He that has eyes to see and ears to hear may convince himself that no mortal can keep a secret. If his lips are silent, he chatters with his fingertips; betrayal oozes out of him at every pore.As outlined here, Kerry Morrison, Executive Director of the Hollywood Property Owners Alliance, recently wrote to California State Controller John Chiang asking him to force the State Judicial Council to pay the $42,857.88 that the HPOA claims they are in arrears. Well and good, we suppose, but in her letter, we find this argument:
Finally, though the courthouse has significantly scaled back its operations in the past couple of years, I understand that there are ambitious plans underfoot to centralize the county’s mental health and diversion courts into this facility. As such, with the anticipated crush of people — court employees, jurors, family members, and professionals — coming to Hollywood to do business each day, the services provided by the BID will help to enhance this experience for everyone.
Oh happy day! Imagine that you’re a mom or a dad coming to the Hollywood Courthouse to watch, e.g., your schizophrenic kid get locked up in Atascadero, where he will spend the rest of his natural life pumped full of thorazine and shut away in the restraint room but at least, thanks to the BID, you don’t have to step over a bunch of homeless people drinking Taaka vodka as you make your way into the building. Your experience surely would be enhanced, would it not? After all, what are drunken homeless people if not unwelcome reminders of the likely fate of the schizophrenic kid if he’s ever let out of the snakepit?
“The use and function of a courthouse is not directly impacted or benefited by any of the services provided by the BID.”If you look here you will find correspondence between HPOA Executive Director Kerry Morrison and various people with the California State Judicial Council, which has not paid its assessments since 2009. It’s well worth a read if only to see Kerry’s hapless rhetorical sallies counterposed with the calm authority of the state’s lawyers. Continue reading State Judicial Council Gets “No Benefits From BID,” Refuses to Pay Assessments Since 2009→
Monica Yamada, minion of corporate scofflaw CIM Group, reports to HPOA on continuing efforts to criminalize all aspects of the lives of non-rich peopleCIM Group, widely known for sending out demolition teams in the dark of night to tear shit down in violation of their building permits,1 leading a judge to invalidate those permits after tenants had already moved in to the building, deputes minion Monica Yamada to serve as its representative to the Joint Security Committee of the Hollywood Entertainment District BID and the Sunset-Vine BID.
Eric Garcetti, thinking about his Starbucks stock and smiling down upon the machinational shenanigans of the city’s BIDsThere’s no question that the BIDs love them some Starbucks. Even the Sunset-Vine “Baby BID” loves its Starbucks. Heck, even the Hollywood Media District, the most thuggish of the Hollywood area BIDs, was caught loving up Starbucks in its macho, cowboy-faced manner on August 6, 2014.
But why do they love Starbucks so much? What is in it for them? It can’t be the coffee. Not even the BID folks are that depraved.
This picture has nothing to do with anything in this post.I am pleased to announce the availability of the 2007-2012 and the 2013-2018 contracts between Andrews International Security and the Hollywood Property Owners Alliance as well as the proposal that A/I submitted in 2012 in order to win that most recent contract. These are available here or directly from our static storage here.
The Berlin Wall image is public domain and available here from the lovely openclipart.org.
Steve Seyler, the Vodka NaziIf you read through Security Kahuna Steve Seyler’s reports to the Joint Security Committee of the Hollywood Entertainment District BID and the Sunset-Vine BID you will notice, among many other weirdly inappropriate obsessions displayed by the man in his semi-literate prose, a fixation on the brands of alcohol that his victims are drinking when arrested. When his officers take their trophy pictures of arrestees they hold the open containers in the frame with the brand visible, and Seyler evidently can’t resist giving his opinion. What this has to do with law enforcement we don’t know.
Anyway, Seyler’s bête noire is something called Taaka Vodka. He has effectively criminalized its possession in the BID-occupied areas of Hollywood:1
He’s also obsessed with a brand of vodka called Borski, to the point where he seems overjoyed that it was involved in the BID patrol’s thousandth arrest of 2013:3
Seyler has, like the guy whose hat graces his head in the satirical picture above, evidently inspired his officers to form a mystical cult whose rituals include some kind of idolatry involving Taaka:2 Continue reading Steve Seyler, Vodka Nazi→
Broomfield’s film exposes the fact that the City of Los Angeles allowed a serial killer to operate with impunity for 22 years, murdering untold numbers of women. Neither the LAPD nor the City government took the case seriously because the victims were black women, many prostitutes or drug addicts. This point was made repeatedly and convincingly, both on screen and during the Q&A after the film, by stars Pam Brooks and Margaret Prescod, who has been pressing the LAPD about the killings since 1986, thereby earning the wrath of, among other geniuses, Darryl Gates, our city’s second worst mistake. Gates, in his inimitably idiotic way, called Prescod and her compatriots in the Black Coalition Fighting Back Serial Murders “dummies” for even raising the issue.
Broomfield’s stunning work shows that Prescod and her allies have been right all along, though. The film gives an irrefutable performative demonstration of the fact that the LAPD has never taken this case seriously: In 2009 the LAPD knew of one survivor of the killer’s attacks. In 2014, before Broomfield started filming, that one survivor was still the only one known. But in the course of filming Brooks managed to locate and arrange for Broomfield to interview not just one additional woman who survived the Sleeper’s attacks but four. How is it possible that a serious investigation could leave such major witnesses to be discovered, and not even discovered by the police, four years after a suspect’s arrest?
It’s unconscionable. The City of Los Angeles will never live down the shame of having, through racism and indifference, abandoned dozens or hundreds of its most vulnerable citizens to a cruel thrill-killer (or killers; the true extent of the damage may never be known). It couldn’t have happened without the utter dehumanization of these women, each and every one someone’s child. According to Joshua Kleinfeld of Northwestern University, “in Southern California, police slang in the early 1990s for the murder of drug dealers, gangsters, prostitutes, and other lawbreakers was the vivid and extremely disturbing term, ‘NHI (no humans involved) Homicide.'”2 And once the police and white Los Angeles have dehumanized people to the point that they can be killed without consequence, killers will flourish. Why wouldn’t they? Continue reading Hollywood Property Owners Alliance Promotes Mindset that Aids, Comforts Los-Angeles-Area Serial Killers→
Racially charged May Company advertisement from the Los Angeles Times on May 17, 1925. Click to embiggen.Yes, friends, it’s true. Los Angeles, now the most ethnically diverse place in the United States,1 was once known as “the great white spot of America.”2 Look at the May Company advert there to your right. Read the fine print:
White, the dominant note in the season’s fashions! The cool, pure, fresh, tubable3 white, that will give such splendid service, and such satisfaction in this charming city of the Southland!
…
Trade and fashion journals have long predicted the vogue of white. Paris has acclaimed it! Los Angeles has accepted it! And the fad is on! Never could a fresher fashion predominate. White, with its cool freshness and Summery appeal, is particularly suited to Los Angeles, the great white spot of America.
NOTE (December 2015): Please read this retraction to provide context to this post. We remain right about many of the issues discussed, but we were dead wrong about the BID’s opposition to public toilets. They support them. A public urinal in Paris, France c. 1865The Hollywood Property Owners Alliance is really, really, really opposed to people pissing on the streets of Hollywood. They’re so opposed that in 2013 they spent over $132,000 to combat it, at approximately $1500 per pissing incident.1 Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. It’s safe to assume that the HPOA BIDs have their hearts dead set against public pissing.
