Apartheid | Michael Kohlhaas dot org

Los Feliz used to be a normal place, and maybe someday it will be again!

Just a quick note to announce a bunch of new materials. Most importantly, the Los Feliz Village BID, in the person of BID boss Rafik Ghazarian, sent me an Excel spreadsheet with mailing addresses for everyone in the BID. Given the months-long, dentaloextractivist-level dramatics created by the City of Los Angeles in the persons of asylum-running lunatics Miranda Paster and Holly Wolcott over e.g. the Venice Beach BID mailing list and the SLAIT BID mailing list,¹ this is a surprising and welcome development. It’s especially laudable given that the Los Feliz Village BID has been the target of at least one significant attempt to destroy it, and, given that it’s a merchant-based BID, and thus required to renew each year, will certainly be so yet again.

I also have tax returns from the creepy little apartheid stronghold in South Central Hollywood known to the world as the Larchmont Village BID, as well as a bunch of assorted jive-ass nonsense from Mr. Mike out in Wilshire Center. Turn the page for links and descriptions.
Continue reading New Documents: Los Feliz Village BID Mailing List, Larchmont Village BID Tax Returns, Wilshire Center BID Tax Returns, Transactions, Bylaws →

Artist Ann Bridges's original submission to the Larchmont Village BID's signal box art contest, showing a later-censored illegal fruit cart. — Larchmont Village BID signal box art contest winner Ann Bridges’s original submission, showing a later-censored illegal fruit cart.

Last Summer we broke the story of the Hollywood Property Owners Alliance’s anti-Latino signal box art contests and of CD13 Councildude Mitch O’Farrell’s willing complicity in this disgraceful episode, along with his stubborn doubling-down through silence in the face of what² seems like some pretty cogent criticism. The story has dropped off the blog, but not off our agenda. The last thing I discovered, but did not write about until now, was that the Google revealed³ that the kooky little backwater BID in Larchmont Village, that old-school Southern California Apartheid throwback⁴ ritz-o-rama neighborhood in South Central Hollywood,⁵ had also held a signal box art contest, and it had also included the very phrase made famous by its ethnic-cleansing big sisters to the North: “No cartoon images or graffiti work of any kind will be considered.”

Well, naturally, I was going to investigate this phenomenon, the point being to find ground zero of this pernicious nonsense,⁶ so on August 6, 2016, I fired off a CPRA request to Heather Duffy Boylston, whose email address is linked to in the BID’s contact form. Wait a while. Crickets. I spent the next couple months firing off more emails to various co-BIDspirators,⁷ making phone calls, leaving voicemails and messages, offering to stop by offices, whatevers, and still…just silence. I asked Miranda Paster to intervene. I asked Holly Wolcott to intervene. Nothing. So finally, even though I hate to spend the money, but who can sit around doing nothing⁸ while zillionaires flaunt their characteristic indifference to truth, justice, and the rule of law, I hired a lawyer to fire off a demand letter. That woke them up, and they sent me a whole bunch of nonsensical irritating junk about their signal box art contest. You can browse through it in the usual places:

And turn the page for the highlights of the contest itself. As always, it’s chock-full of unselfconscious zillionaire weirdness and such-like goodies.
Continue reading How The Racist Cancer Of The HPOA Signal Box Art Contest Rules Spread To The Ritzy Little Apartheid Stronghold of Larchmont Village, Forcing Me To Hire A Lawyer To Pry The Evidence Out Of Their Secretive Grasping Scofflaw Zillionaire Fingers →