The Rusty Mullet at Hollywood and Las Palmas. Fabio Conti hates it. Carol Massie hates it. Marty Shelton hates it. Peter Zarcone hates it. The LAPD accused it of murder. Tomorrow the City is holding a hearing on whether to shut it down.Listen, this isn’t a joke. First get a copy of the hearing notice in the matter of the Rusty Mullet, being held at the Zoning Commission tomorrow morning. Then read the LAPD summary:
Los Angeles Police Department arrest report and crime analysis documentation of: multiple violations of Conditional Use Permit conditions including, failure to have an operable electronic age verification device, failure to implement a Designated Driver Program, failure to post mandated hours of operation, excess number of seats, allowance of amplified music to extend beyond the premises, allowance of live amplified music, allowance of dancing, allowance of loitering, and allowance of patrons to queue in line outside the premises; as well as, murder, rapes, aggravated assaults, assault with a deadly weapon, batteries, physical altercations, kidnapping, possession of a weapon, narcotic drug violations, grand theft auto, robberies, burglary, thefts, service of an obviously intoxicated person, failure of security guard to possess valid security guard license, public drunkenness, disorderly conduct, disturbing the peace, vandalism, and violation of State of California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control required operating conditions.
BID Patrol Officer Courtney Kanagi (badge #130) in 2011.A search of the newly released 2013 daily activity logs of the BID Patrol reveals 50 mentions of the Hollywood Farmers’ Market. You can read all of these with links to the logs at the bottom of this post. Now, we have written before about how the BID Patrol only arrests and warns homeless people for violating the abhorrent LAMC 41.18(d). Finally we have conclusive proof that this is true on a massive, previously unsuspected scale, and it comes from the BID Patrol’s own logs.
Here is just one example out of many, many, many. On March 11, 2013 at 11:50 AM, BID Patrol Officers Courtney Kanagi (badge #130) and G. Merkens (badge #112) recorded the following activity:
1150 BACK-UP FB3: FARMER’S MARKET (IVAR/SELMA); INFORMATION BOOTH CALLED RE: A MALE TRANSIENT AGGRESSIVELY PANHANDLING; OFFICERS MET UP WITH THE SECURITY AND FB3; OFFICERS ADVISED MALE OF HIS VIOLATION; COMPLIED BY LEAVING THE AREA WITH NO FURTHER INCIDENT. Mass violations by non-homeless people of LAMC 41.18(d) on Cosmo Street on October 12, 2014 (and every other Sunday) go unaddressed by the BID Patrol.In other words, Kanagi and Merkens were in the Farmers’ Market at 11:50 AM and did not arrest, warn, or even mention the gangs of people who appear every single Sunday and sit on the sidewalk on Cosmo Street north of Selma to eat. But during this same watch they warned 37 (thirty-fricking-seven!) “TRANSIENTS” (their word) outside of the Market for violating LAMC 41.18(d). Three of these warnings took place a mere 15 minutes after Kanagi and Merkens logged their presence in the Market:
1205 CONTACT (3): HOLLYWOOD/CAHUENGA; OFFICERS OBSERVED 3 TRANSIENTS SITTING; ADVISED OF THEIR LAMC VIOLATION; COMPLIED BY STANDING UP AND LEAVING THE AREA WITH NO FURTHER INCIDENT.
Julie Nony and Andrews International security boss Steve Seyler during happier times.Those are actual quotes in the headline. They come from this email chain between bunches of people in the Media District BID, LAPD Hollywood Division Senior Lead Officer Julie Nony, and Dan Halden of CD13. Here’s more of the context, but you’ll have to read the whole thing to believe it. Chie Kobayashi, of yet another incomprehensible new media post-production outfit on Lillian Way between Santa Monica Blvd. and Melrose, wrote to Julie to complain in detail about homeless people. Julie wrote back:
We really need to get every business on the same page so this doesn’t continue to happen. It might seem strange and ugly at first but if you are new to the area and don’t know how things operate, this can get really out of hand. I will be out for the rest of the week, so I can not personally be there. Please call our front desk number if you should need to have a police unit come out (213-972-2971/2972/2973).
And of course call the B.I.D. first to see if they can handle it. The homeless are a lot like kids in a way. If we warn them and there is no follow through (like we did with the encampment) then they will test us and do what they can get away with. I would like to have a meeting with you, Vince Clothing, Red Studios, Milk, School PD, B.I.D., Vine Street Elementary and your neighbors just north of you. And whoever else you can think of. Lets [sic] all get together and share in the responsibility of keeping this area clean. Thank you!
Julie
We’re not sure where to start with this. We might note that it’s probably true that if kids get warned and there’s no follow through then they’ll test limits. But it’s not true because they’re kids, it’s true because they’re human. The instinct for testing limits is responsible for all human progress and is necessary for human survival.1 We might note that if your methods seem “strange and ugly at first…if you are new to the area” then there’s a reasonable chance that they are in fact strange and ugly. And their methods are very strange and very ugly. We’re not even new to the area and we think they’re strange and ugly. Some of us have grandparents who moved to Hollywood in 1908. Some of us have spent more than half a century in and around Hollywood. And yet we think the methods Julie’s talking about are strange and ugly.
The School on 103rd Street by Roland S. Jefferson is a fine political conspiracy novel as well as a stunning roman des riverains1 planted firmly in early 1970s Black Los AngelesToday’s book is The School on 103rd Street, by Los Angeles author and psychiatrist Roland S. Jefferson. It seems reasonable to review it here for two reasons. First because it so vividly evokes the peculiar time and place of early 1970s Los Angeles, a spatiotemporal locality that’s dear to my heart and second because its subject matter, racial politics in Los Angeles (including a vast conspiracy the nature of which I can’t really reveal without spoiling the plot, which is something I’m not willing to do) aligns closely with the focus of this blog.
I’ll move on to the serious matters below, but first, check this description of protagonists Elwin Carter and Sable having an evening out in 1973:The Cyrano building at 13578 Mindanao Way under construction in 1967.They had dinner at Cyrano’s in Marina Del Rey and then went to the Name of the Game on Century Boulevard for some dancing. At midnight they went down to the Lighthouse to hear Gabor Zabo, and, on the way home, they dropped by Shelly’s Mann Hole and caught the last set by Gerald Wilson. Carter had taken the Ferrari, and, although Sable offered no resistance, she didn’t encourage him. From Shelly’s they headed down Highland toward Wilshire…3
Now, I don’t just read novels for Los Angeles geography porn, but I’m always happy to find it, especially when it has restaurants! Cyrano was a “fine dining” or “continental” sort of place, opened early on in Marina Del Rey. Given the character of the Marina in 1973, at the time Elwin and Sable had dinner there the joint was probably full of cocaine, swinging-in-the-worst-sense, disgusting 1970s facial hair, and gelatinous sleaze coating every surface. Advertisement from the Los Angeles Times, December 14, 1969, announcing the grand opening of Cyrano.
The Name of the Game was a dance place in Inglewood at Century and Crenshaw. Here’s how the Los Angeles Sentinel described it on September 2, 1971:
It’s called The Name of The Game, and to many, many persons it’s the name of the place they find attractive and a lively cynosure for a truly good evening of pleasure. Located at 3000 W. Century boulevard, it has music by Dave Holden, and dancing space for frisky feet or those who just love to move and groove. There’s no cover charge, either. The Name of the Game also affords daily luncheon specials, and daily half-price cocktails. So what could be better for the jaded tastes than a visit to The Name of the Game?4
Unfortunately I can’t find a picture of the place. Note also that there was a sensational killing there in 1973. I don’t have space to go into it, but it was well covered in the Sentinel, starting here.11
Next they head off to the Lighthouse, a famous and still-active jazz club in Hermosa Beach which I’d discuss more if I gave even a fraction of a shit about either jazz or Hermosa Beach. Finally, “on the way home,” they head to Shelley’s Manne Hole which, coincidentally, played an important role in my last recommendation, so I won’t belabor it here. However, these two live in Baldwin Hills, meaning that the Manne Hole, at 1608 N. Cahuenga Blvd., is in no sense but the sense that this night should never end on the way home from Hermosa Beach. Ah, youth!
Now, despite my breathless temporogeographical musings, this novel is much more than a travelogue. It’s an immensely important document about the state of racial politics in Los Angeles eight years after the Watts Rebellion, with more than a little relevance for the present day (as well as being a bitchin’ thriller). Read on for details! Continue reading The School on 103rd Street→
The other day I got the urge to read a little more about Thurgood Marshall. The Los Angeles Public Library’s catalog led me to a book by badass civil rights lawyer Jack Greenberg (read it, it’s fabulous: Crusaders in the Courts, although it’s not the book I’m recommending). That led me to look for other books by Greenberg, and thus appeared before me a book called Off the Emery Wheel which, as you can see, was published in 1935 by an outfit in Hollywood called the Cloister Press. Clearly this was a different Jack Greenberg, but nevertheless I thought it’d be interesting to take a look.
The LAPL’s only copy is noncirculating, and, while a trip to the big library downtown is always nice even though it’s not plausible anymore to combine it with a visit to Grand Central Market since the goddamned-hipster-douchebag apocalypse and its associated fourteen dollar “revisionings” of the Egg McMuffin and suchlike nonsense, I didn’t really have time. However, I’ve been spending a lot of time in the stacks at UCLA, working on a historical project which you’ll read about here at some point, I’m sure (and which is at least somewhat related to the Hollywood BIDs, unlike this piece) so I thought I’d check their catalog. Well, Lo! And behold, they own a copy, which I promptly ordered up out of storage.
And what a pleasant little volume to hold this turned out to be! Inscription in UCLA’s copy of Off the Emery WheelI mean, the poetry is abominable (which is why I’m not reproducing any here), but the book itself is an object of desire. And it’s inscribed by the author as well! And note the tidy little logo of the Cloister Press! A little more poking around and I was blessed to lay my hands on a promotional bookmark from the press, which shows that it was formerly located at 1608 Cahuenga Boulevard. The Manne-Hole at 1608 Cahuenga Boulevard as it looked in its primeI already knew about some of the storied history of this building, formerly home to Shelly Manne‘s Manne-hole, the subject of a sidewalk historical marker, but not that there’d been an artsy literary press in there. Continue reading Off the Emery Wheel→
Pla-Boy Liquors at the corner of Yucca Street and Wilcox Avenue, as it appeared on July 30, 2015. On that date, 200 ml bottles of Crystal Palace vodka were on sale for $2.43, which is 22¢ cheaper than in 2014 according to Kerry Morrison.
Today’s post concerns a series of emails between Kerry Morrison and two Hollywood Neighborhood Prosecutors in 2014. These are part of a larger set of emails which we published some time ago. The BID, of course, is paranoiacally hyperphobic about drinking in public by the homeless, even as they celebrate, revel in, and sing hosanna in the highest to the use, misuse, abuse, of alcohol, even in public, when done by the non-homeless population of Hollywood. That’s not news. What is news is the weirdly obsessive length that newly-appointed-in-2014 Hollywood Neighborhood Prosecutor Jackie Lawson turned out to be willing to go to to accomodate Kerry Morrison’s paranoid hyperphobias. There’s a lot of background here, so please bear with us. Andre Quintero, who preceded Jackie Lawson as the Hollywood Neighborhood Prosecutor and is now, amongst other things, the mayor of El Monte. Either he’s not so prone to BID-bootlicking and dereliction of duty as is his successor or else he has the sense not to do it in writing. He’s that’s-for-damn-sure not popular with his city council out there in the Far East, though.
The documented part of our story begins on January 28, 2014,1 with an email from Kerry Morrison to then-Hollywood-Neighborhood-Prosecutor Andre Quintero, inviting him to a BID-sponsored summit meeting the purported motive for which was “[t]o reduce the incidence of daytime public drunkenness in the Hollywood Entertainment Disctrict and Sunset & Vine BID.” In particular, Kerry calls Andre’s attention to item 4, asking that he “maybe … could be prepared to share some background on” “…laws governing alcohol sales and alcohol use.” Note well that there’s no word out of Andre regarding any of this. And the rest of the agenda is worth reading, but there’s nothing there, really, beyond the usual paranoid ravings about panhandlers and public inebriation with which we’re so familiar.
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.
