First Volume of our Series Hollywood Business Improvement District Documents is Now Available on Amazon!

The cover of the first volume in our series of Hollywood BID documents, now available on Amazon.com!
The cover of the first volume in our series of Hollywood BID documents, now available on Amazon.com!
I’m pleased to announce that the first volume of Hollywood BID documents published by MK.org is now available for purchase on amazon.com. This book is nothing more than a paper copy of the minutes of the HMD BID from 2007 through 2014, so of course you can get it for free here or by direct request from the BID. However, if you’re like me and need paper and ink to concentrate, this is a surprisingly cheap way to get a copy, e.g. it’s way cheaper than the 12¢ per page that Kinko’s wants. The minutes contain, among many other treasures, years worth of discussion about the BID’s mostly nefarious efforts to get Ted Landreth to relocate the GWHFC’s feeding program to somewhere, anywhere, other than the corner of Sycamore and Romaine. I set the price as low as I could, but it wasn’t possible to avoid revenues from all sales channels. We will, however, donate double our revenues from all our publishing to the GWHFC.

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Complete Set of Andrews International BID Patrol Reports Now Available

Real cops write too, not just BID Patrol pretenders.  This one's writing a ticket, not a report.  But it is happening in Hollywood, anyway!
Real cops write too, not just BID Patrol pretenders. This one’s writing a ticket, not a report. But it is happening in Hollywood, anyway!
I haven’t had time to update the relevant documents page yet, but for now an apparently complete set of Andrews International reports to the Hollywood Entertainment District BID and the Sunset-Vine BID about its BID patrol activities is available from our static storage here. This is a lot of new material to digest but we’ll be working our way through it and reporting on what we learn, if anything.


The image of the cop writing the ticket is by Chris Yarzab, is released under the CC BY 2.0, and is available from the Wikimedia Foundation here.

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Complete Media District Board Minutes 2007—2014 Now Available

Are you bored by the board?  There are no boring subjects, only boring minds.
Are you bored by the board? There are no boring subjects, only boring minds.
I’m pleased to announce that we have the complete minutes of the Hollywood Media District BID now available here as well as in our static storage here. From even the cursory attention I’ve given this document it’s obvious that it contains much valuable information. For instance, try searching in the PDF for “Landreth.” More soon, friends!


The picture of the board was released into the public domain by its author and you can find details and your own copy at Wikimedia here.

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Valentine’s Day Poetry Slam Special!

Roses are red Violets are blue Scansion's important And using an appropriate number of syllables per line so you don't sound like a doofus is too!
Roses are red
Violets are blue
Scansion’s important
And using an appropriate number of syllables per line and some semblance of competent syntax so you don’t sound like a total doofus is too!
We’ve written at some length about Übersicherheitführer Steve Seyler‘s unfortunate penchant for poetry. Today, in honor of this, the most poetic of American holidays, we’re highlighting an email exchange from the archives between Seyler and “Good News Joe” Mariani, showing that Richard Dawkins’s notion that cultural practices spread like deadly infectious agents must be taken seriously by serious people.
We'll be damned if we can figure out what this is.  Some trash on the street?  Anyway, this is to Joe and Steve as Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning were to one another. Rhyme on!
We’ll be damned if we can figure out what this is. Some trash on the street? Anyway, this is to Joe and Steve as Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning were to one another. Rhyme on!
For reasons that we can’t determine from the evidence at hand but in response to the unintelligible photo at left, Good News Joe sent Stevie the following billet-doux:

Steve works so hard
Whether he is near or far
I wish he could go to a lake
Or maybe a Vegas escape

Lack of metrical structure? Check. Unintentional partial rhymes? Check. Unthinking use of brain-dead advertising-slogan phraseology as if it were human language? Check. Complete and utter tin-ear-itude? Check, check, check. He’s learned well from his master, whose classic response may be seen after the break.
Continue reading Valentine’s Day Poetry Slam Special!

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Hollywood BID Patrol Sought in 2013 to Hire Off-Duty LAPD Officers for Video Monitoring

Here are a couple of documents regarding the Hollywood Entertainment District BID Patrol’s request to be allowed to hire off-duty LAPD officers to monitor live video feeds. I’m seeking more information regarding this matter and will make it available as it comes in. There’s something interesting going on here in that the BID patrols already represent an effort to privatize policing in Los Angeles, thereby making it more opaque to public scrutiny. If they hire actual LAPD officers for privately assigned work this really exacerbates the problem, doesn’t it? The documents are embedded after the break and can be downloaded here and here.
Continue reading Hollywood BID Patrol Sought in 2013 to Hire Off-Duty LAPD Officers for Video Monitoring

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BID Patrol Directive Orders Unconstitutional Coercion of Hollywood Homeless for Sake of Social Cleansing

Donuts: The fuel of terrorism.  BID Patrol Officers in Vine Street Winchell's taking a break from strongarming the homeless into leaving the streets of Hollywood.
Donuts: The fuel of terrorism. BID Patrol Officers in Vine Street Winchell’s taking a break from strongarming the homeless into leaving the streets of Hollywood.
Amongst the emails between Andrews International Security and the HPOA recently obtained by our correspondent, we find a document entitled ANDREWS INTERNATIONAL BID HOMELESS PERSON DIRECTIVE. You can download a copy here or find an embedded copy after the break. There is much of interest in this document, but today we’re looking at the following bit:


If a BID Officer observes a person who, because of their homelessness commits one of the following misdemeanors:

  1. Obstructing passage on sidewalks
  2. Living or sleeping in a vehicle
  3. Loitering in a restroom
  4. Littering
  5. Use of facilities, e.g., sleeping on a bus bench for other than intended purpose
  6. Public nudity as is necessary to carry on the daily necessities of life
  7. Building a structure in a park or public right-of-way
  8. Trespass on or in public or private property

The Officer may offer such individual(s) the option of going to an available shelter in the surrounding Hollywood community as an alternative to arrest. If the homeless person accepts the offer of assistance, no arrest shall take place and arrangements shall be made to transport the homeless person to the shelter.

This was legal in 1942 and, by God, it's legal now.
This was legal in 1942 and, by God, it’s legal now.
Pass over the dyslexic parrot-like legalese. Pass over the semiliterate, unparseable sentences. Pass over the absolutely unintelligible yet still horrific phrase “sleeping on a bus bench for other than intended purpose.” Consider for now just the fact that in June 2014, five months before the date on this document, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals found LA’s law against sleeping in vehicles to be unconstitutional.

So Andrews International Security, with the full knowledge and consent of the Hollywood Property Owners Alliance, has directed its officers to give homeless people sleeping in their cars a choice between arrest or coerced relocation to a homeless shelter. This, despite the fact that common sense, human decency, and the goddamned Ninth Circuit all agree that people have a constitutional right to sleep in their cars, whether or not it’s “because of their homelessness.”
Continue reading BID Patrol Directive Orders Unconstitutional Coercion of Hollywood Homeless for Sake of Social Cleansing

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