Tag Archives: Cahuenga Boulevard

Mitch O’Farrell Introduced A Motion To Put A Homeless Shelter In The Hollywood Recreation Center At Lexington And Cole — Heroic Activist Org KTown For All Rightly Wonders If This Will Lead To Intensified Enforcement Of Anti-Homeless Laws Around The Park — Which Seems Likely To Me Given CD13’s Appalling Deference To The Well-Organized Unhinged Local NIMBY Psychopaths — Who Would Have To Have Been Placated Before The Motion — This Klown Kar Krew Includes Kanye Producer Anthony Kilhoffer — Who Threatened Sean Starkey With Vigilante Action If The City Didn’t Get Rid Of The Unhoused Human Beings — “If it’s not handled in a week I’ll go through [throw] them out myself”

October 8, 2020 Mike Leave a comment

The Los Angeles City Council Homelessness and Poverty Committee met today, October 8, 2020 and considered, among other things, a Mitch O’Farrell motion to use the Hollywood Recreation Center as interim housing for the homeless. The incomparable Ktown for All livetweeted the meeting and raised the possibility that O’Farrell would use such housing as an excuse for enhanced enforcement of anti-homeless laws in the vicinity.

This is not a baseless fear. Councilmembers universally try to gain the approval of unhinged anti-shelter housedwellers by promising intensified criminalization of homelessness. O’Farrell did precisely that in 2018 with the Hollywood Bridge Housing project, for instance.

Also, the Hollywood Rec center is gang turf, claimed by a particularly violent crew of absolutely genocidal NIMBYs who continually threaten to attack homeless encampments near the park. This deranged mob is led by weirdo Kanye West producer Anthony Kilhoffer, who owns a rental property at 1149 Cole Avenue, directly across the street from the Rec Center.
Continue reading Mitch O’Farrell Introduced A Motion To Put A Homeless Shelter In The Hollywood Recreation Center At Lexington And Cole — Heroic Activist Org KTown For All Rightly Wonders If This Will Lead To Intensified Enforcement Of Anti-Homeless Laws Around The Park — Which Seems Likely To Me Given CD13’s Appalling Deference To The Well-Organized Unhinged Local NIMBY Psychopaths — Who Would Have To Have Been Placated Before The Motion — This Klown Kar Krew Includes Kanye Producer Anthony Kilhoffer — Who Threatened Sean Starkey With Vigilante Action If The City Didn’t Get Rid Of The Unhoused Human Beings — “If it’s not handled in a week I’ll go through [throw] them out myself” →

CD13, Homeless Issues

Grammy Award Winning Housedwelling Kanye Album Producing Hollywood Landlord Anthony Kilhoffer And His Delusional Demented Psychopathic Anti-Homeless Rants — Addressed Mostly To Mitch O’Farrell’s Hollywood Minion Dan Halden — Who Listened Sympathetically — And Set Up Meetings For Kilhoffer With Himself — And Neighborhood Prosecutor Steve Houchin — And Supreme Hollywood Cop Commander Cory Palka — And Neighborhood Council People — And So On — Which Goes To Show That Being An Unhinged Lunatic Isn’t A Bar To Being Taken Seriously By The City Of Los Angeles About Homeless Policy — Not If You’re A Housedwelling Property Owner It’s Not — And Six Months Of Kilhoffer’s Screeching Produced A Sweep — And The Encampment Was Back In Less Than Three Months — And The Cycle Begins Again

April 27, 2019 Mike Leave a comment

One of the perennially interesting unsolved questions in the theory of Los Angeles¹ is who gets to meet with City officials to express their concerns and how and why they do. Why is it that some people have to rant and wave puppets during open public comment while councilmembers ignore them as they fool with their phones playing candy crush or swiping right on their staffies while others get all the face time they ask for, monthly breakfasts with the field staff, meetings, coffee dates, and so on? As with many such questions I certainly have my suspicions about the answer, but evidence has been hard to come by.

Leaving aside the case of zillionaires, who obviously get to meet just because they’re zillionaires, there was this one interesting episode from 2016 where scumbag cat-kicking K-Town slumlord Bryan Kim offered to donate a lot of money to Mitch O’Farrell for having arranged an encampment sweep and then wanted to meet with El Mitch and El Mitch’s consigliere Marisol Rodriguez was all like is he respectful because if so maybe a meeting would be a good idea because it would create the impression that Mitch cares about his constituents.²

This gave me the feeling that in order to meet with these people, in order to have them take one’s concerns seriously, it was at least necessary to be willing to observe some social boundaries, willing to play along, to take a seat at the table, to have concerns the addressing of which would in some way create some direct or indirect political advantage for the council office. This would be disconcerting but, I guess, understandable given the incentives under which City electeds labor.

However, I just recently obtained a string of emails between O’Farrell flunky slash Hollywood button man Dan Halden and a couple of really angry, really unhinged housedwellers which pretty much shoots that theory all to hell. These housedwellers, who are, incidentally, famed Grammy-winning Kanye producer Anthony Kilhoffer and his wife Amy Taylor, want some homeless human beings scraped off the sidewalks on Cole Avenue between Lexington and Santa Monica Boulevard in order to increase the value of their rental property and to soothe their offended aesthetic sensibilities.

Interestingly, once Taylor hears that Dan Halden is going to deal with the matter, she’s very careful to reassure him that she’s a loving human being. This is a super-common trope in this genre. I love all mankind, but I’m scared, so morality no longer applies:

I want you to understand that I empathize with the issues regarding those who cannot afford homes/shelters in Los Angeles. We are not heartless nor.are we blind to the adversities facing low income individuals in these times. But when it becomes an issue of safety, our children’s play spaces, and sanitation -then we need to act quickly and aggressively.

Kilhoffer is not respectful, he’s not willing to play along, he’s not even freaking coherent. He rants about piss, shit, drugs, pimps, how the City encourages encampments in order to drive down property values so they can “redevelop” his property. He insults Mitch O’Farrell’s attention to eliminating Columbus Day in Los Angeles.³ He insists that the people who are upsetting him aren’t even “real” homeless people, whatever that means and they’re not “respectful” like homeless people used to be a few years ago.

But Halden doesn’t ignore Kilhoffer, he doesn’t make cracks about him to his colleagues,⁴ he doesn’t even tell the guy to calm down and stop making up stories about prostitution rings being run out of tents on the sidewalk. No, he doesn’t do any of that. Instead he talks to the guy on the phone, he introduces the guy to neighborhood prosecutor Steve Houchin and various luminaries from the local Neighborhood Council, he arranges phone calls between the guy and supreme Hollywood cop Commander Cory Palka, and so on.

Most upsetting of all, Halden treats Kilhoffer as if he’s sane. He validates his psychotic concerns as if his ranting makes any freaking sense whatsoever, has any connection, however remote, with actual objective reality. It does not. Kilhoffer’s unhinged anger has obviously driven him to a place almost beyond moral judgment. He’s not competent to stand trial.⁵ Shunning is almost the only adequate response.⁶ On the other hand, Halden’s behavior is despicable beyond words and most certainly not beyond moral judgment.

Halden is a professional, his job is ostensibly to serve the people of the City rather than to single out angry dangerous lunatics like Anthony Kilhoffer for special attention and care, to amplify their psychosis and use it to guide policy. We don’t entrust him and his boss and the rest of their damnable ilk with our vast municipal power so they can use it against helpless human beings at the direction of demented psychopaths like Anthony Kilhoffer. He ought to be ashamed of himself, although experience has shown that whether or not he is his behavior won’t be affected by it.

Finally, after six months of Kilhoffer’s abuse and lunatic ravings, Halden finally actually arranges for a sweep of the encampment. In case you were wondering, that’s how encampment sweeps get scheduled in Los Angeles. Oh, and two months later the encampment was back and, I guess, the whole cycle begins again. And what’s the point? I have no idea.⁷

And, as I said, this episode leaves me utterly without a theory as to who gets these people’s time, in whom they invest their resources, what constituent concerns catch their attention. Anyway, turn the page for a transcription of selections from this utterly off the chain email conversation.
Continue reading Grammy Award Winning Housedwelling Kanye Album Producing Hollywood Landlord Anthony Kilhoffer And His Delusional Demented Psychopathic Anti-Homeless Rants — Addressed Mostly To Mitch O’Farrell’s Hollywood Minion Dan Halden — Who Listened Sympathetically — And Set Up Meetings For Kilhoffer With Himself — And Neighborhood Prosecutor Steve Houchin — And Supreme Hollywood Cop Commander Cory Palka — And Neighborhood Council People — And So On — Which Goes To Show That Being An Unhinged Lunatic Isn’t A Bar To Being Taken Seriously By The City Of Los Angeles About Homeless Policy — Not If You’re A Housedwelling Property Owner It’s Not — And Six Months Of Kilhoffer’s Screeching Produced A Sweep — And The Encampment Was Back In Less Than Three Months — And The Cycle Begins Again →

CD13, Homeless Issues, Los Angeles City Government

How I Went To The Bureau Of Engineering To Check On Permits For Anti-Homeless Planters On Cahuenga Boulevard — And Discovered That There Were No Freaking Permits — And Not Only That But The Man Who Helped Me Said That Planters Aren’t The Kind Of Thing They Issue Permits For Anyway

April 4, 2019 Mike 3 Comments

Remember those infernal anti-homeless planters that are appearing on our sidewalks across the City from Venice out to Hollywood and beyond? Well, the Los Angeles Municipal Code is very, very clear about private people installing stuff on the damn sidewalk. It is required to get a permit before the installation goes in. This requirement is found at LAMC 62.118.2.

And it turns out that the existence of such a permit, called an R-permit, is completely a matter of public record. So I determined to check out the legality of the four arrays of planters on Lillan Way and Cahuenga Boulevard that I wrote about on Twitter at the end of February. Last week, mislead by the damn internet, I went to the Public Works Building at 12th and Broadway, but that turned out to be totally the wrong place.

The people there were really helpful, though, and they told me the department I wanted was at 201 N. Figueroa. I didn’t have time that day to continue the journey, but this morning I did. I found the right office and talked to two really helpful people, both of whom confirmed that none of these planters had permits, and that therefore none of them were legal.

Here’s a list of the addresses with illegal planters, and the next stop is the Bureau of Street Services to try to get an investigator out there. Also, read on for a description of the exact steps I took to check on permits, so you can do it too. Note that the relevant code section, LAMC 62.45, requires permits for fences, too. So you can check these out if you’re interested.

• 6350 Santa Monica Blvd. — NO PERMIT — ILLEGAL!
• 1000 N. Cahuenga Blvd. — NO PERMIT — ILLEGAL!
• 720 N. Cahuenga Blvd. — NO PERMIT — ILLEGAL!
• 706 N. Cahuenga Blvd. — NO PERMIT — ILLEGAL!
Continue reading How I Went To The Bureau Of Engineering To Check On Permits For Anti-Homeless Planters On Cahuenga Boulevard — And Discovered That There Were No Freaking Permits — And Not Only That But The Man Who Helped Me Said That Planters Aren’t The Kind Of Thing They Issue Permits For Anyway →

CD13, Homeless Issues

Emails From CD13 Reveal Identities Of People Who Installed Anti-Homeless Planters In Hollywood Along Cahuenga Blvd And Lillian Way — And Their Absolutely Appalling Conversations About — For Instance — Denying Homeless People Food To Encourage Them To Move — So Far There’s No Evidence That CD13 Was Directly Complicit — But They Sure Didn’t Do Anything To Stop Them — And Hollywood SLO Eddie Guerra — The Illegal Donation Solicitor — Certainly Was Complicit — Eddie Guerra: “Unfortunately We Are In The Displacement Business” — Eddie Guerra: “[Homeless Displacement] Is Too Sensitive To Discuss Over Email.” — Eddie Guerra: “Power Washing Doesn’t Chase Away Homeless, It Just Makes The Sidewalks Cleaner And They Like It!”

March 13, 2019 Mike 1 Comment

A quintessential slogan of my mother’s generation of feminists is that the personal is political. And this is as true and as profound as it ever was. But it’s also worth remembering that the political is personal. The powers of government are tools, weapons, wielded by individual human beings making daily conscious choices to use these public resources to further their personal goals, no matter how much they want to pretend otherwise, that they’re doing the will of the people or some other abominable abstraction.

And one of the things I do here at MK.Org is to expose these choicemakers, to smoke them out of the holes in which they huddle, all carefully camouflaged round with weighty principles and abstract whatnot, to reveal the little men crouching behind those shimmering curtains.⁸ This project is viable because, well, you know all that bad stuff that “the City of Los Angeles” does? It’s all being done by individual people, mostly organized via email, and therefore subject to the California Public Records Act.

And one of these bad things that these privilege-addled sociopaths do is to install illegal and appalling planters and fences on our public sidewalks so that there’s no room for tents. They’ve done this in Venice, they’re doing it in Koreatown, and they’re doing it in Hollywood as well. So I asked my good friends at CD13⁹ if they could give me all their emails about these Hollywood ones and, today, they gave me a bunch!¹⁰ You can find them all here on Archive.Org, along with a bunch of pictures I took of the planters.¹¹

One of the things we learn from these emails is that the people who attack homeless residents of our streets by installing these antisocial planters do it for really stupid reasons. For instance, Jennifer Mullen of Quixote Studios just doesn’t like the smell of marijuana, at least not if homeless people are smoking it. She thinks it gives customers the wrong impression of her business. Her email address is jenniferm@quixote.com.

And Andrea Kim of Lucky Scent, located at 726 N. Cahuenga Blvd 90038, doesn’t like the fact that homeless people own bikes and sometimes ask people for money. Even people who arrive in Ubers! Her colleagues Adam Eastwood and Franco Wright agree with her that this is intolerable behavior. Their email addresses are, respectively, andrea@luckyscent.com, adam@luckyscent.com, and franco@luckyscent.com.

As for Abbey Jackloski of the Hollywood Production Center, well, she doesn’t even feel like she needs to give reasons for her hatred of the homeless residents of Lillian Way.¹² She just tells the thoroughly corrupt LAPD officer Eddie Guerra that “that would be amazing” if he could just get rid of them so they can install more planters. Her email address is abbey@hollywoodpc.com.

And last but in no way at all least we have the freakishly hip post-creatives¹³ at HQ Creative Office Freaking Space, who own this rusty space alien at 720 N. Cahuenga Blvd. And they also don’t need a reason. Their in-house sorceress of hipness, Na’ama Termechi, sends an email to disgraced SLO Eddie Guerra and is all like “Homeless exist. Squelch them, please.” And he does and says put in some plants when they’re gone and then Termechi and her conspirators put in the meanest, rustiest, horriblest appropriators of public space imaginable, as pictured at the top of the post. Her email address is naama@hqdevelopment.net.

But none of that nonsense is as interesting as this months-long email conversation¹⁴ between LAPD officer Eddie Guerra and a bunch of people who own property along Cahuenga Blvd and Lillian way north of Melrose and south of Santa Monica Blvd. He tells them to put in planters, he tells them how to put them in, and off they go, talking about getting donations from local nurseries and pushing homeless people away to somewhere else.
Continue reading Emails From CD13 Reveal Identities Of People Who Installed Anti-Homeless Planters In Hollywood Along Cahuenga Blvd And Lillian Way — And Their Absolutely Appalling Conversations About — For Instance — Denying Homeless People Food To Encourage Them To Move — So Far There’s No Evidence That CD13 Was Directly Complicit — But They Sure Didn’t Do Anything To Stop Them — And Hollywood SLO Eddie Guerra — The Illegal Donation Solicitor — Certainly Was Complicit — Eddie Guerra: “Unfortunately We Are In The Displacement Business” — Eddie Guerra: “[Homeless Displacement] Is Too Sensitive To Discuss Over Email.” — Eddie Guerra: “Power Washing Doesn’t Chase Away Homeless, It Just Makes The Sidewalks Cleaner And They Like It!” →

Los Angeles City Council, Street Vending

The City Council Seems To Have Lost Its Grip On Reality With Its Latest Motions On Street Vending — They Want To Keep All Previously Proposed Exclusionary Zones But Change Justification From “Zillionaires Asked For It” To “Objective Health, Safety, Or Welfare Concerns” — And Paul Koretz — Who Evidently Doesn’t Believe That Words Have Meaning — Wants To Exclude A Bunch Of BIDs On The Same Implausible Grounds — This Is Obviously Going To End Up In Court

November 1, 2018 Mike Leave a comment

As you no doubt know, the City of Los Angeles has been arguing about legalizing street vending for years in the face of fiercely unhinged opposition to the very idea from business improvement districts and other organized gangs of zillionaire thugs. But then the whole debate was mooted by a lightning strike from Sacramento in the form of Ricardo Lara’s SB-946, signed into law by Jerry Brown in September, which imposed a set of really stringent restrictions on the form that municipal street vending regulation can take. And not surprisingly, pretty much every dirty trick that the BIDs and their buddies forced into our City’s proposal was banned by Lara’s bill.

In particular, the BIDdies had managed to get the Council to agree that street vending could be banned in any neighborhood in Los Angeles merely because their councilmember asked for it. This serves BIDdies well, of course, because their repsters will do whatever it is that they ask in order to keep the firehose of campaign contributions turned up to eleven. By the end there they’d managed to enshrine such indefensible no-vending zones as Hollywood Boulevard and recommend that BIDs should be able to charge vendors for the privilege of operating on public streets.¹⁵

But this nonsense was switched right off by Lara’s bill, which states unequivocally that:

A local authority shall not require a sidewalk vendor to operate within specific parts of the public right-of-way, except when that restriction is directly related to objective health, safety, or welfare concerns.

And right after the bill was signed it appeared as though our esteemed City Council was taking this matter seriously. They passed a motion ordering the City Attorney to draft an ordinance that would comply with Lara’s law. But such sporadic spurts of sanity swiftly scatter around here.

And thus it wasn’t really a surprise to hear renowned bigamist and CD9 repster Curren Price on the radio yesterday talking about how Council would be able to keep all the previously proposed no-vending zones and even add more and the only difference would be, according to super-genius Curren Price, that “now we’re going to have to base them on health, safety, and welfare concerns.”¹⁶ And turn the page to read all about the drastically deep dive into the crazy vat revealed by this one little stray comment!
Continue reading The City Council Seems To Have Lost Its Grip On Reality With Its Latest Motions On Street Vending — They Want To Keep All Previously Proposed Exclusionary Zones But Change Justification From “Zillionaires Asked For It” To “Objective Health, Safety, Or Welfare Concerns” — And Paul Koretz — Who Evidently Doesn’t Believe That Words Have Meaning — Wants To Exclude A Bunch Of BIDs On The Same Implausible Grounds — This Is Obviously Going To End Up In Court →

LAPD, Public Records Act Pragmatics

Thousands Of Pages Of 2016 LAPD Emails Shed Light On Hollywood Nightclub Racism And Creepy Cop Tricks — Including Targeted Enforcement Against Minority-Serving Establishments — Sending People “To Jail Before They Commit Crimes” — Explicit Targeting Of Putatively Chronic Offenders — Not To Mention Bizarro-World Redaction Policies Which Shed Some Light On The LAPD’s Contempt For The Public Records Act

August 26, 2018 Mike Leave a comment

Friends, cast your minds back to the Spring of 2015! Kerry Morrison’s various BIDs were all in a psychotic tizzy about dark-skinned people coming to Hollywood on the weekends to drink and dance and have some damn fun. Kerry Morrison and her yes-mob started a campaign against the nightclubs on Hollywood Blvd whose patrons were insufficiently lacking in melanin.¹⁷ This led, by the Fall of 2015, to Hollywood’s itchy skritchy little Council-snitchy, the one, the only, Mitch O’Freaking Farrell, starting a high-profile public campaign to shut down every nightspot that made Ms. Kerry Freaking Morrison wrinkle her freaking nose in disdain.

There was some pushback from the club owners in 2016, e.g. from the owner of the Rusty Mullet, whose lawyers played video from this blog at a Council hearing, and the organizers of the #blackhollywoodmatters campaign who, notably, convinced Marqueece Harris-Dawson to vote against the wishes of his smarmy little buddy from CD13 in a committee hearing, although naturally he reversed himself at the full Council vote. But in the usual way of things these minor victories didn’t have much of an effect,¹⁸ and by the end of August 2016 Kerry Morrison was, like Grendel’s momma, sitting around her reeking lair counting her ill-gotten victories on her poisonous and twisted little talons.

Around this time, that is, in August 2016, I filed a public records act request with the LAPD asking for emails related to these matters. And because the LAPD is basically a criminal conspiracy with respect to CPRA and just will not comply with the freaking law, which is why they get sued under the CPRA all the freaking time, it took them two whole years to hand over the goods. But they finally did produce thousands of pages¹⁹ and I recently published the whole pile on Archive.Org for your pleasure and edification.

At this late date, of course, and this was doubtless the City’s intention, the battle for the soul of Hollywood Blvd is pretty much over, with the reprehensible frightening whitening brightening of its nightlife essentially complete. However, history is interesting as well as political science, so I plan to write on these emails from time to time as there’s a lot of really disturbing and important material in there. The texts for today’s sermon come from this set here, and turn the page for the details!
Continue reading Thousands Of Pages Of 2016 LAPD Emails Shed Light On Hollywood Nightclub Racism And Creepy Cop Tricks — Including Targeted Enforcement Against Minority-Serving Establishments — Sending People “To Jail Before They Commit Crimes” — Explicit Targeting Of Putatively Chronic Offenders — Not To Mention Bizarro-World Redaction Policies Which Shed Some Light On The LAPD’s Contempt For The Public Records Act →

Municipal Ethics

Announcing Our New LAMC 49.5.5(A) Project: Peter Zarcone And The HPOA Music Festival Fiasco Provide Raw Material For Our First Experimental Attempt At Seeing What This Law Actually Prohibits

October 12, 2016 Mike Leave a comment

LAMC 49.5.5(A) states, rather succinctly, that:

City officials, agency employees, appointees awaiting confirmation by the City Council, and candidates for elected City office shall not misuse or attempt to misuse their positions or prospective positions to create or attempt to create a private advantage or disadvantage, financial or otherwise, for any person.

Here’s what seems to be required of a City official or employee to violate this law:²⁰

That they misuse their position, where I’m thinking “misuse” means:
- They do something that requires the powers granted to them by virtue of their position and
- their powers were not granted for the purpose of doing that thing.
The misuse creates a private advantage or disadvantage for someone, where I’m thinking “private” means:
- The advantage or disadvantage created does not further public policy goals. E.g. getting arrested creates a disadvantage for the arrestee, but the disadvantage furthers a public goal. Winning a contract through the City’s bidding process advantages the successful bidder, but the advantage furthers a public goal.

The law is enforced by the City Ethics Commission, although it doesn’t seem to have been used much. There is, e.g., this case from 2010 involving a Fire Inspector who charged money for successful inspections. This is the kind of thing one would expect to fall under this statute. However, there is also one high profile case pending right now which doesn’t seem ordinary at all. It seems quite unexpected. In 2014 LAPD Officer Jim Parker was among those who responded to a sex-in-a-car call involving Daniele Watts and her boyfriend. She accused the police of racism and brutality, and Parker anonymously leaked an audio recording of the incident, which exonerated the police. Subsequently, the Ethics Commission issued a public accusation against Parker for violating LAMC 49.5.5(A) on the theory that leaking the confidential audio recording, which he only had access to by virtue of his position, constituted a misuse which created a private advantage for himself.²¹

This is very encouraging. It seems that perhaps the Ethics Commission is willing to at least think about a broad application of this seemingly very broad law. And it’s an interesting thing about laws that no one can actually be sure what they mean, what the range of application is, until they’re repeatedly tested in the courts. Well, that’s not exactly right. If a court decides that people of average intelligence can’t be sure at all what the law actually prohibits or requires, they’re likely to toss it out as unconstitutionally vague. But, I guess, if people don’t know exactly what the law prohibits or requires, but average people could have realized that it potentially prohibits what they’re doing or requires what they’re not doing, then it’s not too vague, even if no one actually did realize those things.²² That’s the space I’m interested in exploring with respect to LAMC 49.5.5(A). And because I’m not interested in philosophical explorations any more I’m going to explore this issue by actually turning people in to the CEC to find out what happens, beginning with our old friend, Peter Zarcone. You can read some details after the break, and even get your very own copy of the complaint I sent the Ethics Commission the other day.
Continue reading Announcing Our New LAMC 49.5.5(A) Project: Peter Zarcone And The HPOA Music Festival Fiasco Provide Raw Material For Our First Experimental Attempt At Seeing What This Law Actually Prohibits →

Business Improvement Districts

Crime Does Pay At City Hall: Anti-RV Resolution Introduced In Council This Morning At Behest of Media District BID Director Lisa Schechter, Acting in Apparent Violation of Her Post-Employment Lobbying Ban

August 30, 2016 Mike Leave a comment

RVs on Lillian Way between Santa Monica Blvd and Melrose Avenue

This morning, CD13 Councilmember Mitch O’Farrell introduced a resolution seeking to impose restrictions on parking oversized vehicles in a semi-industrialized sliver of the Hollywood Media District BID located roughly between Cole Avenue and Vine Street west to east and Santa Monica Boulevard and Melrose Avenue north to south. There is a never-ending flow of these seemingly innocuous items in the agendas of our esteemed Council, but I just happen to know an awful lot about the backstory to this one, which is anything but innocuous, actually, and is the subject of today’s post.

The Media District BID is particularly attractive to people living in RVs because it’s industrialized, so no night-time neighbors to annoy, and it’s close to the center of Hollywood. Especially on Lillian Way and its cross streets, Romaine, Willoughby, and Waring, there has been a thriving but quiet community of RV-dwellers for years on end. But the Media District BID hates it. They just can’t deal with it. For instance, see this email chain from March 2015 where Hollywood cop Julie Nony discusses how to get rid of them with erstwhile Media District BID director Steven Whiddon and a bunch of overprivileged proprietors who don’t understand the concept of public space. But, probably not surprisingly, Steven Whiddon was unable to orchestrate any lasting action.

So enter Lisa Schechter, employed by erstwhile CD4 rep Tom LaBonge until June 30, 2015. Sometime between then and October 2015 she was hired by the Media District to replace the departed but unlamented Whiddon. Very soon after that, in fact on November 5, 2015, Schechter and current Media District Board President Laurie Goldman met with O’Farrell’s Hollywood Field Deputy, Daniel Halden. Dan was kind enough to supply me with a copy of his notes from that meeting, wherein (on the second page) one can read the portentous words: “Oversized vehicles Resolution — MAP.” There’s no question that this meeting between Halden, Goldman, and Schechter, is the genesis of the resolution introduced this morning by Mitch O’Farrell.
Continue reading →

Hollywood Property Owners Alliance, Hypocrisy

Peter Zarcone and Kerry Morrison Conspire Not To Enforce CUP Conditions Against BID-Approved Venues for November 2015 BID-Sponsored Music Festival In Stark Hypocritical Contrast To Their Overzealous Hyperenforcement Against Minority-Serving Venues in Hollywood

August 24, 2016 Mike Leave a comment

A newly shaven Peter Zarcone in April 2015. — A newly shaven Peter Zarcone in April 2015 just as his joint vendetta with the BIDs against nightclubs in Hollywood took off.

Recall that in April 2015 the two HPOA BIDs, the LAPD, and the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce revealed an ongoing conspiracy to shut down minority-serving entertainment venues in Hollywood. Their favored technique for doing this is hyperenforcement of Conditional Use Permits (CUPs). These documents contain numerous restrictions on the operations of bars, restaurants, and so on. Violating these conditions while operating is actually a crime, and owners and employees of venues can be arrested for doing so. This actually happens, e.g. in the shameful case of the Rusty Mullet. Keep that in mind. The LAPD can physically arrest restaurant employees for violations of the CUP. It can also shut the venue down immediately if the CUP is being violated.

Now, in November 2015, eight months after the BID and Zarcone began targeting nightclubs and bars that they didn’t like,²³ the Hollywood Property Owners Alliance sponsored a music festival centered around Cahuenga Boulevard between Hollywood and Selma, notably the most caucasian micro-neighborhood in Hollywood-nightlife-land. Thus, on September 9, 2015, Kerry Morrison wrote to LAPD and CD13:

This festival is intended to present a neighborhood “night-life” experience in Hollywood. We are trying to change the image of Hollywood by celebrating the authentic music and artistic options that are here. As such, the BID is “curating” over four days/nights dozens of different musical experiences, acts, pop-up art shows, comedy, etc — and inviting the public in to experience Hollywood as a walkable neighborhood. … The activity is largely going to be centered around Selma and Cahuenga — very little will happen on Hollywood Blvd.

By the way, this statement is full of dog whistles. Note the contrast between putatively authentic music and whatever kind of music they play on Hollywood Blvd. (hint: white:authentic :: ??:Hollywood Blvd. music) Note the scare quotes around “night-life,” and so on. But that’s not all:
Continue reading Peter Zarcone and Kerry Morrison Conspire Not To Enforce CUP Conditions Against BID-Approved Venues for November 2015 BID-Sponsored Music Festival In Stark Hypocritical Contrast To Their Overzealous Hyperenforcement Against Minority-Serving Venues in Hollywood →

Hollywood BID Patrol, The Race Card

BID Patrol Allegedly Uses the Word “Wetback,” Offending Everybody Except Possibly Anti-Peruvian Director Carol Massie and Graffiti-Art-Haters on Staff and Board

August 8, 2016 kohlhaas Leave a comment

This is not exactly like the BID Patrol. They don't carry rifles, for one thing. — This is not exactly like the BID Patrol. They don’t carry rifles, for one thing.

We’ve been writing a lot recently on what strongly appears to be an anti-Latino attitude on the part of the two business improvement districts controlled by Kerry Morrison. The first indication of this was their freakout over the too-dark skin color of local nightclub patrons. After that it turned out that they think that official acknowledgement of Peruvian culture in Hollywood would be “amazingly inappropriate.” Also, both BIDs design their public art contests in such a way that the chance of a Latino artist being selected is significantly lowered, with both the Hollywood Property Owners Alliance and the Central Hollywood Coalition being guilty of this.

So against that background it wasn’t all too surprising to read this 2015 complaint to Kerry Morrison from an anonymous person:
Continue reading BID Patrol Allegedly Uses the Word “Wetback,” Offending Everybody Except Possibly Anti-Peruvian Director Carol Massie and Graffiti-Art-Haters on Staff and Board →