At the November 11, 2014, meeting of the Central Hollywood Coalition, kommisariat of the Sunset-Vine “Baby BID,” there was some discussion of visionaries doing something or another to do with “mobility”6 in Hollywood.2 One of the visionaries mentioned was Janette Sadik-Khan,5 late of the erstwhile nouveau-Napoleonic Michael Bloomberg NYC empire, who now works for Bloomberg-the-corporation spreading Bloombergian bullshit around the world as fast as they can shovel it out and also gives TED talks.1
Bloomberg is one of these pezzonovante self-styled “reformers” like Eli Broad who thinks that because he’s a zillionaire he understands everything. Sadik-Khan is his Charlie McCarthy.4 These people’s zombie clones brought Los Angeles, among countless other horrors, Dr. John Deasy, who finally left this city with a stake through his heart and unsettling thoughts of Mark Berndt’s cookies dancing through his jug-like head. They’re probably up in the hills right now scheming to bring Michelle Rhee in to replace the guy. Of course, this kind of the-wealthy-gonna-fix-everything Kool-Aid is irresistible to the CHC-slash-SV-BID, a group whose entire foundational principle is “rich people must be smarter cause otherwise why is they so rich?” Hence their eagerness to let Sadik-Khan explain it all to you.
CIM Group, widely known for sending out demolition teams in the dark of night to tear shit down in violation of their building permits,1 leading a judge to invalidate those permits after tenants had already moved in to the building, deputes minion Monica Yamada to serve as its representative to the Joint Security Committee of the Hollywood Entertainment District BID and the Sunset-Vine BID.
Outlaw tagger Thierry Noir, who the Sunset-Vine BID claims is known for his illegal graffiti1 but is no longer a criminal as far as we know, recently tagged a building in the Sunset-Vine BID. The BID is generally opposed to outlaw taggers, but manages to work up an awful lot of enthusiasm for this guy tagging this building. And his work is lovely, there’s no doubt. Continue reading Sunset-Vine BID Supports Outlaw Tagger’s Work in Hollywood→
I am pleased to announce the availability of the 2007-2012 and the 2013-2018 contracts between Andrews International Security and the Hollywood Property Owners Alliance as well as the proposal that A/I submitted in 2012 in order to win that most recent contract. These are available here or directly from our static storage here.
The Berlin Wall image is public domain and available here from the lovely openclipart.org.
The Vine Street Tree Vandal was a topic of conversation at the November 11, 2014 meeting of the Sunset-Vine BID as he or she has been for so very long now.1 Sarah Besley reported that, despite her announcement last month of an imminent arrest, the tree vandalism continues.
Just as she did last month, Besley claims that there will be “more to report next time.” You can see even earlier discussion of the Tree Vandal in boffo security king Steve Seyler’s reports to the Joint Security Committee. The investigation has been about to produce results for an awfully long time now. If we hadn’t seen the damage with our own eyes we’d be starting to wonder if the Tree Vandal might not be named Emmanuel Goldstein.
Listen here as Kerry Morrison, at the November 11, 2014, meeting of the Central Hollywood Coalition, bosses of the Sunset-Vine Business Improvement District, discusses what is to be done about the Social Security Administration building on Vine Street above Santa Monica Blvd: Kerry Morrison: So…um…just in terms of solving a couple stakeholders’ requests we, we’ve been getting a lot of…um…complaints about people gathering around the Social Security building on Vine Street. It’s a rather unsecured building after six o’clock…um…and there’s been…if you drive by there you see it, especially on the weekends, people sleeping in the parking lot… Unidentified Interlocutor: And it’s in the BID? Kerry Morrison: And it’s in the BID, on Vine Street, so it’s south of…um…Picture Head… Unidentified Interlocutors: [interrupting] [something unintelligible about the surplus store]
Kerry Morrison: So we met with…um…the owner of the building and the federal police? And general services department and the Social Security folks and our BID security to just do some problem solving on how to harden the target [unintelligible] Kind of a, you know, a lack of mobility of the federal government to really secure that building…uh…[unintelligible] They say they don’t have the money to put in a fence, or and the federal police work Monday through Friday from nine to five and they’re supposed to be the ones who are patrolling that property but they’re off [unintelligible]… So, um, we’re kinda [unintelligible] a little bit frustrated because it’s kinda become a, a bit of a drain on our resources and…um…the owner of the building had a great idea, he would like to reach out to our congressional representatives and maybe they have some pull with the federal bureaucracy. So [unintelligible] reached out to congressman Adam Schiff’s office and immediately they jumped all over it, said we should have been in that meeting too, you know, we can help you with the general services department, so we’re gonna write a letter, kind of outline what our issues are, and see if we get some help with that…
If you read through Security Kahuna Steve Seyler’s reports to the Joint Security Committee of the Hollywood Entertainment District BID and the Sunset-Vine BID you will notice, among many other weirdly inappropriate obsessions displayed by the man in his semi-literate prose, a fixation on the brands of alcohol that his victims are drinking when arrested. When his officers take their trophy pictures of arrestees they hold the open containers in the frame with the brand visible, and Seyler evidently can’t resist giving his opinion. What this has to do with law enforcement we don’t know.
Anyway, Seyler’s bête noire is something called Taaka Vodka. He has effectively criminalized its possession in the BID-occupied areas of Hollywood:1
He’s also obsessed with a brand of vodka called Borski, to the point where he seems overjoyed that it was involved in the BID patrol’s thousandth arrest of 2013:3
Seyler has, like the guy whose hat graces his head in the satirical picture above, evidently inspired his officers to form a mystical cult whose rituals include some kind of idolatry involving Taaka:2 Continue reading Steve Seyler, Vodka Nazi→
Broomfield’s film exposes the fact that the City of Los Angeles allowed a serial killer to operate with impunity for 22 years, murdering untold numbers of women. Neither the LAPD nor the City government took the case seriously because the victims were black women, many prostitutes or drug addicts. This point was made repeatedly and convincingly, both on screen and during the Q&A after the film, by stars Pam Brooks and Margaret Prescod, who has been pressing the LAPD about the killings since 1986, thereby earning the wrath of, among other geniuses, Darryl Gates, our city’s second worst mistake. Gates, in his inimitably idiotic way, called Prescod and her compatriots in the Black Coalition Fighting Back Serial Murders “dummies” for even raising the issue.
Broomfield’s stunning work shows that Prescod and her allies have been right all along, though. The film gives an irrefutable performative demonstration of the fact that the LAPD has never taken this case seriously: In 2009 the LAPD knew of one survivor of the killer’s attacks. In 2014, before Broomfield started filming, that one survivor was still the only one known. But in the course of filming Brooks managed to locate and arrange for Broomfield to interview not just one additional woman who survived the Sleeper’s attacks but four. How is it possible that a serious investigation could leave such major witnesses to be discovered, and not even discovered by the police, four years after a suspect’s arrest?
It’s unconscionable. The City of Los Angeles will never live down the shame of having, through racism and indifference, abandoned dozens or hundreds of its most vulnerable citizens to a cruel thrill-killer (or killers; the true extent of the damage may never be known). It couldn’t have happened without the utter dehumanization of these women, each and every one someone’s child. According to Joshua Kleinfeld of Northwestern University, “in Southern California, police slang in the early 1990s for the murder of drug dealers, gangsters, prostitutes, and other lawbreakers was the vivid and extremely disturbing term, ‘NHI (no humans involved) Homicide.'”2 And once the police and white Los Angeles have dehumanized people to the point that they can be killed without consequence, killers will flourish. Why wouldn’t they? Continue reading Hollywood Property Owners Alliance Promotes Mindset that Aids, Comforts Los-Angeles-Area Serial Killers→