http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-lopez19oct19,0,625598,full.column
Yet another superb piece of story telling, fact finding and... understanding. Today Steve Lopez talks to ten of the many down and out in wheel chairs homeless on the Row. Each has a different story and, yet, each story is too often... the same story; stories from families Tolstoy never met.
Below is one man's life:
No. 4: John Yost, 79
He's a few beds away from Kenyon. His wife, an alcoholic, is out on the street. Yost's legs gave out on him 10 years ago, after he and his wife moved to San Bernardino from Lebanon, Pa. Nothing has gone their way since. One thing I should know about people in wheelchairs, he warns, is that not everybody who's got one needs it.
"They steal them," he says, from people who do. Then they use them as carts or try to sell them.
I look around for the mayor, who's talking to a young mother with three children. One boy is in a stroller he's too big for, crying his eyes out. The woman tells Villaraigosa she voted for him.
A few minutes later, Midnight Mission publicist Orlando Ward tells Villaraigosa that conditions on skid row are the worst he's seen in his seven years of working there. He sees mothers shooting up, and whereas one relatively docile gang used to control the drug trade, several gangs now compete, with bloodshed common. Ward knows of a guy on the street who sells dope he keeps hidden in his baby's diaper.
Villaraigosa's been doling out hugs at the mission, but Ward tells him to watch out. Disease is rampant, with a particularly nasty staph infection bouncing through prisons and shelters.
Several points. The Mayor has come down to see what Lopez is writing about, and that is important to report. But Lopez doesn't allow that to become the story, or even to allow him to intrude upon the story. The focus remains on those on the streets, and those on the front lines helping them.
Lopez also addresses the fact that some those in chairs are only trying to sell then. With more time, he would have seen how there are also the drug dealers who use them as covers for their drug dealing and drug addicts who use the chairs to beg for money, and then get up and push their chairs home.
Then there are those are not homeless and live in SRO's who have become obese, develop diabetes and then use motorized wheel chairs to more easily move around. Then that lack of any exercise adds to their weight problem and further worsens their disease.
All complications within an already too complicated narrative. But those people are in the minority of those you see in wheel chairs on the streets of Skid Row.
So the story rightfully focuses on those who find themselves - on top of drug, alcohol and mental problems - also having to deal with spending the rest of their lives in wheelchairs. Lastly, the article raises the specter of another calamity descending upon Skid Row - a deadly staph infection that has not gotten the attention it needs. But more on that later.
I have nothing else to say. Just read Lopez's article and if you have missed the first ones - they are all still on the LAT's website.
Wednesday, October 19, 2005
Tuesday, October 18, 2005
End Times Are Nigh! Patterico Praises LA Times!
http://patterico.com/2005/10/17/3780/steve-lopez-at-skid-row/#comments
It's interesting that when the LA Times finally gets something right, its worst critics are the first to offer praise. Now if this could only happen more than once or twice a year...
Lopez is really getting to know Skid Row. He even learned what a - strawberry - is!
I go to Skid Row periodically, generally to visit the scene of a crime that I will be prosecuting - generally a drug sales crime. I am always accompanied by someone with a gun. In my suit, with my large digital camera, I tend to stand out.
As I walk around and snap pictures, I hear people calling out warnings to everyone in the surrounding area: the police are here; stop your drug-taking and drug sales for a few moments.
Some heed the advice, and some don't.
I have stood on a street corner at 5th and Main with narcotics officers - me in my suit with my camera around my neck - and watched as people shoot up and sell drugs on the opposite corner. When the drugs become available, it's like a feeding frenzy; 5-10 people come up within a minute and engage in quick hand-to-hand transactions lasting only seconds.
As I pointed out in his comments section, 5th and Main has cleaned up considerably since his last visit to the Nickel. The Downtown Los Angeles Neighborhood Council initiated - but now independent - Gallery Row project has helped four galleries open at 5th and Main - and two more are coming. Soon after that, most of the stores and restaurants that were fronts for drug dealing were shut down on Main Street and the new 24/7 police cameras are being installed this and next month all along Main, Spring and Broadway.
By the end of the year, 5th and Main should be an almost drug free intersection.
It's interesting that when the LA Times finally gets something right, its worst critics are the first to offer praise. Now if this could only happen more than once or twice a year...
Lopez is really getting to know Skid Row. He even learned what a - strawberry - is!
I go to Skid Row periodically, generally to visit the scene of a crime that I will be prosecuting - generally a drug sales crime. I am always accompanied by someone with a gun. In my suit, with my large digital camera, I tend to stand out.
As I walk around and snap pictures, I hear people calling out warnings to everyone in the surrounding area: the police are here; stop your drug-taking and drug sales for a few moments.
Some heed the advice, and some don't.
I have stood on a street corner at 5th and Main with narcotics officers - me in my suit with my camera around my neck - and watched as people shoot up and sell drugs on the opposite corner. When the drugs become available, it's like a feeding frenzy; 5-10 people come up within a minute and engage in quick hand-to-hand transactions lasting only seconds.
As I pointed out in his comments section, 5th and Main has cleaned up considerably since his last visit to the Nickel. The Downtown Los Angeles Neighborhood Council initiated - but now independent - Gallery Row project has helped four galleries open at 5th and Main - and two more are coming. Soon after that, most of the stores and restaurants that were fronts for drug dealing were shut down on Main Street and the new 24/7 police cameras are being installed this and next month all along Main, Spring and Broadway.
By the end of the year, 5th and Main should be an almost drug free intersection.
Mayor Brokers Hotel Deal! Convention Hotel Lawsuit Dropped!
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-hotel18oct18,1,6706738,print.story?coll=la-headlines-california
Our activist Mayor is once again working miracles:
Richard Fausset Times Staff Writer October 18, 2005
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa announced Monday that he has settled a dispute with the owners of the Bonaventure Hotel that threatened to derail plans for a newer hotel next to the unprofitable Los Angeles Convention Center.
The owners of the Bonaventure — a 1,354-room high-rise in the middle of downtown — had planned to fight the city's proposal to subsidize a competing hotel on downtown's south side.The Los Angeles City Council has agreed to provide the new hotel with up to $290 million in subsidies and loans to help breathe new life into the city-owned convention center, which receives a $20-million subsidy each year because it does not attract enough business.
The planned hotel, a Hilton, is envisioned as a key anchor to L.A. Live, a $1.7-billion "sports-entertainment" development that officials have likened to New York's Times Square.Tourism officials say the main problem facing the convention center is the dearth of nearby restaurants and hotel rooms.
But the city handouts seemed unfair to the owners of the Bonaventure, which is currently billed as "L.A.'s largest convention hotel." They challenged the deal in a lawsuit filed in April and were threatening to launch a petition drive for a ballot referendum to let voters decide the issue.Villaraigosa intervened last week, sitting down with all of the interested parties and helping them reach a compromise.
Under the terms of the agreement, the owners of the Bonaventure, who were worried about losing hotel customers, will have the option of converting up to 400 of their hotel rooms into residential condominiums. In exchange, the owners agreed to drop the lawsuit and proposed referendum. Organized labor got a guarantee that no jobs at the Bonaventure would be lost until three years after a condo conversion.
What is NOT addressed in this settlement - is what is going to be done to make Downtown LA attractive enough to tourists to make convention planners want to come here? More on that shortly.
But start thinking... Broadway...
Our activist Mayor is once again working miracles:
Richard Fausset Times Staff Writer October 18, 2005
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa announced Monday that he has settled a dispute with the owners of the Bonaventure Hotel that threatened to derail plans for a newer hotel next to the unprofitable Los Angeles Convention Center.
The owners of the Bonaventure — a 1,354-room high-rise in the middle of downtown — had planned to fight the city's proposal to subsidize a competing hotel on downtown's south side.The Los Angeles City Council has agreed to provide the new hotel with up to $290 million in subsidies and loans to help breathe new life into the city-owned convention center, which receives a $20-million subsidy each year because it does not attract enough business.
The planned hotel, a Hilton, is envisioned as a key anchor to L.A. Live, a $1.7-billion "sports-entertainment" development that officials have likened to New York's Times Square.Tourism officials say the main problem facing the convention center is the dearth of nearby restaurants and hotel rooms.
But the city handouts seemed unfair to the owners of the Bonaventure, which is currently billed as "L.A.'s largest convention hotel." They challenged the deal in a lawsuit filed in April and were threatening to launch a petition drive for a ballot referendum to let voters decide the issue.Villaraigosa intervened last week, sitting down with all of the interested parties and helping them reach a compromise.
Under the terms of the agreement, the owners of the Bonaventure, who were worried about losing hotel customers, will have the option of converting up to 400 of their hotel rooms into residential condominiums. In exchange, the owners agreed to drop the lawsuit and proposed referendum. Organized labor got a guarantee that no jobs at the Bonaventure would be lost until three years after a condo conversion.
What is NOT addressed in this settlement - is what is going to be done to make Downtown LA attractive enough to tourists to make convention planners want to come here? More on that shortly.
But start thinking... Broadway...
Wayne C. Booth - Author Of 'Rhetoric Of Fiction' - Passes
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/11/books/11booth.html
I somehow missed this obit in the New York Times the other day:
MARGALIT FOX - New York Times
Wayne C. Booth, one of the pre-eminent literary critics of the second half of the 20th century, whose lifelong study of the art of rhetoric illuminated the means by which authors seduce, cajole and more than occasionally lie to their readers in the service of narrative, died yesterday morning at his home in Chicago. He was 84.
And...
... to Professor Booth, literature was not so much words on paper as it was a complex ethical act. He saw the novel as a kind of compact between author and reader: intimate and rewarding, but rarely easy. At the crux of this compact lay rhetoric, the art of verbal persuasion.
The author's task, he argued, was to draw readers into the web of narrative and hold them there. The critic's task was to tease out the specific rhetorical devices - linguistic, stylistic, symbolic - by which this was accomplished. To describe the intricate, shifting dance between author and reader, he coined a number of critical terms that are now common parlance, among them "implied author" and "unreliable narrator.
If you are a writer of fiction, 'The Rhetoric Of Fiction' is mandatory reading to better understand your craft. If you are a reader of fiction, 'The Rhetoric Of Fiction' is mandatory reading just for the pure, raw, naked enjoyment of it.
Later LA Times obit does an excellent job of describing his major work:
http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-booth14oct14,1,987815.story?coll=la-news-obituaries
Mary Rourke Times Staff Writer October 14, 2005
In the book, Booth identified key aspects of storytelling and created terms that are now commonly used to discuss the craft. He referred to "the implied author" as one of three who write a novel. The first is the actual person who does the writing. Then there is the narrator who tells the story. The third is an "implied" presence that conveys irony, judgment and other guideposts throughout the story. The implied author serves as a companion for the reader, Booth said.
In the same book, he compared a "reliable narrator," one who seems to share the author's judgment, with an "unreliable narrator." One is trustworthy, while the other may lie or simply get things wrong.By dissecting fictional narration and looking at each component separately, Booth was able to show the complex communication between an author and a reader.
The book remains "the single most important American contribution to narrative theory," said Bill Brown, chairman of the English department at the University of Chicago. It is "a book that continues to be read, taught and fought about." Booth's writing and teaching demonstrate "how significant the act of literary analysis could and should be," Brown said.
I somehow missed this obit in the New York Times the other day:
MARGALIT FOX - New York Times
Wayne C. Booth, one of the pre-eminent literary critics of the second half of the 20th century, whose lifelong study of the art of rhetoric illuminated the means by which authors seduce, cajole and more than occasionally lie to their readers in the service of narrative, died yesterday morning at his home in Chicago. He was 84.
And...
... to Professor Booth, literature was not so much words on paper as it was a complex ethical act. He saw the novel as a kind of compact between author and reader: intimate and rewarding, but rarely easy. At the crux of this compact lay rhetoric, the art of verbal persuasion.
The author's task, he argued, was to draw readers into the web of narrative and hold them there. The critic's task was to tease out the specific rhetorical devices - linguistic, stylistic, symbolic - by which this was accomplished. To describe the intricate, shifting dance between author and reader, he coined a number of critical terms that are now common parlance, among them "implied author" and "unreliable narrator.
If you are a writer of fiction, 'The Rhetoric Of Fiction' is mandatory reading to better understand your craft. If you are a reader of fiction, 'The Rhetoric Of Fiction' is mandatory reading just for the pure, raw, naked enjoyment of it.
Later LA Times obit does an excellent job of describing his major work:
http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-booth14oct14,1,987815.story?coll=la-news-obituaries
Mary Rourke Times Staff Writer October 14, 2005
In the book, Booth identified key aspects of storytelling and created terms that are now commonly used to discuss the craft. He referred to "the implied author" as one of three who write a novel. The first is the actual person who does the writing. Then there is the narrator who tells the story. The third is an "implied" presence that conveys irony, judgment and other guideposts throughout the story. The implied author serves as a companion for the reader, Booth said.
In the same book, he compared a "reliable narrator," one who seems to share the author's judgment, with an "unreliable narrator." One is trustworthy, while the other may lie or simply get things wrong.By dissecting fictional narration and looking at each component separately, Booth was able to show the complex communication between an author and a reader.
The book remains "the single most important American contribution to narrative theory," said Bill Brown, chairman of the English department at the University of Chicago. It is "a book that continues to be read, taught and fought about." Booth's writing and teaching demonstrate "how significant the act of literary analysis could and should be," Brown said.
Urban Planner Edmond Bacon Dead At 95!
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/18/arts/design/18baco.html?pagewanted=all
ROBIN POGREBIN - New York Times
Edmund N. Bacon, a leading postwar urban planner who remade much of Philadelphia, died on Friday at his home there. He was 95.
And...
As the executive director of the Philadelphia City Planning Commission from 1949 to 1970, Mr. Bacon had an impact on his native city that some have compared to that of Robert Moses during his long reign in New York.
He also signified a bygone era when urban planners were considered celebrities, like Mr. Bacon's youngest son, Kevin, the actor. In 1964 Mr. Bacon was featured on the cover of Time magazine for an issue commemorating urban renewal in America. In 1965 Life magazine devoted a cover story to his work. His 1967 book, "Design of Cities," is still considered a seminal text on contemporary urban planning.
His mark on Philadelphia was perhaps most evident in the planning of Penn Center, a huge development of Philadelphia's downtown core in the 1950's and 60's. The center, comprising offices and hotels, was the largest such project the city had seen since the 1920's.
In replacing the so-called Chinese Wall, a network of elevated railroad tracks that divided the city, Mr. Bacon would eventually establish a stronger east-west spine. He added buildings to the area around 30th Street Station at the western edge of Center City. Mr. Bacon's design concepts also led to the development of Market East, Penn's Landing, Society Hill, Independence Mall and the Far Northeast. "It mixed the bulldoze-and-rebuild philosophy of urban renewal with the tentative beginnings of the historic preservation movement," Paul Goldberger wrote in The New York Times in 1988.
The planner's work was not always seen as a success by critics. In 1998 Herbert Muschamp wrote in The New York Times that Penn Center was "reviled as a prime example of disastrous modern city planning: lamentable in the spare geometry of its buildings, its disregard for the vitality of the traditional street."
Bacon's biggest success was in building a livable residential downtown that worked. His finest legacy is Society Hill where he helped transform one of the city's oldest residential districts from a slum into a mixture of restored colonial, federal and Greek revival era homes, new townhouses and high rise apartment towers. The downside was that he also destroyed what would now be considered a priceless collection of Victorian buildings.
His biggest failure - to me, though - was not Penn Center so much - since that was a replacement of railroad yards, but his wholesale bulldozing of too much of the historic fabric of the city, particularly for the sterile Independence Mall that not only destroyed some colonial and federal buildings that did not fit into the desired narrative, but which also laid waste to many of Philadelphia's finest Victorian buildings, including two of Frank Furness's masterpieces.
Still, even with all that, Bacon was still a pioneer in historic preservation at a time when even the next generation of planners to follow him such Ed Logue were still bulldozing pretty much everything in sight in places like New Haven (and later, in Boston), other than the much later Wooster Square project.
ROBIN POGREBIN - New York Times
Edmund N. Bacon, a leading postwar urban planner who remade much of Philadelphia, died on Friday at his home there. He was 95.
And...
As the executive director of the Philadelphia City Planning Commission from 1949 to 1970, Mr. Bacon had an impact on his native city that some have compared to that of Robert Moses during his long reign in New York.
He also signified a bygone era when urban planners were considered celebrities, like Mr. Bacon's youngest son, Kevin, the actor. In 1964 Mr. Bacon was featured on the cover of Time magazine for an issue commemorating urban renewal in America. In 1965 Life magazine devoted a cover story to his work. His 1967 book, "Design of Cities," is still considered a seminal text on contemporary urban planning.
His mark on Philadelphia was perhaps most evident in the planning of Penn Center, a huge development of Philadelphia's downtown core in the 1950's and 60's. The center, comprising offices and hotels, was the largest such project the city had seen since the 1920's.
In replacing the so-called Chinese Wall, a network of elevated railroad tracks that divided the city, Mr. Bacon would eventually establish a stronger east-west spine. He added buildings to the area around 30th Street Station at the western edge of Center City. Mr. Bacon's design concepts also led to the development of Market East, Penn's Landing, Society Hill, Independence Mall and the Far Northeast. "It mixed the bulldoze-and-rebuild philosophy of urban renewal with the tentative beginnings of the historic preservation movement," Paul Goldberger wrote in The New York Times in 1988.
The planner's work was not always seen as a success by critics. In 1998 Herbert Muschamp wrote in The New York Times that Penn Center was "reviled as a prime example of disastrous modern city planning: lamentable in the spare geometry of its buildings, its disregard for the vitality of the traditional street."
Bacon's biggest success was in building a livable residential downtown that worked. His finest legacy is Society Hill where he helped transform one of the city's oldest residential districts from a slum into a mixture of restored colonial, federal and Greek revival era homes, new townhouses and high rise apartment towers. The downside was that he also destroyed what would now be considered a priceless collection of Victorian buildings.
His biggest failure - to me, though - was not Penn Center so much - since that was a replacement of railroad yards, but his wholesale bulldozing of too much of the historic fabric of the city, particularly for the sterile Independence Mall that not only destroyed some colonial and federal buildings that did not fit into the desired narrative, but which also laid waste to many of Philadelphia's finest Victorian buildings, including two of Frank Furness's masterpieces.
Still, even with all that, Bacon was still a pioneer in historic preservation at a time when even the next generation of planners to follow him such Ed Logue were still bulldozing pretty much everything in sight in places like New Haven (and later, in Boston), other than the much later Wooster Square project.
Monday, October 17, 2005
Cowboy Bites Horse! A Defense Of... GASP!... Steve Lopez....
Yes, I know.
This is LACowboy.
You are at the correct URL.
And, no, Armageddon is not occurring.
I say this because if you regularly read me or even if you just read my last two posts about Steve Lopez - you know I believe the concept of Steve Lopez as a city columnist for the City of Los Angeles is an unfathomable cosmic joke; a tragic karmic payback for the sins of long dead city fathers.
And, no, for those misguided few still concerned about my mental or physical health - the hundreds of buckin' broncos who pile drove this poor old cowboy's head straight into the ground - are not the (sole) reason for this sudden... seeming... loss of reason.
The truth is - alas! - I must regretfully acknowledge - there is a deserved - if not even a honorable - place for (shudder) Steve Lopez in our local journalistic ecology.
There, I said it. And I have not been struck down by lightning.
So far.
To begin with, friends of mine from the City of Brotherly Love have always regaled me good things about Mr. Lopez and his writing. Until now, though, I of course assumed this was because he was now writing about Los Angeles - and not Philadelphia.
Exhibit 'A' for the defense follows:
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-lopez9oct09,0,7935626.column?coll=la-home-headlines
In this column, Lopez communicates not only his subject's odyssey, but also his own personal odyssey into the understanding of the difficulty of helping the homeless. The final - if unstated - revelation to Mr Lopez was that homelessness on Skid Row it is not (primarily) about housing or about the lack people who care enough to try and help them.
OK - hold on!
Before all the housing advocates jump down my throat, affordable housing is a very critical issue and one I will be addressing shortly in depth. But a lack of housing is not - primarily - why the majority of people on Skid Row... are on Skid Row.
But getting back to Steve (and since I am quite momentarily saying good things about him - I am sure he will not mind me using his first name), the above linked column is where I finally began to understand him as a writer.
Clearly, Steve Lopez has a remarkable talent for dealing with people as individuals.
And that is a rare gift.
Too many writers - like politicians - love people in the collective, but have a substantially harder time with them as flawed, quirky, individual... individuals. Steve, though, can not only accept them as who they are, but he can also clearly see their flaws even as he sings eloquently songs about uniqueness.
My pal Stevie can also- OK, this is getting way too familiar - Steve - can also superbly communicate who these people are to his readers - as rapidly declining as readers deservedly are at the LA Times - (sorry... can't help my scorpion-self) - and he then can also make certain you care about them even when he honestly presents you with their flaws.
Now, of course, my main problem with the leadership of the LA Times and with Mr. Lopez - OK, so much for name basis - is that they - and he - simply do not get... Los Angeles. Their DNA and our DNA - so far - are no match. And no amount of planted bloody gloves have so far made any case to the contrary.
Thus, when Mr. Lopez writes about city politics or state wide issues or, horror of horrors - the war in Iraq - I commence to shed massive amounts of brain cells.
But when - the good Steve - writes about the people of Skid Row as he did in Sunday's article...
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-adme-lopez16oct16,0,4505894.column?coll=la-home-headlines
... and in today's article...
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-lopez16oct16-series,0,3994447.special?coll=la-home-headlines
... he is - as good as anyone writing anything anywhere.
I was particularly impressed on how he addressed the problem we have with the portable toilets - or portable death traps as we call them down here - and how they are used almost exclusively for drug dealing and prostitution. Luckily, he has an excellent guide in Captain Andy Smith who has been a Godsend to all of our collective communities.
Now, in Kevin Roderick's yesterday's post in LAOBSERVED...
http://www.laobserved.com/archive/2005/10/steve_lopez_goes_to_skid_1.html
... he expressed some deservedly well founded skepticism about Steve's - momentarily back to first name basis again, sorry for the confusion - Steve's choice of Skid Row as the subject for a five part series, since he clearly smelled the stench of prize bait. And I fully understand.
Every year, the LAT's latest P. Price entry always starts its always five part series on the front page and the blatantly political aspect of each series always messily vomits all over the front page of the paper.
But not this time.
As one who has observed first hand the history of Skid Row since the late 1950's and as one who has tried to work with members of that community on an individual basis, like many of us down here - I know the shock and the horror Steve Lopez now faces. We all understand the helplessness he feels in watching the unimaginable human tragedy surrounding him when he walks the streets of Skid Row.
We also know what it is like to see people finish drug rehab - only to be rehooked by local drug dealers with free heroin to re-enslave them, and not being able to help. We also realize what it is like to see people accept housing, only to end up on the streets within 24 hours - when their demons overcome them, and then not being able to help. We also know what it is like to see that person only days later with a swollen jaw and five less teeth after they had been beaten by someone else who lived on the street.
We also all know what it is like when we get the call or the word from the street that person... is now dead.
So now Steve Lopez, like too many of us down here, is experiencing these same emotions.
So, no, Kevin, this is one five part series that is not all about prizes.
These articles are Steve Lopez dealing with his emotions. It is about caring for the people he meets and talks to on the streets of Skid Row. It is about his wanting to do something, anything, to help while knowing the only thing he can do, is to as truthfully and as brutally honestly as possible, tell the citizens of Los Angeles what the hell is going on down here.
OK.
Sermon over.
And now that I've unburdened myself of that - and even with all that being true - why does a large part of me (hell, most of me, most of the time) still want to see Steve Lopez tarred, feathered - and ridden out of town on a rail?
Well, it's still that simple.
He and the LA Times simply do not know or understand this city.
The fact that the front page story on this important issue could have such a staggeringly stupid, bonehead error - that 10,000 people sleep on the streets of Skid Row every night is completely... inexcusable. And for anyone who has actually walked these streets to write something that detached from reality - is literally beyond belief.
So if Mr. Lopez does accept my not so gracious offer to walk with some of us who live here, he can not only do some actual reporting by counting the number of people who sleep on the streets of Skid Row at night, but by doing so - just maybe - he - and the people who run the LA Times - can finally also begin to understand why so many people in LA so hate the LA Times.
It is because the LA Times has so completely lost so touch with this city that nothing written in it about LA can be trusted by any of us as being factually correct. And that is why we are mad as Hell about the LA Times and Steve Lopez.
But at least Steve - for now - is working from his strengths. Rather than dealing with Los Angeles or the political in the abstract - he now makes the personal the political by dealing with this city on a person by person basis.
And as of today, no one anywhere is doing - or could do - any better job than he is at telling us about ourselves.
But, for God's sake...
Never, ever, let Steve Lopez - or anyone - at the LA Times anywhere near any 'fact' or 'statistic' without at least five people who do NOT work for the LA Times checking it out.
Now, is that too much to ask?
I didn't think so.
This is LACowboy.
You are at the correct URL.
And, no, Armageddon is not occurring.
I say this because if you regularly read me or even if you just read my last two posts about Steve Lopez - you know I believe the concept of Steve Lopez as a city columnist for the City of Los Angeles is an unfathomable cosmic joke; a tragic karmic payback for the sins of long dead city fathers.
And, no, for those misguided few still concerned about my mental or physical health - the hundreds of buckin' broncos who pile drove this poor old cowboy's head straight into the ground - are not the (sole) reason for this sudden... seeming... loss of reason.
The truth is - alas! - I must regretfully acknowledge - there is a deserved - if not even a honorable - place for (shudder) Steve Lopez in our local journalistic ecology.
There, I said it. And I have not been struck down by lightning.
So far.
To begin with, friends of mine from the City of Brotherly Love have always regaled me good things about Mr. Lopez and his writing. Until now, though, I of course assumed this was because he was now writing about Los Angeles - and not Philadelphia.
Exhibit 'A' for the defense follows:
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-lopez9oct09,0,7935626.column?coll=la-home-headlines
In this column, Lopez communicates not only his subject's odyssey, but also his own personal odyssey into the understanding of the difficulty of helping the homeless. The final - if unstated - revelation to Mr Lopez was that homelessness on Skid Row it is not (primarily) about housing or about the lack people who care enough to try and help them.
OK - hold on!
Before all the housing advocates jump down my throat, affordable housing is a very critical issue and one I will be addressing shortly in depth. But a lack of housing is not - primarily - why the majority of people on Skid Row... are on Skid Row.
But getting back to Steve (and since I am quite momentarily saying good things about him - I am sure he will not mind me using his first name), the above linked column is where I finally began to understand him as a writer.
Clearly, Steve Lopez has a remarkable talent for dealing with people as individuals.
And that is a rare gift.
Too many writers - like politicians - love people in the collective, but have a substantially harder time with them as flawed, quirky, individual... individuals. Steve, though, can not only accept them as who they are, but he can also clearly see their flaws even as he sings eloquently songs about uniqueness.
My pal Stevie can also- OK, this is getting way too familiar - Steve - can also superbly communicate who these people are to his readers - as rapidly declining as readers deservedly are at the LA Times - (sorry... can't help my scorpion-self) - and he then can also make certain you care about them even when he honestly presents you with their flaws.
Now, of course, my main problem with the leadership of the LA Times and with Mr. Lopez - OK, so much for name basis - is that they - and he - simply do not get... Los Angeles. Their DNA and our DNA - so far - are no match. And no amount of planted bloody gloves have so far made any case to the contrary.
Thus, when Mr. Lopez writes about city politics or state wide issues or, horror of horrors - the war in Iraq - I commence to shed massive amounts of brain cells.
But when - the good Steve - writes about the people of Skid Row as he did in Sunday's article...
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-adme-lopez16oct16,0,4505894.column?coll=la-home-headlines
... and in today's article...
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-lopez16oct16-series,0,3994447.special?coll=la-home-headlines
... he is - as good as anyone writing anything anywhere.
I was particularly impressed on how he addressed the problem we have with the portable toilets - or portable death traps as we call them down here - and how they are used almost exclusively for drug dealing and prostitution. Luckily, he has an excellent guide in Captain Andy Smith who has been a Godsend to all of our collective communities.
Now, in Kevin Roderick's yesterday's post in LAOBSERVED...
http://www.laobserved.com/archive/2005/10/steve_lopez_goes_to_skid_1.html
... he expressed some deservedly well founded skepticism about Steve's - momentarily back to first name basis again, sorry for the confusion - Steve's choice of Skid Row as the subject for a five part series, since he clearly smelled the stench of prize bait. And I fully understand.
Every year, the LAT's latest P. Price entry always starts its always five part series on the front page and the blatantly political aspect of each series always messily vomits all over the front page of the paper.
But not this time.
As one who has observed first hand the history of Skid Row since the late 1950's and as one who has tried to work with members of that community on an individual basis, like many of us down here - I know the shock and the horror Steve Lopez now faces. We all understand the helplessness he feels in watching the unimaginable human tragedy surrounding him when he walks the streets of Skid Row.
We also know what it is like to see people finish drug rehab - only to be rehooked by local drug dealers with free heroin to re-enslave them, and not being able to help. We also realize what it is like to see people accept housing, only to end up on the streets within 24 hours - when their demons overcome them, and then not being able to help. We also know what it is like to see that person only days later with a swollen jaw and five less teeth after they had been beaten by someone else who lived on the street.
We also all know what it is like when we get the call or the word from the street that person... is now dead.
So now Steve Lopez, like too many of us down here, is experiencing these same emotions.
So, no, Kevin, this is one five part series that is not all about prizes.
These articles are Steve Lopez dealing with his emotions. It is about caring for the people he meets and talks to on the streets of Skid Row. It is about his wanting to do something, anything, to help while knowing the only thing he can do, is to as truthfully and as brutally honestly as possible, tell the citizens of Los Angeles what the hell is going on down here.
OK.
Sermon over.
And now that I've unburdened myself of that - and even with all that being true - why does a large part of me (hell, most of me, most of the time) still want to see Steve Lopez tarred, feathered - and ridden out of town on a rail?
Well, it's still that simple.
He and the LA Times simply do not know or understand this city.
The fact that the front page story on this important issue could have such a staggeringly stupid, bonehead error - that 10,000 people sleep on the streets of Skid Row every night is completely... inexcusable. And for anyone who has actually walked these streets to write something that detached from reality - is literally beyond belief.
So if Mr. Lopez does accept my not so gracious offer to walk with some of us who live here, he can not only do some actual reporting by counting the number of people who sleep on the streets of Skid Row at night, but by doing so - just maybe - he - and the people who run the LA Times - can finally also begin to understand why so many people in LA so hate the LA Times.
It is because the LA Times has so completely lost so touch with this city that nothing written in it about LA can be trusted by any of us as being factually correct. And that is why we are mad as Hell about the LA Times and Steve Lopez.
But at least Steve - for now - is working from his strengths. Rather than dealing with Los Angeles or the political in the abstract - he now makes the personal the political by dealing with this city on a person by person basis.
And as of today, no one anywhere is doing - or could do - any better job than he is at telling us about ourselves.
But, for God's sake...
Never, ever, let Steve Lopez - or anyone - at the LA Times anywhere near any 'fact' or 'statistic' without at least five people who do NOT work for the LA Times checking it out.
Now, is that too much to ask?
I didn't think so.
Sunday, October 16, 2005
It's Time For The Big Shoot-Out At The Media Corral! Lap Tops At Fifty Paces!
http://www.lavoice.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1176
Now that it's clear that LA is not a big enough town for the both of us - it's time for one of us to get out of Dodge. My challenge to Steve Lopez is posted at the above link. For more details also see my below post.
Now that it's clear that LA is not a big enough town for the both of us - it's time for one of us to get out of Dodge. My challenge to Steve Lopez is posted at the above link. For more details also see my below post.
Insanity Defense Only Possible Plea For Steve Lopez And The LA Times!
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-adme-lopez16oct16,0,4505894.column?coll=la-story-footer
In today's column by Steve Lopez, following an excellent column he did last week - which I have not yet gotten around to addressing - and after a superb series of articles on the 'dumping' on Skid Row by the LA Times, this Philadelphia columnist visiting LA, states one of the most preposterous falsehoods ever told by a LA Times writer:
Roughly 10,000 people flop on skid row streets each night, up to half of them mentally ill. The landscape is relentlessly bleak, the stench of rotting trash and misery everywhere.
Now this quote is in an article based on five days he spent on Skid Row. Evidently, though, like too many recently arrived Times reporters, he was blindfolded the entire time, metaphorically if not physically.
First the minor point; there is a smell on some, but not all, parts of Skid Row. But it has little to do with rotting trash. The streets are swept very day and most sidewalks are washed almost every day. No trash is left long enough to rot. That the smell is from days or weeks old decomposing trash is simply not... true.
The smell that assaults one's olfactory senses on some parts of the Row is because not just the homeless but many other people in area use the public sidewalks as public restrooms.
But the real outrage is that if Lopez had spent even one night on Skid Row without his blindfold on - he would have realized there isn't even enough physical room on the sidewalks of Skid Row for 10,000 people to sleep every night.
That he could say anything this detached from reality without any of the editors realizing what he said was insane - proves how detached the LA Times is from this city.
To repeat, Steve Lopez did not say that 10,000 homeless people sleep every night on the streets of downtown.
He did not say that on Skid Row there are 10,000 homeless people, who sleep either on the streets or in shelters every night.
Both totally false statements, by the way.
Steve Lopez stated that 10,000 homeless people sleep - every night - on the streets of Skid Row.
The tragedy is when outsiders from back East who know nothing about Los Angeles and who appear to be incapable of ever learning anything about this city just make up 'facts' about what is happening down here - it only trivializes the seriousness of our problems. Maybe the best thing the LA Times could ever do for this city is to never again publish a single word about... Los Angeles.
UPDATE!
To read my personal challenge to Steve Lopez to actually help me count the people sleeping on Skid Row go to:
http://www.lavoice.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1176
In today's column by Steve Lopez, following an excellent column he did last week - which I have not yet gotten around to addressing - and after a superb series of articles on the 'dumping' on Skid Row by the LA Times, this Philadelphia columnist visiting LA, states one of the most preposterous falsehoods ever told by a LA Times writer:
Roughly 10,000 people flop on skid row streets each night, up to half of them mentally ill. The landscape is relentlessly bleak, the stench of rotting trash and misery everywhere.
Now this quote is in an article based on five days he spent on Skid Row. Evidently, though, like too many recently arrived Times reporters, he was blindfolded the entire time, metaphorically if not physically.
First the minor point; there is a smell on some, but not all, parts of Skid Row. But it has little to do with rotting trash. The streets are swept very day and most sidewalks are washed almost every day. No trash is left long enough to rot. That the smell is from days or weeks old decomposing trash is simply not... true.
The smell that assaults one's olfactory senses on some parts of the Row is because not just the homeless but many other people in area use the public sidewalks as public restrooms.
But the real outrage is that if Lopez had spent even one night on Skid Row without his blindfold on - he would have realized there isn't even enough physical room on the sidewalks of Skid Row for 10,000 people to sleep every night.
That he could say anything this detached from reality without any of the editors realizing what he said was insane - proves how detached the LA Times is from this city.
To repeat, Steve Lopez did not say that 10,000 homeless people sleep every night on the streets of downtown.
He did not say that on Skid Row there are 10,000 homeless people, who sleep either on the streets or in shelters every night.
Both totally false statements, by the way.
Steve Lopez stated that 10,000 homeless people sleep - every night - on the streets of Skid Row.
The tragedy is when outsiders from back East who know nothing about Los Angeles and who appear to be incapable of ever learning anything about this city just make up 'facts' about what is happening down here - it only trivializes the seriousness of our problems. Maybe the best thing the LA Times could ever do for this city is to never again publish a single word about... Los Angeles.
UPDATE!
To read my personal challenge to Steve Lopez to actually help me count the people sleeping on Skid Row go to:
http://www.lavoice.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1176
Saturday, October 15, 2005
World Premier Play At Edgefest! Hit - Or Flop?
http://www.lavoice.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1172
Starting today, I will be doing reviews of cultural events in Los Angeles over at LAVOICE.ORG. More on this later, but I have to run off to a meeting so just follow the link and read about an exciting play no one should miss. It plays tonight, this Sunday and next weekend. By the end of night of its premier last week, it already had offers to tour the country, so it may be awhile before LA will be able to see it again.
Here is the opening of the review:
Investing two hours in a new play is a risk. If the play is about race relations, gay rights, mental illness, sex and priests, we reach the red alert level. If you know the author, a rear row aisle seat is mandatory for quick escape.
After intermission, I relocated front row center.
First, to dispense with preliminaries, the play is onstage tonight (Oct. 15th), tomorrow and next weekend. Stop reading and buy tickets on-line. Once finished, come back and finish the review.
Done?
OK.
In Colin Cox's world premiere play, 'A Pebble In My Shoe: The Life and Times of John Shelby Spong', Stephen Wolfert plays the former Episcopal Bishop starting with his Southern childhood in the 1930's when he first confronted his and his society's prejudices.
The rest of the review is below:
http://www.lavoice.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1172
Starting today, I will be doing reviews of cultural events in Los Angeles over at LAVOICE.ORG. More on this later, but I have to run off to a meeting so just follow the link and read about an exciting play no one should miss. It plays tonight, this Sunday and next weekend. By the end of night of its premier last week, it already had offers to tour the country, so it may be awhile before LA will be able to see it again.
Here is the opening of the review:
Investing two hours in a new play is a risk. If the play is about race relations, gay rights, mental illness, sex and priests, we reach the red alert level. If you know the author, a rear row aisle seat is mandatory for quick escape.
After intermission, I relocated front row center.
First, to dispense with preliminaries, the play is onstage tonight (Oct. 15th), tomorrow and next weekend. Stop reading and buy tickets on-line. Once finished, come back and finish the review.
Done?
OK.
In Colin Cox's world premiere play, 'A Pebble In My Shoe: The Life and Times of John Shelby Spong', Stephen Wolfert plays the former Episcopal Bishop starting with his Southern childhood in the 1930's when he first confronted his and his society's prejudices.
The rest of the review is below:
http://www.lavoice.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1172
Friday, October 14, 2005
Mary Chaney - Artist, Downtown Activist - And Friend - Passes Away.
http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-chaney16oct16,0,7925423.story?coll=la-home-obituaries
Below is a note I received from a close friend of Mary's:
It is with great sadness that we learned of the passing of Mary Chaney this last Wednesday. Mary was a long-time resident of Downtown Los Angeles and activist for the community. A life-long professional artist, Mary fought for the inclusion of arts representatives in the formation of the Downtown Los Angeles Neighborhood Council (DLANC). She was active with LAPD Boosters and CPAB, overseeing improved communications and responsiveness between residential needs and our police department.
Mary worked as a documentary artist sketching from life in the courtroom as well as the streets. Her courtroom work has been broadcast by ABC, CNN, FOX, NBC, KTTV and Court TV. She covered cases such as the civil rights trial in the beating of Rodney King, the Steven Spielberg stalking, the O. J. Simpson civil trial, the Richard Miller "FBI Spy" trial, the Richard Ramirez "Night Stalker" trial, and the civil trial of Philippine President Marcos' wife, Imelda.
Ms. Chaney exhibited her courtroom sketches and illustrations in several Southern California exhibits including exhibits at Loyola Law School "The Classic Courtroom Trial" and the Federal Rodney King case "Justice on Trial". The Los Angeles Sheriffs' Art Documentary featured "The Badge and the Brush" and "My Mom Is In Jail" illustrations.
Her work has been published in several law reviews and is included in the Smithsonian American History Museum, the United States Air Force Art Collection, and the Los Angeles Downtown Art District website. Her quick and astute skills in sketching rendered a small book of portraits of those attending the post-9/11 gathering at City Hall for a Candlelight Vigil, the drawings later acknowledged with gratitude of support by Mayor Giuliani.
Mary will be remembered for her quick humor, hard work for social causes, steadfastness of purpose, and inspiration as an artist. Her passing is a great loss to our community.
A memorial mass will be held at the St. Francis Xavier Maryknoll Church in the Arts District at 10 am on Tuesday Oct. 18. The church it located on Hewitt St. near 3rd Street.
UPDATE!!
At the top of the page is now the link to the LA Times article about Mary's life:
Dennis McLellan October 16, 2005
Mary Chaney, a Los Angeles courtroom artist whose meticulous and delicate drawing style provided local and national television viewers with telling glimpses of high-profile trials, including that of "Night Stalker" Richard Ramirez and Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss, has died.
She was 77. Chaney died Wednesday of cancer at her home in Los Angeles, according to her family. A commercial illustrator, Chaney launched her freelance career in the courtroom in the mid-1980s. Over the years, she provided sketches for ABC, NBC, CNN, Fox, KTTV, Court TV and other news outlets.
And...
Born in Los Angeles in 1927, Chaney graduated from Otis Art Institute, Chouinard Art Institute and Loyola Marymount University. While raising her family in Huntington Park in the 1950s through the mid '70s, she converted her large laundry room into an art studio, where she painted, sculpted and did sketches of her children and neighbors. She also gave painting lessons to adults.
Chaney, who lived more than 20 years on Bunker Hill in downtown Los Angeles and could walk to work in the nearby courthouses, had a passion for the homeless and street people. She titled a series of her drawings of the homeless, which were exhibited in downtown Los Angeles in the '80s, "A Tender Dignity."
Below is a note I received from a close friend of Mary's:
It is with great sadness that we learned of the passing of Mary Chaney this last Wednesday. Mary was a long-time resident of Downtown Los Angeles and activist for the community. A life-long professional artist, Mary fought for the inclusion of arts representatives in the formation of the Downtown Los Angeles Neighborhood Council (DLANC). She was active with LAPD Boosters and CPAB, overseeing improved communications and responsiveness between residential needs and our police department.
Mary worked as a documentary artist sketching from life in the courtroom as well as the streets. Her courtroom work has been broadcast by ABC, CNN, FOX, NBC, KTTV and Court TV. She covered cases such as the civil rights trial in the beating of Rodney King, the Steven Spielberg stalking, the O. J. Simpson civil trial, the Richard Miller "FBI Spy" trial, the Richard Ramirez "Night Stalker" trial, and the civil trial of Philippine President Marcos' wife, Imelda.
Ms. Chaney exhibited her courtroom sketches and illustrations in several Southern California exhibits including exhibits at Loyola Law School "The Classic Courtroom Trial" and the Federal Rodney King case "Justice on Trial". The Los Angeles Sheriffs' Art Documentary featured "The Badge and the Brush" and "My Mom Is In Jail" illustrations.
Her work has been published in several law reviews and is included in the Smithsonian American History Museum, the United States Air Force Art Collection, and the Los Angeles Downtown Art District website. Her quick and astute skills in sketching rendered a small book of portraits of those attending the post-9/11 gathering at City Hall for a Candlelight Vigil, the drawings later acknowledged with gratitude of support by Mayor Giuliani.
Mary will be remembered for her quick humor, hard work for social causes, steadfastness of purpose, and inspiration as an artist. Her passing is a great loss to our community.
A memorial mass will be held at the St. Francis Xavier Maryknoll Church in the Arts District at 10 am on Tuesday Oct. 18. The church it located on Hewitt St. near 3rd Street.
UPDATE!!
At the top of the page is now the link to the LA Times article about Mary's life:
Dennis McLellan October 16, 2005
Mary Chaney, a Los Angeles courtroom artist whose meticulous and delicate drawing style provided local and national television viewers with telling glimpses of high-profile trials, including that of "Night Stalker" Richard Ramirez and Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss, has died.
She was 77. Chaney died Wednesday of cancer at her home in Los Angeles, according to her family. A commercial illustrator, Chaney launched her freelance career in the courtroom in the mid-1980s. Over the years, she provided sketches for ABC, NBC, CNN, Fox, KTTV, Court TV and other news outlets.
And...
Born in Los Angeles in 1927, Chaney graduated from Otis Art Institute, Chouinard Art Institute and Loyola Marymount University. While raising her family in Huntington Park in the 1950s through the mid '70s, she converted her large laundry room into an art studio, where she painted, sculpted and did sketches of her children and neighbors. She also gave painting lessons to adults.
Chaney, who lived more than 20 years on Bunker Hill in downtown Los Angeles and could walk to work in the nearby courthouses, had a passion for the homeless and street people. She titled a series of her drawings of the homeless, which were exhibited in downtown Los Angeles in the '80s, "A Tender Dignity."
Thursday, October 13, 2005
Blair Taylor New Head Of Urban League In Los Angeles!
http://www.laobserved.com/archive/2005/10/urban_league_picks_taylor.html
From LA Observed:
The Los Angeles Urban League announced that Blair Taylor will be the group's new president and CEO, succeeding John Mack. Taylor is Executive Vice President of College Summit, a national college access initiative. He has also been president and CEO of COI/ICD, held positions at PepsiCo and IBM, and has an MBA in Marketing and Entrepreneurial Studies from UCLA’s Anderson Graduate School of Management. He also had been an L.A. City Council deputy. Mack is retiring after leading the Los Angeles Urban League for thirty-six years.
While no one can replace John Mack, Blair Taylor is a more than worthy successor. All his life he has focused on the two critical needs of our urban society. Education and jobs. If we can get those two things right, then everything else will follow.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-urban14oct14,1,1342880.story?coll=la-headlines-california
From LA Observed:
The Los Angeles Urban League announced that Blair Taylor will be the group's new president and CEO, succeeding John Mack. Taylor is Executive Vice President of College Summit, a national college access initiative. He has also been president and CEO of COI/ICD, held positions at PepsiCo and IBM, and has an MBA in Marketing and Entrepreneurial Studies from UCLA’s Anderson Graduate School of Management. He also had been an L.A. City Council deputy. Mack is retiring after leading the Los Angeles Urban League for thirty-six years.
While no one can replace John Mack, Blair Taylor is a more than worthy successor. All his life he has focused on the two critical needs of our urban society. Education and jobs. If we can get those two things right, then everything else will follow.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-urban14oct14,1,1342880.story?coll=la-headlines-california
Deserving Writer Wins Nobel! Pinter Pockets Prize!
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-101305nobel_lat,0,83078.story?coll=la-home-headlines
In a shocking turn of events, the Noble Prize for literature has been awarded to a writer someone other than the Nobel members has read! After decades of sometimes obscure and even questionable choices (along with many very deserved awards, of course), the prize has been given to one of the greats of 20th century literature, playwright Harold Pinter.
Michael Muskal LA Times October 13, 2005
Harold Pinter, whose name has become a synonym for a unique space in the universe of drama, was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature today. Regarded as one of the most important British dramatic voices in the latter half of the 20th Century, Pinter, 75, is known for his sparse and thin style as well as his etched characters whose crystal patter cuts through the mood like diamond drill bits. Pinter "in his plays uncovers the precipice under everyday prattle and forces entry into oppression's closed rooms," the Swedish Academy said in announcing the surprise award.
And...
Last year's winner was Austrian feminist Elfriede Jelinek. Her selection drew such ire that a member of the academy attacked his colleagues for the choice. Knut Ahnlund, 82, resigned Tuesday after he wrote that the choice of Jelinek caused "irreparable damage" to the award's reputation.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/13/books/13cnd-nobel.html?hp&ex=1129262400&en=83057a0d52f6dc0e&ei=5094&partner=homepage
Timothy Williams New York Times
In awarding the $1.3 million prize, the Swedish Academy said Mr. Pinter "uncovers the precipice under everyday prattle and forces entry into oppression's closed rooms." The citation added, "Pinter restored theater to its basic elements: an enclosed space and unpredictable dialogue, where people are at the mercy of each other and pretense crumbles."
Influenced by James Joyce and Samuel Beckett - who became a friend -- Mr. Pinter wrote plays, particularly those during the 1960's, that veer unexpectedly from comedy to examinations of fear and evil. In his early plays, menace lurked just beneath the comedic surface of things - a style that became known as the "comedy of menace."
Mr. Pinter was born in London in 1930 to working class Jewish parents and studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and the Central School for Speech and Drama. As a child, he grew up during the Blitz, and he and his family were forced to evacuate London for three years. That experience, he said later, informed his desire to work for peace.
As a teenager, he twice refused national military service, and was fined.
The irony here, of course, is that it was only millions of Americans and Brits going into military service that saved the world from Hitler and saved the last remnants of the Europe's Jewish population from concentration camps; camps that would not have existed if earlier military force had been used when Hitler had started his attacks on neighboring countries. And if other Brits and Americans did not serve, Pinter and his family would have been put to death in the concentration camps the Germans had planned for England.
There are, of course, no easy answers to the problems facing the world then - or now; but as brilliant as Pinter is at looking into human relationships like many artists, the complexities of the relationships among nations has never been of any interest to him; there was/is only black and white.
In a shocking turn of events, the Noble Prize for literature has been awarded to a writer someone other than the Nobel members has read! After decades of sometimes obscure and even questionable choices (along with many very deserved awards, of course), the prize has been given to one of the greats of 20th century literature, playwright Harold Pinter.
Michael Muskal LA Times October 13, 2005
Harold Pinter, whose name has become a synonym for a unique space in the universe of drama, was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature today. Regarded as one of the most important British dramatic voices in the latter half of the 20th Century, Pinter, 75, is known for his sparse and thin style as well as his etched characters whose crystal patter cuts through the mood like diamond drill bits. Pinter "in his plays uncovers the precipice under everyday prattle and forces entry into oppression's closed rooms," the Swedish Academy said in announcing the surprise award.
And...
Last year's winner was Austrian feminist Elfriede Jelinek. Her selection drew such ire that a member of the academy attacked his colleagues for the choice. Knut Ahnlund, 82, resigned Tuesday after he wrote that the choice of Jelinek caused "irreparable damage" to the award's reputation.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/13/books/13cnd-nobel.html?hp&ex=1129262400&en=83057a0d52f6dc0e&ei=5094&partner=homepage
Timothy Williams New York Times
In awarding the $1.3 million prize, the Swedish Academy said Mr. Pinter "uncovers the precipice under everyday prattle and forces entry into oppression's closed rooms." The citation added, "Pinter restored theater to its basic elements: an enclosed space and unpredictable dialogue, where people are at the mercy of each other and pretense crumbles."
Influenced by James Joyce and Samuel Beckett - who became a friend -- Mr. Pinter wrote plays, particularly those during the 1960's, that veer unexpectedly from comedy to examinations of fear and evil. In his early plays, menace lurked just beneath the comedic surface of things - a style that became known as the "comedy of menace."
Mr. Pinter was born in London in 1930 to working class Jewish parents and studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and the Central School for Speech and Drama. As a child, he grew up during the Blitz, and he and his family were forced to evacuate London for three years. That experience, he said later, informed his desire to work for peace.
As a teenager, he twice refused national military service, and was fined.
The irony here, of course, is that it was only millions of Americans and Brits going into military service that saved the world from Hitler and saved the last remnants of the Europe's Jewish population from concentration camps; camps that would not have existed if earlier military force had been used when Hitler had started his attacks on neighboring countries. And if other Brits and Americans did not serve, Pinter and his family would have been put to death in the concentration camps the Germans had planned for England.
There are, of course, no easy answers to the problems facing the world then - or now; but as brilliant as Pinter is at looking into human relationships like many artists, the complexities of the relationships among nations has never been of any interest to him; there was/is only black and white.
Wednesday, October 12, 2005
LA Times Hires MORE New York Writers To Write About LA! Will The Madness Never Stop?
http://www.laobserved.com/archive/2005/10/joel_stein_gets_new_lat_c.html
Kevin over at LAOBSERVED has the latest gossip on the never ending purge of everything LA from the LA Times. But first, the sole piece of good news; long time Times writer and LA resident Gregory Rodriguez will now have a weekly column in the Opinion/Current section. And no one more deserves a column than he does. The only bad part is that his column is in Current instead of the weekly paper where someone might actually find it and read it, but it's a start.
After that, it's all downhill.
First, the Opinion/Current section has a new articles editor - Sonni Efron - a foreign affairs specialist based in... Washington DC. And with so many readers fleeing the Times due to the paper's lack of foreign news coverage, this is, of course - the obvious way to counterbalance the Current section's current over coverage of local news
Second, New Yorker Joel Stein, having mined all he knows about Hollywood - his real life - and his fantasy life - will now cover everything else he knows in a new column. What he will do after next spring, has yet to be decided.
Third, the Times also hired an LA-based writer to do a column - and they actually mentioned she is an LA-based writer since that is considered such an oddity slightly down Spring Street. And she is... Meghan Daum.
Yup - that Meghan Daum. The one born and bred in the greater New York area. The one who hit the really big time after she left New York for Nebraska and wrote about the differences between New York and Nebraska.
That is our new 'LA-based'- writer of 12 - or is it 18 months? The good news for her is all she needs to do now is substitute LA for Nebraska - and she's got her first two years of columns down cold.
Now to be fair, she is not a good writer. She is a superb writer. As good as they come. And I will look forward to reading her every Sunday morning - though, in reality - it will, of course, be on-line on Saturday night.
But why - why?? - does the LA Times feel the only way to reach of the people of LA is to hire only new people from... New York City?
I guess the folks in Chicago are so ecstatic with the results so far - they figure, why mess with success?
Kevin over at LAOBSERVED has the latest gossip on the never ending purge of everything LA from the LA Times. But first, the sole piece of good news; long time Times writer and LA resident Gregory Rodriguez will now have a weekly column in the Opinion/Current section. And no one more deserves a column than he does. The only bad part is that his column is in Current instead of the weekly paper where someone might actually find it and read it, but it's a start.
After that, it's all downhill.
First, the Opinion/Current section has a new articles editor - Sonni Efron - a foreign affairs specialist based in... Washington DC. And with so many readers fleeing the Times due to the paper's lack of foreign news coverage, this is, of course - the obvious way to counterbalance the Current section's current over coverage of local news
Second, New Yorker Joel Stein, having mined all he knows about Hollywood - his real life - and his fantasy life - will now cover everything else he knows in a new column. What he will do after next spring, has yet to be decided.
Third, the Times also hired an LA-based writer to do a column - and they actually mentioned she is an LA-based writer since that is considered such an oddity slightly down Spring Street. And she is... Meghan Daum.
Yup - that Meghan Daum. The one born and bred in the greater New York area. The one who hit the really big time after she left New York for Nebraska and wrote about the differences between New York and Nebraska.
That is our new 'LA-based'- writer of 12 - or is it 18 months? The good news for her is all she needs to do now is substitute LA for Nebraska - and she's got her first two years of columns down cold.
Now to be fair, she is not a good writer. She is a superb writer. As good as they come. And I will look forward to reading her every Sunday morning - though, in reality - it will, of course, be on-line on Saturday night.
But why - why?? - does the LA Times feel the only way to reach of the people of LA is to hire only new people from... New York City?
I guess the folks in Chicago are so ecstatic with the results so far - they figure, why mess with success?
Bizarre Editing Choice Of The Month At The LA Times!
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-school12oct12,0,6683877.story?page=2&coll=la-home-headlines
In the above article, the LA Times describes the destruction from the earthquake that hit Pakistan and India. The LA Times then lists the agencies looking for donations to help the victims of the quake . This quote is at the end of the story just before the plea from the LA Times to give money to these people:
"You are Christian or Jew?" he inquired, shouting to be heard over the Russian rescue crew's jackhammer. "We like Christians," he said, and his smile turned to a scowl, "more than Jews."
Now I'm not saying that what this man said is not newsworthy - but to use his statements as the lead into the list of agencies accepting money to help people like him... is, well - something that could only happen in the LA Times.
In the above article, the LA Times describes the destruction from the earthquake that hit Pakistan and India. The LA Times then lists the agencies looking for donations to help the victims of the quake . This quote is at the end of the story just before the plea from the LA Times to give money to these people:
"You are Christian or Jew?" he inquired, shouting to be heard over the Russian rescue crew's jackhammer. "We like Christians," he said, and his smile turned to a scowl, "more than Jews."
Now I'm not saying that what this man said is not newsworthy - but to use his statements as the lead into the list of agencies accepting money to help people like him... is, well - something that could only happen in the LA Times.
New LA Times Editorial Staff - New York Times - 3 LA Times - 1/2
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/12/business/media/12times.html?pagewanted=all
The New York Times/Bloomberg take on the new hires/promotions since it cuts to the quick:
BLOOMBERG NEWS
The Los Angeles Times yesterday named three senior editors to help run the newsroom, with one focusing principally on attracting more readers to the daily.
Dean Baquet, editor of The Times, named Leo C. Wolinsky managing editor, assigning him to address readership declines, the newspaper said. An investigative reporter, Doug Frantz, was named managing editor for news and John Montorio was named associate editor for features.
OK - let me get this straight.
Ex-New York Times man Dean Baquet hires ex-New York Times man Doug Frantz to run all the news gathering for the LA Times. He then hires ex-New York Times man John Montorio to run all the feature sections for the LA Times. He then asks Californian Leo C. Wolinsky to solve the problem of why hundreds of thousands of people have stopped reading the Times because it has nothing to do with... Los Angeles.
That settles it! Dean Baquet is definitely on David Geffen's payroll! And I think we can all agree, Dean's worth ever single penny that Geffen is paying him.
The New York Times/Bloomberg take on the new hires/promotions since it cuts to the quick:
BLOOMBERG NEWS
The Los Angeles Times yesterday named three senior editors to help run the newsroom, with one focusing principally on attracting more readers to the daily.
Dean Baquet, editor of The Times, named Leo C. Wolinsky managing editor, assigning him to address readership declines, the newspaper said. An investigative reporter, Doug Frantz, was named managing editor for news and John Montorio was named associate editor for features.
And...
Mr. Baquet said Mr. Frantz would be in charge of day-to-day news-gathering functions, including foreign, national, metro, business, sports and science coverage. Mr. Montorio will direct the paper's feature sections.OK - let me get this straight.
Ex-New York Times man Dean Baquet hires ex-New York Times man Doug Frantz to run all the news gathering for the LA Times. He then hires ex-New York Times man John Montorio to run all the feature sections for the LA Times. He then asks Californian Leo C. Wolinsky to solve the problem of why hundreds of thousands of people have stopped reading the Times because it has nothing to do with... Los Angeles.
That settles it! Dean Baquet is definitely on David Geffen's payroll! And I think we can all agree, Dean's worth ever single penny that Geffen is paying him.
Another Los Angeles Art Collection - Goes Back East!
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/12/arts/design/12gift.html
Carol Vogel New York Times
The Museum of Modern Art has received a gift of 174 contemporary works from a Los Angeles real estate developer, including prime examples of paintings, sculptures and drawings by artists like Philip Guston, Vija Celmins and Christopher Wilmarth.
Since the late 1970's, the developer, Edward R. Broida, has been buying what he considered the best works by a small group of contemporary artists who were overlooked by more fashion-conscious collectors.
"At the time everyone thought I was crazy," Mr. Broida said in a telephone interview, "but the worm has turned." Prime examples of paintings by Guston, for example, are now in such demand that they are fetching upwards of a million dollars at auction. The entire gift is worth about $50 million, said a museum official who requested anonymity because it is a policy not to disclose the financial value of gifts.
These works not only help fill many gaps in the Modern's contemporary art collection, but also enlarge its previous holdings of certain artists. For example, Mr. Broida is giving the museum 36 works by Guston, including 12 paintings, 16 drawings and 8 prints dating from 1938 to 1980. Ann Temkin, a curator in the Modern's department of painting and sculpture, said that while the museum already had 12 paintings by Guston, "the extraordinary quality of Mr. Broida's gift transforms the collection, making it the greatest holdings of Guston in the world."
And...
Now, Mr. Broida said, he is determined to give as much of his collection to public institutions as possible. He is in discussions with the National Gallery of Art in Washington and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
He said he had not considered giving any of his collection to a Los Angeles museum. Of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, he said, "Their art eyes are so different from mine, the collection didn't fit." Of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, he said, "They are totally wrapped up with another large collection," referring to Eli Broad, the Los Angeles financier who is putting his vast collection of contemporary art in a new building that will be part of the museum.
So why are Los Angeles museums so incapable of developing relationships with Los Angeles collectors? For at least fifty years, major LA art collections have too often gone back east - or on the auction block - or both. Somehow our major art museums seem to repel LA collectors almost as much as the LA Times repels... LA readers. Now of course having a 'local' newspaper with zero sense of LA in its pages and no civic pride in LA doesn't help, but even the current sad state of the LA Times can't be blamed for this... completely.
Carol Vogel New York Times
The Museum of Modern Art has received a gift of 174 contemporary works from a Los Angeles real estate developer, including prime examples of paintings, sculptures and drawings by artists like Philip Guston, Vija Celmins and Christopher Wilmarth.
Since the late 1970's, the developer, Edward R. Broida, has been buying what he considered the best works by a small group of contemporary artists who were overlooked by more fashion-conscious collectors.
"At the time everyone thought I was crazy," Mr. Broida said in a telephone interview, "but the worm has turned." Prime examples of paintings by Guston, for example, are now in such demand that they are fetching upwards of a million dollars at auction. The entire gift is worth about $50 million, said a museum official who requested anonymity because it is a policy not to disclose the financial value of gifts.
These works not only help fill many gaps in the Modern's contemporary art collection, but also enlarge its previous holdings of certain artists. For example, Mr. Broida is giving the museum 36 works by Guston, including 12 paintings, 16 drawings and 8 prints dating from 1938 to 1980. Ann Temkin, a curator in the Modern's department of painting and sculpture, said that while the museum already had 12 paintings by Guston, "the extraordinary quality of Mr. Broida's gift transforms the collection, making it the greatest holdings of Guston in the world."
And...
Now, Mr. Broida said, he is determined to give as much of his collection to public institutions as possible. He is in discussions with the National Gallery of Art in Washington and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
He said he had not considered giving any of his collection to a Los Angeles museum. Of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, he said, "Their art eyes are so different from mine, the collection didn't fit." Of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, he said, "They are totally wrapped up with another large collection," referring to Eli Broad, the Los Angeles financier who is putting his vast collection of contemporary art in a new building that will be part of the museum.
So why are Los Angeles museums so incapable of developing relationships with Los Angeles collectors? For at least fifty years, major LA art collections have too often gone back east - or on the auction block - or both. Somehow our major art museums seem to repel LA collectors almost as much as the LA Times repels... LA readers. Now of course having a 'local' newspaper with zero sense of LA in its pages and no civic pride in LA doesn't help, but even the current sad state of the LA Times can't be blamed for this... completely.
Tuesday, October 11, 2005
LA Times Crosses Line Between Editorial and Ads!
http://www.latimes.com/
Clicked on LA TIMES website and saw a story headed 'DOES BASEBALL HAVE A NEW SCANDAL TO WORRY ABOUT?' - with a film-noirish photo of two baseball players in a locker room. MORE STORY was one link - the other was VIDEO.
I hit the MORE STORY link and... found this breaking 'story' was an ad for... milk. And even then, it was hard to tell for certain until one clinked one more link.
I then went back to the front page to see that in very tiny letters, this was labeled as an.. advertisement. Now this ad is on the middle box of the right hand side of the page and at least a half-dozen other ads rotate in that spot and none of them can be mistaken for anything other than an ad. This one, however, is designed to look exactly like a news story with no clue within it that it is an ad. And the layout is designed to take your eye straight to the links and away from the tiny advertisement banner on top of the box.
The clear intent is to defraud. And the Times gets paid every time one of us clicks on the ad thinking it is a news story.
Clicked on LA TIMES website and saw a story headed 'DOES BASEBALL HAVE A NEW SCANDAL TO WORRY ABOUT?' - with a film-noirish photo of two baseball players in a locker room. MORE STORY was one link - the other was VIDEO.
I hit the MORE STORY link and... found this breaking 'story' was an ad for... milk. And even then, it was hard to tell for certain until one clinked one more link.
I then went back to the front page to see that in very tiny letters, this was labeled as an.. advertisement. Now this ad is on the middle box of the right hand side of the page and at least a half-dozen other ads rotate in that spot and none of them can be mistaken for anything other than an ad. This one, however, is designed to look exactly like a news story with no clue within it that it is an ad. And the layout is designed to take your eye straight to the links and away from the tiny advertisement banner on top of the box.
The clear intent is to defraud. And the Times gets paid every time one of us clicks on the ad thinking it is a news story.
Is The New York Times Takover Of The LA Times Now Official?
http://www.laobserved.com/archive/2005/10/first_thing_wednesday_101_1.html
No, I don't mean the New York Times is buying the LA Times (they are too bright to do that), but the latest pod person from the New York Times may be hatching as we speak over of Spring Street. Kevin Roderick's morning post:
Whispers in the wind say that Times editor Dean Baquet could name his managing editor(s) today. Istanbul correspondent and leader of the Friends of Dean club Doug Frantz happens to be in town. Not predicting, just saying...
So I guess all this foolish talk about more local coverage and more local reporting is... well... just foolish talk.
Frantz and Dean first met up in Chicago and then worked together again at the New York Times. However, Frantz did spend some years reporting at the LA Times, so he has at least visited our city in the past. But if this appointment does happen, then there will again not be one person with any ties or extensive first hand knowledge of this city (much less born and raised and educated in LA) at the top of the food chain at the LA Times.
However, looking at this from a strictly journalistic POV - Frantz is an excellent writer and a superb investigative reporter. His expose of Scientology, the US arming of Iraq and many other investigative pieces bode well for his tenure here, even though he has made it clear that his heart is really in... Istanbul.
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0238,cotts,38413,6.html
His leaving the New York Times:
http://slate.msn.com/id/2109463/
The pitchfork-and-torch mob from the Times newsroom got the right man but busted him for being a jerk when his real crime was tampering with the news. Douglas Frantz, the much-respected investigative reporter who left the Times after rumbling with the Raines administration, issues this indictment of his former boss in e-mail to Mnookin:
My sense was that Howell Raines was eager to have articles that supported the war-mongering out of Washington. ... He discouraged pieces that were at odds with the administration's position on Iraq's supposed weapons of mass destruction and alleged links of Al Qaeda. Because of that, Judy Miller's reporting was encouraged by other senior editors at the paper, sometimes over the objections of other editors.
AND...
http://www.poynter.org/dg.lts/id.45/aid.25397/column.htm
His parting words/thoughts when he quit the LA Times:
http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=45&aid=24947
Another viewpoint on why he first left LA Times.
http://nick.assumption.edu/WebVAX/Nation/Ireland22Apr96.html
Troopergate never really developed "legs" as a major media story because it first broke in the right-wing American Spectator. We learn from Stewart that the Los Angeles Times had the story before the Spectator, but the paper's editor, Shelby Coffey, held it up until after the monthly scooped the daily. Coffey's actions so angered veteran investigative reporter Douglas Frantz that he eventually quit the paper, and is now with The New York Times. Stewart says he found the troopers "scrupulously accurate."
His investigative pieces have managed to annoy Scientologists, Armenians, the pro-Israel lobby, several presidents, even more newspaper editors, the right, the left and too many other groups to mention, so he must be doing something right.
He has also written at least eight books (most of them with his wife, Catherine Collins), three of which I have read and enjoyed.
No, I don't mean the New York Times is buying the LA Times (they are too bright to do that), but the latest pod person from the New York Times may be hatching as we speak over of Spring Street. Kevin Roderick's morning post:
Whispers in the wind say that Times editor Dean Baquet could name his managing editor(s) today. Istanbul correspondent and leader of the Friends of Dean club Doug Frantz happens to be in town. Not predicting, just saying...
So I guess all this foolish talk about more local coverage and more local reporting is... well... just foolish talk.
Frantz and Dean first met up in Chicago and then worked together again at the New York Times. However, Frantz did spend some years reporting at the LA Times, so he has at least visited our city in the past. But if this appointment does happen, then there will again not be one person with any ties or extensive first hand knowledge of this city (much less born and raised and educated in LA) at the top of the food chain at the LA Times.
However, looking at this from a strictly journalistic POV - Frantz is an excellent writer and a superb investigative reporter. His expose of Scientology, the US arming of Iraq and many other investigative pieces bode well for his tenure here, even though he has made it clear that his heart is really in... Istanbul.
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0238,cotts,38413,6.html
His leaving the New York Times:
http://slate.msn.com/id/2109463/
The pitchfork-and-torch mob from the Times newsroom got the right man but busted him for being a jerk when his real crime was tampering with the news. Douglas Frantz, the much-respected investigative reporter who left the Times after rumbling with the Raines administration, issues this indictment of his former boss in e-mail to Mnookin:
My sense was that Howell Raines was eager to have articles that supported the war-mongering out of Washington. ... He discouraged pieces that were at odds with the administration's position on Iraq's supposed weapons of mass destruction and alleged links of Al Qaeda. Because of that, Judy Miller's reporting was encouraged by other senior editors at the paper, sometimes over the objections of other editors.
AND...
http://www.poynter.org/dg.lts/id.45/aid.25397/column.htm
His parting words/thoughts when he quit the LA Times:
http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=45&aid=24947
Another viewpoint on why he first left LA Times.
http://nick.assumption.edu/WebVAX/Nation/Ireland22Apr96.html
Troopergate never really developed "legs" as a major media story because it first broke in the right-wing American Spectator. We learn from Stewart that the Los Angeles Times had the story before the Spectator, but the paper's editor, Shelby Coffey, held it up until after the monthly scooped the daily. Coffey's actions so angered veteran investigative reporter Douglas Frantz that he eventually quit the paper, and is now with The New York Times. Stewart says he found the troopers "scrupulously accurate."
His investigative pieces have managed to annoy Scientologists, Armenians, the pro-Israel lobby, several presidents, even more newspaper editors, the right, the left and too many other groups to mention, so he must be doing something right.
He has also written at least eight books (most of them with his wife, Catherine Collins), three of which I have read and enjoyed.
Important Article In LA Times On Earthquake Safety!
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-building11oct11,1,4309360.story?coll=la-headlines-california
Sharon Bernstein October 11, 2005
Tens of thousands of older concrete buildings across California represent the state's largest remaining risk of serious damage in a major earthquake, seismic safety officials say. Constructed as department stores, schools, parking structures and office buildings from the 1930s through the early 1970s, these buildings typically consist of large, open lower stories held up by unreinforced or poorly reinforced concrete pillars.
After several collapsed in the 1971 San Fernando earthquake, seismic safety codes were upgraded to require that any new concrete buildings be better constructed. Many seismic experts say preexisting structures - known as non-ductile concrete buildings - need to be retrofitted to bring them up to current standards.
"It's well recognized within the earthquake professional community that many California non-ductile concrete buildings are at unacceptable risk of collapse in moderately strong shaking," said Thomas Heaton, professor of engineering seismology at Caltech.Because many of the older concrete buildings tend to be filled during the day with office workers, schoolchildren or people parking their cars, the death and injury toll from an earthquake that caused several of the structures to collapse could be staggering, said Heaton.
But building owners and business organizations have long fought efforts to require retrofits, arguing that the risk is overstated. And they say that in some cases, the cost of retrofits comes close to that of razing a building and starting over. Neither the state nor local governments have required that the structures be reinforced.
"If you're going to use a 'sky is falling' scenario, then maybe you can justify" a retrofit requirement, said Carol Schatz, president of the Central City Assn. "But if you're going to put a bunch of commercial property owners out of business in the process, what have you accomplished?"
Property owners and business associations opposed a proposal last year by City Councilmen Greig Smith and Alex Padilla to count the number of unreinforced concrete buildings in Los Angeles. The measure didn't make it out of a council committee.
"We met with a lot of opposition," said Smith, who saw that and a companion proposal as first steps toward developing a program to retrofit the city's non-ductile concrete buildings and unreinforced parking structures. Smith said he hoped to work with business groups to draft a proposal acceptable to the council.
I know I am going to make a lot of people I know unhappy, but there are few things more important to the long term safety of LA than this issue. There needs to be an inventory our unreinforced concrete buildings and a study of just how dangerous each of them is.
But then both the state and the city need to get creative. There is not a one solution that fits this problem. Fixing these potential deathtraps will need to be done on almost case-by-case basis.
Possibly the adaptive reuse ordinance can allow for many of the larger office buildings to be turned into condos. Maybe zoning variances and property tax abatements might make it possible for the buildings to be financially able to be either retrofitted - or redeveloped.
I know even back in 1965 when watched the great American Cement Building being built on Wilshire overlooking MacArthur Park, I wondered how safe it was, a worry that only increased when I saw the damage done to concrete buildings in the 1967 Caracas earthquake. But now that it has been converted into lofts, possibly it can become a template of how to reuse these buildings, of course it might have been built to much higher standards than normal due to who its owner was.
Lastly, some years ago there was considerable press about 1970's and 1980's office buildings with unsafe steel welds not being retrofitted quickly enough; but I have not read anything on that story for many years. Maybe an update might be in order from Sharon Bernstein on that subject.
Was it done - or not done?
PS - Proof-readers. I think Sharon meant 'companion proposal' and not 'compasion proposal', so I corrected in my version of the story.
Sharon Bernstein October 11, 2005
Tens of thousands of older concrete buildings across California represent the state's largest remaining risk of serious damage in a major earthquake, seismic safety officials say. Constructed as department stores, schools, parking structures and office buildings from the 1930s through the early 1970s, these buildings typically consist of large, open lower stories held up by unreinforced or poorly reinforced concrete pillars.
After several collapsed in the 1971 San Fernando earthquake, seismic safety codes were upgraded to require that any new concrete buildings be better constructed. Many seismic experts say preexisting structures - known as non-ductile concrete buildings - need to be retrofitted to bring them up to current standards.
"It's well recognized within the earthquake professional community that many California non-ductile concrete buildings are at unacceptable risk of collapse in moderately strong shaking," said Thomas Heaton, professor of engineering seismology at Caltech.Because many of the older concrete buildings tend to be filled during the day with office workers, schoolchildren or people parking their cars, the death and injury toll from an earthquake that caused several of the structures to collapse could be staggering, said Heaton.
But building owners and business organizations have long fought efforts to require retrofits, arguing that the risk is overstated. And they say that in some cases, the cost of retrofits comes close to that of razing a building and starting over. Neither the state nor local governments have required that the structures be reinforced.
"If you're going to use a 'sky is falling' scenario, then maybe you can justify" a retrofit requirement, said Carol Schatz, president of the Central City Assn. "But if you're going to put a bunch of commercial property owners out of business in the process, what have you accomplished?"
Property owners and business associations opposed a proposal last year by City Councilmen Greig Smith and Alex Padilla to count the number of unreinforced concrete buildings in Los Angeles. The measure didn't make it out of a council committee.
"We met with a lot of opposition," said Smith, who saw that and a companion proposal as first steps toward developing a program to retrofit the city's non-ductile concrete buildings and unreinforced parking structures. Smith said he hoped to work with business groups to draft a proposal acceptable to the council.
I know I am going to make a lot of people I know unhappy, but there are few things more important to the long term safety of LA than this issue. There needs to be an inventory our unreinforced concrete buildings and a study of just how dangerous each of them is.
But then both the state and the city need to get creative. There is not a one solution that fits this problem. Fixing these potential deathtraps will need to be done on almost case-by-case basis.
Possibly the adaptive reuse ordinance can allow for many of the larger office buildings to be turned into condos. Maybe zoning variances and property tax abatements might make it possible for the buildings to be financially able to be either retrofitted - or redeveloped.
I know even back in 1965 when watched the great American Cement Building being built on Wilshire overlooking MacArthur Park, I wondered how safe it was, a worry that only increased when I saw the damage done to concrete buildings in the 1967 Caracas earthquake. But now that it has been converted into lofts, possibly it can become a template of how to reuse these buildings, of course it might have been built to much higher standards than normal due to who its owner was.
Lastly, some years ago there was considerable press about 1970's and 1980's office buildings with unsafe steel welds not being retrofitted quickly enough; but I have not read anything on that story for many years. Maybe an update might be in order from Sharon Bernstein on that subject.
Was it done - or not done?
PS - Proof-readers. I think Sharon meant 'companion proposal' and not 'compasion proposal', so I corrected in my version of the story.
Monday, October 10, 2005
Bombing In LA - Last Friday - And LA Times Scooped By - Everyone! LAT Also Ignores Terrorist Angle In Oklahoma Bombing!
http://slate.msn.com/id/2127853/&#uclabomb
I have to admit it had never even occurred to me to check to see if the LA Times covered this story - since everybody else had. But guess what - they didn't!
Mickey KausUpdated Monday, Oct. 10, 2005, at 11:11 PM PT
Dear Tribune Company: Can we have the massive layoffs now? Please? Can it be that an improvised explosive device was found and detonated by police on Friday near the University of California at Los Angeles and the story still has not made the Los Angeles Times? It looks that way. ... Note to LAT editor Dean Baquet: Whatever you do, don't run this bomb story. People might be interested! That's always dangerous. But if readers don't know about it then they won't be unnecessarily worried. ...
Also not covered in the LAT is the long breaking story that the Oklahoma 'depressed student' suicide bomber may have actually been a member of a terrorist cell.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_University_of_Oklahoma_bombing
http://michellemalkin.com/archives/003668.htm
I have to admit it had never even occurred to me to check to see if the LA Times covered this story - since everybody else had. But guess what - they didn't!
Mickey KausUpdated Monday, Oct. 10, 2005, at 11:11 PM PT
Dear Tribune Company: Can we have the massive layoffs now? Please? Can it be that an improvised explosive device was found and detonated by police on Friday near the University of California at Los Angeles and the story still has not made the Los Angeles Times? It looks that way. ... Note to LAT editor Dean Baquet: Whatever you do, don't run this bomb story. People might be interested! That's always dangerous. But if readers don't know about it then they won't be unnecessarily worried. ...
Also not covered in the LAT is the long breaking story that the Oklahoma 'depressed student' suicide bomber may have actually been a member of a terrorist cell.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_University_of_Oklahoma_bombing
http://michellemalkin.com/archives/003668.htm
Banville Wins Booker! Barnes Robbed Again!! Master Of English Literary World Waxes Lyrical On - Parking In LA!!
http://www.calendarlive.com/books/cl-et-booker11oct11,0,324014.story?coll=la-tot-promo&track=morenews
Susan Salter Reynolds October 11, 2005 LONDON
The Man Booker Prize, the world's most prestigious award for new fiction, was awarded here Monday to Irish writer and critic John Banville. In a closed news conference prior to a gala dinner at London's historic Guild Hall, the five Booker judges said their decision to honor Banville's "The Sea" followed "an extraordinarily closely contested last round in which judges felt the level of the short-listed novels was as high as it had every been."
They called Banville's novel "a masterly study of grief, memory and love recollected."The award includes a cash prize, which this year amounts to $91,800. (The other authors on this year's short list were Sebastian Barry, Kazuo Ishiguro, Julian Barnes, Zadie Smith and Ali Smith.)"
It was like a fiercely argued seminar," said John Sutherland, chairman of the judges' committee, which annually awards the prize to the best novel by a Commonwealth or Irish citizen that is published in Britain."It was very civilized, and yet at the same time people had very deeply held views," Sutherland said. "The discussion could have gone on for three days. It was by no means unanimous. But no one would have been mortified if any of the other books won."
So... once again, Julian Barnes was robbed! Well, since "The Sea" is one of the two novels I have not read, I can't say that with real certainty, but as a long time Barnes fan, it's sad to see him strike out a third time for the Booker, particularly since winning it might have helped him become better known in America.
I stumbled across his METROLAND back in the very early 1980's when a Brit I was seeing had brought over a copy from the UK before it was published here and I made the mistake of picking it up at... shall we say... an inopportune... moment when she felt that my attention should have been focused... elsewhere.
And even today, I still had to get someone to ship me his latest novel since it will not be published here until winter or spring, I think.
Final fun fact!
Booker jury head John Sutherland is a huge fan of LA (as well as being a fellow Mike Davis agnostic), and for years taught literature at Cal Tech... of all places... and still teaches there one quarter a year. One of my favorite recent writings by him is on the oh, so California topic - of secret parking spots. Below is the end of a quite elegant essay on the subject:
http://pr.caltech.edu/periodicals/336/articles/Volume%201/05-17-01/parking.html
Faculty and students use Caltech around the clock. I frequently work till 11 p.m. or midnight (strange life forms emerge on the campus, and in Millikan Library, at this witching hour). One of the pleasures of life here is to walk through the cool campus, by the lily ponds, late at night, conscious that one is safe, and that all around people are quietly working, expanding the frontiers of knowledge. But after such a stint, one doesn’t feel like coming in with the lark next morning.
If you do turn up after 9 a.m., chances are you will be met by “Lot Full” signs. It makes people ratty, it makes them late, and it palpably reduces the efficiency of the place.
The Institute should, I think, consider abolishing designated parking privileges after 11 a.m. There are few more vexing experiences than cruising around an otherwise jam-packed lot or structure, with gaping holes that you know will never be filled because the designated parker is either (1) on leave, (2) retired and only comes in once a week for mail, or (3) deceased.
If all the reserved parking spaces turned into pumpkins at 11, it would enable colleagues to move from the street when the 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. grace period elapses.
In the interim, I would suggest some guerilla parking tactics. First, of course, is to talk to your division administrator, find out who is on leave, and snaffle their place (a paint-pot at midnight and some pirate redesignating, for the more adventurous guerilla). Carpooling is never going to work at Caltech, where people have such different modi operandi. But it would be socially responsible for colleagues to inform their division or department when they will not be coming in and when their designated space is up for grabs—to be distributed, perhaps, by divisional lottery or by auction.
There are some frankly antisocial tactics. Come in at 10 a.m., park on the street, then slip into one of the spots that falls vacant at noon, when colleagues drive off to lunch. Of course, when the poor sods come back, they must do the circuit, looking vainly for what is no longer there. I’ve done it, I’m sorry to say. War of all against all.
Oddly, the Caltech community seems averse to parking south of California. When, as increasingly happens, I can find nothing on campus, I go a couple of hundred yards to Holladay Road, and park (appropriately, as I like to think) outside George Ellery Hale’s house. It’s a big, empty San Marino street with, as far as I can see, no restrictions. You can walk, pleasantly, down leafy Lombardy and up Arden, use the Ped Xing, and come up into campus by its nicest entrance, the Bridge colonnade, Throop Site, and Millikan Pond. Don’t tell anyone, though. We don’t want everyone to start going there.
Susan Salter Reynolds October 11, 2005 LONDON
The Man Booker Prize, the world's most prestigious award for new fiction, was awarded here Monday to Irish writer and critic John Banville. In a closed news conference prior to a gala dinner at London's historic Guild Hall, the five Booker judges said their decision to honor Banville's "The Sea" followed "an extraordinarily closely contested last round in which judges felt the level of the short-listed novels was as high as it had every been."
They called Banville's novel "a masterly study of grief, memory and love recollected."The award includes a cash prize, which this year amounts to $91,800. (The other authors on this year's short list were Sebastian Barry, Kazuo Ishiguro, Julian Barnes, Zadie Smith and Ali Smith.)"
It was like a fiercely argued seminar," said John Sutherland, chairman of the judges' committee, which annually awards the prize to the best novel by a Commonwealth or Irish citizen that is published in Britain."It was very civilized, and yet at the same time people had very deeply held views," Sutherland said. "The discussion could have gone on for three days. It was by no means unanimous. But no one would have been mortified if any of the other books won."
So... once again, Julian Barnes was robbed! Well, since "The Sea" is one of the two novels I have not read, I can't say that with real certainty, but as a long time Barnes fan, it's sad to see him strike out a third time for the Booker, particularly since winning it might have helped him become better known in America.
I stumbled across his METROLAND back in the very early 1980's when a Brit I was seeing had brought over a copy from the UK before it was published here and I made the mistake of picking it up at... shall we say... an inopportune... moment when she felt that my attention should have been focused... elsewhere.
And even today, I still had to get someone to ship me his latest novel since it will not be published here until winter or spring, I think.
Final fun fact!
Booker jury head John Sutherland is a huge fan of LA (as well as being a fellow Mike Davis agnostic), and for years taught literature at Cal Tech... of all places... and still teaches there one quarter a year. One of my favorite recent writings by him is on the oh, so California topic - of secret parking spots. Below is the end of a quite elegant essay on the subject:
http://pr.caltech.edu/periodicals/336/articles/Volume%201/05-17-01/parking.html
Faculty and students use Caltech around the clock. I frequently work till 11 p.m. or midnight (strange life forms emerge on the campus, and in Millikan Library, at this witching hour). One of the pleasures of life here is to walk through the cool campus, by the lily ponds, late at night, conscious that one is safe, and that all around people are quietly working, expanding the frontiers of knowledge. But after such a stint, one doesn’t feel like coming in with the lark next morning.
If you do turn up after 9 a.m., chances are you will be met by “Lot Full” signs. It makes people ratty, it makes them late, and it palpably reduces the efficiency of the place.
The Institute should, I think, consider abolishing designated parking privileges after 11 a.m. There are few more vexing experiences than cruising around an otherwise jam-packed lot or structure, with gaping holes that you know will never be filled because the designated parker is either (1) on leave, (2) retired and only comes in once a week for mail, or (3) deceased.
If all the reserved parking spaces turned into pumpkins at 11, it would enable colleagues to move from the street when the 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. grace period elapses.
In the interim, I would suggest some guerilla parking tactics. First, of course, is to talk to your division administrator, find out who is on leave, and snaffle their place (a paint-pot at midnight and some pirate redesignating, for the more adventurous guerilla). Carpooling is never going to work at Caltech, where people have such different modi operandi. But it would be socially responsible for colleagues to inform their division or department when they will not be coming in and when their designated space is up for grabs—to be distributed, perhaps, by divisional lottery or by auction.
There are some frankly antisocial tactics. Come in at 10 a.m., park on the street, then slip into one of the spots that falls vacant at noon, when colleagues drive off to lunch. Of course, when the poor sods come back, they must do the circuit, looking vainly for what is no longer there. I’ve done it, I’m sorry to say. War of all against all.
Oddly, the Caltech community seems averse to parking south of California. When, as increasingly happens, I can find nothing on campus, I go a couple of hundred yards to Holladay Road, and park (appropriately, as I like to think) outside George Ellery Hale’s house. It’s a big, empty San Marino street with, as far as I can see, no restrictions. You can walk, pleasantly, down leafy Lombardy and up Arden, use the Ped Xing, and come up into campus by its nicest entrance, the Bridge colonnade, Throop Site, and Millikan Pond. Don’t tell anyone, though. We don’t want everyone to start going there.
Sunday, October 09, 2005
Why Doesn't Mark Swed Have A Column In The LA Times?
http://www.calendarlive.com/music/cl-et-phil8oct08,0,702172.story?track=widget
No writer at the Los Angeles Times expresses more passion and enthusiasm about the subject he covers - in his case, mainly classical music - than Mark Swed. No writer also is any better at conveying that enthusiasm to an audience than he does.
The Walt Disney Concert Hall has proved an inspirer of lasting, invigorating music. Steven Stucky's Second Concerto for Orchestra received a Pulitzer Prize. Steve Reich's "You Are (Variations)" was a Pulitzer finalist and has just been released on a winning Nonesuch disc. Esa-Pekka Salonen's "Wing on Wing" highlights a high-profile Deutsche Grammophon recording. John Adams' "Dharma at Big Sur" has lots more performances lined up and a recording comes out next year.
Magnus Lindberg's "Sculpture," which the Los Angeles Philharmonic commissioned (in partnership with the Koussevitzky Music Foundation) and premiered Thursday night, seems just as likely to last.
And...
At the end the organ came rumbling in, lingering "Zarathustra"-like in its low register. Tubas and other brass instruments took positions around the hall. The seats and floors vibrated at frequencies that felt healthful for the body. Many tickets for the Philharmonic in Disney are not cheap, but when you throw in musical shiatsu, you've got a bargain.The orchestral writing is that of a master.
Disney Hall is especially happy with bass notes, and Lindberg gave it its fill. The bouncy fanfare figures are not blatant but more like a filigree. The instrumental texture is often fast-moving and complex. A Sibelius sense of mysterious winds blowing everything around is strong at first.
In the middle, "Sculpture" turns into a miniature concerto for orchestra, focusing on different instrumental sections competing to be the most dazzling. The piece climaxes with rousing Stravinskyan rhythms. The score's 23 minutes fly by. The performance was spectacular.
After reading the above review, you want to hear the music he writes about and it makes you want to be apart of the explosion of contemporary classical music finally freed from academic constraints. It also makes one want to see and hear the LA Philharmonic play while enjoying the visceral pleasures of the interior of Disney Hall.
So imagine if beside his music reviewing job, Swed also had a three times a week column about Los Angeles? A column focused around the overall culture life of our city, along with everything and anything else he has a passion for.
More than anything, the LA Times desperately needs voices that know, understand and care about Los Angeles. The present temporary managers inability to hire anyone to do that, remains a mystery.
No writer at the Los Angeles Times expresses more passion and enthusiasm about the subject he covers - in his case, mainly classical music - than Mark Swed. No writer also is any better at conveying that enthusiasm to an audience than he does.
The Walt Disney Concert Hall has proved an inspirer of lasting, invigorating music. Steven Stucky's Second Concerto for Orchestra received a Pulitzer Prize. Steve Reich's "You Are (Variations)" was a Pulitzer finalist and has just been released on a winning Nonesuch disc. Esa-Pekka Salonen's "Wing on Wing" highlights a high-profile Deutsche Grammophon recording. John Adams' "Dharma at Big Sur" has lots more performances lined up and a recording comes out next year.
Magnus Lindberg's "Sculpture," which the Los Angeles Philharmonic commissioned (in partnership with the Koussevitzky Music Foundation) and premiered Thursday night, seems just as likely to last.
And...
At the end the organ came rumbling in, lingering "Zarathustra"-like in its low register. Tubas and other brass instruments took positions around the hall. The seats and floors vibrated at frequencies that felt healthful for the body. Many tickets for the Philharmonic in Disney are not cheap, but when you throw in musical shiatsu, you've got a bargain.The orchestral writing is that of a master.
Disney Hall is especially happy with bass notes, and Lindberg gave it its fill. The bouncy fanfare figures are not blatant but more like a filigree. The instrumental texture is often fast-moving and complex. A Sibelius sense of mysterious winds blowing everything around is strong at first.
In the middle, "Sculpture" turns into a miniature concerto for orchestra, focusing on different instrumental sections competing to be the most dazzling. The piece climaxes with rousing Stravinskyan rhythms. The score's 23 minutes fly by. The performance was spectacular.
After reading the above review, you want to hear the music he writes about and it makes you want to be apart of the explosion of contemporary classical music finally freed from academic constraints. It also makes one want to see and hear the LA Philharmonic play while enjoying the visceral pleasures of the interior of Disney Hall.
So imagine if beside his music reviewing job, Swed also had a three times a week column about Los Angeles? A column focused around the overall culture life of our city, along with everything and anything else he has a passion for.
More than anything, the LA Times desperately needs voices that know, understand and care about Los Angeles. The present temporary managers inability to hire anyone to do that, remains a mystery.
Saturday, October 08, 2005
LA Times Website Still Shuts Down On Weekends!
Went to website to see score on USC game - but no live coverage on the front page. Went to Sports - still no box with live coverage - plus no update on now tied score with supposed roll over Arizona. So now 'watching' game on another newspaper's site while typing on this computer.
Update!
Almost 7:30 - and still nothing on front page of LA Times website. Story on sports page, but you'll never find out about it on the front page.
PS - 42 - 21 USC over Arizona.
Update!
Almost 7:30 - and still nothing on front page of LA Times website. Story on sports page, but you'll never find out about it on the front page.
PS - 42 - 21 USC over Arizona.
Does LA Times Editorial Page Really Rely On Jay Leno's Monologue For Its Facts? Seems So!
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-ed-avocados8oct08,0,4170304.story?coll=la-home-oped
In an otherwise excellent editorial about NAFTA and the benefits of free trade, the LA Times Editorial Page attempts a stab at humor, with the usual disastrous results:
Salsa has replaced ketchup as the nation's favorite condiment; perhaps it's little wonder that guacamole may now be its favorite dip.
Now I just happen to recall when the survey done by the American Condiment Association was released, and I also remember what Jay Leno said that same night; they, alas, were not the same thing. The survey said that ketchup and salsa were tied as America's favorite condiment in a 1,000 person survey:
http://www.dressings-sauces.org/pressroom_revealsaboutyou.html
A new survey commissioned by The Association for Dressings and Sauces reveals some interesting facts about consumers and condiment sauces, including salsa, salad dressing and mayonnaise. In the recent survey of 1,000 Americans completed by Synovate, salsa and ketchup tied for the 'favorite' condiment with mayonnaise, salad dressing and barbecue sauce close behind.
Jay Leno however said - that salsa was now the most popular of the two - and an urban legend was born! There is, however, a lot more to this story. To begin with, it is true that salsa has passed ketchup in sales when it comes to dollars spent
But the much higher cost of salsa compared to ketchup, makes ketchup easily the best selling condiment. In addition, other surveys show that the number of homes that have ketchup in them is between 95% and 97% and the highest percentage of homes that I could find with salsa in them was... 37%, making ketchup the clear winner as 'favorite' condiment in terms of what people actually buy and keep in their homes.
A very minor point in some ways - but of all places where getting at the actual truth, however inconvenient or nuanced it maybe, should be of primary import - the Editorial Page is the number one place in the paper. Alas - it is also the very last place in the LA Times where 'facts' can be trusted.
Myself, I way prefer salsa to boring ketchup - but it's relish that is my favorite.
PS - The LA Times Editorial Page has yet to correct its sugar trade editorial on-line (just in the corrections section) and it has yet to issue any corrections on its almost totally false earthquake/Katrina editorial, among many other still uncorrected errors.
In an otherwise excellent editorial about NAFTA and the benefits of free trade, the LA Times Editorial Page attempts a stab at humor, with the usual disastrous results:
Salsa has replaced ketchup as the nation's favorite condiment; perhaps it's little wonder that guacamole may now be its favorite dip.
Now I just happen to recall when the survey done by the American Condiment Association was released, and I also remember what Jay Leno said that same night; they, alas, were not the same thing. The survey said that ketchup and salsa were tied as America's favorite condiment in a 1,000 person survey:
http://www.dressings-sauces.org/pressroom_revealsaboutyou.html
A new survey commissioned by The Association for Dressings and Sauces reveals some interesting facts about consumers and condiment sauces, including salsa, salad dressing and mayonnaise. In the recent survey of 1,000 Americans completed by Synovate, salsa and ketchup tied for the 'favorite' condiment with mayonnaise, salad dressing and barbecue sauce close behind.
Jay Leno however said - that salsa was now the most popular of the two - and an urban legend was born! There is, however, a lot more to this story. To begin with, it is true that salsa has passed ketchup in sales when it comes to dollars spent
But the much higher cost of salsa compared to ketchup, makes ketchup easily the best selling condiment. In addition, other surveys show that the number of homes that have ketchup in them is between 95% and 97% and the highest percentage of homes that I could find with salsa in them was... 37%, making ketchup the clear winner as 'favorite' condiment in terms of what people actually buy and keep in their homes.
A very minor point in some ways - but of all places where getting at the actual truth, however inconvenient or nuanced it maybe, should be of primary import - the Editorial Page is the number one place in the paper. Alas - it is also the very last place in the LA Times where 'facts' can be trusted.
Myself, I way prefer salsa to boring ketchup - but it's relish that is my favorite.
PS - The LA Times Editorial Page has yet to correct its sugar trade editorial on-line (just in the corrections section) and it has yet to issue any corrections on its almost totally false earthquake/Katrina editorial, among many other still uncorrected errors.
Friday, October 07, 2005
LA Times Starts Series On History Of Los Angeles - And Totally Butchers The Facts!
http://www.latimes.com/media/acrobat/2005-10/19825427.pdf
Proving once and for all that almost no one at the LA Times has any knowledge about Los Angeles - and that any interest in factual accuracy is not even on the radar of anyone in management - they actually have the nerve to start a series to teach us about our own city's history with error... after error... after error...
I'd go into them all right now, but first I want to see if I can figure out anybody can get so many simple basic facts so totally... wrong.
Proving once and for all that almost no one at the LA Times has any knowledge about Los Angeles - and that any interest in factual accuracy is not even on the radar of anyone in management - they actually have the nerve to start a series to teach us about our own city's history with error... after error... after error...
I'd go into them all right now, but first I want to see if I can figure out anybody can get so many simple basic facts so totally... wrong.
Want To Know What's Happening In LA? Read The Washington Post! Or... Almost Any Blog!
http://slate.msn.com/id/2127477/&#library
http://www.laobserved.com/archive/2005/10/threat_to_library_tower_r.html
So... the President announces that one of the terrorist plots thwarted was blowing up the tallest building in downtown LA. Sounds like a no-brainer for a local news story? Right?
Wrong!
As LA Observed and Mickey Kaus and lots of other people have observed... if it happens in LA - it ain't gonna be in the LA Times. And here's.... Mickey!
One major metropolitan newspaper story on the administration's alleged success in foiling Al Qaeda tells us, in its second paragraph, that the reported plots aimed to strike a wide variety of targets, including the Library Tower in Los Angeles, ships in international waters and a tourist site overseas, the White House said last night.
Another major metropolitan newspaper doesn't mention the possible targeting of L.A.'s tallest building. The paper that doesn't bother to mention the gripping Los Angeles angle would be the major newspaper of:
a) Los Angeles
b) Washington, D.C.
And do I have to tell you the correct answer?
Of course not!
http://www.laobserved.com/archive/2005/10/threat_to_library_tower_r.html
So... the President announces that one of the terrorist plots thwarted was blowing up the tallest building in downtown LA. Sounds like a no-brainer for a local news story? Right?
Wrong!
As LA Observed and Mickey Kaus and lots of other people have observed... if it happens in LA - it ain't gonna be in the LA Times. And here's.... Mickey!
One major metropolitan newspaper story on the administration's alleged success in foiling Al Qaeda tells us, in its second paragraph, that the reported plots aimed to strike a wide variety of targets, including the Library Tower in Los Angeles, ships in international waters and a tourist site overseas, the White House said last night.
Another major metropolitan newspaper doesn't mention the possible targeting of L.A.'s tallest building. The paper that doesn't bother to mention the gripping Los Angeles angle would be the major newspaper of:
a) Los Angeles
b) Washington, D.C.
And do I have to tell you the correct answer?
Of course not!
Thursday, October 06, 2005
LA Times Skid Row Series Keeps Getting Better And Better!
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-dumping5oct05,0,3581498.story?coll=la-home-local
I've almost been afraid to comment on the latest stories about the 'dumping' of the homeless, criminals, drug addicts and the sick on Skid Row for fear of jinxing the yeoman work being done by Cara Mia DiMassa and Richard Winton.
This series started by saying this 'dumping' had long been an urban legend, one that had never been proven. Those of us who live downtown found that a little... say we say... disingenuous... to be polite about it... even by the never anything less than staggering standards of cluelessness at the LA Times.
But since any reporter just starting on this story would only have the morgue at the Times to check - their complete ignorance of what was happening only steps from the fortress on Spring Street was... totally understandable.
But these two reporters have now shown that the 'dumping' that could never be proven by the LAT in the past is so extensive that at just one - just one - of dozens of service providers in downtown, an almost endless line of police cars from 10 - yes - TEN - different police agencies dropped off over 150 intoxicated homeless at just one agency in the heart of Skid Row in just one month.
And those are just the ones who bothered to sign them in at the agency; it does not cover those who just did a drop and run at their front door, often under the cover of darkness.
Then they also examine the differences between dropping off people at specific service givers qualified to deal with a person's problems, police agencies that just take people to the sidewalk in front of a random service provider, not caring if it is the right agency or not (hey, he's not longer our problem - why worry?) - and those who quietly at night just dump anyone they don't want in their neighborhood - in our neighborhood. And while the LA Times does not cover this - this is often done from unmarked police cars.
And then this article goes even further and examines the many reasons why this process occurs and the different points of view and ... well - that leads us to today's article.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-dumping6oct06,0,4040252.story?coll=la-home-headlines
Today's installment - with reporter Cara Mia DiMassa joined by Stuart Pfeifer this time - describes the differing points of view of Chief William Bratton and Sheriff Lee Baca and how Los Angeles - the city of a 1,000 - plans is struggling - yet again - to develop... another plan.
Stay tuned!
I've almost been afraid to comment on the latest stories about the 'dumping' of the homeless, criminals, drug addicts and the sick on Skid Row for fear of jinxing the yeoman work being done by Cara Mia DiMassa and Richard Winton.
This series started by saying this 'dumping' had long been an urban legend, one that had never been proven. Those of us who live downtown found that a little... say we say... disingenuous... to be polite about it... even by the never anything less than staggering standards of cluelessness at the LA Times.
But since any reporter just starting on this story would only have the morgue at the Times to check - their complete ignorance of what was happening only steps from the fortress on Spring Street was... totally understandable.
But these two reporters have now shown that the 'dumping' that could never be proven by the LAT in the past is so extensive that at just one - just one - of dozens of service providers in downtown, an almost endless line of police cars from 10 - yes - TEN - different police agencies dropped off over 150 intoxicated homeless at just one agency in the heart of Skid Row in just one month.
And those are just the ones who bothered to sign them in at the agency; it does not cover those who just did a drop and run at their front door, often under the cover of darkness.
Then they also examine the differences between dropping off people at specific service givers qualified to deal with a person's problems, police agencies that just take people to the sidewalk in front of a random service provider, not caring if it is the right agency or not (hey, he's not longer our problem - why worry?) - and those who quietly at night just dump anyone they don't want in their neighborhood - in our neighborhood. And while the LA Times does not cover this - this is often done from unmarked police cars.
And then this article goes even further and examines the many reasons why this process occurs and the different points of view and ... well - that leads us to today's article.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-dumping6oct06,0,4040252.story?coll=la-home-headlines
Today's installment - with reporter Cara Mia DiMassa joined by Stuart Pfeifer this time - describes the differing points of view of Chief William Bratton and Sheriff Lee Baca and how Los Angeles - the city of a 1,000 - plans is struggling - yet again - to develop... another plan.
Stay tuned!
Copy Editors - Or Proof Readers? Some Clarification, Mickey Kaus!
http://slate.msn.com/id/2127477/&#copyeditors
In his post last night, Mickey Kaus criticized former LA Times editor John Carroll for having too many copy editors during his tenure.
My position: A good copy editor will make your copy better--but only on rare occasions will it be enough better to justify the delay and hassle, let alone the copy editor's salary. And good copy editors are hard to find--the best quickly move on to other jobs these days. Those that stay, especially in big organizations like the LAT, are too often repositories of self-justifying pedantry! Usually they just make copy duller.
Agreed - but what Mickey does not address - is who exactly does the fact checking for the LA Times articles - and editorials? Are those the 1,000 editors that Ken Auletta says work at the Times?
If so -- then the LA Times needs to hire at least another 2,000 more since the current 1,000 are - clearly - not enough.
In his post last night, Mickey Kaus criticized former LA Times editor John Carroll for having too many copy editors during his tenure.
My position: A good copy editor will make your copy better--but only on rare occasions will it be enough better to justify the delay and hassle, let alone the copy editor's salary. And good copy editors are hard to find--the best quickly move on to other jobs these days. Those that stay, especially in big organizations like the LAT, are too often repositories of self-justifying pedantry! Usually they just make copy duller.
Agreed - but what Mickey does not address - is who exactly does the fact checking for the LA Times articles - and editorials? Are those the 1,000 editors that Ken Auletta says work at the Times?
If so -- then the LA Times needs to hire at least another 2,000 more since the current 1,000 are - clearly - not enough.
Wednesday, October 05, 2005
LA Times Still Conducting Witness Relocation Program For Writers Of Corrected Commentaries!
October 5, 2005
Same-sex marriage: In a commentary Tuesday about Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's veto of a bill giving legal protection to same-sex couples, Assemblyman Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) was incorrectly identified as a state senator.
As usual, there is no link to the story, and no clue as to who the commentator is to help readers find the correction. So... what are the odds that it belongs to the most factually challenged columnist in the LA Times - Robert Scheer?
Well... about 100%.
Same-sex marriage: In a commentary Tuesday about Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's veto of a bill giving legal protection to same-sex couples, Assemblyman Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) was incorrectly identified as a state senator.
As usual, there is no link to the story, and no clue as to who the commentator is to help readers find the correction. So... what are the odds that it belongs to the most factually challenged columnist in the LA Times - Robert Scheer?
Well... about 100%.
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-oe-scheer4oct04,1,7082850.column
And guess what other subterfuge the Times engages in? Instead of acknowledging the error as they do in other people's columns - they this time they made the change WITHOUT acknowledging the error within the article.
I guess at the Los Angeles Times, rules don't apply to everyone.Does The LA Times Have A... Death Wish?
http://www.laobserved.com/archive/2005/10/times_names_a_new_web_gur_1.html
At one precise moment, the LA Times' current problems went from bad - to critical; a damning series of stories that came under so much criticism from so many sources, it permanently alienated a large segment of the community from the newspaper.
Not only did thousands of readers immediately cancel their subscriptions, but ever since then, circulation has plummeted at the LA Times faster than at any other major paper in the country. It is the single blow from which the LAT may never recover.
And that damaging blow was, of course, the last minute 'groping' stories' against Schwarzenegger before the recall election. There was a tidal wave of complaints at how these stories were written and edited to make them anything but impartial. There was also the careful staging of the stories to do the most damage and the blatant placement of any good news for the Schwarzenegger right next to a groping story. This incident lost the LA Times more credibility than any other event of my lifetime; no one on the street cared about Staples - a hell of a lot of people cared about the blatant bias the Times showed during that recall election. And then when it was discovered that the Times coverage was partially done in tandem with the Gray Davis campaign (see link at very bottom) ... that was the final breaking point for many former Times readers.
I should add that my complaints against the Times are its lack of local coverage and its inability to get its fact right. Bias in the newspapers is there, but that is to be expected and I rarely get into that. But this time was different; every single aspect of how the Times covered the groping stories - and the recall - was so... offensive... to anyone who cares about journalistic integrity that for weeks I stopped returning calls from LA Times reporters; I simply could not trust myself to not vent upon innocent victims. Ironically, I later discovered that many reporters at the Times felt the same way I did about how the Times handled that story.
This was also the time the on-line community really started to attack the Times; both because of the way the LAT handled the groping story and how the LA Times kept running their own polls and stories on how Grey Davis was close to keeping his job even though no other polls had anything near the figures that the Times poll managed to concoct.
Luckily, never before - or since - has the Times so debased its standards. So let's move on from the past.
Let the new era begin because as of today - glasnost has begun! The LA Times has finally announced a new web/interactive media Tsar to reach out to the on-line community. And they have brought in a person they claim is uniquely qualified to accomplish both tasks. From the LA Times memo on LAOBSERVED:
... he will oversee editorial content on latimes.com, calendarlive.com, and new interactive initiatives. This new position is designed to better align the newsroom and the web site. (He) will work closely with the newsroom to create new stories and features for the web, and to encourage all departments to regard latimes.com and our other interactive products as vital, though distinctly different, parts of The Times
So... did they hire a long time expert in the on-line field? Someone who understands interactive media enough to prevent another wikitorial fiasco?
No.
Do they hire a young kid with cutting edge experience in this - or any - technology?
No.
How about a blogger with journalistic experience?
No.
Someone who understands on-line interactivity of any kind?
No.
Someone... anyone.... with any kind of track record that will in any way engender trust from those who mistrust Times?
Hell, no.
Instead, the LA Times promotes a very senior editor with zero web experience and zero technological background; an aging baby boomer with no known connections with the on-line world of any kind.
Then it gets better.
He is also the sole credited person who edited those exact stories that damaged the LA Times' reputation and credibility with more readers more than anything else the Times has ever published.
And then Dean Baquet proudly proclaims these are the exact reasons why he hired him for the job. See below from LA OBSERVED:
Joel Sappell has been the deputy editor in Business for entertainment coverage and the editor who oversaw the groping investigation of Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2003. He will now become an assistant managing editor, raising the website's head to masthead status, as well as get the title of Executive Editor, Interactive.
Sappell, 52, has little experience with online news, but Editor Dean Baquet says in a statement that "It has become clear over time that interactive is a different animal, but one that should be guided by the same bedrock principles as the newsroom. It is a testament to the importance of the Web that we are placing one of our most creative and aggressive editors in charge of the editorial part of the site."
Lastly, an overview on the Arnold groping coverage:
http://www.jillstewart.net/php/issues/issue1014.php
At one precise moment, the LA Times' current problems went from bad - to critical; a damning series of stories that came under so much criticism from so many sources, it permanently alienated a large segment of the community from the newspaper.
Not only did thousands of readers immediately cancel their subscriptions, but ever since then, circulation has plummeted at the LA Times faster than at any other major paper in the country. It is the single blow from which the LAT may never recover.
And that damaging blow was, of course, the last minute 'groping' stories' against Schwarzenegger before the recall election. There was a tidal wave of complaints at how these stories were written and edited to make them anything but impartial. There was also the careful staging of the stories to do the most damage and the blatant placement of any good news for the Schwarzenegger right next to a groping story. This incident lost the LA Times more credibility than any other event of my lifetime; no one on the street cared about Staples - a hell of a lot of people cared about the blatant bias the Times showed during that recall election. And then when it was discovered that the Times coverage was partially done in tandem with the Gray Davis campaign (see link at very bottom) ... that was the final breaking point for many former Times readers.
I should add that my complaints against the Times are its lack of local coverage and its inability to get its fact right. Bias in the newspapers is there, but that is to be expected and I rarely get into that. But this time was different; every single aspect of how the Times covered the groping stories - and the recall - was so... offensive... to anyone who cares about journalistic integrity that for weeks I stopped returning calls from LA Times reporters; I simply could not trust myself to not vent upon innocent victims. Ironically, I later discovered that many reporters at the Times felt the same way I did about how the Times handled that story.
This was also the time the on-line community really started to attack the Times; both because of the way the LAT handled the groping story and how the LA Times kept running their own polls and stories on how Grey Davis was close to keeping his job even though no other polls had anything near the figures that the Times poll managed to concoct.
Luckily, never before - or since - has the Times so debased its standards. So let's move on from the past.
Let the new era begin because as of today - glasnost has begun! The LA Times has finally announced a new web/interactive media Tsar to reach out to the on-line community. And they have brought in a person they claim is uniquely qualified to accomplish both tasks. From the LA Times memo on LAOBSERVED:
... he will oversee editorial content on latimes.com, calendarlive.com, and new interactive initiatives. This new position is designed to better align the newsroom and the web site. (He) will work closely with the newsroom to create new stories and features for the web, and to encourage all departments to regard latimes.com and our other interactive products as vital, though distinctly different, parts of The Times
So... did they hire a long time expert in the on-line field? Someone who understands interactive media enough to prevent another wikitorial fiasco?
No.
Do they hire a young kid with cutting edge experience in this - or any - technology?
No.
How about a blogger with journalistic experience?
No.
Someone who understands on-line interactivity of any kind?
No.
Someone... anyone.... with any kind of track record that will in any way engender trust from those who mistrust Times?
Hell, no.
Instead, the LA Times promotes a very senior editor with zero web experience and zero technological background; an aging baby boomer with no known connections with the on-line world of any kind.
Then it gets better.
He is also the sole credited person who edited those exact stories that damaged the LA Times' reputation and credibility with more readers more than anything else the Times has ever published.
And then Dean Baquet proudly proclaims these are the exact reasons why he hired him for the job. See below from LA OBSERVED:
Joel Sappell has been the deputy editor in Business for entertainment coverage and the editor who oversaw the groping investigation of Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2003. He will now become an assistant managing editor, raising the website's head to masthead status, as well as get the title of Executive Editor, Interactive.
Sappell, 52, has little experience with online news, but Editor Dean Baquet says in a statement that "It has become clear over time that interactive is a different animal, but one that should be guided by the same bedrock principles as the newsroom. It is a testament to the importance of the Web that we are placing one of our most creative and aggressive editors in charge of the editorial part of the site."
Lastly, an overview on the Arnold groping coverage:
http://www.jillstewart.net/php/issues/issue1014.php
Tuesday, October 04, 2005
Is Commander In Chief - The Worst Written Show In The History Of TV??
Just got in from my city-wide neighborhood council meeting of the night - clicked on the TV and started half-listening to some really bad soap opera with seriously stilted, amazingly wooden dialogue when I realized it was... Commander-In-Chief.
God - this isn't even the quality of a amaterish high school play written by a clueless high school writer.
Two more scenes. Decided it's a subversive comedy. It's supposed to be bad. No other possible explanation.
Just heard worst line of dialogue in the history of TV.
Even worse line of dialogue. Hysterical deafness settling in. There is a God.
Looking for gun to put my TV out of its misery.
Hell... let the TV look out for itself. I'll use it on myself.
UPDATE!
No reviews on second episode that I could find today, but found a few who were willing to say the Commander-in-Chief had no clothes when the pilot aired. From NEWSDAY:
Finally, the best new comedy of the 2005-06 TV season is here with the arrival Tuesday night of ABC's much-touted "Commander in Chief," starring Geena Davis as the vice president who becomes POTUS after the big guy succumbs to an aneurysm. What's that, you say? This is a drama and not a comedy? Oh, dear. In that case, we'll be forced to adjust our original assessment. This is the worst new drama of the 2005-06 season, which - considering the competition - is an outstanding achievement in itself.… There is such a plenitude of ineptitude on display here - acting, writing, direction, music, even makeup (catch those incredible lubricated lips!) - that one struggles to know where to begin. … If viewers generously choose to sidestep the utter implausibility of this premise, they are then treated to the sight of Davis, a gifted comedic actress, displaying what appears to be the only two moves in her dramatic repertoire - raised eyebrows (signifying "surprise") and lowered eyebrows ("resolve"). …
The rest of Verne Gay's NEWSDAY review is at:
http://www.newsday.com/entertainment/tv/ny-ettel4443370sep27,0,5661485.story?coll=ny-television-print
God - this isn't even the quality of a amaterish high school play written by a clueless high school writer.
Two more scenes. Decided it's a subversive comedy. It's supposed to be bad. No other possible explanation.
Just heard worst line of dialogue in the history of TV.
Even worse line of dialogue. Hysterical deafness settling in. There is a God.
Looking for gun to put my TV out of its misery.
Hell... let the TV look out for itself. I'll use it on myself.
UPDATE!
No reviews on second episode that I could find today, but found a few who were willing to say the Commander-in-Chief had no clothes when the pilot aired. From NEWSDAY:
Finally, the best new comedy of the 2005-06 TV season is here with the arrival Tuesday night of ABC's much-touted "Commander in Chief," starring Geena Davis as the vice president who becomes POTUS after the big guy succumbs to an aneurysm. What's that, you say? This is a drama and not a comedy? Oh, dear. In that case, we'll be forced to adjust our original assessment. This is the worst new drama of the 2005-06 season, which - considering the competition - is an outstanding achievement in itself.… There is such a plenitude of ineptitude on display here - acting, writing, direction, music, even makeup (catch those incredible lubricated lips!) - that one struggles to know where to begin. … If viewers generously choose to sidestep the utter implausibility of this premise, they are then treated to the sight of Davis, a gifted comedic actress, displaying what appears to be the only two moves in her dramatic repertoire - raised eyebrows (signifying "surprise") and lowered eyebrows ("resolve"). …
The rest of Verne Gay's NEWSDAY review is at:
http://www.newsday.com/entertainment/tv/ny-ettel4443370sep27,0,5661485.story?coll=ny-television-print
Dreaded LA Times Fish Curse - Strikes Lure Again!
When will the LA Times ever learn? Never, ever publish any fish related story.
Or if they choose to ignore past history - and tempt the fates - at least they should realize they need at least five separate layers of proof readers to go over every fish story they publish.
Or if they choose to ignore past history - and tempt the fates - at least they should realize they need at least five separate layers of proof readers to go over every fish story they publish.
Record fish — An article in last week's section about fishing records said Mark Gasich holds the world record for yellowfin tuna. The 399.6-pound fish he caught is the biggest yellowfin taken on rod and reel, but the International Game Fish Assn. has not officially recognized the catch as a record. The article also referred to Ralph Werking, a holder of fishing records, as Raleigh Werking.
Float tubing — An article last week about float tube fishing incorrectly identified manufacturer Buck's Bags as Buck Bags.
For more on the LAT's sad, sad fish history - and their total befuddlement with... tuna, see the below posts. The stories regarding tuna, bait licking (Yes - bait licking! I mean - could I actually make this stuff up?) and other fish fallacies are towards the bottom of cited corrections:
For more on the LAT's sad, sad fish history - and their total befuddlement with... tuna, see the below posts. The stories regarding tuna, bait licking (Yes - bait licking! I mean - could I actually make this stuff up?) and other fish fallacies are towards the bottom of cited corrections:
Update On New York Times Housing Price Drop Story!
http://www.curbed.com/archives/2005/10/04/bubblewatch_enfin_la_deluge.php
As I suspected, while the constant rise of housing prices should - hopefully - end soon, the large price drop the New York Times reported took place in Manhattan during the last quarter APPEARS to be partially - if not largely - due to a different mix in what sold over the summer:
Luxury market really takes a beating, with prices down 26% ($5.2 million average to $3.8 million average) in last three months. Only four sales above $10 million.
Here is an example where even if sale prices had gone up compared to prior sales of comparable properties, since fewer units at the very high end of the market sold, it would still appear that property values were declining
Record sales of entry-level apartments pushing price averages downward.
OK - so we now have both very few sales at the top of the market and record numbers selling at the bottom of the market in the same quarter, creating a dramatic price drop in sales prices.
But that still does not mean that the prices those units received were any lower than they would have been in the quarter before this one. Therefore, we do not know if there is any real price drop yet.
In other words, the jury is still out on where Manhattan housing prices are heading:
Brokers sound notes of relative optimism, of course, noting summer traditionally (read: from 1958 to 1972) was a slow time for the housing market. Where from here? Let's not forget prices this summer were still a solid 10% above those last summer. If this is the downdraft, let's break out the party hats.
As I suspected, while the constant rise of housing prices should - hopefully - end soon, the large price drop the New York Times reported took place in Manhattan during the last quarter APPEARS to be partially - if not largely - due to a different mix in what sold over the summer:
Luxury market really takes a beating, with prices down 26% ($5.2 million average to $3.8 million average) in last three months. Only four sales above $10 million.
Here is an example where even if sale prices had gone up compared to prior sales of comparable properties, since fewer units at the very high end of the market sold, it would still appear that property values were declining
Record sales of entry-level apartments pushing price averages downward.
OK - so we now have both very few sales at the top of the market and record numbers selling at the bottom of the market in the same quarter, creating a dramatic price drop in sales prices.
But that still does not mean that the prices those units received were any lower than they would have been in the quarter before this one. Therefore, we do not know if there is any real price drop yet.
In other words, the jury is still out on where Manhattan housing prices are heading:
Brokers sound notes of relative optimism, of course, noting summer traditionally (read: from 1958 to 1972) was a slow time for the housing market. Where from here? Let's not forget prices this summer were still a solid 10% above those last summer. If this is the downdraft, let's break out the party hats.
Hollywood's Book City To Close? Or - Will It Move Downtown?
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-hollywood4oct04,1,4998152.story?coll=la-headlines-california
First, the bad news:
Lisa RichardsonTimes Staff Writer October 4, 2005
The longest going-out-of-business sale on Hollywood Boulevard is ending. Book City Collectibles, the once-cavernous landmark beloved by neighborhood book junkies and film buffs for 32 years, is finally leaving.
Probably.
When the sign announcing Book City's closure went up in the front window four years ago, area bibliophiles panicked. Ten thousand people signed a petition declaring its importance to the neighborhood. Then, somehow, owner Alan Siegel, 76, never left.
"I'm a guy who's a slow mover," Siegel explained. A slim man in suspenders and a baseball cap, Siegel spoke in front of the store's towering bookshelves still comfortably loaded with 50,000 volumes.
Now the... possible... good news:
With the end in sight, Mitch Siegel said he is eyeing a location downtown, which is having its own residential boom.
Now while I can not say any more at this time, I will tell you that if Book City does move downtown - you will find it out first on... LA Cowboy.
Stay tuned!
First, the bad news:
Lisa RichardsonTimes Staff Writer October 4, 2005
The longest going-out-of-business sale on Hollywood Boulevard is ending. Book City Collectibles, the once-cavernous landmark beloved by neighborhood book junkies and film buffs for 32 years, is finally leaving.
Probably.
When the sign announcing Book City's closure went up in the front window four years ago, area bibliophiles panicked. Ten thousand people signed a petition declaring its importance to the neighborhood. Then, somehow, owner Alan Siegel, 76, never left.
"I'm a guy who's a slow mover," Siegel explained. A slim man in suspenders and a baseball cap, Siegel spoke in front of the store's towering bookshelves still comfortably loaded with 50,000 volumes.
Now the... possible... good news:
With the end in sight, Mitch Siegel said he is eyeing a location downtown, which is having its own residential boom.
Now while I can not say any more at this time, I will tell you that if Book City does move downtown - you will find it out first on... LA Cowboy.
Stay tuned!
Monday, October 03, 2005
Skyrocketing Housing Prices To Slow - Or Even Drop? How WIll Downtown Be Affected?
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/04/realestate/04reals.html
A New York Times article tomorrow seems to make a fairly good case that the seemingly endless surge in housing prices may at last be coming to a long expected end. But the evidence they cite is still spotty. In only one place do they cite a serious drop in housing prices - New York - and even then it is in just one quarter and could possibly be (partially) due to a different inventory mix in that quarter.
DAVID LEONHARDT and MOTOKO RICH
A real estate slowdown that began in a handful of cities this summer has spread to almost every hot housing market in the country, including New York.
More sellers are putting their homes on the market, houses are selling less quickly and prices are no longer increasing as rapidly as they were in the spring, according to local data and interviews with brokers.
In Manhattan, the average sales price fell almost 13 percent in the third quarter from the second quarter, according to a widely followed report to be released today by Miller Samuel, an appraisal firm, and Prudential Douglas Elliman, a real estate firm. The amount of time it took to sell a home was also up 30.4 percent over the same period.
Mainly, the reported slowing of the market is reflected by increasing inventory and longer sale times. The reporters also mention that credit standards are being tightened - which is long overdue - and that the days of low interest are over. The second part is still questionable though. A few nudges by the Fed and the run up in gas prices and possible shortages in building materials needed for the rebuilding of the Gulf Coast are - so far - short term events; not a systemic change. And an increase in energy conservation, could bring those prices down again.
But as the more recent loans with low teaser rates expire - that will hit a lot of new homeowners, hard.
As for what this means for Los Angeles, in the most expensive areas, prices do seem rather high for lower quality product. But in much of the city, the demand so far exceeds the supply, I do not see a major price break in the next few years, barring, of course, some major external factor. Prices, I suspect, will level off, then decline somewhat, particularly for marginal product, but also at the very top of the market.
And if prices do come down on the new product coming on the market in Downtown LA - that is a good thing. Lower prices will mean more people will be able to buy, and even right now, the supply of buyers exceeds the amount of product that is coming on-line, even at today's prices.
There is one caveat to that scenario, though. Right now there is little street life in the loft districts, and even less night life. The Broadway theaters appear to be on the verge of re-opening, but the question of what programing they will have still remains open.
We also have no great books stores, no vintage clothing stores, no antique stores, no music clubs, no 99 seat theaters, no Indy film houses, no record stores and none of a hundred other ammenties we need to create a true urban core.
Now many, if not most of these things, appear about to happen - posilby as soon as next spring and summer, if everything goes right. But everyone Downtown needs to realize that just as housing was the key to starting the rebirth of Downtown, having the streets of Downtown active 24 hours a day, 7 days a week is essential if the housing revival and the overall rebirth of Downtown is going to continue.
A decline in the national hot housing market is inevitable; a decline in the number of units being built in Downtown is not.
A New York Times article tomorrow seems to make a fairly good case that the seemingly endless surge in housing prices may at last be coming to a long expected end. But the evidence they cite is still spotty. In only one place do they cite a serious drop in housing prices - New York - and even then it is in just one quarter and could possibly be (partially) due to a different inventory mix in that quarter.
DAVID LEONHARDT and MOTOKO RICH
A real estate slowdown that began in a handful of cities this summer has spread to almost every hot housing market in the country, including New York.
More sellers are putting their homes on the market, houses are selling less quickly and prices are no longer increasing as rapidly as they were in the spring, according to local data and interviews with brokers.
In Manhattan, the average sales price fell almost 13 percent in the third quarter from the second quarter, according to a widely followed report to be released today by Miller Samuel, an appraisal firm, and Prudential Douglas Elliman, a real estate firm. The amount of time it took to sell a home was also up 30.4 percent over the same period.
Mainly, the reported slowing of the market is reflected by increasing inventory and longer sale times. The reporters also mention that credit standards are being tightened - which is long overdue - and that the days of low interest are over. The second part is still questionable though. A few nudges by the Fed and the run up in gas prices and possible shortages in building materials needed for the rebuilding of the Gulf Coast are - so far - short term events; not a systemic change. And an increase in energy conservation, could bring those prices down again.
But as the more recent loans with low teaser rates expire - that will hit a lot of new homeowners, hard.
As for what this means for Los Angeles, in the most expensive areas, prices do seem rather high for lower quality product. But in much of the city, the demand so far exceeds the supply, I do not see a major price break in the next few years, barring, of course, some major external factor. Prices, I suspect, will level off, then decline somewhat, particularly for marginal product, but also at the very top of the market.
And if prices do come down on the new product coming on the market in Downtown LA - that is a good thing. Lower prices will mean more people will be able to buy, and even right now, the supply of buyers exceeds the amount of product that is coming on-line, even at today's prices.
There is one caveat to that scenario, though. Right now there is little street life in the loft districts, and even less night life. The Broadway theaters appear to be on the verge of re-opening, but the question of what programing they will have still remains open.
We also have no great books stores, no vintage clothing stores, no antique stores, no music clubs, no 99 seat theaters, no Indy film houses, no record stores and none of a hundred other ammenties we need to create a true urban core.
Now many, if not most of these things, appear about to happen - posilby as soon as next spring and summer, if everything goes right. But everyone Downtown needs to realize that just as housing was the key to starting the rebirth of Downtown, having the streets of Downtown active 24 hours a day, 7 days a week is essential if the housing revival and the overall rebirth of Downtown is going to continue.
A decline in the national hot housing market is inevitable; a decline in the number of units being built in Downtown is not.
Will The Last Person Out Of The Getty - Please Turn Off The Lights!
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-getty3oct03,1,3564228.story?coll=la-headlines-california
First Munitz's - reportedly much resented by the staff - private secretary - long thought to be the heavy-handed second in command at the Getty, resigned - and now Munitz, I mean the Getty (I keep forgetting that the two are not supposed to be the same thing) has had to accept the 'retirement' of his/their long time curator of antiquities, Marion True, just prior to her going on trial for purchasing looted art objects on behalf of the Getty.
Ralph Frammolino and Jason Felch Times Staff Writers October 3, 2005
The curator of antiquities for the J. Paul Getty Museum bought a vacation home in the Greek islands after one of the museum's main suppliers of ancient art introduced her to a lawyer who arranged a nearly $400,000 loan.
The Getty said in a statement Saturday evening that the curator, Marion True, had resigned after museum officials confronted her about the loan, which she obtained in 1995.The statement, released in response to questions from The Times, said the loan breached museum policy, which requires employees to report even the appearance of a conflict of interest."
The Getty has determined through its own investigation that Marion True failed to report certain aspects of her Greek house purchase transaction in violation of Getty policy," the statement said. "In the course of the Getty's discussions with Ms. True on this matter, she chose voluntarily to retire."
OK - but what's the REAL story? Well -
Internal Getty records obtained by The Times show that museum officials knew three years ago about the loan True obtained for the vacation home. The Getty declined comment on the documents. Italian authorities say Interpol in Greece is investigating the loan.
OK - let's get this straight. The LA Times obtained leaked Getty documents about the scandal dating from ... three years ago... and now - shortly after the Times announced they had those documents - Munitz - I mean, the Getty - suddenly 'discovers' there has been an ethics breach at the Getty!
And they are shocked. Shocked!
OK - so what's the real, real story?
Well, if Marion True is convicted she faces serious jail time and considerable fines. And while I assume the Getty will continue to pay her legal expenses - since they are on trial too, what happens if the Italians offer her a deal to save her own skin?
What happens if they ask her to turn on the Getty and tell all she knows about their complicity(if any, of course), in exchange of a light or no sentence at all?
I imagine that might be a hard deal to turn down. Now, of course, with stakes this high, it might make sense for the Getty to cut a deal and take the 'high road' to protect any potentially guilty parties who reside up on the hill or on the board.
But if this does go to trial - it could become the Michael Jackson/OJ Simpson spectacle of the art world.
Lastly, my observation last week that new Getty curator Michael Brand is the only one at the Getty with any real power now seems particularly apt. In fact, the way things are going - he may even end up being the last man standing up there.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/04/arts/design/04gett.html
New York Times also covers story and lays out the timeline. House bought in 1996, Getty found out about conflict on interest in 2002, Marion True asked to resign in... late 2005.
First Munitz's - reportedly much resented by the staff - private secretary - long thought to be the heavy-handed second in command at the Getty, resigned - and now Munitz, I mean the Getty (I keep forgetting that the two are not supposed to be the same thing) has had to accept the 'retirement' of his/their long time curator of antiquities, Marion True, just prior to her going on trial for purchasing looted art objects on behalf of the Getty.
Ralph Frammolino and Jason Felch Times Staff Writers October 3, 2005
The curator of antiquities for the J. Paul Getty Museum bought a vacation home in the Greek islands after one of the museum's main suppliers of ancient art introduced her to a lawyer who arranged a nearly $400,000 loan.
The Getty said in a statement Saturday evening that the curator, Marion True, had resigned after museum officials confronted her about the loan, which she obtained in 1995.The statement, released in response to questions from The Times, said the loan breached museum policy, which requires employees to report even the appearance of a conflict of interest."
The Getty has determined through its own investigation that Marion True failed to report certain aspects of her Greek house purchase transaction in violation of Getty policy," the statement said. "In the course of the Getty's discussions with Ms. True on this matter, she chose voluntarily to retire."
OK - but what's the REAL story? Well -
Internal Getty records obtained by The Times show that museum officials knew three years ago about the loan True obtained for the vacation home. The Getty declined comment on the documents. Italian authorities say Interpol in Greece is investigating the loan.
OK - let's get this straight. The LA Times obtained leaked Getty documents about the scandal dating from ... three years ago... and now - shortly after the Times announced they had those documents - Munitz - I mean, the Getty - suddenly 'discovers' there has been an ethics breach at the Getty!
And they are shocked. Shocked!
OK - so what's the real, real story?
Well, if Marion True is convicted she faces serious jail time and considerable fines. And while I assume the Getty will continue to pay her legal expenses - since they are on trial too, what happens if the Italians offer her a deal to save her own skin?
What happens if they ask her to turn on the Getty and tell all she knows about their complicity(if any, of course), in exchange of a light or no sentence at all?
I imagine that might be a hard deal to turn down. Now, of course, with stakes this high, it might make sense for the Getty to cut a deal and take the 'high road' to protect any potentially guilty parties who reside up on the hill or on the board.
But if this does go to trial - it could become the Michael Jackson/OJ Simpson spectacle of the art world.
Lastly, my observation last week that new Getty curator Michael Brand is the only one at the Getty with any real power now seems particularly apt. In fact, the way things are going - he may even end up being the last man standing up there.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/04/arts/design/04gett.html
New York Times also covers story and lays out the timeline. House bought in 1996, Getty found out about conflict on interest in 2002, Marion True asked to resign in... late 2005.
On Mondays - Even The Gods Have Feet Of Clay! Plus Feet Of Clay Update!!
http://www2.dailynews.com/rickorlov/ci_3081299
Two of the brightest people I know today committed a hideous libel against my beloved Owens Valley today. One of them said it - and the other one (Rick Orlov of the Daily News)reported it:
One of the classic films about Los Angeles, "Chinatown," is about to become an educational tool.
The union representing some 10,000 city workers, Service Employees International Union Local 347, is putting together a forum Oct. 20 at its headquarters to open a discussion about the city's history and future.
The one thing that union business manager Julie Butcher promises is that there will be no sheep brought in to protest the city's taking of water from Northern California.
Northern California???
Excuse me.
There are many geographic areas of California you can use in describing Inyo County and the Owens Valley. There is locally used term - Eastern California, there is also the very apt phrase, Central California and should there only be a choice between Northern and Southern California, it would be Southern California. But in all the years I spent up there - not once did I ever hear it referred to as... Northern California.
Luckily I will be speaking before that film and will be able to correct this character assassination of the Owens Valley's good name.
UPDATE!
In response to the question in the comments section about the source of the phrase "Even Gods have feet of clay...:
"FEET OF CLAY -- a vulnerability; a failing or weakness. The image is from the Book of Daniel (2:31-40) (in the Bible) in which King Nebuchadnezzar has a dream that Daniel describes and then interprets: 'Thou, O king, sawest, and, behold, a great image.This image's head was of fine gold, his breast and arms of silver, his belly and his thighs of brass. His legs of iron, his feet part of iron and part of clay. Thou sawest till that a stone was cut without hands, which smote the image upon his feet that were of iron and clay, and brake them to pieces.' The whole image then broke, and the pieces were carried away in the wind. Daniel's interpretation was that Nebuchadnezzar was the head of gold, a king of kings, but that after him would come a series of weaker kingdoms that would finally break up, like the image with feet of clay, and be replaced by the kingdom of God." From the "The Dictionary of Cliches" by James Rogers (Ballantine Books, New York, 1985).
Two of the brightest people I know today committed a hideous libel against my beloved Owens Valley today. One of them said it - and the other one (Rick Orlov of the Daily News)reported it:
One of the classic films about Los Angeles, "Chinatown," is about to become an educational tool.
The union representing some 10,000 city workers, Service Employees International Union Local 347, is putting together a forum Oct. 20 at its headquarters to open a discussion about the city's history and future.
The one thing that union business manager Julie Butcher promises is that there will be no sheep brought in to protest the city's taking of water from Northern California.
Northern California???
Excuse me.
There are many geographic areas of California you can use in describing Inyo County and the Owens Valley. There is locally used term - Eastern California, there is also the very apt phrase, Central California and should there only be a choice between Northern and Southern California, it would be Southern California. But in all the years I spent up there - not once did I ever hear it referred to as... Northern California.
Luckily I will be speaking before that film and will be able to correct this character assassination of the Owens Valley's good name.
UPDATE!
In response to the question in the comments section about the source of the phrase "Even Gods have feet of clay...:
"FEET OF CLAY -- a vulnerability; a failing or weakness. The image is from the Book of Daniel (2:31-40) (in the Bible) in which King Nebuchadnezzar has a dream that Daniel describes and then interprets: 'Thou, O king, sawest, and, behold, a great image.This image's head was of fine gold, his breast and arms of silver, his belly and his thighs of brass. His legs of iron, his feet part of iron and part of clay. Thou sawest till that a stone was cut without hands, which smote the image upon his feet that were of iron and clay, and brake them to pieces.' The whole image then broke, and the pieces were carried away in the wind. Daniel's interpretation was that Nebuchadnezzar was the head of gold, a king of kings, but that after him would come a series of weaker kingdoms that would finally break up, like the image with feet of clay, and be replaced by the kingdom of God." From the "The Dictionary of Cliches" by James Rogers (Ballantine Books, New York, 1985).
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