I am pleased to announce the availability of about 1.3 GB of images, obtained from the HPOA under the California Public Records Act. The main archive page is here. You can see a listing of the files for individual download here. I rot13-ed the filenames to protect people’s privacy somewhat.1 You can get the whole batch via bittorrent which, as always, is most efficient if you want local copies of these pictures. I’ll be organizing these into thematic PDF flip-books and publishing them at the Archive and on Amazon over the next few weeks, but as it may be a while I thought I’d make the raw images available now.
If you don’t know what rot13 is you need to get your internet user’s license renewed post haste!
Image of man explaining democracy to the BID Patrol is a public record.
As you can see from the images to your right, the Vine Street Tree Vandal is still at large and hard at his dastardly work as of today, May 19, 2015. One of these three-in-a-row vandalized trees on the west side of Vine Street between DeLongpre and Sunset was hit just last week. What we have here is more than just a crime spree, more than just a peasant revolt against the ham-fisted idiocy of the Andrews International Security BID Patrol, it is in fact an indictment of the BID Patrol’s very competence. The big brass at Andrews will blether on about their self-proclaimed excellence in privatized facism, but when it comes to an actual ongoing crime spree they’re quite evidently helpless. Continue reading Vine Street Tree Vandal Turns the Hat-Trick on May 19!→
Newly vandalized jacaranda tree on Vine Street, May 13, 2015We’ve been writing about the continuing story of the Vine Street tree vandal since October of last year. The Sunset-Vine BID has been announcing the imminent arrest of the criminal for at least that long. In fact, we could have sworn that they mentioned it again at last month’s Joint Security Committee meeting although we’ll be damned if we can find it in there now. We’ve also noted that this criminal does in fact seem to be targeting the BID’s trees, although as Kurt Cobain might have said but didn’t, just because you have enemies doesn’t mean you’re not paranoid. Proof that the vandalism as pictured above was newly committed: as-yet unwilted tree fronds at the base of the tree. Is the baseball cap evidence of the workings of a depraved criminal mind? Obviously. Who else but depraved criminals root for American League teams?As you can see to your left, though, the tree vandal is still at large and working despite the dogged efforts of Keystone Kop-wannabes Andrews International Security, the Hollywood Neighborhood Prosecutor, the LAPD, and everyone else. Perhaps there’s more than one tree vandal, and though they arrest particular instances, new vandals rise up hydra-like after the manner of peasant rebellion leaders everywhere. Continue reading Vine Street Tree Vandal Still At Large Despite Best Efforts of HPOA, LAPD, FBI, NSA, Other TLAs!!!→
A member of the Hollywood Protective Association and spiritual forebear of the modern BID Board member, with the backing of the 1920s edition of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, announces to the world that she’s a moron. Note sign in window stating “Member Hollywood Protective Association.”Long-time readers of this blog will recall that, last month, we broke the story of Hollywood Chamber of Commerce biggity-wig Marty Shelton’s bizarre distaste for black, brown, and poor people visiting Hollywood. Inspired by that, we recently wrote on the white supremacist roots of our beloved Hollywood sign and the inwrought caucasians-only policies of the real-estate development it once promoted. This line of inquiry got us interested in the jim crow history of Hollywood, which turns out to be quite rich.
For instance, a brief discussion in Scott Kurashige’s interesting book The Shifting Grounds of Race: Black and Japanese Americans in the Making of Multiethnic Los Angeles1 led us to read up in old LA Times articles on anti-Japanese hysteria in Hollywood in the early 1920s. It seems that in April 1923, the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce gave some advice to a bunch of angry white people. The article is here, but the short version is that some Japanese people bought eight lots in Hollywood, four near Bronson and Sunset and four on Tamarind and Gordon, and had the nerve to wish to build some apartment buildings and a church. Jess E. Stephens, City Attorney of Los Angeles in April 1923 when pitchfork-waving torch-bearing howling Hollywood lynch mobs came whining to him about how Japanese people were being meanies and building a church in Hollywood. His response doesn’t seem to be available in the historical record.
The white people got all in a tizzy, you can see one in the image above, and went to the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce screaming for help. The Chamber, as opposed to the presence of non-white people in Hollywood as they are today, directed the howling mob to the City Attorney to seek a restraining order and they also started circulating petitions “urging the residents to agree to restrict the use of land to those of the Caucasian race.”2 They were even inspired to poetry! See after the break for an especially creepy example.
