In 2011 the Andrews International BID Patrol arrested 103 people in Hollywood for violating the despicable LAMC 41.18(d), which, truly truly, outlaws sitting on the sidewalk in the absence of a parade. We have written oh so many times about how the BID Patrol does not arrest non-homeless violators of this law, and how this selective enforcement is particularly egregious in the case of the Hollywood Farmers’ Market. Well, imagine then, our surprise to read in an L.A. Weekly article from January 2011, our own Kerry Morrison, discussing how, even though she does not live in Hollywood at all and is probably far more at home at the Larchmont Market, held for some reason only zillionaires can grok at the same time as the Hollywood one, she thinks people who do live in Hollywood are a bunch of zombie NIMBYs from Hell cause they didn’t want to move the iconic Hollywood Farmers’ Market to some random parking lot due to the toys-from-pram whinging of the Film School at Sunset and Ivar. The point she seems to be making is that if the Market was moved, there would be more room for everyone and it would be a win-win situation all round, especially if you only ask the zillionaires, which seems to be Kerry’s modus operandi in such matters. Says Kerry, vis-a-vis crowded conditions:
Sometimes I actually have to sit on the curb to eat my pupusa. It seems like there’s so much opportunity for some expansion and breathing room — i don’t personally see how that would affect the urban charm.”
As you probably know, the city of Los Angeles has been holding public hearings to gather input on possible frameworks for legalizing street vending. We’ve written before about the May 28 meeting in Boyle heights: once, twice, and thrice. Now, at last, we take up the June 11 meeting in Van Nuys. We’re starting things off with our old friend, Ms. Kerry Morrison. You can listen to her statement here or read a transcription after the break. We’ve also written about Kerry’s description of the meetings at the Joint Security Committee in July:
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.
In the same meeting, Kerry explained that she wasn’t putting up with this, not for a second, and told everyone what she’d done about it:
So actually, Carol Schatz and I wrote a letter to Herb Wesson, the president of the city council after that meeting saying this is, this is really not being, you know, well-handled, there’s no security, it’s intimidating to people, there are people who did not want to testify. So the subsequent two hearings were, um, maybe a little bit more well-behaved.
Well, we put our fearless correspondent on the case and he went out and got us a copy of this letter. As is usual with Kerry when she’s writing in this genre, outraged-with-veneer-of-politesse-and-diplomacy white supremacism, the letter manages to combine utterly competent, even stylish, syntax with semantics that wouldn’t have been out of place in a 1970-era Ronald Reagan psychotic fever dream about students running wild in the streets of Berkeley. Read on for details and more! Continue reading Kerry Morrison in Van Nuys: Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison / Where the executioner’s face is always well hidden1→