Tag Archives: Hancock Park

Mitch O’Farrell’s Misbegotten Playground Motion Was About Selma Park After All, Making It Even More Likely That He Was Trying To Please Kerry Morrison, Perhaps Because of the $2,600 In Campaign Contributions Given To Him By Her And Mr. Kerry Morrison

January 1, 2017 Mike Leave a comment

The future of Selma Park as seen in the fevered delusions of Kerry Morrison and Mitch O’Farrell

When I reported a few days ago on the tsunami of bad press surrounding Mitch O’Farrell’s recent Council motion seeking a municipal law to ban adults from children’s playgrounds in parks it was not yet provable, no matter how probable it seemed, that the proposal was related to the ongoing battle for Selma Park. Well, yesterday the Times published an excellent if somewhat shallow article by reporter Dakota Smith which settled the matter once and for all: “[O’Farrell spokesman Tony] Arranaga said O’Farrell proposed the law after locals complained about drug dealing at Selma Park playground in Hollywood.”

It’s still not proven that Kerry Morrison had a hand in O’Farrell’s proposal, but at this point it’s clear that she must have done. First of all, as anyone who actually lives in the area knows, there are no drug dealers in the playground at Selma Park. There may be drug dealers in the adult part, I don’t know, although I haven’t seen any actual drug dealing in there. Thus when Tony Arranaga speaks of putative locals putatively complaining about putative drug dealing in Selma Park, Occam’s Razor leads me to assume he’s talking about Kerry Morrison, who is still fuming more than 15 months after my colleagues and I undid her illegal off-limitsing of the Park for adults unaccompanied by children.

Lunada Bay in Palos Verdes, former home of HPOA bullymeister Kerry Morrison and present home, much like Hollywood under the HPOA, of a particularly virulent form of the restriction of public space through bullying and government-sanctioned privately-applied violence.

And such a move would be more than consistent with what we know about Kerry Morrison’s history. My colleagues recently reported that she and her husband, Mr. Kerry Morrison, had intentionally moved to Los Angeles in order to impose their puritanical visions on our City. Further research has revealed from whence these Morrisons came to our fair City:

Kerry Morrison, executive director of Hollywood’s business improvement district … moved from the more elegant confines of Rancho Palos Verdes. She now lives with her husband and children in Hancock Park, a neighborhood that was chosen precisely because it sits in the middle of old Los Angeles.

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Hollywood Property Owners Alliance, Hypocrisy

Morrison Family Missionary Position Revealed! Mr. Kerry Morrison Admits Morrison Family Moved To South Central Hollywood To “support … the [Morrison] family’s mission to contribute and to participate in LA’s urban renewal,” To Which Ivan Illich Says “Yanqui Go Home!”

December 20, 2016 kohlhaas Leave a comment

This is not a picture of Peter Zarcone, it is a picture of Mr. Kerry Morrison.

We have written before about about how Ms. Kerry Morrison presents herself as a missionary bringing the blessings of zillionaire-table-crumbs to the homeless population of Hollywood. And, given the proper understanding of Mother Teresa, it’s true that she is an awful lot like the Caudilla of Calcutta.¹

And none of this is really a secret. For instance, here are more than 30 pages of emails from Kerry Morrison to various coreligionists extolling the virtues of Christian love for one’s City, praying for one’s City, serving one’s City as a “Christ Follower,” and whatnot. And there’s a long and vital tradition of this kind of thing in Christianity, to be sure. E.g. compare Paul’s letter to the Hebrews 11:9-10 on how Abraham’s faith led him to leave his home and live like a stranger for the sake of finding the City of God:

By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God.

A typical house in Windsor Square, to whence the Morrison family moved, the better to missionaryize you, fellow Angelenos! (Note: this is a picture of Eric Garcetti’s house, not Kerry Morrison’s house. We have neither a picture of Kerry Morrison’s house nor plans to obtain one because we’re not stalkers).

And of course it’s well known to students of Hurricane Kerry that she lives in zillionaire enclave Windsor Square, where she brushes shoulders or whatever with zillionaire lackey and fellow resident Eric Garcetti.² And living in Windsor Square no doubt means many things to many people, but never ever ever would we ever have thought that it could be construed as an Abrahamic sojourn “like a stranger in a foreign country” for the sake of “looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God.” Newly discovered information reveals, however, that that’s precisely how Ms. Kerry Morrison sees it.
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Venice Beach BID

Venice Beach BID Hearing Roundup: Bonin Jettisons Deference, Implicatively Slams Hollywood, Downtown BIDs: “There’ve Been Good BIDs And There’ve Been Bad BIDs” And Hollywood? And Downtown? Not Good BIDs. Wesson/Englander Totalitarian Style Almost Causes Third Do-Over

November 8, 2016 Mike Leave a comment

A battle-weary Mike Bonin graciously acknowledges his ultimate victory this afternoon at the Venice Beach BID hearing.

Quick summary: Venice Beach BID hearing in August was messed up due to habitual arrogance of City Council. Heroic civil rights lawyer calls bullshit. City Attorney sees potential liability for City and advises a do-over. A bunch of other shenanigans, too many to name-check at this point, ensue. This morning the do-over hearing was held. You can watch it here on YouTube.

So everyone made their comments, and they weren’t all that different from the first time, although Mike Bonin managed not to lose his shit and compare the BID opposition to Trump supporters.³ But nevertheless, there were a few surprising moments. Recall that the first hearing was invalidated because third-smartest-guy-in-the-room Herb Wesson cut off public comment too early. So this time, Mitch Englander, who is Council president pro tem,⁴ after all the speaker cards had been called, announced to the world at large:⁵

Mitch Englander on the dais getting whispered advice from a deputy city attorney. What does it say about our City that almost 15% of our Councilmembers are named Mitch? Nothing good, friends, nothing good.

I wanna be extra careful on this one given the problems with the last public hearing. Is there anybody here who filled out a card or tried to speak or [unintelligible] has not been heard yet?

And then the other one, Wesson or Englander, seeing that sanest of habitual gadflies, Eric Preven, indicating that he would like to speak, announced:

Ah, Mr. Preven, you actually spoke to the Council already for your maximum of three minutes per the Council rules.

And Preven said no. And everyone in the room wondered whether they were really going to take the risk of messing everything up for a second time just to prevent Eric Preven from speaking for one more minute after we’d all been there almost an hour already. Well, the Deputy City Attorney told the two prezzes to CTFO, and they folded, for Christ’s sake, and let Eric Preven speak.

But far more interesting than that was Bonin’s victory speech.⁶ In particular, maybe since he was feeling a little conciliatory, he said:
Continue reading Venice Beach BID Hearing Roundup: Bonin Jettisons Deference, Implicatively Slams Hollywood, Downtown BIDs: “There’ve Been Good BIDs And There’ve Been Bad BIDs” And Hollywood? And Downtown? Not Good BIDs. Wesson/Englander Totalitarian Style Almost Causes Third Do-Over →

Hollywood Property Owners Alliance, Hypocrisy

Kerry Morrison Declares that Hollywood Street Performers Must Be Unmasked Because of Terrorism While All the While Taking Financial Advantage of Masked KKK Terrorism In Hancock Park

April 28, 2016 kohlhaas Leave a comment

Terrorism according to Kerry Morrison: This is acceptable. — Terrorism according to Kerry Morrison: This is acceptable (and very, very good for business).

We have written many a post about Kerry Morrison’s weirdly obsessive hatred of the street characters at Hollywood Boulevard and Highland Avenue and how she uses the power of her BID to attack them at every turn. Her surreality-based antipathy has at various times inspired her co-conspirators at the LAPD to crack down heavily on these performers, even to the point where Carol Sobel had to sue the cops in Federal Court to stop the neurotic vendetta.

She’s spent at least a decade railing against these characters and working with the City Attorney, the City Council, private attorneys, everyone in sight, without notable success, to ban their activities, to stop them wearing masks, to require them to wear identity badges, to conflate them with terrorists, and so on. Well, we’ve been looking into the matter a little more deeply, and today we’re here to tell you a story about street characters, the KKK, domestic terrorism, anti-mask laws, and property values in Hancock Park.⁷ First let’s take a little trip through 7 years worth of the minutes of the Board of Directors of the Hollywood Property Owners Alliance, concentrating on the street characters of Hollywood and Kerry Morrison’s efforts to thwart them by any means necessary:

Terrorism according to Kerry Morrison: This is unacceptable.

June 2006—Morrison and Deputy City Attorney Bill Kysella have drafted a resolution for consideration by Council President Eric Garcetti that the City Attorney’s office work with the Hollywood Entertainment District and the Hollywood Division of the LAPD to evaluate potential solutions to document the identity of the street characters and performers, regulate their activities, and ban the use of masks in the interests of protecting public safety on the public right-of-way within the Hollywood Enterainment District.

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Public Records Act Pragmatics

Berkeley Police Department Fulfills Experimental CPRA Request in 59 Days

February 23, 2016 Mike Leave a comment

Anymore, the astonishing beauty of the city of Berkeley is only skin deep.

Long-time readers of this blog will recall that, due to the stunning reluctance of the LAPD to comply with the simple mandates of the California Public Records Act, I’m running an experiment in which I requested 100 emails to and from BIDs from each of three California police departments. The SFPD was the clear winner here, supplying me with the goods in a mere 23 days. Late last week the city of Berkeley weighed in with two sets of emails (one and two). Most of the content isn’t especially interesting if you don’t know the dramatis personae; it’s the same old song about the homeless, about behaviors, about activities, about protecting investments, and so on and on and on. I did spot one interesting episode, which I discuss after the break. Also, I will note that the Long Beach PD still has not fulfilled my request (although they are discussing it with me), and of course the LAPD ignores everyone and they’re still being sued because of that. Is it a coincidence that the two cities that follow the law have municipal sunshine ordinances while the two that do not lack such laws? I doubt it very much.
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