This photograph shows that Officer Benjamin Thompson (#39467) of the Hollywood Vice Squad is a mewling, puking liar. Read on for details!A couple weeks ago we wrote about a Zoning Administrator hearing being held for the purpose of revoking the Rusty Mullet’s conditional use permit. Well, the hearing was held on July 28, 2016. As far as we know a determination has not yet been made, but we recently obtained more than five hours of audio from the hearing. You can listen to part I and also part II here. It’s not easy to get through the whole damned thing, which is why you’re lucky to have us! We’ve listened to the whole thing and made clips of some interesting bits. Note that as long as we were haunting City Hall to get this material we also obtained audio from the CUP revocation hearings for the Cosmo Nightclub and the Cashmere, and you can find both of those on this Archive.org page.
Now, long-time readers of this blog will recall that in March 2015 we broke the story that Fabio Conti, Carol Massie, Kerry Morrison, Marty Shelton, and pretty much everyone on the Board of Directors of the Sunset & Vine BID except for Chase Gordon are a bunch of racists who want to shut down every bar on Hollywood Boulevard because they don’t like the skin color of the patrons. So imagine our pleasure at learning that Mike Ayaz, the Rusty Mullet’s lawyer, actually showed our video at the hearing! This was part of the evidence for his position, with which we concur, that the restaurant appears on a hit list of bars being targeted for racist reasons by the BID, the LAPD, and the City Government. You can hear the whole clip here, where he refers to Fabio’s speech as “disturbing video which I would like to play of a quasi-governmental agency that basically…I think I’ll let the video speak for itself.” And speak for itself it does: Fabio Conti, Kerry Morrison, and Carol Massie at a March 2016 meeting of the quasi-governmental agency responsible for the clandestine hit list targeting the Rusty Mullet.
Be sure to catch the audience reaction at the end. It doesn’t make anyone sane happy to hear Fabio Conti channeling Marty Shelton claiming that “the Lindsey Lohans of the world are not hanging out at the Rusty Mullet” with the regulars, who are “decidedly minority, brown and black, and my guess, from a lower economic strata.” These dimwits on the BID are clearly going to regret the day they neglected to listen to their one and only sane Board Member, Chase Gordon, who responded to this bullshit in March 2015 by saying that he didn’t “think that we should be, especially public-facing, going out with the distinction of ‘we don’t want lower economic statuses coming and visiting Hollywood.” Anyway, who can say what will happen, but we here at MK.org are inordinately proud on this beautiful Sunday morning that the citizen journalism of our intrepid correspondent is paying off in this big way. This story is a sleeper, but when it finally makes the papers, it’s going to be huge.
The Rusty Mullet at Hollywood and Las Palmas. Fabio Conti hates it. Carol Massie hates it. Marty Shelton hates it. Peter Zarcone hates it. The LAPD accused it of murder. Tomorrow the City is holding a hearing on whether to shut it down.Listen, this isn’t a joke. First get a copy of the hearing notice in the matter of the Rusty Mullet, being held at the Zoning Commission tomorrow morning. Then read the LAPD summary:
Los Angeles Police Department arrest report and crime analysis documentation of: multiple violations of Conditional Use Permit conditions including, failure to have an operable electronic age verification device, failure to implement a Designated Driver Program, failure to post mandated hours of operation, excess number of seats, allowance of amplified music to extend beyond the premises, allowance of live amplified music, allowance of dancing, allowance of loitering, and allowance of patrons to queue in line outside the premises; as well as, murder, rapes, aggravated assaults, assault with a deadly weapon, batteries, physical altercations, kidnapping, possession of a weapon, narcotic drug violations, grand theft auto, robberies, burglary, thefts, service of an obviously intoxicated person, failure of security guard to possess valid security guard license, public drunkenness, disorderly conduct, disturbing the peace, vandalism, and violation of State of California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control required operating conditions.
Jittery little psychopath and Hollywood McDonald’s queen Carol Massie who, in direct contradiction to high McDonald’s corporate-level mucky-mucks, thinks her business is not all about the bucks. Despite its appearance this is not a surveillance picture. It’s just a picture with that surveillance aesthetic!Remember back in March 2015 when we reported on the weirdly racist meanderings of Hollywood Chamber of Commerce flunky Marty Shelton as filtered through the unrepressed id of jittery little psychopath and Hollywood McDonald’s queen Carol Massie, who, in a surprising-even-for-her outburst at a meeting of the Sunset-Vine BID Board blamed Hollywood nightclub owners for ruining everything because they run “…these businesses who don’t really care about anything except that they make a profit.”??
At that time, we responded, quite reasonably even if we do say so ourselves, to the effect that:
Carol, here’s a newsflash: your company destroys rainforests, destroys the health of the world’s people, exploits its employees, destroys everything, because it doesn’t “really care about anything except that [it] make[s] a profit.” That’s what McDonald’s does.
A member of the Hollywood Protective Association and spiritual forebear of the modern BID Board member, with the backing of the 1920s edition of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, announces to the world that she’s a moron. Note sign in window stating “Member Hollywood Protective Association.”Long-time readers of this blog will recall that, last month, we broke the story of Hollywood Chamber of Commerce biggity-wig Marty Shelton’s bizarre distaste for black, brown, and poor people visiting Hollywood. Inspired by that, we recently wrote on the white supremacist roots of our beloved Hollywood sign and the inwrought caucasians-only policies of the real-estate development it once promoted. This line of inquiry got us interested in the jim crow history of Hollywood, which turns out to be quite rich.
For instance, a brief discussion in Scott Kurashige’s interesting book The Shifting Grounds of Race: Black and Japanese Americans in the Making of Multiethnic Los Angeles1 led us to read up in old LA Times articles on anti-Japanese hysteria in Hollywood in the early 1920s. It seems that in April 1923, the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce gave some advice to a bunch of angry white people. The article is here, but the short version is that some Japanese people bought eight lots in Hollywood, four near Bronson and Sunset and four on Tamarind and Gordon, and had the nerve to wish to build some apartment buildings and a church. Jess E. Stephens, City Attorney of Los Angeles in April 1923 when pitchfork-waving torch-bearing howling Hollywood lynch mobs came whining to him about how Japanese people were being meanies and building a church in Hollywood. His response doesn’t seem to be available in the historical record.
The white people got all in a tizzy, you can see one in the image above, and went to the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce screaming for help. The Chamber, as opposed to the presence of non-white people in Hollywood as they are today, directed the howling mob to the City Attorney to seek a restraining order and they also started circulating petitions “urging the residents to agree to restrict the use of land to those of the Caucasian race.”2 They were even inspired to poetry! See after the break for an especially creepy example.
Jittery little psychopath Carol Massie: “These kind of people” (Hollywood nightclub patrons) use drugs, cause “mayhem,” and are catered to by “businesses who don’t really care about anything except that they make a profit.”
Marty Shelton, Board Chairman of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, wants to turn Hollywood into a sundown town. According to Marty, nightclub patrons who are “decidedly minority, brown and black, and my guess, from a lower economic strata,” are “not appealing at all” and you won’t find that a wealthy apartment dweller “from Sunset and Vine was at Janes House hanging with the homies.”
Here’s the backstory: Last weekend a bunch of people from the Sunset-Vine BID and the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce took what they call a “midnight walk” around Hollywood Boulevard. They wander around the Boulevard from midnight until 3 a.m. so they can see how the other half lives in Hollywood. And they don’t like what they see. They don’t like it one bit.
At the March 17th meeting of the Sunset-Vine BID board of directors, Fabiolus Cucina owner Fabio Conti read aloud from an email that Marty sent to the participants describing his reaction. You can watch the relevant segment here, and there’s a transcription after the break. It’s worth reading or hearing the whole thing, because our poor journalistic tools can’t begin to do justice to the offensive craziness to be found therein.
Marty, here’s a newsflash: the city of Los Angeles is “decidedly minority, mostly brown and black.” That’s the way it is here, and the fact that it’s like that in Hollywood at night is a GOOD thing. The fact that it’s NOT like that in Hollywood during the day is the problem. We know it’s too much to ask of the BID, the Chamber, and their minions that they solve this problem, but it’s not too much to ask that they refrain from making it worse by pushing their apartheid policies on our lovely city. If “brown and black” people don’t “mesh with the new high-income residents coming in along with ofc tenants” then let those tenants live somewhere else, like, I don’t know, Minneapolis. Our city is “decidedly minority” and we LIKE it.
After Fabio read aloud this abhorrent piece of racist posturing, jittery little psychopath and owner of multiple Hollywood-area McDonald’s franchises Carol Massie weighed in with another weirdly delusional take on the subject:
Thus spake Carol Massie: You know, one of the problems, I think, and this is from going to security meetings. I think that the patrons do have a lot of money. And they, that’s why they cater to them, and that’s why some of the nightclubs [unintelligible] these kind of people, because they do have that kind of money, and they pay a lot of money for the drink…for, for, for getting into the building. It’s not so much the drinks cause they do other things instead, because after hours it’s mayhem. But whatever they look like, they have money from somewhere and they’re bringing it to these businesses who don’t really care about anything except that they make a profit. Jittery little psychopath Carol Massie’s McDonald’s at DeLongpre Avenue and Vine Street, just sitting there not “really car[ing] about anything except that they make a profit.”
Carol, here’s a newsflash: your company destroys rainforests, destroys the health of the world’s people, exploits its employees, destroys everything, because it doesn’t “really care about anything except that [it] make[s] a profit.” That’s what McDonald’s does. And “these kind of people”?! And “they do other things instead”?!? And “money from somewhere”?!?! “MAYHEM”???!!?!!
And if you don’t think “these kind of people” are good for Hollywood, why do you keep the drive-through window at your Vine Street restaurant open 24 hours? Who do you think wants an Egg McMuffin at 3 a.m. if not nightclub patrons in Hollywood? Do you “really care about anything except that [you] make a profit?” Put your money where your mouth runs off and stop making money off “these kind of people,” why don’t you? We don’t want to seem naive. Rich white racists are racist, but for God’s sake, don’t talk about it on camera. Continue reading Black, Brown, Poor, Nightclub Patrons Are Ruining Hollywood According to Hollywood Chamber Chair Marty Shelton and McDonald’s Owner Carol Massie→
![Jittery little psychopath Carol Massie's McDonald's at DeLongpre Avenue and Vine Street, just sitting there not "really car[ing] about anything except that they make a profit."](https://michaelkohlhaas.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/2015.03.19.carol_.massies.mcdonalds.at_.delongpre.and_.vine_.700.jpg)