Fashion District BID Board Meeting!! Chunkheaded Semigroomed Yobbo Thuggy-Boy Mark Chatoff Presides Over Kooky White-Privilege-O-Rama As LAPD Honcho Mark Reina Gives Jeansy-Creamsy Update On Pending Poverty-Crime-Associated Newton Division Border Shift Moving FDBID To Zillionaire-Associated Central Division — Meanwhile, Linda Freaking Becker, If You Don’t Have Something To Hide, Like Your Pathetic Performance As BID Renewal Boss, Why Are You So Afraid Of Being Videotaped?! — Also Rena Leddy Appears In Public With No Scarf!!!

March 15, 2018 Mike Leave a comment

Today I rode the good old Metro Line 45 North on Broadway to the freaking Fashion District BID board of directors meeting. And all I have to say to you all, my loyal readers,¹ is that if you enjoy reading this blog, you owe me freaking big time for the crapola I sit through on your behalf just so we can all get a little giggle and a little spine-chill from the weirdly tedious yet terrifying antics regularly to be experienced at these people’s damn meetings.²

So I did record the entire damned meeting, and you can watch it here on YouTube and if you care about freedom at all you can also watch it here on Archive.Org. The whole thing was essentially as tedious as one might expect, with most of the interesting action taking place before the meeting was convened, so I didn’t get it on tape.³

That bit consisted of director Brian Taban, vice president for covert creepy operations at über-shady real estate firm JADE Enterprises,⁴ bitching and moaning to Rena Leddy⁵ like this: “It’s impossible to find a construction lender at reasonable rates Downtown. You can’t find a lender that’s comfortable lending forty, fifty million dollars these days.”⁶

But it wasn’t all a waste of time! Most interestingly, LAPD Super Duper Cop Mark Reina gave a long update on plans to shift the Northern boundary of Newton Division so that the Fashion District will lie entirely within the Central Division. You can watch and listen here, and turn the page for some discussion.⁷ Also, be sure not to miss aggressively splenetic crackpot Linda Becker aggrievedly announcing to the world that the meeting was being recorded⁸ Continue reading Fashion District BID Board Meeting!! Chunkheaded Semigroomed Yobbo Thuggy-Boy Mark Chatoff Presides Over Kooky White-Privilege-O-Rama As LAPD Honcho Mark Reina Gives Jeansy-Creamsy Update On Pending Poverty-Crime-Associated Newton Division Border Shift Moving FDBID To Zillionaire-Associated Central Division — Meanwhile, Linda Freaking Becker, If You Don’t Have Something To Hide, Like Your Pathetic Performance As BID Renewal Boss, Why Are You So Afraid Of Being Videotaped?! — Also Rena Leddy Appears In Public With No Scarf!!! →

Los Angeles City Government

DONEWatch Launched! No Longer Will The City Of Los Angeles Be Allowed To Manipulate And Marginalize Neighborhood Councils Unscrutinized — “The Time Has Come to Watch the Watchers!”

March 7, 2018 Mike Leave a comment

Anyone who reads this blog regularly knows that the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment, the City agency that exists seemingly only to boss about Neighborhood Councils, although no one really knows whether or not they have the authority to do that, is pretty much the embodiment of evil.¹ Just look at our tag archive for Grayce Liu to see the pernicious role these people played in the Skid Row Neighborhood Council debacle.

Grayce Liu was at the forefront of the mishandling of the SRNC appeal process, she played a major role in the use of online voting to torpedo the SRNC election, and so on. And it’s not all about Skid Row. DONE has been involved in controversy after controversy, all of them relating to their habit of undermining the power, such as it is, of the City’s neighborhood councils. And to date they have been able to do this in a fairly covert manner. No one has really been paying much attention.

Well, those days are done. Yesterday a group of citizens announced the launch of a new watchdog group known as DONEWatch! They also have a Facebook page!! If you care about the fate of our neighborhood council system, or the functionality of our City government, or just about minor tangential issues like the rule of law in a free society, you should check this out! Turn the page for a stirring quote on the mission of this brave devoted band!
Continue reading DONEWatch Launched! No Longer Will The City Of Los Angeles Be Allowed To Manipulate And Marginalize Neighborhood Councils Unscrutinized — “The Time Has Come to Watch the Watchers!” →

Announcements, Skid Row Neighborhood Council

Zillionaires Against Humanity At The Los Angeles Poverty Department Opening On Friday, March 9, At 6 p.m. — Exhibit Of Cartoons From This Blog, The Skid Row Neighborhood Council Formation Committee’s Timeline Of Events, And Video By Linus Shentu

March 6, 2018 Mike 5 Comments

Opening on Friday, March 9 at 6 p.m. at the Los Angeles Poverty Department‘s Skid Row History Museum & Archive see an exhibit of cartoons from this blog, a timeline and documents by General Jeff from the Skid Row Neighborhood Council Formation Committee, and videos by Linus Shentu. The exhibit will run through June 30. Here is the press release, and turn the page for a transcription.
Continue reading Zillionaires Against Humanity At The Los Angeles Poverty Department Opening On Friday, March 9, At 6 p.m. — Exhibit Of Cartoons From This Blog, The Skid Row Neighborhood Council Formation Committee’s Timeline Of Events, And Video By Linus Shentu →

Fashion District BID

Chardonnay-Swilling Scarf Monster Rena Leddy And Her Gang Of Halfwit Henchwomen Discuss How To Market Fashion District Artsy-Shartsitude, Showing How They Subvert The Rule Of Law, Undermine Civil Society, And Betray The Social Compact For Far Less Than 30 Pieces Of Silver — Not To Mention Long-Awaited Proof That Creak-Voiced Marketing Queen Ariana Gomez Is Really Truly Smarter Than Kylie Freaking Jenner!

March 4, 2018 Mike Leave a comment

The other day we wrote about Thursday’s fun-filled¹ meeting of the Fashion District BID‘s most funnest committee ever, which is to say, the Marketing Committee.² Today I have a couple more interesting episodes to present to you!

First, Chardonnay-swilling scarf monster³ Rena Leddy began a little discussion with her gang of half-witted henchwomen, notably Laurie Sale, Laurie Rosen, Linda Becker,⁴ Mark Levy,⁵ and Ariana Gomez, about how to market the arty-shartsy side of the Fashion District. You can watch it here if you have the stomach for it. There’s no transcription after the break, cause really, it’s too inconsequential to bear.

The main thing about it, though, is its absolutely puerile triviality. They’re all like “EEK, there are galleries, let’s promote them! There are murals, OMG!!” BIDs do an awful lot of this kind of jive, where they take the products and activities of actual human beings, bleach them into a kind of blindingly inoffensive white soup, and then natter on about how unique it all is and how they can use it for their branding efforts or whatever.

And that would all be fine, maybe a little irritating or cookie-toss-inducing, as that kind of tin-eared jargonistic verbal outsplorching will be. It would be, that is, if it were all these BIDs were up to. But it’s not all they’re up to. Not even close.
Continue reading Chardonnay-Swilling Scarf Monster Rena Leddy And Her Gang Of Halfwit Henchwomen Discuss How To Market Fashion District Artsy-Shartsitude, Showing How They Subvert The Rule Of Law, Undermine Civil Society, And Betray The Social Compact For Far Less Than 30 Pieces Of Silver — Not To Mention Long-Awaited Proof That Creak-Voiced Marketing Queen Ariana Gomez Is Really Truly Smarter Than Kylie Freaking Jenner! →

Fashion District BID

Oh Snap, You Sap! Generation Gap Crap Map App Flap As BIDdies Yap — Executroid Directrix Rena Leddy And Marketing Creak-Talk Queen Ariana Gomez (Who Dumped Snapchat Before Kylie, She’s That Freaking Smart) Explain To Dumb-As-A-Bag-Of-Kidney-Stones Laurie Sale About Kids These Days — And Rena Leddy Makes Big Brother Look Sane: Proclaims Hate Is Love, Slavery Is Freedom, War Is Peace, Streets Closed To The Public Are Public Space

March 1, 2018 kohlhaas Leave a comment

I mean, we spill an awful lot of electrons around here yammering on about the sheer fuck-witted stupidity of our white supremacist BIDdie friends, but somehow the unmitigated bag-of-kidney-stones level dumbness on display at these people’s meetings still has the power to astonish.¹ Evidence for this claim? Witness, if you will, this recent meeting of the Fashion District BID‘s freaking marketing committee, kindly recorded for your viewing pleasure² by one of our long-time correspondents, the mysterious Mr. Mike.

Most of the meeting consisted, as usual, of creak-voiced FDBID Marketrix Extraordinaire Ariana Gomez³ yammering on about web freaking analytics, affinity freaking groups, in-freaking-fluencers, social freaking media freaking blah-de-freaking-blah-blah-blah, and the usual sort of jive one might expect to be emitted by a bunch of BIDdies all hopped up on managerial jargon and an unshakably delusional sense of the depth, value, and intrinsic rightness of their own objectively bizarro world-view. There were at least a couple of non-coma-inducing episodes as well, though!

First, Fashion District Board of Directors member, part-time executive directrix in her own right, and by far the least brilliant bulb in the metaphorical Fashion District chandelier, the inimitable Ms. Laurie Sale, started a flap about some map app crap and was dealt a slap by the generation gap. Watch and listen here, and turn the page for some mockery and the usual transcription.

Second, Rena Leddy,⁴ who in the past has somehow managed to pass fairly successfully as a sane person, gave up on that whole pointless charade and took a great deal of time out of everyone’s lives to explain how that periodic BID-sponsored black mass known as the Urban Dinner Party celebrates a lack of public space by reserving a public street for a private party, forbidding the public from even entering it without a pricey ticket, and how this somehow turns the closed-off street into public space.⁵ Watch and listen here, and, as above, turn the page for some mockery and the usual transcription.
Continue reading Oh Snap, You Sap! Generation Gap Crap Map App Flap As BIDdies Yap — Executroid Directrix Rena Leddy And Marketing Creak-Talk Queen Ariana Gomez (Who Dumped Snapchat Before Kylie, She’s That Freaking Smart) Explain To Dumb-As-A-Bag-Of-Kidney-Stones Laurie Sale About Kids These Days — And Rena Leddy Makes Big Brother Look Sane: Proclaims Hate Is Love, Slavery Is Freedom, War Is Peace, Streets Closed To The Public Are Public Space →

Business Improvement Districts, Public Records Act Pragmatics

More Eye-Poppingly Implausible Deliberative Process Exemption Claims By Attorney Briggs, BID-Addled Self-Proclaimed 36^th Level Shaolin Black Belt CPRA-Fu Master — Not!

February 28, 2018 Mike Leave a comment

Recently, first on February 8, 2018 and then again on February 17, 2018, I’ve published some sets of emails for which self-proclaimed Hollywood Superlawyer Jeffrey Charles Briggs had at some point in the past claimed were exempt from production via the California Public Records Act due to the half-delusional common law principle known to the zillionaire elite and their minions as the Deliberative Process Exemption.

Both of those sets of documents were collateral fallout from an almost-concluded writ petition I was forced by Briggs’s bizarro intransigence to file against his client, the Hollywood Media District. Today, though, I have yet another set, this batch from the East Hollywood BID. They are also a client of Briggs, moved not only to bizarro intransigence but to a freaking intransigential paradigm shift by Briggs’s newly emboldened stance against simple compliance with the law.¹

There are two quite distinct parts to this story. First, there are the actual emails that Briggs Esq. claimed to be exempt. Along with those goes much more than a modicum of mockery. Second, there’s the story of the CPRA request itself and how Attorney Briggs cannot for the freaking life of him just tell his client to follow the damn law because it’s easier for everyone in the long run. Turn the page for an obsessively detailed discussion of the first part.² Continue reading More Eye-Poppingly Implausible Deliberative Process Exemption Claims By Attorney Briggs, BID-Addled Self-Proclaimed 36^th Level Shaolin Black Belt CPRA-Fu Master — Not! →

Brown Act Pragmatics, Central City East Association

How The Central City East Association Violated The Brown Act Twice In One Meeting On Thursday Morning So I Reported Them To The Los Angeles County District Attorney

February 24, 2018 Mike 1 Comment

As you know, the Central City East Association held a meeting the other day.¹ And a lot of interesting stuff went down. For instance, watch and listen here as Estela Lopez, the voodoo queen of Skid Row herself, explains to the Board that for some reason having to do with the much-discussed trash ordinance, they need to rewrite part of their contract with their street-cleaning contractor Chrysalis. There’s a transcription of the whole discussion after the break, but it’s easy to summarize what happens.

Estela Lopez is all like guys, we gotta redo the contract because reasons and then some random Board member is all like I have a motion because Roberts, and then Mark Shinbane, the Fabulous Freaking Fishmonger himself, is all like I second the motion and let’s vote. Unanimous? Done! The only problem? There’s not a word about it on the damn agenda. And this wasn’t the only instance of this kind of behavior at the meeting.

Just take a look here as freaking Bob Smiland, honcho supremo of Inner City Arts, quintessentially opposite-of-Silas-Lapham paint zillionaire, and unanimously acclaimed most galootish CCEA board member of all freaking time, responds to dictator-for-life Mark Shinbane’s rhetorical question about if there’s anything else before he adjourns the damn meeting by going off on a tangent so freaking tangential that his fellow totalitarian zillionaires were left in dropped-jaw silence as he rambled on about tourist brochures for Skid Row to be left in upscale hotel lobbies and god knows WTF else.² And … you guessed it! Not a word about it on the damn agenda.

And what’s the problem with all this, you may well ask? Why can’t a few good old white supremacist buddies get together on a Thursday morning at ground zero of the homeless crisis in the United States of America and talk about any random crap that pops into their little zillionaire-addled heads? Well, as it happens, it is against the freaking law, that’s why!

Because business improvement districts have voluntarily chosen to benefit from coercively collected assessments, the State Legislature has passed Streets and Highways Code §36612, which makes all these BID boards of directors subject to the Brown Act. The good old Brown Act contains many treasures, and not least amongst these is good old §54954.2(a)(3), which states unequivocally that: “No action or discussion shall be undertaken on any item not appearing on the posted agenda.”

Mark Shinbane, of course, is famous for his criminal ways and he’s no stranger to violating the Brown Act, but this, to the best of my knowledge, is the first time he’s ever done it on camera. Turn the page for a little more evidence, transcriptions of the relevant bits, and, best of all, a copy of the report I sent to the LA County DA this morning turning these creepers in for their criminal ways.
Continue reading How The Central City East Association Violated The Brown Act Twice In One Meeting On Thursday Morning So I Reported Them To The Los Angeles County District Attorney →

Central City East Association, LAPD

MK.Org World Exclusive News Flash!! LAPD Deputy Chief Robert Arcos Announces That He Will Be Applying To Replace Charlie Beck As Chief Of The LAPD

February 22, 2018 Mike Leave a comment

I’m not a reporter, and I don’t seek out news, but once in a while, like the hog in the adage, I stumble across what seems to my amateur sensibilities to be an actual news story. And that’s exactly what happened this morning at the February Board meeting of the Central City East Association when LAPD Deputy Chief Robert Arcos, in response to a characteristically sycophantic question from CCEA Executive Directrix Estela Lopez, announced that he will be applying to replace soon-to-be-retired Charlie Beck as chief of the LAPD.

I recorded the whole meeting,¹ and you can watch the exchange between Estela Lopez and Robert Arcos starting here. You can read a transcription of the important parts after the break.² And remember, you read it here first!
Continue reading MK.Org World Exclusive News Flash!! LAPD Deputy Chief Robert Arcos Announces That He Will Be Applying To Replace Charlie Beck As Chief Of The LAPD →

Business Improvement Districts

Ahahahaha And LOL!!! Ellen Riotto Of The South Park BID Is Now Taking Sensitive Legal Advice From Internet Randoms At This Blog!!!

February 21, 2018 Mike Leave a comment

The Brown Act contains many wonderful treasures, but one of the wonderfullest is to be found at §54954.1, which states unambiguously that:

Any person may request that a copy of the agenda, or a copy of all the documents constituting the agenda packet, of any meeting of a legislative body be mailed to that person. … Upon receipt of the written request, the legislative body or its designee shall cause the requested materials to be mailed at the time the agenda is posted pursuant to Section 54954.2 and 54956 or upon distribution to all, or a majority of all, of the members of a legislative body, whichever occurs first.

I ask many of my BID friends to send me these notifications and their agenda packets. It really seems to piss most of them off.¹ I don’t feel bad for asking BIDs to comply with the law, though. After all, it’s voluntary on their part and they’re making an awful damn lot of money out of it.

So anyway, our friends at the South Park BID are reasonably cooperative about complying with the law. They invited me to sign up for their public mailing list, which I did. It’s an open question as to whether this is compliance, since the law requires notifications to be sent at the time that the board receives them, but this presently seems too minor to quibble over. On the other hand they spout an awful lot of spam through that account, and clearly I shouldn’t be required to sort through the junk just to be able to receive notifications that they’re legally mandated to send. Again, though, this is an argument for another day.

However, it turns out that the South Park BID does distribute packets to its board of directors in advance of the meetings and also that those are not available via the public mailing list. I only found out about this recently, so I wrote to the BID boss ladies and asked them to send them goodies my way!

After some nonsense with them interrogating me mercilessly about which email address I wanted the board packets sent to,² we got all the details ironed out. And after that, my friends, it must follow, as the night the day, that I ended up sending Ellen Riotto some of my sage legal advice and, amazingly, she ended up taking it!³ Read on for the details and a bunch of emails!
Continue reading Ahahahaha And LOL!!! Ellen Riotto Of The South Park BID Is Now Taking Sensitive Legal Advice From Internet Randoms At This Blog!!! →

Business Improvement Districts, Public Records Act Pragmatics

More Hollywood Media District CPRA Exemption Claims Exposed By Court Order As Unmitigated Mendacity — E.G. Laurie Goldman’s City Hall Gossip-Mongering Chittery-Chat To Fellow Board Members Ferris Wehbe And David Freaking Bass About Michael Weinstein, Eric Garcetti, And Little Mitchie O’Farrell Could Not Be Considered Part Of A Deliberative Process Anywhere Outside Of The Feverishly Dizzying Intellect Of Self-Proclaimed Hollywood Superlawyer Jeffrey Charles Briggs

February 17, 2018 Mike Leave a comment

A couple weeks ago I wrote about an email that self-proclaimed Hollywood superlawyer Jeffrey Charles Briggs had released to me in response to a CPRA request but later claimed that it was exempt from release as a result of his having solemnly intoned the words “deliberative process” three times while standing on his hands naked at a crossroads at midnight on the Summer Solstice, which is about the level to which the CPRA has descended in this fair City in these latter days.

I mentioned at that point that he and his infernal client, the Hollywood Media District Property Owners Association, had been ordered by the Hon. Mary Strobel to hand over a whole passel of other emails which they’d claimed were exempt for various reasons.¹ So finally I received these emails from le super-avocat de Hollywood lui-même, and now you can read them too!

For extra behind-the-scenes CPRA thrills, compare them to Jeffrey Charles Briggs’s summaries and aggressively hallucinated exemption claims in the declaration and log he filed with the court. And turn the page for a detailed analysis in a couple of cases of just how deeply, arrogantly nonsensical these exemption claims are revealed to be once we can compare them with the actual emails.
Continue reading More Hollywood Media District CPRA Exemption Claims Exposed By Court Order As Unmitigated Mendacity — E.G. Laurie Goldman’s City Hall Gossip-Mongering Chittery-Chat To Fellow Board Members Ferris Wehbe And David Freaking Bass About Michael Weinstein, Eric Garcetti, And Little Mitchie O’Farrell Could Not Be Considered Part Of A Deliberative Process Anywhere Outside Of The Feverishly Dizzying Intellect Of Self-Proclaimed Hollywood Superlawyer Jeffrey Charles Briggs →