Right now there is no BID more interesting to me in the entire City of Los Angeles than the Studio City BID. I mean, I dropped by one of their furtive little meetings last month and one of their directors, famously angry clown Matthew Dunn, was so rattled by my presence that he stormed out of his own meeting.1 And then they committed such an astonishing series of so very flagrant violations of the Brown Act that I was forced to send them a demand letter asking them to pinky swear that they’d never do it again.
And man, when it comes to his CPRAiatic duties, SCBID zeck dreck Dr. John Walker Ph.D.2 is a freaking pain in that thing that writers often resort to mentioning pains in for metaphorical purposes, but once in a while a few items trickle through the border wall as they did yesterday when he, or at least his pocky little minion Damian Gatto, sent over a few righteous goodies! And amongst these was this announcement from June 2018 in which the Studio City BID gave notice to the BID Consortium that it was hiring a replacement for Emmy-winning Zeck Dreck Dr. John Walker!! There is a transcription of this remarkable document after the break.
And then the applications started rolling in! The first applicant I have information about was evidently Ms. Vicki Nussbaum, who used to be the executive director of the Sherman Oaks BID and may still be for all I know, but is at least also the executive director of the Century City BID.3 You’ll hear more about this lady’s application quite soon, but not today.4
And the next applicant that I know anything about is our old friend Taylor Freaking Bazley! That’s right, Mike Bonin’s creepy little field deputy for Venice, deeply implicated in the horror show that is the Venice Beach BID, is out looking for another job! Do his friends at CD11 know about this?! Probably not, because he obviously isn’t using them as references! You can read everything I know in this September 12, 2018 email from SCBID Board member Ben Besley5 to John Walker, Board president Tony Richman, and fellow hiring committee members Barry Wise and Dean Cutler.
Here’s the story in brief, and you will find detailed discussion and transcriptions of all relevant emails after the break! About a month ago Taylor Bazley interviewed for the job. After his interview he sent a sycophantic thanks-friend! email to Board president Tony Richman about how the committee’s shit smelled like roses and so on.6 Also, he seems to have given shadowy BID president Tara Devine’s name as a reference. The hiring committee evidently found it difficult to get in touch with Tara Devine. Finally, Ben Besley got an email from admin@venicebeachbid.com, a well-known pseudonym of Ms. Tara Devine, splaining that Tara Devine was too busy to talk to him right now but maybe later!
Then John Walker weighed in with a story about how TD was being investigated for not spending BID money properly and also how the SCBID didn’t hire her to be their renewal consultant because she charged too damn much. He closed this defamational little missive with the defamer’s favorite excuse: “This is not meant to sway your investigation but I think you should be aware of some history.” So yeah, just another example of how the Los Angeles BID world is like one big seething daisy chain but without the sex.7 Turn the page for transcriptions of all relevant material!
So like I said above, all this is based on this email chain here, which I received the other day from the Studio City BID under the auspices of the California Public Records Act. We can deduce that Taylor Bazley did in fact interview as Dr. John Walker’s replacement from this email from Taylor Bazley to BID Board president Tony Richman. Note Taylor Bazley’s professionally appropriate use of his personal email address:
From: Taylor Bazley <taylorbazley@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: SCBD
Date: September 5, 2018 at 1:39:01 PM PDT
To: Tony Richman <latonyr@gmail.com>
Thank you for taking the time! The committee had very thoughtful questions that I think illuminated very clearly the many opportunities which lay in front of the organization for growth and further improvement to the heart of Studio City. I would be honored to work with you all to make those opportunities a reality and eagerly look forward to our next communications.
Please extend my gratitude to the full committee – I wasn’t able to find their email addresses anywhere online (let alone mailing) otherwise I would have sent a note personally.
Regard, [sic]
Taylor
And there’s really no need to make fun of Taylor Bazley’s balls-to-the-wall sycophancy. First of all he needs the job, or really wants it, anyway. We’ve all been there. Second of all, it actually makes fun of itself. All we have to is quote it, which we did. A few days later Ben Besley, supposedly Sarah McPherson Besley’s husband, wrote to the committee with more news about Taylor Bazley’s candidacy:
On Sep 10, 2018, at 9:44 AM, Ben Besley
Gentlemen,
My contact at the Hollywood BID Kerry Morrison, a Coro Fellow, didn’t know of Taylor but that’s not surprising as he did the program in St. Louis. I have a call into the President of the Venice Beach BID Tara Devine to get some feedback. Will update you all tomorrow at the latest.
-Ben
Ben Besley knows Kerry Morrison because the woman he seems to be married to used to have a fulfilling career on the sin-drenched streets of Hollywood, flouncing about the place as Kerry Morrison’s minion-in-chief. And Kerry Morrison and Taylor Bazley are both Coro Fellows, that being a program which takes young people who want to go into government and screens them carefully to make sure they’re sufficiently obeisant to zillionaires. So they thought she’d know him, but she didn’t.
More importantly, though, on September 10 or before Ben Besley had left a message for President Tara Devine to grill her about Taylor Bazley. This got Zeck Dreck Dr. John T. Walker Ph.D. pretty riled up, and a mere 32 minutes later he fired off this intemperate slab of insinnuendo:
From: John Walker <john@johntwalker.com>
Sent: Monday, September 10, 2018 10:16 AM
To: Ben Besley <bbesley@midwoodid.com>
Cc: Tony Richman <latonyr@gmail.com>; Barry Wise <barrywise@earthlink.net>; Dean Cutler <DCUTLER@ILLICRE.COM>
Subject: Re: SCBD
Hello Ben –
Thank you for your follow-up on this. I should share some information re: Tara Devine: If you are not aware, she is (or was) leading the Venice BID who was being investigated about lack of transparency – collecting Money and not spending it within the BID – and before I was aware of any of this, she was someone who gave us a bid to be the consultant of our Renewal. We went with someone else because her quote came back at over $45,000 – which seemed way too high.
This is not meant to sway your investigation but I think you should be aware of some history – and perhaps your wife is aware of some of this?
Regards,
John
Oh Lord, amirite? You can run, Tara Devine, but you can’t hide from your reputation! Notice how John T. Walker slings a bunch of mud at Tara Devine and then, because he kind of has to, admits that he did think of hiring her as a BID consultant but, and this is the crucial bit, THAT WAS BEFORE HE KNEW SHE WAS BEING INVESTIGATED! Dodged a bullet there, Studio City-zens, didn’t you? And all thanks to your Emmy winning Zeck Dreck!
A couple days later Ben Besley was back in front of the computer firing off his characteristically salience-dripping emails to the committee:8
From: Ben Besley
Sent: Wednesday, September 12, 2018 12:42 PM
To: ‘John Walker’ <john@johntwalker.com>
Cc: Tony Richman <latonyr@gmail.com>; Barry Wise <barrywise@earthlink.net>; Dean Cutler <DCUTLER@ILLICRE.COM>
Subject: RE: SCBD
Tony and Fellow Sub-Committee Members,
I didn’t hear anything back from Tara Devine but did get some feedback from a close friend who works at the Tribune Real Estate Group (property assets from the Los Angeles Times and other Tribune media entities) who knows Taylor personally. He says Taylor is the real deal and that his ambition is sincere and reliable in his estimate.
….
-Ben
Got it, committee? Taylor Bazley is the real deal! There’s an epitaph for you, innit? If only someone would say something nice like that about me! Maybe I’d be working for a BID right now too! Oh, and later that day, Tara Devine finally answered him. Well, of course, it was Tara Devine pretending to be someone called “Admin,” which is a well-known favorite game of hers. Basically, she’s way too freaking busy to deal with him:
Subject: Your Call
From: Venice Beach BID <admin@venicebeachbid.com>
Date: 09/12/2018 12:57 PM
To: Ben Besley <bbesley@midwoodid.com>
Tara asked me to let you know that she has a heavily scheduled week + a Board meeting on Friday. She will give you a call late Friday, or you may text her at 310.430.5121 and she may be able to get back to you faster that way.
See that, Taylor Bazley?! Good buddy Tara Devine doesn’t have the time to give your potential employers a quick call-back and a good reference. And you thought you’d be safe asking her to be your reference rather than anyone at your real job at CD11? Bet you anything she told Mike Bonin first chance! I mean, if he’ll even speak to her any more.
So that’s the story of how Taylor Bazley applied to be the executive director of the Studio City BID! And we, the public, still don’t know what happened if anything did! But eventually we’ll know. Stay tuned for the very-soon-upcoming next episode of the SCBID’s hiring process starring Ms. Vicki Freaking Nussbaum!
Oh, and as promised, here’s a transcription of the job announcement. Maybe you’re qualified and want to apply? Tell ’em we sent you!
Job Title: Executive Director. Reports to the President and the Full Board.
Job Location; CBS Studio Lot – 4024 Radford Ave., Studio City, Ca.
Responsibilities and Duties: This is a full-time position with paid vacation.
Be responsive to all City requirements for BID’S. We are a Property Owner BID. You will manage the daily operations and administrate the Studio City Business District. You will be responsible in creating and overseeing our Management District Plan, which is already written. It will dictate the recurring services which must be performed by the contractors hired. You may also create new programs that benefit the BID through marketing.
Maintain good contact with all our members.
Updating all our members through both land mail and digital use of our website. You will need to coordinate street work, negotiate contracts, send out RFP’s, oversee our Security team and plan two major Tree and Palm tree trimmings yearly.
Be creative and always be thinking of ways to improve our services.
You must be self-motivated and be able to work without direct supervision.
You will be given an Executive assistant and office manager. You should be knowledgeable with California Employment Laws. You will be issuing Payroll.
You must know: Word, Microsoft, Mac, Quicken, Excel and be able to develop budgets and should have good writing skills.
Salary: Is negotiable and Commensurate with experience. You must have Management/Supervisor experience, be computer proficient and have a valid Driver’s License.
If you meet the requirements and have an interest, please email your Resume for more information to: John@thescbd.com .
We are looking to fill this position not later than the end of August, 2018.
John Walker
Executive Director
Studio City Business District
4024 Radford Ave, Edit 2, Suite 8
Studio City, Ca 91604
Ofc: 818.655.5377
Fax: 818.655.8327
Image of Taylor Bazley is ©2018 MichaelKohlhaas.Org and you can see the seed that grew the plant on which the flower bloomed by clicking right here!
- A move of such unheralded proportions, so very weird, that I felt moved to create a commemorative coffee mug in honor of the occasion. Buy yours today! It’s selling like those things the kids like to pour syrup on at Norm’s that writers will often mention as a point of comparison for things that are selling as well as syrup-soakers. Know what I mean? I already sold one! Which is infinity percent more than most of my mugs sell!
- It seems that our old friend Dr. John Walker Ph.D. actually earned a doctorate in some kind of psychology at one time, although obviously he’s not a real doctor! If anyone knows where he earned this Ph.D. I’d be interested to hear about it. There’s zero information on Google Scholar e.g. and nothing on Worldcat either.
- Where she specializes in aggressively bone-headed Humistonian CPRA obstructionism of the very sort that leaves Andrew Thomas and the freaking Westwood Village BIDdies spending about five dollars per page to give me records for free that if they’d just hire a lawyer who cared for their money as much as she cares for her own would point out that it’s be essentially infinity times cheaper to just give me the damn records. You’ll be hearing a lot more about La Nussbaum in the near and far futures.
- It’s pretty clear that she didn’t get the job, though, and I have a pretty good idea of why that is!
- True fact! This Ben Besley fellow is putatively married to an old friend of this blog, namely Sarah McPherson Besley, who used to be a proud minion of Kerry Freaking Morrison over at the HPOA. Long-time readers will best remember Sarah Besley for her bizarre antipathy to Peruvians in Hollywood, her bent-knee minionesque worship of self-styled visionary and zillionaire cult leader Jeanette Sadik-Khan, and, perhaps weirdest of all, her unhinged devotion to the “severed finger” school of urban planning. It was a pleasant surprise to discover that her self-proclaimed husband helps run the Studio City BID and we look forward to many years of mocking the guy on the Internet!
Also Sarah Besley seems to insert herself into the operations of the SCBID from time to time, and more on this very soon in relation to Vicki Nussbaum, so probably we’ll be seeing her around here more regularly again, which is, of course, excellent news! This discovery also explains a long-standing mystery. Many long years ago we all used to sit around the MK.Org secret headquarters wondering just what it was that those Hollywood BIDdies, including Sarah McPherson Besley, were trying to turn Hollywood into. For a long time Universal City was a clear favorite due to its popular-with-tourists recreations of famous city streets but without anything scary, like human activities unrelated to shopping. But now it’s becoming clear that it’s really Studio City!
- You can read this and everything else relevant after the break.
- I mean, as far as I know, anyway. Pix or it didn’t happen!
- This one is a little edited so as not to reveal the subject of my very next post on the subject. But if you’re the kind of BIDdologist who always clicks through to the primary sources you already know what that is!
