This photograph shows that Officer Benjamin Thompson (#39467) of the Hollywood Vice Squad is a mewling, puking liar. Read on for details!A couple weeks ago we wrote about a Zoning Administrator hearing being held for the purpose of revoking the Rusty Mullet’s conditional use permit. Well, the hearing was held on July 28, 2016. As far as we know a determination has not yet been made, but we recently obtained more than five hours of audio from the hearing. You can listen to part I and also part II here. It’s not easy to get through the whole damned thing, which is why you’re lucky to have us! We’ve listened to the whole thing and made clips of some interesting bits. Note that as long as we were haunting City Hall to get this material we also obtained audio from the CUP revocation hearings for the Cosmo Nightclub and the Cashmere, and you can find both of those on this Archive.org page.
Now, long-time readers of this blog will recall that in March 2015 we broke the story that Fabio Conti, Carol Massie, Kerry Morrison, Marty Shelton, and pretty much everyone on the Board of Directors of the Sunset & Vine BID except for Chase Gordon are a bunch of racists who want to shut down every bar on Hollywood Boulevard because they don’t like the skin color of the patrons. So imagine our pleasure at learning that Mike Ayaz, the Rusty Mullet’s lawyer, actually showed our video at the hearing! This was part of the evidence for his position, with which we concur, that the restaurant appears on a hit list of bars being targeted for racist reasons by the BID, the LAPD, and the City Government. You can hear the whole clip here, where he refers to Fabio’s speech as “disturbing video which I would like to play of a quasi-governmental agency that basically…I think I’ll let the video speak for itself.” And speak for itself it does: Fabio Conti, Kerry Morrison, and Carol Massie at a March 2016 meeting of the quasi-governmental agency responsible for the clandestine hit list targeting the Rusty Mullet.
Be sure to catch the audience reaction at the end. It doesn’t make anyone sane happy to hear Fabio Conti channeling Marty Shelton claiming that “the Lindsey Lohans of the world are not hanging out at the Rusty Mullet” with the regulars, who are “decidedly minority, brown and black, and my guess, from a lower economic strata.” These dimwits on the BID are clearly going to regret the day they neglected to listen to their one and only sane Board Member, Chase Gordon, who responded to this bullshit in March 2015 by saying that he didn’t “think that we should be, especially public-facing, going out with the distinction of ‘we don’t want lower economic statuses coming and visiting Hollywood.” Anyway, who can say what will happen, but we here at MK.org are inordinately proud on this beautiful Sunday morning that the citizen journalism of our intrepid correspondent is paying off in this big way. This story is a sleeper, but when it finally makes the papers, it’s going to be huge.
Jittery little psychopath Carol Massie: “These kind of people” (Hollywood nightclub patrons) use drugs, cause “mayhem,” and are catered to by “businesses who don’t really care about anything except that they make a profit.”
Marty Shelton, Board Chairman of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, wants to turn Hollywood into a sundown town. According to Marty, nightclub patrons who are “decidedly minority, brown and black, and my guess, from a lower economic strata,” are “not appealing at all” and you won’t find that a wealthy apartment dweller “from Sunset and Vine was at Janes House hanging with the homies.”
Here’s the backstory: Last weekend a bunch of people from the Sunset-Vine BID and the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce took what they call a “midnight walk” around Hollywood Boulevard. They wander around the Boulevard from midnight until 3 a.m. so they can see how the other half lives in Hollywood. And they don’t like what they see. They don’t like it one bit.
At the March 17th meeting of the Sunset-Vine BID board of directors, Fabiolus Cucina owner Fabio Conti read aloud from an email that Marty sent to the participants describing his reaction. You can watch the relevant segment here, and there’s a transcription after the break. It’s worth reading or hearing the whole thing, because our poor journalistic tools can’t begin to do justice to the offensive craziness to be found therein.
Marty, here’s a newsflash: the city of Los Angeles is “decidedly minority, mostly brown and black.” That’s the way it is here, and the fact that it’s like that in Hollywood at night is a GOOD thing. The fact that it’s NOT like that in Hollywood during the day is the problem. We know it’s too much to ask of the BID, the Chamber, and their minions that they solve this problem, but it’s not too much to ask that they refrain from making it worse by pushing their apartheid policies on our lovely city. If “brown and black” people don’t “mesh with the new high-income residents coming in along with ofc tenants” then let those tenants live somewhere else, like, I don’t know, Minneapolis. Our city is “decidedly minority” and we LIKE it.
After Fabio read aloud this abhorrent piece of racist posturing, jittery little psychopath and owner of multiple Hollywood-area McDonald’s franchises Carol Massie weighed in with another weirdly delusional take on the subject:
Thus spake Carol Massie: You know, one of the problems, I think, and this is from going to security meetings. I think that the patrons do have a lot of money. And they, that’s why they cater to them, and that’s why some of the nightclubs [unintelligible] these kind of people, because they do have that kind of money, and they pay a lot of money for the drink…for, for, for getting into the building. It’s not so much the drinks cause they do other things instead, because after hours it’s mayhem. But whatever they look like, they have money from somewhere and they’re bringing it to these businesses who don’t really care about anything except that they make a profit. Jittery little psychopath Carol Massie’s McDonald’s at DeLongpre Avenue and Vine Street, just sitting there not “really car[ing] about anything except that they make a profit.”
Carol, here’s a newsflash: your company destroys rainforests, destroys the health of the world’s people, exploits its employees, destroys everything, because it doesn’t “really care about anything except that [it] make[s] a profit.” That’s what McDonald’s does. And “these kind of people”?! And “they do other things instead”?!? And “money from somewhere”?!?! “MAYHEM”???!!?!!
And if you don’t think “these kind of people” are good for Hollywood, why do you keep the drive-through window at your Vine Street restaurant open 24 hours? Who do you think wants an Egg McMuffin at 3 a.m. if not nightclub patrons in Hollywood? Do you “really care about anything except that [you] make a profit?” Put your money where your mouth runs off and stop making money off “these kind of people,” why don’t you? We don’t want to seem naive. Rich white racists are racist, but for God’s sake, don’t talk about it on camera. Continue reading Black, Brown, Poor, Nightclub Patrons Are Ruining Hollywood According to Hollywood Chamber Chair Marty Shelton and McDonald’s Owner Carol Massie→
![Jittery little psychopath Carol Massie's McDonald's at DeLongpre Avenue and Vine Street, just sitting there not "really car[ing] about anything except that they make a profit."](https://michaelkohlhaas.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/2015.03.19.carol_.massies.mcdonalds.at_.delongpre.and_.vine_.700.jpg)