So yeah, the headline pretty much says it all. I filmed yesterday’s meeting of the North Figueroa Association and got yelled at by a toadie.¹ You can watch the video:

• On YouTube
• On Archive.Org

They didn’t make quorum, so the meeting was short. The third most interesting part was the report by the world’s oldest field deputy, the toadlike toadie Mr. Bill Freaking Cody, which you can watch beginning here. In particular, Bill Cody notes that CD1 will be holding “an overall design meeting for Highland Park, probably the first week of August.” He lists the groups that will be invited and, big surprise, none of the local arts activism groups are included.

The second most interesting occurrence was Board President Tom Wilson’s announcement that James Bygrave, hipster restaurateur and member of the Highland Park BID’s super-exclusive Facebook stalking committee, is resigning from the Board. Bye James!

And like one of our idols,² “we have saved the best for last!” Turn the page for all the news concerning el gran mamón Bill Cody’s rage-rant about how unlike all other BIDs in Los Angeles the members of the Highland Park BID Board of Directors are largely people of color which, it seems, was a response to a recent post of mine that he either didn’t read carefully or wasn’t capable of understanding.³ Read on, friends!

Well, of course, watch the clip, although I’m not transcribing today. Bill Cody, his voice quivering with putatively righteous outrage, calls my attention to the putative fact that five out of the seven Board members present are “people of color.”⁴ He hopes I will remember this in the future and accuses me of misrepresenting something in a recent post of mine.

So I read every post I’ve ever posted on the NFA, of which including this one there are three, to see if any of them made any claims that were refutable by the putative fact that five out of seven of the NFA board members present yesterday were “people of color.” I didn’t find any, but I’m pretty sure that the one Bill Freaking Cody was thinking of was this: Highland Park BID Accused Of Promoting Gentrification By Among Other Things Asking The City To Enforce Anti-Mural Laws And Selectively Promoting White-Serving Businesses …

Is it possible that the following is the passage that upset Bill Cody so very much? I mean, I guess so. Note that the link is as in the original:

This story provides an excellent example of what pernicious gentrification looks like in Los Angeles, how it is covertly but significantly supported by the City government, and how property-based BIDs do not care a whit about the interests of business owners per se. They only care about the interests of the owners of commercial property who, in this City at least, are predominately white.

The theory that Bill Cody was thinking of this passage is consistent with his explanation that he pointed out the putative five out of seven factoid to counter what he accusingly called my “…shifting over disingenuously to a stat about the overall BIDs in Los Angeles” But of course, Bill Freaking Cody, I never said anything at all about the racial composition of the HPBID Board of Directors, as any marginally literate middle schooler could tell you from reading the passage. I didn’t even say anything about the racial composition of any BID Board of Directors in Los Angeles, let alone the NFA Board.

I said that property-based BIDs “only care about the interests of the owners of commercial property” and that in Los Angeles, the owners of commercial property “are predominately white” This claim, which I stand by not only across the City but in Highland Park as well, is irrefutable by claims about how many Board members out of the seven who happened to show up yesterday are “people of color.” ⁵ But I suppose that if Bill Cody could read real good maybe he wouldn’t be the world’s oldest field deputy.

And maybe if Bill Freaking Cody could read real good he wouldn’t have induced an egregious violation of the Brown Act by keeping the entire Board in the meeting room for over 12 minutes after the meeting was adjourned, filling them in on his opposition research about me. I was waiting at the bus stop⁶ across the street and saw clearly that they all stayed in there for that long.

When they came out, one of them came up to me, gave me his business card, and said that he understood from Bill Cody that I didn’t have any friends, but he wanted to be my friend. Whatever that means. Of course, Bill Cody is famous for offering to “handle” people on the BID’s Nixonesque enemies list, so probably now he’s dedicated to handling me.⁷ Whatever, Bill! Get a real job, why don’t you?

Image of Bill Cody is ©2018 MichaelKohlhaas.Org. It was made of my own image of Bill Cody and also this image of grafitti in Highland Park which was made by Cheryl Johnson and graciously released by her under the CC BY-SA 2.0 license.

1. To be fair, or at least to be as fair as the editorial policy of this blog will allow, Board president Tom Wilson went out of his way to shake my hand and tell me that they’re working on my pending public records act requests, which I respect a great deal. It’s surprising how few people in the world of business improvement districts understand the cosmically important distinction between yelling at people on a blog and yelling at them in person. The first keeps civil society healthy and is to be respected at least in theory by all who care about our polity. The second is antisocial, borderline insane, makes you look like an asshole, and in some cases is illegal. Choose wisely, friends!
2. That would be Jesus rather than David Freaking Letterman, thank you very much!
3. Or, obviously, both might be true. On reflection this seems like the most likely explanation.
4. At one point some guy on the Board whose name I didn’t catch actually pulled his shirt down to prove … I’m not sure what he was proving.
5. It’s well-understood by people who’ve thought about the matter that white supremacists of the type involved with BIDs come in all skin colors. It’s a matter of whose interests their jobs and their well-being depend on their supporting. As usual, the Wiki has a pretty good explanation of matters, so it really can’t be that darn esoteric: “[White supremacy is] a political ideology that perpetuates and maintains the social, political, historical or institutional domination by white people.“
6. Southbound 81, yay!
7. How telling people that I don’t have any friends fits into his plans, I’m not sure. He doesn’t strike me as a guy with an abundance of foresight though, so probably it’s to be expected that no one can figure out what he’s thinking.