=283.5 ml of actual vodka.
The small bottles that everyone in the BID is so het up about are 200 ml, so we’re talking about 
Continue reading There’s a 98.72% Chance that at Least Two People on the HPOA/CHC Boards of Directors are Really, Really Hypocritical
As of October 2014 the Hollywood Entertainment District BID and the Sunset-Vine BID had made over 600 arrests for drinking in public. Annualized this is over 700 arrests for 2014. By that point they’d made 945 arrests, which we’ll annualize to 1000 for ease of calculation. Thus around 70% of the arrests that BID security makes are for the simple act of drinking alcohol in public. In 2013 the Entertainment district seems to have spent about $1,600,000 on security.1
Thus we can estimate that the BIDs pay about $1,600 per arrest (about $1,120,000 per year) to arrest people for drinking in public. This is around a third of their annual budget and, of course, where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. The BID is really in a tizzy over this. In this issue of their newsletter you can read as Kerry Morrison frets and frets about what to do:
Continue reading Kerry Morrison Frets About the BID’s Public Drinking Problem. We Have the Solution!
After a number of requests and a few lengthy meetings of the MichaelKohlhaas.org ethics committee we have decided to make unredacted copies of Steve Seyler’s reports to the HPOA/CHC Joint Security Committee available to our readers. They are currently available via the menu in the header (direct link here). As we’ve mentioned on a number of occasions, these reports are not pretty. We feel, however, that exposing their ugliness to the world is more important than protecting the already-violated privacy of their subjects.
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!
Ah, but Kerry Morrison doesn’t love it so much.
Continue reading Positions on Cheap/Affordable Alcohol Reveal Hollywood Property Owners Alliance to be Hypocritical, Insane, or (Most LIkely) Both
Marshall’s blatantly biased decision in favor of her cronies at City Hall was reversed unanimously by the 9th circuit and again unanimously by the U.S. Supreme Court, and yet she continued to violate their orders and judicial ethics at every possible point for almost a decade after the big courts remanded the case back to her with a note attached saying roughly: “Dear Consuelo and city of Los Angeles, are you fucking serious?!”
Continue reading Anatomy of a Hustle
Another homeless person by the name of Tyson…big guy [unintelligible] was on the sidewalk. I guess he…eh…he had this attitude that nobody liked him, nobody cared for him [unintelligible] and…um…after I calmed him down I offered him coffee he took it and he was [unintelligible] having a hard time but…[unintelligible]…I saw him three days ago and he said again thank you and he thought nobody cared about him. So he was talking about he wanted…[unintelligible]…so it’s just another example of we’re actually making contact with everybody out there I mean buying him a cup of coffee calm him down a little…
Continue reading John Irigoyen to Sad Homeless Man: Don’t Worry, I Care About You. Now Have Some Coffee and GTFO.
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
But for the sake of argument, we’ll assume that whoever wrote this little newsletter gem is right at least insofar as her own perception of insanity. Now what?
Continue reading By Its Own Definition the Hollywood Property Owners Alliance is Acting Craaaazy!
![Joseph Varet, who "approach[es] life as a kind of experiential art form," in the act of not thinking about how many homeless people per day his gallery will consume.](https://michaelkohlhaas.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/2014.11.20.Joseph.Varet_.at_.HMD_.BID_.BoD_.meeting.png)
Here’s the story. Joseph and his wife, Esther Kim, whose marriage was the subject of a surreally sycophantic New York Times article in 2011,1 moved here from Houston or some other place east of San Bernardino sometime roughly around last week, and started a gallery named after an Ed Ruscha project, Various Small Fires. “After all, these are two people who approach life as a kind of experiential art form.”1 First they ran it out of their big-ass house in Venice2 but more recently moved it to a newly-purchased and renovated building at 812 Highland.
It seems that, according to Joseph, all the best contemporary art galleries in the universe are moving to this neighborhood like a bunch of sheep in the wake of Regen Projects’s 2012 relocation to Highland and Santa Monica. Joseph speaks at length about the impending Weltreisezielmodernenkunstheit of the area, which is about 4 blocks from where the Greater West Hollywood Food Coalition does its nightly mitzvah. The GWHFC is opposed in this by the Media District BID with lawsuits, subversive attempts to outlaw sharing food in public, whining, disgraceful letters to the editor, and probably any number of other shameful tactics. Of course, Joseph, whose wife has “never caught him in a lie,”1 mentions none of this. What, after all, do hunger, suffering, misery, have to do with “developing the district in a positive and sustainable way?” “It’s the damage that we do and never know. It’s the words that we don’t say that scare me so.”3
You can read a complete transcript of Joseph’s remarks after the break. We were going to mock them in detail but our modest abilities can’t even touch the speech’s inherent auto-mock functionality. Read it and weep for your city, Angelenos.
Continue reading Joseph Varet Joins Media District BID Board, Announces Impending Weltreisezielkunstheit of Highland Avenue, Ignores Homeless
But of course, you don’t know what we’re talking about. Let us explain. At their meeting on November 20, 2014, the Hollywood Media District BID expanded the size of its Board of Directors from 17 to 19 members1 because they had two open spots and four applicants for them and why should they choose when they don’t have to? As the Dodo Bird said, “EVERYBODY has won, and all must have prizes.” One of the candidates involved in this board-packing maneuver was a perfectly nice-seeming fellow who was sent over by the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center, on Schrader between Hollywood and Selma, about three blocks east of McCadden.
Continue reading Cap’n John Irigoyen: Think of the Children! But Don’t Worry, Kids Aren’t Frightened by the LA Gay and Lesbian Center
