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.

So Who's Going To Take The Fall For The Phony Gentrification Story?

The question on everyone's mind downtown today - why did Tom Slater, a virtually unknown writer in LA with no known connections to or any special knowledge of Los Angeles, end up writing the lead article on gentrification in Downtown Los Angeles two Sundays ago?

Did he submit the article in an effort to push his upcoming book?

Or... did the Times ask him - and make a point of not asking anyone with any first hand information on the subject?

Was there a reason behind the timing of the piece? Does it have anything to do with the negotiations that are going on between the City Attorney's Office and the Mayor's Office about allowing the police to break up the dens of drug dealers posing as homeless encampments that are going on at this moment?

Inquiring cowboys want to know!

But suppose... just suppose... that someone who wants to keep those encampments in place because it is good for their business... has been talking to someone at the Times and asked them for some support in keeping the encampments on Skid Row?

And... just suppose... that person at the Times then contacted a writer half-way around the world and fed him the "facts" to write that article? And just suppose he found a writer innocent enough to rely on the LA Times for his facts without doing ANY independent investigation?

And could this also explain why this article has seemingly... vanished... from the LA Times website?

Is that what happened?

Well, only time will tell.

But a certain very, very informed source - and picture a picture of a horse and his mouth right here - is claiming that is indeed the case.

Stay tuned!

It's going to be a bumpy week!

LA Times White Washes, Covers Up and Buries Their Lies About Skid Row!

On the front page of last week's Current section, the LA Times published an article on the alleged gentrification of Skid Row in which almost every statement was either an out and out lie - or a serious distortion of the truth as I demonstrated in yesterday's post.

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

And while I had hoped that the Los Angeles Times would correct at least half of those lies and errors, instead - buried at the bottom of their corrections page is this pathetically inadequate response:

Gentrification: A July 30 Current article on urban revitalization said the Central City East Assn. had "literally swept and hosed" homeless people from encampments on skid row when it cleaned the streets recently. Homeless people had been informed a day in advance that the street would be washed, and the organization waited until everyone was out of the way before beginning the cleanup.

But that is just the beginning of the cover-up of the truth. First, let's look at all the corrections contained on today's on-line corrections page and see what the LAT considered more important than correcting the lead front page story in last Sunday's Cuurrent section about a major civic issue that was largely... fraudulent:

Negro Leagues: The Sports series on the Negro Leagues included a July 28 article on former team owners that said Alejandro Pompez was the first owner in the league to sign Latin players. In fact, several Latin players had signed with major league teams before Pompez became an owner. Also, a chart on July 30 listed those who made the jump from the Negro League Monarchs to Major League Baseball. Left off was Harold M. Jones, a Monarch who later signed with the Kansas City Athletics.

'I Love Led Zeppelin': A review of Ellen Forney's "I Love Led Zeppelin" in July 30's Book Review cited the author's account of attending a 1970s Halloween costume party with her father. The author actually recounts her mother's experience attending the party with Forney's father.

'Conversations With Other Women': An article about actress Helena Bonham Carter in today's Calendar says that "Conversations With Other Women," in which she stars, was directed by Hans Canosa from a script by his wife, Gabrielle Zevin. They are not married.

Museum blogs: An article about museum blogs last Sunday misspelled as Brian the first name of the Science Museum of Minnesota exhibition developer who manages its Science Buzz blog. His name is Bryan Kennedy.

Photographer's gender: A caption with an item last Sunday about an art exhibition at the Skirball Cultural Center incorrectly referred to photographer Michal Ronnen Safdie as a man. Safdie is female.

Museum blogs: A Calendar article about museum blogs on July 30 misspelled the first name of the manager of the Science Museum of Minnesota's Science Buzz blog. His name is Bryan Kennedy, not Brian.

Mustard Day: A Sunday Punches item in July 30's West magazine misidentified the pope who created the office of Mustard Maker to the Pope. It was Pope John XXII of Avignon, not John XII.

"So You Think You Can Dance": An article last Sunday about the TV show "So You Think You Can Dance" mistakenly gave choreographer Nancy O'Meara's first name as Anne.

Solar energy: A Real Estate section article on July 30 identified a member of the American Solar Energy Society board as Alan Black. His name is Andy Black.

African tour: A tour to South Africa and Namibia in the July 30 Tours & Cruises column listed the single surcharge as $325. It is $1,325.

The article on blues deejay Margaret Ann Long-Dolan (a.k.a. Ann the Raven) left the impression that musician John Lee Hooker was still performing ("The Blue Raven," July 23). Hooker died in 2001. The article also indicated that Long-Dolan hosts one of three blues-centric radio shows in Southern California. In addition to the three mentioned, "The Blues Shack" broadcasts on KCLU-FM in Ventura County (88.3) and Santa Barbara (102.3).

The 800 Words column on the TV commercial ad for HeadOn ("Ad Nauseam," July 23) misspelled the diet pill Relacore as Realcore.

Gentrification: A July 30 Current article on urban revitalization said the Central City East Assn. had "literally swept and hosed" homeless people from encampments on skid row when it cleaned the streets recently. Homeless people had been informed a day in advance that the street would be washed, and the organization waited until everyone was out of the way before beginning the cleanup.

Ok - this major screw-up was buried as correction number 13 of 14 corrections. And it was considered less important than calling Alan Black, Andy Black (whoever he is), less important than getting the spelling corrrection on a freaking diet pill, less important than the cost of a surchage on a trip to Africa - and, my favorite, less important than not once, but twice, correcting the misspelling of the first name (Brian instead of Bryan) who is the ... drum roll please... manager of the Science Museum of Minnesota's Science Buzz blog; a correction which I am certain is of vital importance to everyone in Los Angeles.

And then in the printed paper, I had to look through the whole section twice before I found the correction of the front page, top of the fold story, and that correction was buried on the last page - buried under another correction.

Now before we get to the totally inadequate correction itself, I wanted to refresh myself on the article, so I went to the Current page on the website since it always has last week's stories on it. But, uh - no - it was not there. But, no bother, all stories are still free on-line for at least ten days, so just searched for Central City East and while I found the correction of the story and the CCEA's letter to the editor - I could not find the story itself

Then I searched 'Skid Row', and got tons of hits - but still not that article. Ok - so the LA Times search engine isn't the greatest. So I ran Tom Slater the writer and - still no article!

I then tried direct quotes from the article - and still no article. So it appears that someone has removed the article from the searchable database to try and hide the evidence.

I did - finally - find the story, though, by going to the on-line print edition and since last Sunday was no longer an option, I changed the 7 days back to an 8 in the URL - and I... finally... found the Slater story. And guess what - even though they were forced to print a (partial) correction - but have refused to correct the on-line story itself!

So why has the LA Times not only refused to correct 90% of the errors in the story, and then try to bury the correction? And when you do find the story - why has it NOT been corrected?

More on this in my next post.

LA Times' Op-Ed Page Publishes Single Most Moronic Article In History Of Los Angeles Times!

In a stunning combination of massive factual errors, complete geographic ignorance, incorrect historic references and a seeming lack of any first (or second or third) hand knowledge of the subject matter he is writing about, English university lecturer Tom Slater managed to out embarrass even Mel Gibson with his bizarre statements in last Sunday's LA Times.

In his Op-Ed piece about the affects of gentrification on LA's Skid Row, Tom Slater starts by claiming that homeless people were recently literally 'swept and hosed' away on Skid Row by the local business improvement teams.

Unfortunately for him - and the LA Times - nothing like that ever happened.

It is a total fantasy.

And since the LA Time's news section did cover this story, perhaps someone over at the Op-Ed section might on occasion read the news section of the LA Times.

What really happened is that once sidewalks became such health hazards that they endangered any person walking on them, much less sleeping on them, with illnesses such as flesh-eating bacteria, they had to be cleaned to protect the health of the people using those sidewalks. Anyone who was camped out on them was then given a full day's notice to move both themselves and their possessions to safety prior to the sidewalks being cleaned.

They were also told there were lockers - paid for by the local business community - where anyone who is homeless can safely store their belongings free of charge at any time, and not just when the sidewalks are being cleaned.

To repeat, no one was ever literally or figuratively swept or hosed away - and no one ever needed to lose their belongings. In fact, rather than being swept away, the homeless were able to immediately return to the now (relatively) clean sidewalks once the sidewalks dried off, or even before.

In addition, the sidewalks are similarly cleaned in every other part of downtown - and not just on Skid Row or where the homeless sleep, a fact Slater appears to be ignorant of. He also ignores the fact that to NOT clean the sidewalks of Skid Row when the rest of the sidewalks of downtown are being cleaned would be inexcusable. And if that ever happened, then Mr. Slater would, of course, claim this was one of the servces not provided that 'underserved' community (as he calls it); an 'underserved' community that has far more free social servcies than any part of this city, making that claim of his a lie, also.

Slater then proceeds to fill up empty space with needless histories of the terms 'skid row' and 'gentrification' and even then, he can not get his facts straight. He baldly states that Seattle was the original Skid Row where logs were alleged slid down a street called Skid Road. He refuses to say, though, this is only one of several theories of where the name came from. He also ignores the fact that the term Skid Road was used in other Western lumber camps before it was used in Seattle and even far earlier in the Adirondacks, where the original skid roads existed.

He also ignores the fact that recent research makes it likely that the 1880's road of Seattle was NOT a place where logs were 'skid' down to the water, since that would defy the laws of gravity. He also ignores - or is unaware that there are other theories about the origination of the term, other than the logging terms, when he makes his broad statement that the term Skid Row being originated in Seattle.

But - hey - why let a few facts stand in the way of a bad story?

Still, it is odd that when he goes to such lengths to explain the term when he is writing a book about the subject - and then refuses to admit his explanation is only an (increasingly) challenged theory.

After that, Slater cites his extensive credentials for writing the authoratative article about Skid Row in Los Angeles.

He visited LA in both 1994 and in 2002.

One time in each century.

Now while almost every statement of his in this article can be challenged to one degree or another on factual grounds, I will merely examine the final few paragraphs where he hangs himself with the rope he has so carefully laid out for himself:

To begin with:

Gentrification is a serious issue when housing laws fail to protect tenants, when affordable housing is nonexistent and when no new public housing is being built because of widespread fears of re-creating the unacceptable conditions of L.A.'s existing housing projects, like Imperial Courts in Watts.

The truth is all of Downtown LA is covered by a strong rent contol ordinance and it covers all affordable housing units. And even the ability to raise rents by rehabbing units, has been curtailed. Second, Skid Row area has the largest concentration of affordable low income housing in the city - so how can affordable housing here be.... non-existent?. Plus more affordable units are re-habbed for long term use each year, and others are built from the ground up. And until recently, the majority of all housing built in downtown was affordable.

Even if people are not made homeless, the conversion of dilapidated hotels into swanky apartments means there that are fewer housing options for poorer citizens, and if this happens on a large scale, it puts massive pressure on already stretched voluntary organizations, charities and social assistance providers.

Again, totally false. Not a single hotel has been turned into swanky apartments and only one old hotel has even had a portion of its units converted into work force priced lofts.

Exactly one.

And not one tennant was evicted in even that case. Less than 1% of all the individual new units in downtown built or being built were created from buildings that were hotels at the time the loft boom started. And the number of new permanent affordable units in the greater downtown area has dramatically increased during the same time period.

Plus there is a moratorium - which he also ignores - that prevents any existing SRO Hotel from being converted.

People living on the streets and in the single-room-occupancy hotels of downtown L.A. have enough to cope with already without being hosed out of the way for iPod-wearing, latte-drinking professionals strolling to work in Bunker Hill.

Obviously, he has never, ever walked the streets of Downtown if he thinks that people walking to work on Bunker Hill from their lofts are walking through Skid Row. No one from any lofts is walking to any offices through the streets of Skid Row. He also neglects to mention that the single largest subsidized housing project in downtown - by far - is located on... Bunker Hill.

Now that are just some of the highlights of his factual errors. Now I will address how he covers up and ignores the real problems of Skid Row.

If urgently needed change in downtown L.A. is to improve life at all for those who live there now, some provision must be made for adequate, affordable housing. Caps on loft conversions, greater rent protections for tenants and subsidies for people unable to afford rental housing would also help ensure that poverty is not simply moved elsewhere.

If the debate about skid row is to be productive, we need to reject the characterizations of its dwellers as unfortunate failures and instead evaluate the ways in which a booming housing market can do damage — economic, social and psychological — to those who live in poor, underserved neighborhoods.

It is frightening that the LA Times could have printed a piece about LA’s Skid Row by someone completely ignorant of the reasons behind the existence of Skid Row. To begin with, Skid Row in its present state happened long before anything resembling gentrification happened anywhere in the central city.

There is zero cause and affect between the new lofts in downtown and the Skid Row.

Even more bizarre is Slater’s assertion that the only way one can have a dialogue on Skid Row is to ignore the problems of those who live in those neighborhoods and instead concentrate on the ‘negative’ affects a booming housing market has on the low income people in those neighborhoods.

The problem with his thesis – is that it’s totally wrong.

Either he is unaware – or has chosen to conceal – that the vast majority of the homeless sleeping on the sidewalks of Skid Row are there because of their addition to drugs or alcohol – and that many of them also suffer from varying degrees of mental illness.

Of the over fifty people I had assisted in their getting off the streets – not one of them was forced out into the streets primarily by loss of housing due to economic problems; every one of them lost their housing – by their own admission - due to incarceration, drug or alcohol problems, mental illness or - usually - a combination of several of these problems, which then led them to be unable to afford housing.

That is not to say that people do not end up on the street due to a loss of housing, period. But those are rarely the people you find lying on the sidewalks of Skid Row. And those homeless for primarily economic reasons usually tend to be the very short term homeless.

Also, I have not once been unable to find housing for anyone who did – finally – want to get off the streets with days or at worst – weeks – of trying to get them off the streets. The problem of Skid Row is not gentrification; the problem is that the majority of the people sleeping on the streets of Skid Row refuse to accept any housing that does not allow them to use drugs or they are too mentally ill to accept the help they need.

And his idea on putting a cap on buildings being converted into lofts - and by law 100% of them are now office/industrial buildings as opposed to the previous 98% of the buildings - thus reducing the overall supply of housing will make housing overall more affordable is... bizarre.

But Slater claims that no discussion of Skid Row can even address those issues since he refuses to even acknowledge they exist; he states that only the allegedly deleterious affects of gentrification on existing inhabitants can be considered when one discusses Skid Row. And that is the final flaw in his bizarre article.

His unsupported claims about gentrification ignore the empirical research of those people who have actually studied the real world the affects of gentrification on existing low income tenants; academics such as Lance Freeman of Columbia and Jacob Vigdor of Duke. And they have each discovered – to their amazement - that in gentrifying neighborhoods low income tenants stay longer in neighborhoods which are booming – because of the benefits in living in safer, cleaner neighborhoods – which is the exact opposite of what Slater claims.

Below are some paragraphs from an article at the POLIS website:

http://nycenvirons.blogspot.com/2005/06/exploding-gentrification-myth-columbia.html

For as long as gentrification has been a divisive topic, the underlying assumption has been the same: As wealthier people move into downtrodden neighborhoods, low-income people are pushed out. But does gentrification actually cause increased displacement? Lance Freeman, an assistant professor of urban planning at Columbia University, thinks the answer is no. One of the leading academics to step on the gentrification land mine, Mr. Freeman (who happens to live in a Columbia-owned apartment just around the corner from Tiemann Place) has found himself in the uncomfortable position of having to explode the myth itself. "It’s a controversial issue," he told The Observer recently, "The research results were unanticipated. But the data says what it says."

What his data says is this: Low-income people in gentrifying neighborhoods are, in fact, more likely to stay in their apartments longer than low-income people in non-gentrifying neighborhoods. Not only does gentrification not cause displacement any more than the myriad other factors that result in poor people losing or leaving their homes, says Mr. Freeman, it actually provides an incentive to stay. Think about it: Would you be inclined to leave your apartment if the neighborhood was improving?

Mr. Freeman referred to the New York City Housing and Vacancy Survey in reaching his conclusion. He found that poor households living in gentrifying neighborhoods in New York City, including Harlem, were 24 percent less likely to have moved between 1991 and 1999 than poor people living in non-gentrifying communities. Even when controlling for various factors, like age, race and overcrowding, poor households were still 20 percent less likely to move from gentrifying areas than poor households living in non-gentrifying communities in New York City.

."Because the results seem somewhat counterintuitive and raise a lot of questions, they want to make sure it’s right," said Mr. Freeman. "You don’t usually see that in the social sciences. Who knows—maybe they’re going to trash my research."

Mr. Freeman’s research, however, does not stand completely alone. Conclusions similar to his were reached two years ago by Jacob Vigdor, an assistant professor at Duke University, who analyzed Boston neighborhoods.

"There’s no evidence that gentrification increases residential turnover," Mr. Vigdor concurred. "The typical image people have in their minds is that people are being thrown out of their homes in gentrifying neighborhoods. But there is usually some degree of vacancy and rehabbing of buildings that weren’t previously inhabitable.

So how many of the lies and wrong information and concealed data in this article will the Times address when they have to do their inevitable mea culpa on this piece?

About half is my guess ... if we're lucky.

Hollywood's Columbia Square - Saved! And Will Continue As An Entertainment Complex!

In the best of all possible worlds, not only are the old KNX Studios on Sunset going to be saved - but they will continue to be used as much needed productions studios - helping keep Hollywood in... Hollywood. From GlobeSt.com:

Historic CBS Radio Complex Commands $66M

By Bob Howard

HOLLYWOOD, CA-Las Vegas-based developer Molasky Pacific LLC plans to redevelop the historic CBS Radio complex known as Columbia Square at 6121 Sunset Blvd. after acquiring the property for $66 million, according to Madison Partners. Lynwood Fields of Madison Partners, who brokered the sale, tells GlobeSt.com that Molasky Pacific plans to redevelop the 125,000-sf building to continue to attract entertainment industry tenants and is considering options that would include adding some residential units to the office and broadcasting facility.

The property, which is 100% occupied, was built in 1938 as a CBS radio studio and was considered cutting-edge when it was built. During the decades that followed, television shows that were broadcast from Columbia Square included the Jack Benny Show, the George Burns & Gracie Allen Show and the pilot episode for I Love Lucy.

Fields, who represented both Molasky and seller Sungow LLC, calls the property “a rare opportunity to breathe new life into a relic of the golden age of Hollywood." According to Helmi Hisserich, regional adminsitrator for the Community Redevelopment Agency, the redevelopment of Columbia Square will provide new housing, office and entertainment uses “while preserving the key historical elements of the property."

The 6121 Sunset building, situated on 4.69 acres, is home to KCBS-TV, KCAL-TV and KNX NewsRadio. All three are scheduled to relocate to a new facility adjacent to CBS Studio Center in nearby Studio City.

Fields tells GlobeSt.com that the redevelopment of the building will become part of the ongoing renaissance in Hollywood, where a host of retail, office, residential and entertainment projects have taken off in recent years. “This development foresees maintaining the studio portion of the property and developing around it,” he says.

Foxes On Leashes? Hot New Hollywood Pet?

In a strange example of unintended consequences, when Joseph Stalin endorsed psuedo-sceientist Lysenko's attempt to disprove Mendel's theory of genetics, he also set into motion a series of events that will undoubtedly lead to tame foxes on leashes becoming the hot new power pet of LA movie moguls.

Nice Rats, Nasty Rats: Maybe It’s All in the Genes

By Nicholas Wade

On an animal-breeding farm in Siberia are cages housing two colonies of rats. In one colony, the rats have been bred for tameness in the hope of mimicking the mysterious process by which Neolithic farmers first domesticated an animal still kept today. When a visitor enters the room where the tame rats are kept, they poke their snouts through the bars to be petted.

The other colony of rats has been bred from exactly the same stock, but for aggressiveness instead. These animals are ferocious. When a visitor appears, the rats hurl themselves screaming toward their bars.

“Imagine the most evil supervillain and the nicest, sweetest cartoon animal, and that’s what these two strains of rat are like,” said Tecumseh Fitch, an animal behavior expert at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland who several years ago visited the rats at the farm, about six miles from Akademgorodok, near the Siberian city of Novosibirsk. Frank Albert, a graduate student at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, is working with both the tame and the hyperaggressive Siberian strains in the hope of understanding the genetic basis of their behavioral differences.

“The ferocious rats cannot be handled,” Mr. Albert said. “They will not tolerate it. They go totally crazy if you try to pick them up.”

When the aggressive rats have to be moved, Mr. Albert places two cages side by side with the doors open and lets the rats change cages by themselves. He is taking care that they do not escape to the sewers of Leipzig, he said.

The two strains of rat are part of a remarkable experiment started in the former Soviet Union in 1959 by Dmitri K. Belyaev. Belyaev and his brother were geneticists who believed in Mendelian theory despite the domination of Soviet science by Trofim Lysenko, who rejected Mendelian genetics.

Belyaev’s brother was exiled to a concentration camp, where he died, but Belyaev was able to move to Siberia in 1958 and became director of the Institute of Cytology and Genetics in Novosibirsk. There he was able to study genetics in relative freedom, according to a report prepared by Dr. Fitch after a visit to the institute in 2002.

AND.....

Belyaev decided to study the genetics of domestication, a problem to which Darwin gave deep attention. Domesticated animals differ in many ways from their wild counterparts, and it has never been clear just which qualities were selected for by the Neolithic farmers who developed most major farm species some 10,000 years ago.

Belyaev began his experiment in 1959 with 130 farm-bred silver foxes, using their tolerance of human contact as the sole criterion for choosing the parents of the next generation.

“The audacity of this experiment is difficult to overestimate,” Dr. Fitch has written. “The selection process on dogs, horses, cattle or other species had occurred, mostly unconsciously, over thousands of years, and the idea that Belyaev’s experiment might succeed in a human lifetime must have seemed bold indeed.”

In fact, after only eight generations, foxes that would tolerate human presence became common in Belyaev’s stock. Belyaev died in 1985, but his experiment was continued by his successor, Lyudmila N. Trut. The experiment did not become widely known outside Russia until 1999, when Dr. Trut published an article in American Scientist. She reported that after 40 years of the experiment, and the breeding of 45,000 foxes, a group of animals had emerged that were as tame and as eager to please as a dog.

As Belyaev had predicted, other changes appeared along with the tameness, even though they had not been selected for. The tame silver foxes had begun to show white patches on their fur, floppy ears, rolled tails and smaller skulls.

The tame foxes, Dr. Fitch reported, were also “incredibly endearing.” They were clean and quiet and made excellent house pets, though — being highly active — they preferred a house with a yard to an apartment. They did not like leashes, though they tolerated them.

American researchers have suggested that the foxes be made available as pets, partly to ensure their survival should the Novosibirsk colony be wiped out by disease.

So there you have it. Renegade Stalinist mad scientist inadvertently causes latest Beverly Hills status symbol.

A true fable for our times.

Equally intriguing, though, is that hidden away in Siberia, a group of likely forgotten scientists have been running a breeding program of rats and foxes with close to zero economic benefit for almost half-a century, unmolested by several regime changes or even the collapse of communism.

Clearly a fable from a time that no longer exists.

Low Tech Teachers Who Can Actually Teach Trump High-Tech Subsitutes!

First, read my prior post on contemporary relationships. The following piece will have another layer of meaning if you do.

Bob Sipchen (Monday's Column, July 24, 2006)

The teacher’s blah-blah-blah sent my brain swooning toward hibernate mode. I slumped into the flesh-toned plastic chair, propped an elbow on the laminate wood desktop and fought back panic.

I knew the fear was irrational. “You’re an adult, a journalist on assignment!” I told myself. “Your pals aren’t really out there having a total blast playing while you suffer.”

Even now, you see, it’s hard for me to discuss the trauma that summer school boredom inflicted on my young psyche. Entering that classroom rekindled the pain.

Here’s what’s bizarre, though: Before I could escape into guilty slumber, I found myself paying attention. In a classroom. On a hot summer day.

And it wasn’t the hand puppets that saved me from stultifying ennui. It was the teacher. She captured my attention without so much as a state-of-the-art interactive whiteboard with edit-as-you-go video clips.

Which brings me to today’s subject: Teachers and technology.

My July 10 column, written from an education and computing conference in San Diego, chided schools for a Luddite-like refusal to take young peoples’ techno-sophistication and entertainment addiction into account.

Thanks to the relatively new technology of the Internet, a rippin’ good discussion of that subject has been unfolding at this column’s latimes.com blog. So far the online debate among students, parents, teachers and crabby citizens is ping-ponging from gung-ho geekery to traditionalist scoffing, with hurtful assaults on my eggshell-like ego thrown in: “…The LA Times, great paper that it is, should probably start attacking the problem by finding writers for this subject who don’t mock their subject matter.”

A few excerpts:

“… Computers and media, especially in early childhood and up through 7th-8th grade, do more harm than good. . . . Being active, hearing stories, using the imagination is critical to well-rounded kids.”

“The problem is that exploring Internet links is so easy and tempting, it is difficult to stay focused.

In science and engineering, much learning comes from working problems. I am worried that many students spend more time searching for a solution they can copy than working the problem themselves.”

I have nothing else to else to add. It says it all.

When Friends Are Really Friends - Or Just Not So Old Acquaintances!

The significance of others

A study says Americans' personal ties are waning. Or maybe not -- if you count MySpace friends.

By Gina Piccalo
Times Staff Writer

July 23, 2006

EVERY now and then, a study comes along that declares our modern life terminally fractured, inspiring weeks, sometimes years, of despairing headlines and intellectual navel-gazing. This year, it's the so-called friendship study, which announced that nearly one in four Americans has no confidants — no spouse, no one — nearly triple the number in 1985.

The findings have resonated high and low: grave warnings from world-weary columnists, a joke in a Jay Leno monologue. Story after story has heralded the study as revealing "a nation of isolation" and "casualties of the Internet age." That's because it certainly feels true. Sure, we work too much and commute too far to build anything more than a broad network of acquaintances. We hunker down within our immediate families.

But step back a little and another picture emerges. What about the mountain of anecdotal evidence to the contrary? The explosion of online networking, for example, MySpace.com being among the most notable, or our addiction to e-mail…. If we're all so isolated, as Leno pointed out, "who the hell is everyone talking to on their cellphones?"

Then there's the study itself and the news media's hasty interpretations. Of course, when it comes to academic research, few would accuse reporters of overly careful analysis, particularly when a "finding" such as this one promises such tantalizing, blockbuster bad news. Who could forget the June 1986 Newsweek article — only recently retracted — about the bogus notion that single women over 40 were more likely to get killed by terrorists than married? That story was embroidered into the culture. (The most recent findings, it turns out, show that women over 40 have more than a 40% chance of marrying.)

Or the study in May in the Journal of the American Medical Assn. That one showed that middle-aged Americans are more likely to go to the doctor than their English counterparts — but many in the media looked at the study and concluded that Americans are sicker.

Uh - wait a second. As I recollect... the LA Times was one of those... many in the media... who got taken in (at least initially, and I do not recall any correction or retraction since then) by that sham of a study while the New York Times instantly and correctly deduced that the study was essentially... bogus.

But I digress. Now for the meat of the matter:

In some reports, the study's co-author and spokeswoman, Lynn Smith-Lovin, seemed to get a little carried away, using images of Hurricane Katrina victims stranded on rooftops to illustrate her findings. "It's one thing to know someone and exchange e-mails with them," she told Reuters. "It's another thing to say, 'Will you give me a ride out of town with all of my possessions and pets? And can I stay with you for a couple or three months?' "

Still, if reporters had just read the study closely, the stories would have been more nuanced, even more interesting.

For one thing, the friendship study isn't, as sociologists and demographers like to point out, even about friendship. It's about confidants, people you discuss personal matters with, who are just as likely to be your bank teller as your best friend.

But the whole notion of candor these days exists independent of friendship, as the culture of Internet exhibitionism seeps into — and reshapes — the "real" world. Blabbing into our cellphones, posting our personal stories on message boards and blogs, and wading through celebrity-tabloid minutiae, we've lost all sense of what's public and what's private. We spill and spill and spill on reality shows, on YouTube.com, on niche online groups. It's a wonder we have anything left to say, let alone need more of an audience.

Questionnaire questions

MANY sociologists consider the Smith-Lovin team's data solid because it's based on the General Social Survey, a questionnaire that has been widely used every year since 1972 to measure a variety of social, cultural and political shifts.

Though one experienced social networks expert — who feared professional backlash if named — questioned whether the findings are a better reflection of the changing work ethic of interviewers from 1985 to 2004, the period the study compares, rather than our nation's purportedly growing isolation.

That's because the GSS requires the interviewer to "probe" if a subject lists fewer than five confidants. Probing leads to more questions; when a respondent lists no confidants, the interviewer can skip about a dozen questions. (Though the study's authors said they were concerned about that possibility, they also state that the "probe pattern" in the 1985 and 2004 surveys was "very similar.")

The interviews, during summer and early fall 2004, included as many as 148 questions, asked over 90 minutes. Respondents were interviewed in person, often in their homes, and selected from a random sampling of regions of the country, in urban and rural areas. The authors — Smith-Lovin, Miller McPherson and Matthew E. Brashears — are still skeptical of their findings and say so in their conclusion, even after months spent searching for what they assumed was a mistake in their methodology. They didn't find an error, but they did include several caveats to their conclusion.

"Possibly, we will discover that it is not so much a matter of increasing isolation but a shift in the form and type of connection," they write.

Could it also be that the interviewer-respondent connection is very different from it was 20 years ago?

The authors also acknowledge that people's reports of their actions aren't "perfect reflections" of them. And it's possible, they write, that their key question to the 1,467 respondents — "Looking back over the last six months, who are the people with whom you discussed matters important to you?" — may have been misinterpreted to exclude newer forms of communication like e-mail.That wouldn't be surprising considering the 19-year span between GSS studies on the topic of social isolation, said Tom Smith, director of the survey at the University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center.

"The issue comes here not with reliability of the data source, in a general sense, but complexities in measuring these kinds of intimate relationships and whether people may or may not be using the same standard they used 20 years ago," he said.

Subjects may not have qualified their e-mail or cellphone chat as "discussion," the researchers write. And, they write: "What Americans considered important might well have shifted over the past two decades, perhaps as a result of major events (the attacks of 9/11 and the wars that followed)."

"One of things we read out of our data is that people may have fewer really close ties," said Smith-Lovin. "That doesn't mean they're isolated, but they have more weak ties…. We're kind of circulating through interests, groups and relationships at a faster rate, and we may not stay at any one long enough to develop that close tie."

Remarkably, in all this coverage, what might be considered a huge upside was often portrayed as a negative — that marriages are more intimate than ever, with spouses relying more on each other for emotional support. The study also found that women are achieving equality with men in the number of social ties outside the family. There's also evidence that more people now have a confidant of another race. Still, it's the portrait of new American "isolate" that made the headlines.

So what does this study tells us about human relationships?

Too much!

In other words, it shows how complex and changing - and not changing - relationships are among humans. It also shows there is no one answer or one sound bite that can describe how we all relate to one another.

As for myself, I had a half-dozen close friends in high school - several of whom I will see at my John Marshall Class of 1966 reunion next month. After that, I had ten years of running and riding with nine crazed cowhands who were closer to me than even my own family until that way of life tragically ended for us all.

My friendship with them became the pivotal event of my life. They enabled me to discover who I was meant to be and they then gave me the courage and the skills to be that person. Because of them, everything I have done since then has in some way been an unsuccessful attempt to recreate that now lost world we once inhabited.

Today, I know hundreds of people with whom I regularly communicate with - and - on occassion, I even recognize a few of their faces and remember a few of their names.

And I consider many of them to be good friends.

But I have not a single close friend like those I once had.

And of all the people I now know, there were but two and now three, people with the range of interests and the variety of knowledge - with whom I can really communicate with about the things that matter most to me.

Communication, friendship - and close relationships. Three very different states.

But if one is lucky enough to be married to someone who is a combination of all three - then I'd say you are far more fortunate than the rest of us.

Lastly - read my next post about the LAUSD and education. It surprisingly says a lot more about the state of relationships in today's world than any study ever could.

Another Non-Paying Job For LA Cowboy!

Normally I don't link to articles about myself - but the attached photo is simply too funny (alas!) not to share. Note though - please subtract about twenty years from the age I appear to be in the photo.

Even I am not that old....

And I would like to add that I am very honored to have been selected by the delegates to the Los Angeles Neighborhood Councils Congress - LANCC - as their next chair. And, luckily, I have a great team of officers to work with; Jim Alger as First vice-chair, Luciana Dar as Second vice-chair, Adrienne O'Neill as Secretary and David Strause as Treasurer - plus Ken Draper as Director of Communications and Outreach and Roger Kulpa as Director of the website.

Happy Cowboy Christmas! Or As You City People Better Know It - The Fourth Of July!

Though more accurately, it is the week before - and after - the Fourth of July that is called the Cowboy Christmas. That is because there they are so many damn rodeos going on at one time that poor ole cowpokes don't know which one of them to unwrap first. So it is not uncommon for rodeo cowboys to hit a dozen – or more – rodeos – in one week either by sharing private planes – or splitting driving shifts in cram-packed extra-large pick-ups with four stall horse trailers following behind them.

Now while I never did the rodeo cowboy thing – with a few exceptions – when I first hit the cowboy trail I did train bucking stock that we sold to stock contractors and we then went to the rodeos to see how they performed… which brings us to today’s tale…

During my first Cowboy Christmas, one of the contractor’s bucking stock couldn’t make it from one rodeo to the next in time and my own personal horse – Mr. D – the buckinest horse that ever lived – just happened to be with me. So with it being a seller’s market in bucking broncs – I asked good old Mr. D if he would care to make his rodeo debut and he quickly gave me an eager snort - hell, yes.

The next few hours were mighty entertaining for us and Mr. D as we watched one cowboy after another go flying in near record times.

So we repeated this several times over the next few days. And it was a mighty sad Mr. D when we finally returned back to the ranch after our first Cowboy Christmas. The next year, however, due to small rodeo’s close proximity to a much larger rodeo – a couple cowboys who were in the money for that year’s championship showed up – and both got promptly throwed by Mr. D as soon as they cleared the chute.

Now as keeping a low profile was always our number one priority, with that kind of attention focused on my horse – we quickly broke camp and left – and returned to the ranch.

The following year, we hit some smaller rodeos – making certain that no ranking cowboys would be there – but when one person moseyed over to us and asked us if this was the Cowboy Christmas horse… we quickly packed up and left, thus ending Mr. D’s rodeo career to both our regrets.

So now I am sitting in a loft in Downtown Los Angeles… but my mind today is far way in another time and another place.

Because it is Cowboy Christmas and I am a long way from home.

As Expected... Hollywood Hills Mountain Lion Downgraded To... Bobcat Status....

About those lion sightings

Wednesday's Morning Buzz reprinted an email from the president of the Hollywood Hills West Neighborhood Council warning residents that a dog had fallen prey to the mountain lion (or lions) that roams the canyons. Today Madame Prez sent a second email pooh-poohing the report:

I have just spoken to Rory Fitzpatrick (again) re the purported mountain lion sightings (and dog attacks/missing dogs). He has told me that he has spoken to the animal control folks as well as the Runyan [sic] rangers and that there have been NO mountain lion sightings.

And...

Fitzpatrick is the chief field deputy for Councilman Tom LaBonge. The hillside correspondent who forward the email to me also sent along info circulating in the hills today about a family of bobcats spotted at Hollywood Reservoir—with photos:

Last year, I received multiple reports of bobcat sightings on both sides of Barham. Here are four photographs I took last December near the lake. They show three different bobcats (I observed them following each other near the water line from the right to the left).

Now that that's cleared up - what's happening on the status of the Richfield Building clone on Western? Extant... or... extinct?

First Grand Avenue Park Public Meeting!

Yesterday was the first of three meetings devoted only to a discussion of the planning of the 16 acre Grand Avenue Park. Just a brief note for right now as I have to trot over and present a horse to the LAPD's mounted division on behalf of the Downtown Los Angeles Neighborhood Council at 10 AM on the steps of City Hall.

The biggest surprise for the Related and Grand Avenue teams was that developing bridges and plazas to connect the three parts of the park that are now seperated by streets was the easily the most popular of the real options (other than lawns, shady places and other non-controversial items).

More later.

Missing Building Alert!

Is the superb old black and gold art deco/moderne bank building (that closely resembled the old Richfield Building downtown) on Western still there? It was/is at Beverly or Third on the NW corner of Western. I had not heard that it was torn down, but the below LAOBSERVED post makes it sound as it if is no longer with us...

CityBeat and its parent company, Southland Publishing, are moving on up. Southland closed escrow on the gorgeous former Security-First National Bank of Los Angeles branch at 5209 Wilshire Boulevard, just east of the landmark Wilson tower at La Brea. The art deco bank recently joined the elite group of local buildings listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Built in 1929, it was designed by the architecture firm of Morgan, Walls and Clements, which did the Wiltern Theatre tower, the El Capitan and a hundred or so other notable Los Angeles buildings. The old bank vault is still inside 5209 Wilshire, which is the last surviving example of Stiles O. Clements' black-and-gold terra cotta design that delighted downtown architecture buffs on the long-gone Atlantic Richfield building....

Mountain Lion - Or Just A Really Big Bob Cat?

From LAOBSERVED this morning:

Chaparral notes

Email going around the Hollywood Hills:

A neighbor on Upper Outpost had his small dog taken by a mountain lion yesterday morning - ran off to Runyon (which we border up here). Please make sure your stakeholders and neighbors up in the hills are aware that there is at least one mountain lion and several bob cats up here in addition to the coyotes.

Thanks.

Anastasia Mann
President
HHWNC

Now since no mountain lion has been spoted in the Hollywood Hills for many decades that I can recall... could this have been a large bob cat? An escaped 'pet'? Or did one make it there all the way from Malibu - which is the nearest location that I know any have been spotted.

Grand Avenue The New... Columbus Circle? Uh... I Don't Think So....

The Los Angeles Times article on how Grand Avenue will become LA's version of Columbus Circle is understandably skeptical, however there are points raised by both Related and the article that need to be discussed - and debated. The good news is that this project is NOT the suburban, mall like, enclosed space that is Time Warner Center. It is also not the sterile, ugly architecture that is Time Warner Center.

The other good news is that this does not need to be a stand alone, separated from the rest of downtown project that the article infers it is doomed to become due to its unique geographical - and topographic constraints.

First, the opening of the article:

Hello, Columbus: An L.A. Street Looks to a New York Circle

Developer sees the vibrant Manhattan hub as a model for Grand Avenue. Replicating its upscale atmosphere would be a challenge.

By Cara Mia DiMassa Times Staff Writer June 19, 2006 NEW YORK

Wedged between Lincoln Center and the theater district, Columbus Circle had long been known as an urban landmark inexplicably lacking the hustle and bustle of the rest of Manhattan. But two years ago, developer Related Cos. opened the 55-story mega-complex known as Time Warner Center here - and, largely as a result, the area has been transformed. The "mini-city" boasts some of New York's most expensive restaurants as well as luxury condos, a five-star hotel, a Whole Foods Market and, soon, a museum - all within a few blocks.

Related is now preparing to break ground on another mega-complex: the $1.8-billion, Frank Gehry-designed Grand Avenue project in downtown Los Angeles. When people ask what Grand Avenue will look and feel like, the developers at Related often point to Columbus Circle.
But a visit to Manhattan makes it clear that despite some similarities, replicating the upscale atmosphere and vibrant pedestrian life of Columbus Circle is going to be a challenge. The circle, though once sleepy, had a large, well-heeled residential population living nearby and is located within a quick walk of Central Park, Fifth Avenue's shopping district and Broadway.

By contrast, Grand Avenue is on Bunker Hill, on the far north side of downtown. The area is home to Walt Disney Concert Hall and the Museum of Contemporary Art, but it is a long uphill walk from other local institutions, including the Central Library, Staples Center and the increasingly trendy South Park district.

Time Warner Center's shops feed off a much denser array of offices and residential buildings than Grand Avenue's shops would. In Columbus Circle, the upscale businesses are sustained both by residents who live nearby and workers at the center's namesake company, media titan Time Warner. Though Grand Avenue will have some office space in its third phase, most of the high-rise units are set aside for hotel rooms, condos and low-income affordable housing. Related has touted both developments for their village concept, including shopping, homes, businesses and even subway stops in one sprawling development.

To begin with, the shopping areas and restaurants of this project almost all open to the outdoors. Even the second and third story restaurants are planned to have outdoor dining terraces. Grand Avenue will also be designed by a world class architecture - and not a corporate drone. These two factors alone will make Grand Avenue a far different - and far better - project than the boring, suburban (though financially successful) project that is Time-Warner Center.

This will be an urban and not a suburban center.

As for the lack of office space in the project - Bunker Hill is already filled with high rise office buildings. It is also within a few blocks of the rest of the financial district. The lack of office space in this project does not in itself differentiate it from Columbus Circle.

This project is also closer to our Music Center than Time-Warner is to Lincoln Center - and it is far closer to our hopefully soon to re-open Broadway Theater District than Time-Warner is to their Broadway Theater District.

Additionally, new development is planned on all four sides of Bunker Hill- with a high rise just announced at Grand and Sunset Boulevard - and that will eventually make Grand Avenue and Bunker Hill more of a central location.

However, one major factor that is not being considered is that the two Red Line subway stations - once they are properly integrated into Bunker Hill - will make Grand Avenue a major transit hub. People will be able to get there - with no transfer needed - from the new urban centers of North Hollywood, CityWalk/Universal City, Korea Town, Hollywood Highland and Hollywood. Eventually even the Miracle Mile, Beverly Hills, Westwood and Santa Monica will have direct subway access to Bunker Hill and Grand Avenue.

By then, almost every major dense, multi-use urban center in Los Angeles will directly connect to Bunker Hill - without having to change trains

So while 'shopping centers' such as the Grove will not be directly connected - no one goes for the Grove for an urban experience. It is a well designed shopping center - period.

Additionally, if the Grand Avenue Park is correctly done - then it too will be a major regional destination. While it is much smaller than Central Park - hopefully it will be very densely used so that it will have comparable numbers of people who are within easy walking distance of Central Park from Time-Warner.

The biggest obstacle, though, that is addressed in the article - but not really discussed in depth is that Bunker Hill is on... a hill.

And that is the project's biggest drawback - at the moment. Even one of the leaders of the Grand Avenue Committee - Bill Thomas - once told me that no city center has ever been built on a hill-top.

What is surprising to me, though - is not on one has ever publicly discussed this how this problem can be turned into... an advantage.

What no one seems to understand that with a few simple fixes, getting onto Bunker Hill will be faster and easier than walking a few blocks within the flat areas of downtown.

If once you get out of the subway at 1st and Hill or 4th and Hill - if you can automatically step onto an escalator or an elevator that will instantly take you to either Olive or Grand - it will become far easier and faster to get to Grand Avenue than to walk two blocks in any other direction.

And if when you walk to Hill Street from the Broadway Theater District or the new shopping districts developing in the Historic Core, district, you can also quickly ride to the top of the Hill - the so-called obstacle becomes... the path of least resistance.

Bunker Hill becomes the easiest neighborhood to access instead of the hardest.

Add to that the DASH bus system and the proposed Red Car line that will connect Staples/LA Live with the Historic Core/Broadway Theater District and Grand Avenue - and the hill-top obstacle... vanishes.

Plus the converse if true. When people who are on Bunker Hill want to go down to the Theater District or the new shopping districts in the Historic Core, they will just have to step on either a bus, tram, elevator or escalator - and they will be at the bottom of the hill.

There is only one caveat to all this. While I have heard a lot of talk about connecting Grand Avenue with the subway system - and the rest of downtown - I have yet to see the specifics of how this linkage is to happen. And that is something that the developers of Grand Avenue need to address - now.

Why Does The New York Times Endorse The Destruction Of This Country's Religious, Political And Civil Liberties?

Ok - so maybe the above headline is a bit... provocative... to get your attention.

But while it is something of an exaggeration - in reality - it is all too accurate.

In an article about two Muslim clerics in Houston, the New York Times claims in a highly inaccurate headline that these two individuals have created a moderate middle ground between materialism of America and Islamic extremism. And the original headline on the website which is no longer available - was even more blatantly false.

June 18, 2006

U.S. Muslim Clerics Seek a Modern Middle Ground

By LAURIE GOODSTEIN

Every seat in the auditorium at the University of Houston was taken, and the crowd was standing in the back and spilling out into the lobby, straining to hear. The two men onstage began to speak to the crowd in Arabic, with such flawless accents and rarefied Koranic grammar that some audience members gaped when they heard the Arabic equivalent of the king's English coming from the mouths of two Americans.

Sheik Hamza Yusuf, in a groomed goatee and sports jacket, looked more like a hip white college professor than a Middle Eastern sheik. Imam Zaid Shakir, a lanky African-American in a long brown tunic, looked as if he would fit in just fine on the streets of Damascus.

Both men are converts to Islam who spent years in the Middle East and North Africa being mentored by formidable Muslim scholars. They have since become leading intellectual lights for a new generation of American Muslims looking for homegrown leaders who can help them learn how to live their faith without succumbing to American materialism or Islamic extremism.

But with their words - and their actions - the two clerics clearly prove that this is a lie.

First, Mr. Yusuf:

Mr. Yusuf once was a source of the kind of zealous rhetoric he now denounces. He said in 1995 that Judaism was based on the belief that "God has this bias to this small little tribe in the middle of the desert," which makes it "a most racist religion." On Sept. 9, 2001, he said the United States "stands condemned" for invading Muslim lands.

He has since changed his tune - not for spin, he says, but on principle. "Our community has failed, and I include myself in that," he told an audience in a downtown theater in Elizabeth, N.J., this year.

"When I started speaking in the early 90's, our discourse was not balanced.

"We were focused so often on what was negative about this country," he said. "We ended up alienating some people. I've said some things about other religions that I regret now. I think they were incorrect."

So... he realizes that talking too much about what is negative about his country ended up alienating people - so he now he tries to 'balance' his discourse to better sell his message. And when he called Judaism 'the most racist religion' - he MAY have been incorrect.

Now for Mr. Shakir:

While leading a mosque in New Haven in 1992, Mr. Shakir wrote a pamphlet that cautioned Muslims not to be co-opted by American politics. He wrote, "Islam presents an absolutist political agenda, or one which doesn't lend itself to compromise, nor to coalition building."

While he did not denounce Muslims who take part in politics, he pointed out the effectiveness of "extrasystemic political action" - like the "armed struggle" that brought about the rule of the Taliban in Afghanistan.

And...

Asked now about his past, he said, "To be perfectly honest, I don't regret anything I've done or said."

But it is at the end of the article where he makes it very clear what their vision of this country's future is:

He said he still hoped that one day the United States would be a Muslim country ruled by Islamic law, "not by violent means, but by persuasion."

"Every Muslim who is honest would say, I would like to see America become a Muslim country," he said. "I think it would help people, and if I didn't believe that, I wouldn't be a Muslim.

So this modern, middle ground - which is what the New York Times terms their views - calls for mullahs and ayatollahs to run this country under the full control of Islamic law; a modern middle ground that would destroy every political, religious and civil right we have in this country.

I can only wonder what Ms. Goldstein would have had to say about Adolph Hitler when he presented his 'moderate' face to the equally gullible press back in the 1920's.

Convention Center Hotel Design Unveiled! South Park Remains Architecture Free Zone!

The good news is that Downtown Los Angeles gets both a convention center hotel and its first 5 star hotel.

The bad news is that the project is yet another bland, corporate architectural firm designed box. While London and New York - not to mention most US cities - are hiring world class architects for many of the projects, other than Frank Gehry on Grand Avenue and a handful of other projects, downtown - and South Park and LA Live in particular - are becoming architectural black holes.

L.A. Convention Center to Get Major Hotel Tower

The complex would give downtown the magnet for business conferences it has lacked for years.

By Annette Haddad and Kimi Yoshino Times Staff Writers June 13, 2006

The remaking of downtown Los Angeles will gain a crucial missing piece today when developers unveil plans for a 1,000-room hotel complex — including a five-star Ritz-Carlton and a four-star Marriott Marquis — for the Convention Center.

Rising 54 stories, the $750-million project would be one of the largest buildings in Los Angeles at 2 million square feet. The proposed 124-room Ritz-Carlton would be the first five-star hotel downtown and, with the largest ballroom in the city, the planned 876-room Marriott Marquis would fill a void as a business meeting hub at the Convention Center.

The hotels are to be topped by 216 luxury condominiums. The project, scheduled to open in 2010, would anchor L.A. Live, the 27-acre sports-entertainment complex considered the linchpin of downtown's redevelopment.

It has taken two decades to land a major convention hotel, but the agreement by Marriott International Inc. with local developers to operate two luxury inns in the same glitzy Las Vegas-style high-rise raises hopes for reestablishing the city center as a top tourist and convention magnet.

"All of this is really a wonderful story about the emergence — and reemergence — of downtown Los Angeles as a strong economic center and a strong weight to the region's economy," said Stuart Gabriel, a USC professor and director of its Lusk Center for Real Estate.

The complex — with its upper stories to be sheathed in glass — is being jointly developed by KB Home, which is building the condos, and AEG, which is owned by billionaire Philip Anschutz, the developer of Staples Center.

It is being designed by San Francisco-based architecture firm Gensler.

Los Angeles Times Innocent Of Ignoring Los Angeles... For Once...

In an on-line exclusive, LAOBSERVED quotes Cal State Fullerton professor Jeffrey Brody on why the LAT's expose of bad judges in Vegas is a bad thing for Los Angeles and the LAT.

Last week's Los Angeles Times investigative series on judges in Las Vegas was impressive as a piece of reporting, but a bad sign for the paper, writes Jeffrey Brody, professor of communications at California State Fullerton. He is also co-author of The Newspaper Publishing Industry, a book that examined economic trends affecting papers. Here's his commentary, only at LA Observed:

The investigative reports about Nevada judges illustrate the strength of a great paper like the LA Times. It also illustrates the shortsightedness of the paper's editors at a time when the newspaper has been bleeding circulation. Rather than devote resources to investigating the California judiciary, a local story, the Times puts its energy in an out-of-state effort that will certainly win prizes but do little to boost readership in Southern California.

While I do agree that some of the LAT's national stories are somewhat besides the point, in this case I disagree. First, Las Vegas is in the LAT's market. Second, Las Vegas is to a certain extent a suburb of Los Angeles since LA supplies the largest number of its visitors, many of its second home buyers and a lot of now full time residents who are still interested in Los Angeles.

Most importantly, though, many of the people most affected by the crooked judges in Nevada are Los Angeles business people and visitors to Vegas.

And that's three good reasons why the Los Angeles Times should have covered this story.

UPDATE!

About half-way down the first page of the first of the LA Times's three part series, the LAT presents their case why this expose is important to the people of Los Angeles...

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-vegas8jun08,0,5737582,print.story?coll=la-home-headlines

.... Las Vegas is one of the fastest-growing metropolitan areas in the United States. Since 1960, census figures show, its population has exploded by 1,246%. But many of its courts have not grown with it, much less grown up.

At the heart of the Las Vegas court system are 21 state judges who hear civil and criminal cases, and who can be assigned anywhere in Nevada, but who are called district judges because they work out of courthouses in the judicial districts where they are elected.

These state judges often dispense a style of wide-open, frontier justice that veers out of control across ethical, if not legal, boundaries. The consequences reach beyond Nevada, affecting people in other states, especially California.

Some of the effect falls upon visitors from Los Angeles who come here to gamble, flirt with sin and have a good time. More than a quarter — about 29% — of the 38.5 million visits to Las Vegas in 2005 were made by Southern Californians, including many who came here more than once.

By that estimate, published by the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, Southern Californians make more than 11 million visits to Las Vegas every year. But the effect falls, as well, upon Californians in business. Like Michael Farney of Ojai, who owned Elite Marine, a boat company that served southern Nevada and Lake Mead, an uncounted number of people from Southern California hold financial interests in Las Vegas and its surrounding metropolitan area.

Of all businesses that relocate to Nevada, according to the state Commission on Economic Development, at least 36% come from California.

Whether they want to play or do business, all who come to Las Vegas, from Southern California or elsewhere across the nation, expect a fair shake, especially from its courts. Las Vegas is a town, however, where some judges, operating in a new $185-million Clark County courthouse two blocks from casinos, wedding chapels and strip clubs, routinely rule in cases involving friends, former clients and business associates, even in cases touching people to whom they owe money.

Case closed! Verdict for... the Los Angeles Times!

Excellent Los Angeles Times Article On Transplants... As Far As It Goes...

The many investigative articles by the Los Angeles Times over the past two years have been superb. And the recent articles about the problems with the heart, liver and kidney transplant program both locally and nationally are no exception... as far as they go.

The problem I have, though, is that the real problem is NOT how the few organs which are harvested each year are distributed - but the shame that far more organs go unharvested each year.

If the media would instead look into how sufficient organs could be harvested each year to render waiting lists and tough allocation decisions unnecessary - then the problems addressed in this articles would vanish.

So why doesn't the Los Angeles Times and the rest of the MSM use its bully pulpit to research what needs to be done and then advocate making those changes? Thousands of lives could be saved each year if this problem was adequately addressed and solved.

More on this latter - but below is the opening of Sunday's article:


TRANSPLANT INEQUALITY A TIMES SPECIAL REPORT

Death by Geography

Patients' chances of getting new organs in time to save their lives vary vastly based on where they live. The situation is most dire for people needing livers.

By Alan Zarembo Times Staff Writer June 11, 2006

In the world of organ transplantation, location is everything. After waiting more than a decade for a liver, Jonathan Van Vlack was deteriorating. His gut swelled with fluid, and toxins accumulating in his blood made him forget his own name. Still, he wasn't sick enough — not in New York, where about 2,000 people statewide were vying for the same scarce livers."

He's having a very difficult time right now," his wife, Laura, nervously e-mailed a friend in March 2005. "We really need that liver to come." It never did. Van Vlack died in December, on his 53rd birthday.

Frank Evanac was stalled in the same line. By age 53, he had been waiting four years for a liver, and he needed a kidney as well. After getting a tip at a Fourth of July party, however, he gave up on New York. Without telling his doctors, he moved in with his sister outside Jacksonville, Fla., and joined a new waiting list.

Fourteen days later, a surgeon sewed in his new liver and kidney. Two very sick men. Two locations. Two fates.