Screenshot of LA City Approval for a public toilet at Hollywood Blvd and Orange Drive.Well, long-time readers of this blog will recall a number of shrill screeds on our part about how the BID Patrol keeps arresting people for public urination but the HPOA doesn’t do anything to get public toilets installed. And aren’t we embarrassed now. We had assumed that the HPOA had so much political juice that they could get anything they wanted out of the city, so the fact that Hollywood has no public toilets, we wrongly assumed, was proof that the HPOA was opposed to them.
Peter Zarcone, the missing link between Mitch O’Farrell’s press conference and the BID meetings where the plot was hatchedWell, the Los Angeles Times reported yesterday that Mitch O’Farrell, accompanied by LAPD Hollywood Boss-o-Rootie Peter Zarcone, gave a press conference out on the Boulevard explaining that nightclubs are really bad and if they break the laws, they’re going to be treated like homeless people and subjected to laser-focused nit-picksy iron-fisted enforcement. And the Weekly reported the same story but with much saucier photographs. O’Farrell even used the motherfricking Q-word:
This culture is diminishing the quality of life for people who live here and we are determined to bring them into compliance or shut them down.
Pro-tip: Whenever anyone ever under any circumstances in any official capacity says the Q-word, not only are they lying, but they’re going to be aiming a gun at you quite soon. Mitch O’Farrell: The BIDs say “hit!” and he says “How hard?”
But none of these news stories reported on why Mitch is doing this and why he’s doing it now. Long-time readers of this blog will recall exactly where we have heard this nonsense before. That is, only at EVERY freaking BID meeting we’ve ever attended. There was the one where they hated on nightclubs cause their clientele is too dark-skinned and poor and the one where they conspired with Zarcone to institute hyper-enforcement in an effort to get liquor licenses pulled and so on. Mitch isn’t cracking down on nightclubs because anyone who lives in Hollywood cares. He didn’t even ask anyone who lives in Hollywood. This is nothing more than the latest delusional scene in the fevered psychodrama of Kerry Morrison’s and John Tronson’s and jittery little psychopath Carol Massie’s neurotic mental relationships with the wrong kind of people having the wrong kind of fun in public in Hollywood. What they’re saying when Mitch O’Farrell’s mouth is moving is that their ideal Hollywood denizens are white people who spend a lot of money quietly and go home in an orderly manner before midnight. You know, like they have in Minneapolis or something. Continue reading MK.Org Scoops Freaking Everybody with the Story Behind the Story of Mitch O’Farrell’s Anti-Hollywood-Nightclub Denunciations, Threats, and Posturings→
Evidently some Disney theme park somewhere east of San Bernardino actually has a through-the-looking-glass replica of a Hollywood Boulevard that might have been real right here in the most real neighborhood in the most real city in the world. Except, look! Unlike the real Hollywood Boulevard this fake one has benches, because they don’t have a BID destroying every possible thing that might give aid and comfort to anyone.Amongst the files that our faithful correspondent recently open-sesame-ed out in literal troves from the Ali-Baba-esque locality on Ramirez Street known to the world as the City Archives and Record Center was a most interesting, most singular fax to Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg from a serial candidate for every random political office in California and generally all-round attention-seeking loony named Steve Mozena, self-styled “Chair of HOLLYWOODLAND.” On the handwritten fax cover sheet1 Steve declaims: I’m Martin Sheen and I “like the idea of ‘Hollywoodland.'”Jackie, I’m looking for support for my project. Martin Sheen and Slyvester [sic] Stallone like the idea of “Hollywoodland” Let’s see if we can work together and make this a reality. Steve
Jackie Goldberg, CD13 representative from 1994–2000, midwife, enabler, and founding mother of the Hollywood Property Owners Alliance as we know it today.NOTE (Jan. 3, 2019): The records discussed in this post are now also available on Archive.Org.
I was recently seeking some records of Eric Garcetti’s from his time at CD13 and was dismayed to find that former councilmembers’ records aren’t systematically retained, especially when they, like Garcetti, take another city job subsequent to serving on the council. On the other hand, this search did lead me to the website of the Los Angeles City Archives, which is a miracle of rare device indeed. I’m going to write up the details when I have time for inclusion in our Practical Guide to Using the CPRA in Los Angeles, but the TL;DR is that you look here for the finding aids to the archives, find what you want, email the guy a day before, and head on down to 555 Ramirez Street and sit there looking through boxes at folder upon folder upon folder of actual files from actual Los Angeles City Councilfolk. You can copy whatever you want! It’s so lovely I can’t even describe it. I will tell you what I found there, though! Continue reading Files from the Archives: Former City Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg and the Prehistory of the Hollywood Property Owners Alliance→
What rights are being violated here? What torts being committed? Is the photographer violating trademarks? Performance rights? Rights of publicity? False light?!? Are we violating any of these rights by republishing this photo? I guess we’re gonna find out! At least the BID Patrol can’t pop old Elmo for violating LAMC 41.47.2. At least not this time…We recently had occasion to write about the HPOA’s continent-spanning conspiracy with a bunch of their creepy counterparts in Manhattan to abuse intellectual property law, to violate California Penal Code §158, to constructively violate the first amendment, and both stridently and characteristically to act the fool with respect to the burning issue of street characters. You can’t trademark breasts, so what are they going to do about topless street characters when they get to L.A.? One might argue that women can bare their breasts legally in New York but not in California. That’s not the kind of law that’s going to withstand any pressure, though. It just hasn’t been rigorously tested here….yet!
Since last we examined this issue, the NYPD has gone nuclear by asking Disney and Marvel to sue the street characters, something which those companies seem to have proved unwilling to do. Of course, what the city and the local BIDs really don’t like is the naked ladies. Some of the information we were missing then we’ve obtained now. First, you will recall that in a finger-down-throat-fawning set of emails Kerry Morrison advised Tom Cusick, the dude who’s her counterpart at the Fifth Avenue BID, that they hadn’t had much luck with their criminal attempts to incite litigation against street characters. She mentioned to Tom, though, that the HPOA had managed to get Sesame Street to send cease and desist letters to Big Bird and Elmo one time under special circumstances. We now have copies of those letters. Read on for analysis. Continue reading Kerry Morrison and/or Minions Almost Certainly Lied to Sesame Street to Evoke Anti-Big-Bird, Anti-Elmo C&D Letters→
The earliest of nine photos taken by the BID Patrol at Cameron Diaz’s star ceremony.On June 22, 2009, Cameron Diaz got a star on the Boulevard out in front of the Egyptian Theater. Someone, sometwo, or somemany Andrews International Security peeps were there, snapping pictures at a rapid rate of speed.
We’ve heard so darn much about the NSA and all the evil stuff they can learn via metadata, so we thought we’d try some of the same moves on this sequence of images, of which we have nine in our possession. Here they are all in a row (click to enlarge), and you can see and get the individual full-sized files after the break:
The Boyle Hotel at 101 N. Boyle Avenue, appearing here because we don’t have a picture of the Boyle Heights City Hall, which is about half a mile west on First Street from the corner of First and Boyle, that being the location of this building.We recently wrote about Kerry Morrison’s description of the series of public meetings sponsored by the Chief Legislative Analyst of the city of Los Angeles regarding the framework for legalizing street vending that’s being studied by the City Council. Well, interestingly enough, it turns out that the Council’s Economic Development committee has a website set up devoted to the issue and found thereupon are audio recordings of three of the four meetings held to-date.1 Astute readers will no doubt recall Kerry’s description of these meetings: there were a series of four hearings that the chief administrative office staff held on the… the sidewalk vending ordinance. … It’s just this kind of amorphous set of hearings, which were completely dysfunctional, disrespectful, and almost, um, resembled a circus. Wanna know what “frabjous” means? You gotta ask Mr. Humpty Dumpty, or look it up in the Dictionary, for God’s sake.
Well, frabjous day, friends! We have listened to the first of these, held at the Boyle Heights City Hall on May 28, 2015, and clipped out some representative bits for your audiosthetic pleasure and we’re sharing them with you here. First listen to HPOA Board Member Alyssa Van Breene (transcriptions after the break if, like us, you’d rather read than hear):
Listened up? Good! Let’s take this nonsense one lie at a time, shall we? Continue reading The True Facts About the May 28, 2015, Community Sidewalk Vending Meeting at Boyle Heights City Hall Revealed Here (With Audio) for All to Hear and Judge and Opinionate Upon! Part 1: Alyssa Van Breene→
You probably thought that Batman was the good guy, but it’s time to admit that you were wrong. Here he is, not just terrorizing poor innocent tourists who don’t know any better than to allow themselves to be victimized, but he’s also flagrantly violating trademark law. If he were as honest as we’d been led to believe he’d be hauling his own self off to jail instead of macking on helpless tourist girlies.Stories of the rich and powerful abusing intellectual property laws to stifle free expression, shut down criticism of their terroristic conspiracies against humanity, lock away little old ladies because their grandkids misuse bittorrent, wantonly slaughter cute lil bunnies, and so on, are as common in the tech press as dandelions on the expansive and suspiciously green lawns of Hancock Park before the gardeners show up on Thursday morning. Sesame Street Characters performing for US Navy personnel in a manner which, presumably, the BID finds acceptable because there are no tourists involved. Read more about guys in Elmo suits after the break.
This post-capitalo-apocalyptic legal technology, the use of which reached its supernova-esque apotheosis earlier this month with the City of Inglewood’s mind-blowingly shenaniganistic attempt to assert copyright in video of city council meetings,1 it turns out was being used by our friends at the Hollywood Property Owners Alliance to try to shut down the by-them-much-reviled street performers in a shameless criminal conspiracy with their aiders and abettors at the the City Attorney’s office and the LAPD as late as last August. Although our bosom BIDdies seem to have met with little success, except, evidently, in the case of Elmo of Sesame Street, their futile attempts are quite telling. Read the actual evidence here and our commentary on them after the break. Continue reading HPOA in Criminal Conspiracy with LA City Attorney to Abuse Intellectual Property Law in Never-Ending War on Constitutional Rights of Hollywood/Highland Street Characters→
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→
LAPD officer tases prone, unresisting man on Hollywood Blvd. on December 17, 2009 while the crowd of onlookers, many of them also sworn officers, do and say nothing about it.Today I uploaded 14 videos obtained from the HPOA under the California Public Records Act. You can see them here or via the drop-down menu structure or here. There are more videos to follow, although probably not immediately.
No one here has had time to watch these thoroughly yet. If you see something we should write about please drop a line. Meanwhile, in this video from December 2009, you can see an LAPD officer calmly and deliberately use his taser on a prone, unresisting man (at 6:40), contrary to both human decency and LAPD policy (see §573 Use of Non-Lethal Control Devices). The victim’s last words before he’s tased? “I ain’t doing nothing.” And he ain’t, either.
![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)
