As of October 2014 the Hollywood Entertainment District BID and the Sunset-Vine BID had made over 600 arrests for drinking in public. Annualized this is over 700 arrests for 2014. By that point they’d made 945 arrests, which we’ll annualize to 1000 for ease of calculation. Thus around 70% of the arrests that BID security makes are for the simple act of drinking alcohol in public. In 2013 the Entertainment district seems to have spent about $1,600,000 on security.1
The Hollywood Property Owners Alliance arguing with itself about alcohol. The moral? The rich are connoisseurs of fine spirits who appreciate a bargain. The poor are going to jail.Look! The Hollywood Property Owners Alliance loves “affordable” “booze”!! For instance, there’s a new bar in Hollywood:
Whiskey Blu, located at 1714 N. Las Palmas, advertises $2 beer, including Pabst, Budweiser, and Coors as well as $5 shots of Makers Mark, Bullit, Crown, Jim Beam and more. … Whiskey Blu has stepped up to serve those who enjoy a nice, affordable drink.
And look again! Another bar closed down but now it’s back:
For several years, Dillon’s Irish Pub & Grill was a hub for sports fans, tourists and nightlife at the famed intersection of Hollywood and Vine. Known for its $3 beers…
And look again again!
For those who love a little booze and music, Hollywood & Highland’s summer series, Wine & Jazz, does not disappoint!
I said WHAT?! You must be crazy… If you click here you will be able to read the Spring 2014 issue of the Hollywood Entertainment District BID’s newsletter. It’s chock-full of mockable goodness, but today our attention is focused on page 7, which contains an article called Combatting Alcohol Issues.
Out of the many mockable statements in this piece, we have chosen for today’s post this minor claim as our topic: “As Albert Einstein said, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results.”
First of all, Einstein didn’t say this, as anyone with any sense of history would have known immediately.1 Second of all, no matter who said it, it’s not just wrong, but stupidly wrong. Third, it’s a dreadfully overworked cliché. Finally, as with so many too-good-to-be-true misattributions, this is an instance of projection; that is, the author’s alienation2 from her own subconsciously perceived or imagined errors, turning them into imaginary characteristics of some delusionally constructed alterity.3
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.
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.
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→
The RAND corporation, imagined by Kate Greenaway as the Pied Piper, plays the tune called by the piper-payer while happily dancing imaginary children under the influence of LSD obtained from RAND-ite Herman Kahn frolic aboutLike many superfluous, quasi-criminal, quasi-public institutions, the BIDs of Los Angeles are terrified that people will notice they’re a dangerous nuisance and proceed to abolish them. One symptom of this anxiety is a craving for academic justification stronger than the craving of tweakers for meth.
So one rich guy calls another rich guy and soon enough the RAND Corporation of Santa Monica, California, mostly famous for paying cold warrior par excellence Herman Kahn to analyze potential preemptive nuclear strikes on China while under the influence of LSD,1 has prepared a report on how beneficial the existence of BIDs is to the city of Los Angeles. TL;DR: Confuse correllation with causation and the tune that was called by the piper-payer ends up played by the piper.
BID free zone on the East side of DowntownWe decided that we were going to do some research of our own. Luckily, the existence of a small sliver of land surrounding Olympic Boulevard between Central and Stanford is not claimed by any BID and thus allows us to analyze how beneficial the nonexistence of BIDs is to the city of Los Angeles. We obtained a small private grant and set out into the field.2 We think you’ll be interested in our results. Continue reading Exuberance, Freedom, Commerce, Blossom in Rare DTLA BID-free Zone→
As of October 2014 the Hollywood Entertainment District BID and the Sunset-Vine BID had made over 600 arrests for drinking in public. Annualized this is over 700 arrests for 2014. By that point they’d made 945 arrests, which we’ll annualize to 1000 for ease of calculation. Thus around 70% of the arrests that BID security makes are for the simple act of drinking alcohol in public. In 2013 the Entertainment district seems to have spent about $1,600,000 on security.1
