Tag Archives: Hollywood Entertainment District

Sidewalk With BID Patrol

Image from Steve Seyler's September 8, 2014 report to the Joint Security Committee of the Hollywood BIDs
Image from Steve Seyler’s September 8, 2014 report to the Joint Security Committee of the Hollywood BIDs
Our faithful readers will have been delving eagerly into Steve Seyler’s reports to the Joint Security Committee as we’ve made them available. The image to the right is typical of the weirdly voyeuristic self-serving propaganda that fills these documents.

Seyler is, of course, speaking to his bosses, so he has to make sure they understand what they’re getting for their money. And what are they getting?
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A Shameful Thing

Hollywood, November 1, 2014, 8:15 a.m. P.D.T.
Hollywood, November 1, 2014, 8:15 a.m. P.D.T.
The second redacted report from Steve Seyler to the Joint Security Committee of the Hollywood Entertainment District BID and the Sunset-Vine BID is available here. I don’t actually feel equal to the task of describing in serious terms how upsetting this material is, but I’m going to try my best to match the gravity of the subject.

Steve’s narratives of the homeless people of Hollywood lack any consciousness of the fact that these are human beings with human lives that he’s dealing with. They have no power, no voice, no property, they have nothing. They are harried and tormented by Steve’s Andrews International Security guards. It’s not enough that Steve’s guards scream at and arrest the homeless for activities which are not only lawful but completely normal if done in a house: sleeping, sitting, urination, defecation, but he mocks them with epithets and has them photographed like trophy animals in the process.

His reports betray no evidence of compassion or even a basic understanding of the fact that these people are homeless as the result of social processes beyond anyone’s control. Instead he fills his reports with self-serving anecdotes about his horror-movie-boyscout guards helping blind men across the street and buying hungry people pizza interspersed with immature jokes about shit on the streets and illicit vodka. Is he unaware that his ordained purpose is not helping and saving but moving homeless people out of the steamroller path of businessmen and their plans for tourism and development? He can’t possibly be, which makes his pretense and his weird antics even more disturbing.

And the members of the Joint Security Committee, who have evidently received these reports for years without either seeing how disgusting they are or putting an end to them (if only for the sake of public image) are as guilty or more so. It’s plausible that Steve can’t help the fact that he’s a bully-boy who ended up with too much power for anyone’s good, but Kerry Morrison at least seems like a decent, kind person. I can’t believe she hasn’t seen how bad this is. Certainly the LAPD, LASD, and City Attorney’s Office liasons to the BID ought to know better; they’re professionals. Real police don’t act like this (at least not in public). It’s a shameful thing.
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No One Shall Expel Us from the Paradise Epstein has Created for us

Aaron Epstein directing the attention of two concerned citizens to the paradise he has created for them
Aaron Epstein directs the attention of two concerned citizens to the paradise he has created for them whilst a bunch of homeless creatures, some of them in violation of Los Angeles Municipal Code §41.18(d), frolic in the foreground. A badly designed mixed-use structure looms in the background and BID security patrols chase sinners in the upper left.
In March 1999, Aaron Epstein, an owner of assessed property within the borders of the Hollywood Entertainment District BID, managed by the “Property Owners Association,” found that “[t]he POA’s monthly meetings were not open to the public, much to the distress of plaintiff.” Epstein sued for a declaratory judgment stating that the BID was subject to the requirements of California’s open meetings law, known as the Brown Act. Although his motion was denied by the trial court, that decision was overturned on appeal. The appellate court’s opinion is scathingly, corrosively, beautifully, decisive, referring as it does to the BID’s and the City of LA’s legal theories as “subterfuge” designed “to circumvent the requirements of the Brown Act.” It’s well worth reading, and here are a few selections:
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Documents

I’m pleased to announce our new Documents page, also available through the menu on the header in all its arboreally structured glory. We hope to build this into a repository of records we obtain under the California Public Records Act. So far we just have one item prepared for publication, a report by Steve Seyler of Andrews International Security to the Joint Security Committee of the Hollywood Entertainment District BID and the Sunset-Vine BID. This is the document that Kerry Morrison originally refused to let me read at the meeting. I can see why she was reluctant because it’s not pretty. We’ve redacted it here to try to preserve some shreds of dignity in an ugly set of circumstances. Of course the unredacted original is available on request from Kerry.

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Frisco Dwellers don’t LA; Never Have, Never Will

If this were a college class, it'd be Rocks for Jocks
If this were a college class, it’d be Rocks for Jocks
Maybe you’ve been out of state and had some wit tell you that they hate Los Angeles “but love San Francisco.” This is a commonplace sentiment among easterners (around here, we believe that easterners start at the San Bernardino County line). Here’s an explanation: San Francisco is a tiny, transparent town. It’s easy to understand because it’s small and because it’s a self-conscious imitation of eastern cities, themselves often self-conscious imitations of European cities. It’s visually appealing in a facile way. It’s got pretty houses and the “bad” neighborhoods, such as they are, have been suppressed and relocated to the point where tourists don’t have to go there. Their local burritos are just exotic enough to thrill but not so different from Chipotle™ that they disconcert the outta-towners.

San Francisco is exactly what easterners expect from a city and the weather’s better and the executioner’s face is always well hidden. So they “get it” immediately and love it instinctively, like tourists love Denny’s because the food’s the same wherever they are. Frisco dwellers crave this universal approval, too. They’re addicted to an extent where, like junkies, they need a big dose of tourist-love-bombing daily just to feel normal. Like sex addicts, they continually need yet another piece of strange or they’ll forget they exist. For over a hundred years they’ve been letting this addiction distort their city’s culture and politics to make it even more pleasing to easterners.
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Clips from the October 16, 2014 Meeting of the HPOA

Monica Yamada
Monica Yamada
The HPOA is the Hollywood Property Owners Alliance. It seems to be an umbrella organization which controls the Sunset-Vine BID and the Hollywood Entertainment District BID. Here is the full 56+ minute video of their October 16, 2014 meeting and here are a few clips of interest:
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Seyler: Arrest ’em all to send a message (updated)

Steve Seyler explains it all for you
Steve Seyler explains it all for you
Steve Seyler, high muckamuck of security at Andrews International, gave a lengthy report at yesterday morning’s meeting of the Sunset-Vine BID and Hollywood Entertainment District Joint Security Committee meeting.

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Hollywood BIDs flout the Brown Act (updated)

I attended my first meeting of the Sunset-Vine BID and Hollywood Entertainment District Joint Security Committee meeting this morning.  It was held in a restaurant called “Cleo” located in The Redbury Hotel.  I’ll have more to say about the actual content of the meeting later.  For now I’ll just talk about scandalous violations of the Brown Act, a California law regulating public meetings.
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