Tag Archives: Leron Gubler

Hollywood Property Owners Alliance, Street Vending

Lying Zillionaires Lie About Street Food In Hollywood — Hollywood Property Owners’ Alliance And Hollywood Chamber Of Commerce Submit Doctored Anti-Vendor Photos And Mendacious Letter To City Council — Oppose Street Food Because Hotdoguero Putatively Under The Influence Of Marijuana While Cooking — As If The Kitchens Of Every Ritzy Restaurant On The Boulevard Weren’t Hotbeds Of Cocaine Abuse, Rape, And Sadistic Brutality — The Three Central Back Of The House Traditions Of The Fine Dining Industry

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I’ve been covering the dishonest, fever-pitched, chainsaw-screech opposition of the business improvement districts of Los Angeles to this City’s miraculous, one-of-a-kind, irreplaceable street vendors since the Spring of 2015. And they will lie, they will pay their minions to lie, they will whine, and so on. And the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce is no better. E.g. its so-called CEO, Leron Gubler, recently wrote a racist screed to the LA City Council claiming that the value of Hollywood Boulevard as a world-class tourist attraction was being depleted due to too many “third world bazaar” type people selling yummy food on the sidewalks.1

And, as you no doubt know, all of this nonsense had the effect of dragging out the City’s attempts at legalizing vending for years, leading State Senator Ricardo Lara to introduce a bill forbidding cities in California from banning vending. This was signed into law by Jerry Brown in September and immediately moved the Los Angeles street vending debate into a different dimension. Lara’s bill prohibits restricting vending on the basis of anything other than objective health, welfare, and safety concerns. And the City is working on a regulatory system that putatively complies with these new limitations.

So the BIDdies have retrenched, given up on banning vendors in most parts of the City, and, in a bizarre Satanic inversion of Jesus’s cleansing of the temple, are concentrating on keeping a very few of their high and holy places, like Hollywood Boulevard, safe for the moneychangers by preventing infestations of the wrong kind of people selling cheap and yummy food2 in a “third world bazaar” type atmosphere. This is as opposed to the expensive and crappy food that the BIDdies prefer to be sold to tourists in Hollywood.3

And to do this, of course, they’re now required to argue that they’re motivated solely by objective health, welfare, and safety concerns rather than the real reasons, chief among which is their unhinged racism. Which brings us to November 27, 2018, when Leron Gubler submitted yet another letter to the Council File, accompanied by some photos supplied by the Hollywood Property Owners’ Alliance, pushing the theory that vending on Hollywood Boulevard is unhealthy, unsafe, and contributes to illfare,4 and so should be banned.
Continue reading Lying Zillionaires Lie About Street Food In Hollywood — Hollywood Property Owners’ Alliance And Hollywood Chamber Of Commerce Submit Doctored Anti-Vendor Photos And Mendacious Letter To City Council — Oppose Street Food Because Hotdoguero Putatively Under The Influence Of Marijuana While Cooking — As If The Kitchens Of Every Ritzy Restaurant On The Boulevard Weren’t Hotbeds Of Cocaine Abuse, Rape, And Sadistic Brutality — The Three Central Back Of The House Traditions Of The Fine Dining Industry →

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Los Angeles City Council, Street Vending

City Attorney Submits Proposed Street Vending Ordinance To Council — Mostly Kicks Can Down Road To 2020 By Instructing Rec and Parks And BSS To Write Regulations For Council Approval — But Does Include Hard-Coded Ban Of Vending At Venice Beach, Pueblo De Los Angeles, And Within 500 Feet Of Walk Of Fame, Dodger Stadium, Hollywood Bowl, Coliseum, Staples Center On Event Days

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September 2018 — A taquera Oaxaqueña plies her trade on Vermont Avenue north of Slauson.
In September Jerry Brown signed into law Ricardo Lara’s monumental SB 946, basically invalidating all municipal bans on street vending in California. One week later the Los Angeles City Council instructed the City Attorney to draft a compliant ordinance. And yesterday the City Attorney’s drafts5 hit the Council File. You can read the drafts for yourself:

These also came with a report from the City Attorney.

The main difference between the drafts seems to be that in the first version the Bureau of Street Services will be responsible for licensing vendors and enforcement won’t start until 2020. In the second version the City will choose a private contractor to administer the program. There may be other differences that I didn’t notice.

In neither case is it possible to tell right now what legalized street vending will look like in Los Angeles. Both drafts require Recreation and Parks and the Bureau of Street Services to draw up detailed regulations for vending in parks and on the streets respectively, and what these will look like is almost completely undetermined by the language of the ordinances. Although, if the earlier-announced positions of Rec and Parks and of BSS are going to be implemented, we’re in for another long ugly fight which will probably include more lawsuits.

Despite the inchoate character of these drafts, though, it seems that there are some prohibitions which the City Attorney feels are too important to be left up to the vagaries of the administrative rule-making process. These are as listed in the headline, and as transcribed and discussed below after the break.
Continue reading City Attorney Submits Proposed Street Vending Ordinance To Council — Mostly Kicks Can Down Road To 2020 By Instructing Rec and Parks And BSS To Write Regulations For Council Approval — But Does Include Hard-Coded Ban Of Vending At Venice Beach, Pueblo De Los Angeles, And Within 500 Feet Of Walk Of Fame, Dodger Stadium, Hollywood Bowl, Coliseum, Staples Center On Event Days →

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Business Improvement Districts, Los Angeles City Council

Leron Gubler Of The Hollywood Chamber Of Commerce Wrote To The City Council To Tell Them That Legal Street Vending Is Causing Hollywood Boulevard To Be “Compared To A Third World Bazaar” — And Because He’s A Racist Fucking Moron He Takes It For Granted That That’s A Bad Thing

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ACTION NOTE: Carol Schatz told us that City Council was going to be taking up street vending again soon, and she was correct. It’s scheduled for the Economic Development Committee on April 16 at 2 p.m. in City Hall room 340, which is the Ferraro Council Chamber. Obviously they’re expecting a crowd.

Business Improvement Districts and other white supremacist zillionaire flunkies like various chambers of commerce and the Central City Association have spent the last three years fighting against legalized street vending in Los Angeles because they’re a bunch of puritanical racists. Ordinarily, though, they have the sense to hide their puritanical racism behind a thin screen of concern for slightly more acceptable issues like civic order, the rule of law, public health, whatever.

However, a couple days ago, Leron Gubler of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce let the mask slip just for a moment. He sent this letter, a transcription of which is after the break, to City Council to oppose legalizing street vending.6 And in it he stated:

The Chamber and the Hollywood Entertainment District BID continue to be inundated with complaints from our property owners and visitors on Hollywood Boulevard about the increase in sidewalk vendors over the past year. The street, especially at night, is being compared to a third world bazaar.

It’s not even a dog whistle. He’s explicitly complaining that there are too many unruly darkies on Hollywood Blvd., because who else is found in a “third world bazaar”? These people7 don’t seem to have the first clue that they don’t own Hollywood Blvd., they don’t own this City. And this is not the first time they’ve complained about nonwhite people taking over Hollywood Blvd.

Their visions for Hollywood Blvd., for Los Angeles, are no more important or valid than anyone else’s, no matter what the color of their skin or whether or not they have a zillion bucks in the bank. Most of Los Angeles likes street vending. Most of Los Angeles likes unruly darkies. We are unruly darkies here. Without unruly darkies there would be no Los Angeles. Our City would be just like freaking Hancock Park or San Marino. Most of Los Angeles likes what vending does for our streets, our neighborhoods, our humanity. If these BIDdies don’t like it, why don’t they move back to America or Palos Verdes or wherever they came from?
Continue reading Leron Gubler Of The Hollywood Chamber Of Commerce Wrote To The City Council To Tell Them That Legal Street Vending Is Causing Hollywood Boulevard To Be “Compared To A Third World Bazaar” — And Because He’s A Racist Fucking Moron He Takes It For Granted That That’s A Bad Thing →

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Business Improvement Districts, Miscellaneous, Public Records Act Pragmatics

Self-Proclaimed Hollywood Super Lawyer Jeffrey Charles Briggs Adorns His Professional Emails With Quotes From This Blog!! Tacit Endorsement Of Us? Irresistible Freudian Urge To Reveal His Hidden Forbidden Feelings? Stockholm Syndrome? All Of The Above?? Enquiring Minds Wanna Know!!

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So as you’re probably aware, the staff of this blog is involved in any number of interminable legal battles with various BIDs across the City of Los Angeles for the sole reason that, being zillionaires and therefore suckled on white privilege and Satan’s wine, they cannot, for the damn life of them, just follow the freaking law. And some astonishingly large percentage of this City’s BIDdies are represented in their CPRAfactions by self-proclaimed Hollywood Superlawyer Jeffrey Charles Briggs.8

Therefore it is not unusual for me to sit down in front of the computer to spend a pleasant hour or so arguing with BIDdies about how they better start handing over the damn goods or else …9 and to spend like 80% of that time swapping electrons with the notorious JCB himself. And I have to say, it’s pretty fulfilling, cause the guy has a hair-trigger temper and I get three points10 every time he loses it.11

So anyway, right now we’re into it about the issue of whether two different versions of an email, with different metadata but the same body content, are distinct records or not. He says no, they’re the same. I say yes, they’re different.12 And he’s maintaining his untenable position for two distinct clients. First, the East Hollywood BID and second, the Hollywood Media District BID. And, my friend, turn the page for more snide remarks, evidence that Mr. JCB reads this blog and quotes it, and, de natch, transcriptions galore!
Continue reading Self-Proclaimed Hollywood Super Lawyer Jeffrey Charles Briggs Adorns His Professional Emails With Quotes From This Blog!! Tacit Endorsement Of Us? Irresistible Freudian Urge To Reveal His Hidden Forbidden Feelings? Stockholm Syndrome? All Of The Above?? Enquiring Minds Wanna Know!! →

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Announcements, Fashion District BID, Municipal Ethics

New MK.Org Coffee Mug Honoring Leron Gubler And The Hollywood Chamber Of Commerce For Being Extra Super Duper Law Abiding, Also Tons Of New Fashion District BID Emails

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My recent post about the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce and its lobbying disclosure activity was so popular, or at least the picture that accompanied the post was so popular, that, effectively although not actually by popular demand, we here at MK.Org created yet another souvenir gift mug, an accessory with which you too can tell the world that you’re opposed to bad BIDness in Los Angeles and also is very handy for the drinking of coffee and other hot beverages! We here at MK.Org feel that this item has the potential to outsell our current bestselling item, the Blair Besten anti-CPRA award mug. Help us make that dream come true, friends!

Turn the page for link to newly obtained emails from the Fashion District.
Continue reading New MK.Org Coffee Mug Honoring Leron Gubler And The Hollywood Chamber Of Commerce For Being Extra Super Duper Law Abiding, Also Tons Of New Fashion District BID Emails →

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Business Improvement Districts, Municipal Ethics

The Hollywood Chamber Of Commerce Amended Its Lobbying Registration Form in April 2017 And The Only Change Was The Date They Qualified — More Interesting, Though, Is The Fact That They Consider Their Pro-Establishment Advocacy For Jeff Zarrinnam’s Inchoate Hollywood-Western And Route 66 BIDs To Be Lobbying Activity

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It’s well-known that the Municipal Lobbying Ordinance requires lobbyists of all stripes to register with the City Ethics Commission. The Hollywood Chamber of Commerce is no exception to the rule.13 They are also required to amend their registration forms if there are any material changes in the information provided.14

And as you know if you follow this blog, I find everything to do with lobbyists in Los Angeles fascinating, and thus I haunt the Ethics Commission’s lobbying pages, poring over the alphabetical lists of individual lobbyists and of lobbyist firms and employers to see if anything’s changed or if something is newly interesting.

And lo! Last night I noticed that our old friends, the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, had amended their registration form on April 28. Here are the two forms:

Well, I stared and stared and stared at those two forms just trying to figure out what had changed. Eventually I noticed that the original form had January 31, 2017 as the date they’d qualified as a lobbying entity15 whereas the amended version had January 1, 2017 as the day of qualifying.

One of the Hollywood Chamber’s registration forms superimposed on the other with 38% opacity so that it’s clear that the only difference is in the qualifying date. Click to enlarge, of course.
There’s a lot of information on the forms, though, and I didn’t feel confident that the difference I’d noticed was in fact the only difference. I wasn’t sure what do to until this morning, when it occurred to me that if I put both pages into the GIMP, superimposed one on top of the other, and then faded the opacity up and down I’d be able to notice what changed.16 And it turns out that in fact, it’s correct that the only change was the date of the Hollywood Chamber’s qualifying as a lobbyist.

Which leads irresistibly to the question of why Leron Gubler and/or Nicole Shahenian, who are the Hollywood Chamber’s two registered lobbyists, felt the need to make this tiny change. Read on for speculations and some other chit-chat about the fact that Leron Gubler lists the establishment of the Hollywood Western and the Route 66 BIDs as issues the Chamber is lobbying for this year.
Continue reading The Hollywood Chamber Of Commerce Amended Its Lobbying Registration Form in April 2017 And The Only Change Was The Date They Qualified — More Interesting, Though, Is The Fact That They Consider Their Pro-Establishment Advocacy For Jeff Zarrinnam’s Inchoate Hollywood-Western And Route 66 BIDs To Be Lobbying Activity →

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Announcements, Business Improvement Districts

New Documents: Palisades BID Bylaws, Gateway To LA BID Homeless Outreach Collaboration With Heirs Of Sister Aimee In Venice, And Beaucoup De Minutes From North Hollywood, Figueroa Corridor, and East Hollywood

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So much new stuff! Here’s the list, friends:

And turn the page for minutes, minutes, minutes, and more minutes. Hours worth of minutes!
Continue reading New Documents: Palisades BID Bylaws, Gateway To LA BID Homeless Outreach Collaboration With Heirs Of Sister Aimee In Venice, And Beaucoup De Minutes From North Hollywood, Figueroa Corridor, and East Hollywood →

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Hollywood Property Owners Alliance, Hypocrisy

That Time in 2012 When Kerry Morrison’s OCD Street Character Rage Incited Rabid, Frothing-at-Mouth Angry White Property Owning “Bull[ies]” to Attack Jane Ellison Usher and Tamar Galatzan with “Repeated Kicks to the Head”

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Kerry Morrison in 2012 explaining to Jane Ellison Usher why it's so important to get rid of street characters in Hollywood.
Kerry Morrison in 2012 explaining to Jane Ellison Usher why it’s so important to get rid of street characters in Hollywood.
Last month we broke the story of Kerry Morrison’s insistence that street characters on Hollywood Blvd. must be outlawed to curb terrorism while carving out a performative exception for the Ku Klux Klan’s Hancock Park operations. One of the incidents described there was a terse summary from HPOA Board minutes about how some meeting was tense because the City Attorney’s office had “…dropped the ball…” and they walked out of the meeting (due to shame or something).
Jane Ellison Usher in May 2009, three years before the HPOA's receiving repeated kicks to the head from Kerry Morrison and bullying friends
Jane Ellison Usher in May 2009, three years before receiving “repeated kicks to the head” from Kerry Morrison and “bully[ing]” friends.
Well, we recognize a whitewashing when presented with one, so we directed our faithful correspondent to investigate further, and, with the assistance of ever-helpful Mike Dundas of the City Attorney’s office, he came up with this little gem right here, which is an email from Special Assistant City Attorney Jane Ellison Usher17 to Kerry Morrison, Joe Mariani, and Leron Gubler, taking them to task for allowing their psychotic crazed white property owner constituents to berate Ms. Usher and her colleague Tamar Galatzan18 over a perceived, albeit delusionally so, inaction with respect to the TERRORISM street character problem at Hollywood and Highland. Ms. Usher’s description is far, far more plausible than that of the anonymous minutes-taker quoted above and far, far less flattering to the crazed HPOA-ites than is their own description. In particular:
Continue reading That Time in 2012 When Kerry Morrison’s OCD Street Character Rage Incited Rabid, Frothing-at-Mouth Angry White Property Owning “Bull[ies]” to Attack Jane Ellison Usher and Tamar Galatzan with “Repeated Kicks to the Head” →

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Hollywood Property Owners Alliance, Hypocrisy

LA Times Reporting on Mitch O’Farrell’s All-by-his-Lonesome Pitchfork-and-Torch-Wielding Assault on Hollywood Nightlife Continues to Make No Goddamned Sense Whatsoever

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Mitch O'Farrell, cleverly photographed so as to render HPOA's marionette control strings invisible.
Mitch O’Farrell, cleverly photographed so as to render HPOA’s marionette control strings invisible.
We reported recently on media coverage of CD13 Councildude Mitch O’Farrell’s recently inaugurated hysterical campaign against nightclubs in Hollywood which, if you read the coverage prior to today, seemed to come out of nowhere. Of course, as we said, it almost surely came from the HPOA, seeing as they are not only exceedingly prone to racist anti-nightclub hysteria but additionally are in no way above complex multi-agent conspiracies with Leron Gubler of the Hollywood chamber and Peter Zarcone of the LAPD.

Well, today the Times ran yet another gap-filled, info-deficient story on the subject. At least this one said one relevant thing:

The new attention from O’Farrell is not the result of an increase in complaints. In fact, Zarcone said complaints against clubs remain flat.

So that’s what O’Farrell’s attention is NOT a result of. Could the Times be bothered to find out what it IS a result of? No, they could not. What does O’Farrell have to say about this? Something stupid:

“Hollywood must be a neighborhood that is safe, clean and hospitable to its residents,” O’Farrell said.

The residents aren’t complaining. Zarcone himself said so. So who is complaining? It’s the BIDs, ain’t it? And what does Leron Gubler have to say? Something else stupid:
Continue reading LA Times Reporting on Mitch O’Farrell’s All-by-his-Lonesome Pitchfork-and-Torch-Wielding Assault on Hollywood Nightlife Continues to Make No Goddamned Sense Whatsoever →

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Joint Security Committee

Piratical Hollywood Chamber of Commerce Flies False Flag for BID’s Brain-Dead Bar-Busting Brouhaha

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Peter Zarcone strikes a thoughtful pose at the April 9, 2015 meeting of the Joint Security Committee
Peter Zarcone strikes a thoughtful pose at the April 9, 2015 meeting of the Joint Security Committee
LAPD Hollywood Division Captain Peter Zarcone, who seems like a pretty decent guy even if he does look a little “like he had been disinterred for the express purpose of making people uneasy,”1 turned out to be the voice of what passes for ethical standards at the Joint Security Meeting on April 9, 2015. Here’s the story.

The JSC was, as usual, blethering on about how nightclubs are ruining everything and had pretty much agreed that the problem was lack of enforcement of the terms of liquor licenses. The issue is that type 47 licenses, which require a bona fide food service establishment, are being used as type 48 licenses, which do not require food to be served. See here for a description of the various types of California liquor licenses allowed.

John Tronson at the Joint Security Committee meeting on April 9, 2015, complaining about some guy whose name we didn't catch who gets too damned many liquor licenses and thereby ruins EVERYTHING in Hollywood
John Tronson at the Joint Security Committee meeting on April 9, 2015, complaining about some guy whose name we didn’t catch who gets too damned many liquor licenses and thereby ruins EVERYTHING in Hollywood

The JSC agrees that there are just too many liquor licenses. In fact, listen here as John Tronson accuses one of his fellow zillionaires, possibly Argentinian impresario-about-town Adolfo Suaya of “What’s on Third,” possibly someone whose name we didn’t catch, of mucking everything up by getting “6 liquor licenses for every building he owns” (transcript after the break).

So Fabio Conti has the solution! The BID should go to liquor license hearings and… do what? Maybe tell the ABC that liquor licenses attract too many poor, dark-skinned people to Hollywood?!
Continue reading Piratical Hollywood Chamber of Commerce Flies False Flag for BID’s Brain-Dead Bar-Busting Brouhaha →

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