The Hollywood Property Owners Alliance arguing with itself about alcohol. The moral? The rich are connoisseurs of fine spirits who appreciate a bargain. The poor are going to jail.Look! The Hollywood Property Owners Alliance loves “affordable” “booze”!! For instance, there’s a new bar in Hollywood:
Whiskey Blu, located at 1714 N. Las Palmas, advertises $2 beer, including Pabst, Budweiser, and Coors as well as $5 shots of Makers Mark, Bullit, Crown, Jim Beam and more. … Whiskey Blu has stepped up to serve those who enjoy a nice, affordable drink.
And look again! Another bar closed down but now it’s back:
For several years, Dillon’s Irish Pub & Grill was a hub for sports fans, tourists and nightlife at the famed intersection of Hollywood and Vine. Known for its $3 beers…
And look again again!
For those who love a little booze and music, Hollywood & Highland’s summer series, Wine & Jazz, does not disappoint!
I said WHAT?! You must be crazy… If you click here you will be able to read the Spring 2014 issue of the Hollywood Entertainment District BID’s newsletter. It’s chock-full of mockable goodness, but today our attention is focused on page 7, which contains an article called Combatting Alcohol Issues.
Out of the many mockable statements in this piece, we have chosen for today’s post this minor claim as our topic: “As Albert Einstein said, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results.”
First of all, Einstein didn’t say this, as anyone with any sense of history would have known immediately.1 Second of all, no matter who said it, it’s not just wrong, but stupidly wrong. Third, it’s a dreadfully overworked cliché. Finally, as with so many too-good-to-be-true misattributions, this is an instance of projection; that is, the author’s alienation2 from her own subconsciously perceived or imagined errors, turning them into imaginary characteristics of some delusionally constructed alterity.3
He that has eyes to see and ears to hear may convince himself that no mortal can keep a secret. If his lips are silent, he chatters with his fingertips; betrayal oozes out of him at every pore.As outlined here, Kerry Morrison, Executive Director of the Hollywood Property Owners Alliance, recently wrote to California State Controller John Chiang asking him to force the State Judicial Council to pay the $42,857.88 that the HPOA claims they are in arrears. Well and good, we suppose, but in her letter, we find this argument:
Finally, though the courthouse has significantly scaled back its operations in the past couple of years, I understand that there are ambitious plans underfoot to centralize the county’s mental health and diversion courts into this facility. As such, with the anticipated crush of people — court employees, jurors, family members, and professionals — coming to Hollywood to do business each day, the services provided by the BID will help to enhance this experience for everyone.
Oh happy day! Imagine that you’re a mom or a dad coming to the Hollywood Courthouse to watch, e.g., your schizophrenic kid get locked up in Atascadero, where he will spend the rest of his natural life pumped full of thorazine and shut away in the restraint room but at least, thanks to the BID, you don’t have to step over a bunch of homeless people drinking Taaka vodka as you make your way into the building. Your experience surely would be enhanced, would it not? After all, what are drunken homeless people if not unwelcome reminders of the likely fate of the schizophrenic kid if he’s ever let out of the snakepit?
“The use and function of a courthouse is not directly impacted or benefited by any of the services provided by the BID.”If you look here you will find correspondence between HPOA Executive Director Kerry Morrison and various people with the California State Judicial Council, which has not paid its assessments since 2009. It’s well worth a read if only to see Kerry’s hapless rhetorical sallies counterposed with the calm authority of the state’s lawyers. Continue reading State Judicial Council Gets “No Benefits From BID,” Refuses to Pay Assessments Since 2009→
Visionaries pouring out of a Kool-Aid drenched TED talk on their way to Hollywood to fix EVERYTHING, especially stuff that ain’t broke.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 Kerry Morrison about 36 minutes before she pronounced Hollywood “not pleasant.”
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.
Monica Yamada, minion of corporate scofflaw CIM Group, reports to HPOA on continuing efforts to criminalize all aspects of the lives of non-rich peopleCIM 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.
Eric Garcetti, thinking about his Starbucks stock and smiling down upon the machinational shenanigans of the city’s BIDsThere’s no question that the BIDs love them some Starbucks. Even the Sunset-Vine “Baby BID” loves its Starbucks. Heck, even the Hollywood Media District, the most thuggish of the Hollywood area BIDs, was caught loving up Starbucks in its macho, cowboy-faced manner on August 6, 2014.
But why do they love Starbucks so much? What is in it for them? It can’t be the coffee. Not even the BID folks are that depraved.
Article from Sunset-Vine BID newsletter showing characteristically hypocritical enthusiasm for work of outlaw tagger Thierry Noir, who used to be arrested by people hired by people like the BID Board of Directors, but who now has a certain cachet due to his acceptance by wealthy art patrons.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→
This picture has nothing to do with anything in this post.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.
Emmanuel Goldstein or the Vine Street Tree Vandal? You decide!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.
