Tag Archives: Koreatown

Business Improvement Districts, Los Angeles City Government

Some Guy Complains To Clerk’s Office About “Deteriorating Conditions” In The Wilshire Center BID — Rick Scott Informs Jose Flores That It’s The BID’s Job To Handle Angries — But Admits That The City Will Intervene “To Try To Resolve” If The BID Doesn’t Deal With It — But The City Won’t Intervene When BIDs Violate CPRA — Or The Brown Act — So What Rick Scott Means Is The City Will Mostly Intervene If BIDs Don’t Persecute Homeless Enough — Also Around 200 Other Emails From Wilshire Center!

December 9, 2018 Mike Leave a comment

It’s been a while since I’ve asked for records from the Wilshire Center BID, in fact we haven’t heard from them since the whole sad clown Mike Hakim episode last summer. But just the other day I got about 200 new emails from the always cooperative Mr. Mike Russell, their doughty zeck dreck, and as always you can peruse them at your leisure and pleasure here on Archive.Org. And there are no blockbusters in there, but you might enjoy looking through the usual rattle and hum of the daily BIDness.

However, there is one really interesting, at least from a technical BIDological point of view, item, and that is this October 2, 2018 email from Rick Scott of the City Clerk’s BID division to Jose Flores, his subordinate, CCed to Mr. Mike Russell and, in a particularly cruel touch of bureaucratic passive aggression, every last one of Jose Flores’s supervisors. It seems that some internet random known as nezabudka1937@gmail.com fired off an angry little missive to the Clerk’s BID division at Clerk.NBID@lacity.org complaining about homelessness and urban decay in K-Town (of course there’s a transcription of everything after the break).

Jose Flores, who’s apparently tasked with sifting through the chaff,¹ forwarded it to Rick Scott, and Rick Scott was all like, Jose! Send it to Mr. Mike Russell next time! Why? Here’s where things get strange. Thus all-caps-icalized Rick Scott:

With ANY stakeholder issue the BID is always the first entity they should contact. If their issue isn’t resolved after a reasonable time we will contact the BID to try to resolve it. The BIDs don’t work for us. They are paid to address stakeholders’ concerns.

Wow. Just wow. First of all, the angry email was from an unidentified internet random. It’s big if true that Rick Scott’s correct that BIDs are paid to address the concerns of internet randoms as long as he calls them stakeholders. But I’m pretty sure it’s not true.² BIDs are paid to address the concerns of their boards of directors, not even the concerns of the people who pay their assessments. And it gets worse. Lots worse.
Continue reading Some Guy Complains To Clerk’s Office About “Deteriorating Conditions” In The Wilshire Center BID — Rick Scott Informs Jose Flores That It’s The BID’s Job To Handle Angries — But Admits That The City Will Intervene “To Try To Resolve” If The BID Doesn’t Deal With It — But The City Won’t Intervene When BIDs Violate CPRA — Or The Brown Act — So What Rick Scott Means Is The City Will Mostly Intervene If BIDs Don’t Persecute Homeless Enough — Also Around 200 Other Emails From Wilshire Center! →

Hypocrisy, Miscellaneous

Will Salao, Former ABC Honcho And Member Of The Racist BID-Inspired CD13-Managed Hollywood Nightclub Task Force, Indicted By The Feds For Shocking Corruption Including Taking Bribes In Koreatown — The L.A. Times Has The Story But We Have The Lurid Details — Not To Mention Copies Of Many Of The Pleadings

October 31, 2018 Mike 1 Comment

Remember the utterly and reprehensibly racist nightclub task force convened by CD13’s Daniel Halden for the express purpose of shutting down minority-serving nightclubs on Hollywood Boulevard at the white supremacist whim of Ms. Kerry Morrison? Well, if not, you can read all about it over here. And it’s to be expected that all of the participants in such a morally bankrupt enterprise are themselves morally bankrupt individuals. But nevertheless it’s still surprising when one of them actually gets indicted by the federal government for actual criminal corruption.

And yet that’s just what happened last month to Will Salao, former head of the Los Angeles office of the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control and former cheerfully enthusiastic member of the Hollywood Nightclub Task Force. Basically the guy teamed up with a former colleague named Scott Seo to take bribes from Koreatown bar owners to overlook violations, warn them that LAPD was going to raid their bars, send them photos of undercover vice officers, and on the other side, to pressure them to sell their bars by hitting them repeatedly with violations.

And all this at the same time, 2015 and 2016, that he was helping Kerry Morrison carry out her puritanical racial cleansing of Hollywood Boulevard. She’s so freaking focused on driving out the darkies that she’ll work with any kind of criminal at all. I really wonder if he was getting paid under the table for that too. After all, he drove bars out of business, and that’s worth money to the competition. Why wouldn’t the competition pay him for it? You can read the primary sources on this whole brouhaha here on Archive.Org.

The L.A Times published a story on Salao’s indictment a couple weeks ago, and it’s really informative and so on, but man, there are a lot of really lurid details that they just didn’t see fit to put in there, and that’s where we come in! I’m collecting all the paper here on Archive.Org. First of all, here’s a copy of the actual indictment.³ And there are endless goodies in there! The words I put in Will Salao’s mouth in the cartoon up top are direct quotes from his off-the-chain text messages to his co-conspirator, and there is a lot more where that came from! And you’ll find transcriptions of the best of it after the break!

Anyway, he seems to be out on $20,000 bail and not allowed to leave the state and to have surrendered his passport. And according to the government in the joint discovery report there is a ton of additional evidence, including video and audio. Probably we’re not going to get to see most of it, but we can always hope! The trial is presently set for December 11, 2018, but the parties have stipulated that none of them will be ready by then, so I imagine it’ll be reset.

And now, what you know you’ve been waiting for! Turn the page for the most amazing selections from the indictment, showing just what kind of fleas Ms. Kerry Morrison has exposed herself to by lying down with dogs such as Will Salao for no better purpose than closing down hip-hop nightclubs on Hollywood Boulevard!
Continue reading Will Salao, Former ABC Honcho And Member Of The Racist BID-Inspired CD13-Managed Hollywood Nightclub Task Force, Indicted By The Feds For Shocking Corruption Including Taking Bribes In Koreatown — The L.A. Times Has The Story But We Have The Lurid Details — Not To Mention Copies Of Many Of The Pleadings →

Business Improvement Districts, Los Angeles City Government

Mike Hakim, Zillionaire Carpetbagging Developer From Beverly Hills, Tried To Sell His Soul To Eric Garcetti But — Most Unkindest Cut Of All! — No Matter How He Begged And Pleaded Eric Garcetti Wasn’t Buying Cause Brenda Arianpour’s Soul Was Way Cuter — Too Bad So Sad Mike Hakim!

July 30, 2018 Mike Leave a comment

I wrote last month about an interesting incident in which Eric Garcetti asked Mike Russell of the Wilshire Center BID to arrange for a tame zillionaire⁴ to speak at the joint Garcetti/Wesson press conference announcing the star-crossed Koreatown homeless shelter which was, at that time, being proposed by Wesson. Mike Hakim, Beverly Hills zillionaire and proponent of a universally reviled K-Town skyscraper, volunteered but Mike Russell and Eric Garcetti went with Beverly Hills zillionairette Brenda Arianpour instead.

Well, the other day I got a whole new set of emails from Mr. Mike Russell,⁵ which you can read all of right here on the Archive. And amongst these were some that told the rest of the story. It seems that after Mike Hakim volunteered, while Mike Russell and Eric Garcetti’s communications staff were busy fluffing Brenda Arianpour for her big day, no one bothered to tell Mike Hakim that his contributions were unwanted.

Finally, days later, like the little sad clown he tries so hard not to be, he emailed Mike Russell reminding him that he was willing to speak. Mike Russell, never one to waste an opportunity, told Mike Hakim that Eric Garcetti liked Brenda Arianpour better, even though mostly Mike Russell chose her, and then had the nerve to tell Mike Hakim that the Mayor still wanted him to show up and act like he supported the whole thing.

The record doesn’t show that Mike Hakim responded, but day of he regained some of his highly compromised personal dignity and said he couldn’t make it because traffic. And that, friends, is the whole tragedy laid out for your sympathy. Don’t ever think those zillionaire developers from Beverly Hills have it easy. Their lives are harder than yours in ways you can’t even imagine until you’ve earned or inherited your first zillion.

Turn the page, as always, for transcriptions of everything.
Continue reading Mike Hakim, Zillionaire Carpetbagging Developer From Beverly Hills, Tried To Sell His Soul To Eric Garcetti But — Most Unkindest Cut Of All! — No Matter How He Begged And Pleaded Eric Garcetti Wasn’t Buying Cause Brenda Arianpour’s Soul Was Way Cuter — Too Bad So Sad Mike Hakim! →

Los Angeles City Council

How Herb Wesson Arranged For His Constituents To Pack A Council File With Phony Astroturf Letters Supporting His K-Town Homeless Shelter — And The Letters Were Written By Herb Wesson’s Assistant Chief Deputy Andrew Westall

July 4, 2018 Mike Leave a comment

One of the important topics we study here is the function of business improvement districts as lobbyists, not least as tools that the City uses to lobby itself in order to create the illusion of popular support for its initiatives. We recently saw an excellent example of this trope when Eric Garcetti used the Wilshire Center BID to supply a speaker putatively from the community to support his and Herb Wesson’s proposed Koreatown homeless shelter.

And it seems that Eric Garcetti was not the only LA Politician engaged in astroturfing support for this project. Just yesterday I obtained a huge trove of emails from the Byzantine Latino Quarter BID along Pico Blvd. The most interesting item in there⁶ is a May 15, 2018 email from Herb Wesson’s field deputy Cairo Rodriguez to Moises Gomez, BLQ BID director, asking him to submit a letter supporting the shelter.

But the most amazing, unexpected part of Cairo Rodriguez’s appeal is that it came with a letter of support attached, just waiting for the blanks to be filled in. See here for the original DOCX file, and here for a PDF, and there’s a transcription after the break. This is so peculiar, isn’t it? Obviously Herb Wesson’s not trying to convince himself to vote for the shelter, and he doesn’t have to convince his colleagues, because they’ll vote for anything he supports in his own district, so what’s the point of these letters? So strange.

According to the metadata this faked-up letter of support was written by Andrew Westall, one of Herb Wesson’s senior staff members. And a glimpse at Council File 18-0392 shows that a lot of copies of this astroturf letter were in fact submitted by a lot of different organizations on letterhead, with signatures.⁷ There are links to samples after the break.
Continue reading How Herb Wesson Arranged For His Constituents To Pack A Council File With Phony Astroturf Letters Supporting His K-Town Homeless Shelter — And The Letters Were Written By Herb Wesson’s Assistant Chief Deputy Andrew Westall →

Business Improvement Districts, Los Angeles City Government

An Interesting Example From Wilshire Center Showing How Eric Garcetti Used The BID To Supply A Tame Businessperson To Speak For Herb Wesson’s Proposed K-Town Homeless Shelter — Revealing At Least One Of The Ways In Which The City Of Los Angeles Relies On BIDs To Manufacture An Appearance Of Community Support For Its Projects — Did I Mention The City Told The BID A Week Before They Told The News Media And Asked The BID To Keep Quiet About It?!

June 23, 2018 Mike 1 Comment

It’s been clear for a long time now that one of the uses that the City gets out of BIDs is to encourage them to lobby it, thus creating an appearance of community support for projects that the City intended to do all along. It’s easy to see the results of this process at any City Council meeting where a bunch of BIDdies line up to speak in favor of random proposal X that they don’t have any organic reason for caring about.

However, it’s not so easy to see the lead-up to the lobbying events. Obviously City officials are reluctant to release the evidence, and perhaps the BIDdies are as well.⁸ That’s why today’s documents are so very interesting! The emails I’m presenting are part of a larger release from the Wilshire Center BID, and you can get the original MBOX file or PDFs if you prefer here on Archive.Org.

The story is about the by-now famous homeless shelter proposed for Koreatown by CD10 repster Herb Wesson. The world found out about this project on May 2, 2018 at a joint press conference held by Wesson and Eric Garcetti, as Gale Holland explains in this characteristically excellent story in the Times.⁹

But amazingly, City staffers told the BID about the proposal on April 26, a full week before anyone else knew. BID board members were asked to keep quiet about it and also to propose a businessperson to speak at the May 2 press conference in support of the shelter. Real Estate zillionaire Mike Hakim volunteered himself to speak at BID director Mike Russell’s request but was, it seems, ignored by everyone, no doubt due to his shady, universally hated skyscraper project in Koreatown.

Instead, Mike Russell nominated Greenbridge Investments flunky Brenda Arianpour, a real estate zillionaire whom Russell misrepresented as a small business owner. After thorough vetting by Garcetti’s communications flacks, Arianpour was chosen to speak in favor of the project. Although not, of course, to speak in her own unscrutinized words. Garcetti’s flacks were sure to discuss “talking points” with her in advance.

The emails by which this was arranged are linked to and transcribed below.
Continue reading An Interesting Example From Wilshire Center Showing How Eric Garcetti Used The BID To Supply A Tame Businessperson To Speak For Herb Wesson’s Proposed K-Town Homeless Shelter — Revealing At Least One Of The Ways In Which The City Of Los Angeles Relies On BIDs To Manufacture An Appearance Of Community Support For Its Projects — Did I Mention The City Told The BID A Week Before They Told The News Media And Asked The BID To Keep Quiet About It?! →

CD13

Scumbag Cat-Kicking Koreatown Slumlord So Pleased With On-Demand CD13 Homeless Encampment Clean-Up That He Offers Commendations And Free Lunches for Staff, Campaign Contributions for Mitch O’Farrell

September 28, 2016 Mike Leave a comment

Dear kitty-cat, TAKE THAT, YOU HOMELESS P.O.S.!!! Sincerely, Mitch O'Farrell and your friends at CD13. — Dear kitty-cat, TAKE THAT, YOU HOMELESS P.O.S.!!! Sincerely, Mitch O’Farrell and your friends at CD13.

I wrote some time ago about how CD13 staffer Aram Taslagyan organized an on-demand homeless encampment clean-up at the behest of scumbag cat-kicking Koreatown slumlord Bryan Kim, who needed it done really really fast because he had some kind of inspection forthcoming. Well, yesterday,¹⁰ I managed to get copies of some new emails between Bryan Kim and various CD13 staffies on the subject.¹¹ In particular, on March 27, 2016, Bryan Kim wrote to CD13 District Director Marisol Rodriguez¹² under the subject Recognizing Aram Taslagyan, stating e.g. that¹³
Aram did a great job demonstrating professional excellence and swiftly took comprehensive action to utilize his alliance with other groups such as LAPD, Sherrif, groups among others. I applaud his great effort for taking care (completely clearing all homeless encampment issues.

And what are Bryan Kim’s hopes for the future?

As of 4 days later there has still been no recurrence of them revisiting on Vermont and Marathon.

We hope to continue vigilant and collective efforts as I am in contact with Braille, LACC, local and community patrons to closely monitor any future outbreak, for which I will let Aram and lapd know.

Because as everyone who’s involved with “quality of life” knows, both homeless people and zombies arrive in “outbreaks.” Let’s hope we don’t have any more! And what is he asking Marisol Rodriguez to do?
Continue reading Scumbag Cat-Kicking Koreatown Slumlord So Pleased With On-Demand CD13 Homeless Encampment Clean-Up That He Offers Commendations And Free Lunches for Staff, Campaign Contributions for Mitch O’Farrell →

CD13

CD13 Staff Organizes On-Demand Homeless Encampment Cleanup for Benefit of Bryan Kim of “Scumbag” Cat-Kicking Koreatown Slumlords Kim and Casey, Subsequently Personally Invite Him to Support LAMC 56.11 in Council

July 21, 2016 Mike Leave a comment

CD13 gleefully kicking "frustrating" homeless people out of your neighborhood since 2013. — Mitch O’Farrell and his staff: gleefully kicking “frustrating” homeless people out of your neighborhood since 2013.

How does the City of Los Angeles decide which homeless encampments to target for cleanup? How do they decide when to target them? Well, if these two email chains from City Council District 13 about encampment-breaking on Vermont Avenue and Marathon Street in Koreatown are any indication (one and two) they target them when non-homeless people call CD13 and tell them to clean out the homeless people.¹⁴ And what do they get out of targeting them? Well, they’re politically savvy enough to turn down free lunches offered in exchange for their dirty work, but they will accept an offer of bused-in political supporters to astroturf the public comments section of a Council meeting. First let’s look at the players involved.

Bryan Kim is a partner in Koreatown based property management company Kim and Casey, which doesn’t seem to have a website.¹⁵ They do, however, have a Yelp page. This is notable for having uniformly one star reviews, which include comments like:¹⁶
They would tell me I was picky about the filth they’d promised to clean up before I moved in but never took care of it. They wouldn’t accept responsibility and blamed everyone and everything else until they were legally forced to take control of the growing sludge and cesspool that had been forming for I don’t know how many weeks .

Aram Taslagyan: "Hi Bryan, [the homeless encampment that was interfering with your pending property inspection] is all clean now. ... Please let me know if it starts up again at any level. — Aram Taslagyan: “Hi Bryan, [the homeless encampment that was interfering with your pending property inspection] is all clean now. … Please let me know if it starts up again at any level.

Or, even more colorfully:

I had my sink drain burst and when I asked them to fix it they said “NO”. The reason they gave me was that I had a bathroom sink to use and I dint really need the one in my kitchen. … What kind of management company is this? Also, one day as I was looking out my window, I saw one of the three guys who were walking the property from Kim and Casey Kick my neighbors cat at he was walking down the path way. It was the middle aged guy of the three that were walking the property. I don’t know his name and don’t care to know such a scumbag.

So that’s Bryan Kim according to Yelp; K-Town slumlord and associate of cat-kickers if not a cat-kicker himself. The other correspondent is CD13 field deputy Aram Taslagyan, whose bio you can read for yourself. The whole thing evidently began with a disconnected phone call from Kim to CD13 intern Sean Starkey, which resulted in this email:
Continue reading →