image, a Four Seasons resort and spa is set to open in November, adding Westlake Village to its list of locations that include London, Paris, Singapore and Bangkok, Thailand.

Wealth and fame are no strangers to this area, home to five Fortune 500 companies:
Countrywide Financial Corp., Dole Food Co., the Ryland Group Inc., Guitar Center Inc. and Amgen Inc., the world's largest biotechnology firm, which for more than two decades has helped fuel the business boom.

On the positive side, I also would have never imagined that a small guitar store that my old writing partner used to hang out in back in the 1960's during his rock star phase would become one of the 1,000 largest companies in the country.