Kerry Morrison at the Hollywood Property Owners Alliance Joint Security Meeting counting nightclubs in Hollywood that she and her coconspirators haven’t destroyed yet.Maybe you remember our semi-recent post about the July 28 meeting of the Joint Security Committee, in which some genius of a Sheriff’s deputy poured forth a never-ending stream of genius-level similes, including a comparison of sidewalk vendors at MacArthur Park with “too many animals in one cage.” Well, with all the furor over Hollywood nightclub totalitarianism, we’ve been too busy to get back to that video until this morning. Take a look here as our friends on the committee and some random cop discuss the Rusty Mullet. As always, a complete transcription may be found at the end of this post, but here is essentially what was discussed in this metaphorically smoke-filled back room.
“He is slight of build and not a physical threat.” Then why is the BID Patrol forcing him out of public view?I’m searching through the 2015 BID Patrol daily logs and also the 2015 arrest reports as part of a major project I’m working on,1 and I just keep coming across more surreal and upsetting (albeit tangential) episodes. For instance, on June 25, 2015 BID Patrol gunmen Dennis Watkins (badge #104) and Steven Sewell (badge #111), whose pictures Kerry Morrison is willing to lie and to break the law in order to keep secret,2 told the following story:3
RADIO CALL: 6923 HOLLYWOOD BLVD. 415 MAN IN FRONT OF THE “METRO”. UPON ARRIVAL NUMEROUS PEOPLE WERE POINTING TO THE SUBJECT. THE SUBJECT IS “C***** B****’ A M / W / 40-45 YRS. HE IS A TRANSIENT AND CAUSES PROBLEMS WERE EVER HE MAY BE. HE HAS PERIODS OF TIME WHERE HE WILL USE THE MOST VULGAR LANGUAGE TOWARD ANYONE IN EAR SHOT. HE PULLS A CHILD TYPE WAGON WITH ALL OF HIS POSSESSIONS. THERE IS NO REASONING OR CALMING THIS INDIVIDUAL DOWN. OFFICERS HAVE TO TAKE A FIRM POSTURE AND DIRECT HIM AWAY FROM PEOPLE. OFFICERS WILL ESCORT HIM TO A SIDE STREET OR OTHER LESS TRAVELED LOCATION. HE IS SWEARING AT THE OFFICERS DURING ALL OF THIS. IT IS UNKNOWN IF HE IS UNDER A DOCTORS CARE. IT IS AMAZING THAT HE HAS NOT BEEN ASSAULTED BY OTHER CITIZENS. HE IS SLIGHT OF BUILD AND NOT A PHYSICAL THREAT.
Kerry Morrison with her detective hat on.There is all kinds of interesting stuff in the BID Patrol daily log files, and some of it is too weird to even describe. This little story is from April 24, 2015, written by BID Patrol officers Mike Coogle and his frequent partner Mike Ayala:
OUTREACH- 1500 BLOCK OF GORDON AVENUE- E/ SIDE OF STREET
YESTERDAY WE RECEIVED A CALL FROM KERRY’S OFFICE REGARDING A VEHICLE SHE OBSERVED. THE VEHICLE, A GREY BUICK LIC#XXXXXXX, WAS UNOCCUPIED BUT CONTAINED A CHILD SEAT, FORMULA AND OTHER ITEMS POSSIBLY INDICATING THE OWNER OF THE VEHICLE IS HOMELESS WITH A CHILD. YESTERDAY WE LEFT A PATH CARD AND FLIER WITH LOCAL, FAMILY FRIENDLY HOMELESS SERVICES ON THE WINDSHIELD. THIS MORNING, THE CARD AND PAPER WERE GONE. THE VEHICLE WAS UNOCCUPIED AND SOME ITEMS APPEARED TO BE IN DIFFERENT SPOTS.
If the BID is established forget about food trucks. BIDs freaking hate food trucks. Especially if they’re near a restaurant, like this one on Logan Street North of Sunset is.If the Echo Park BID is established forget about little old ladies selling flowers, like this one on Sunset Blvd. just West of Echo Park Avenue. BIDs freaking hate little old ladies!If the Echo Park BID is established forget about signs like this. BIDs freaking hate signs on the sidewalk.If the BID is established in Echo Park say goodbye to RVs around the Park itself. BIDs freaking hate RVs.Due to some kind-hearted click bait1 bestowed by loyal FOMs Esotouric, my colleagues’ recent post on the resurgence of the long-dormant proposed Echo Park Business Improvement District has turned out to be one of our most popular posts of 2016. The colleagues left out some absolutely essential information and so I’m following up on their behalves. Also I used the whole situation as an excuse to ride the 704 Eastbound to Echo Park Avenue and Sunset Blvd. to check out the situation on the ground.
First the essential info: This thing is on the agenda for the Economic Development Committee meeting on Tuesday, May 10, in room 1010 in City Hall. You can go tell them what you think about it. Unfortunately I have other commitments, and I’m sure approval is a foregone conclusion, but there’s the info if you want it.
Second, as you can see from the images accompanying this post, if the BID’s approved a lot of stuff is going to change out there. They’re going to chase off taco trucks. BIDs hate taco trucks with a passion that’s hard to understand. They even, believe it or not, hate taco trucks parked on private property. Showing an astonishing ignorance of the rights of property owners in a free society, they’ve been known to express amazement that they’re not against the law.
Garcetti’s last laugh…the Echo Park BID claws its grimy way out of its once-forgotten grave.NOTE: Part Two of this series is now live on the internets.
I mean, sure, we’re being overdramatic, but what is anyone to think when a long-forgotten council file comes roaring back to life after six years of inactivity. We didn’t even know that was legal!
John Tronson and Kerry Morrison at the March 17, 2016 meeting of the HPOA Board of Directors. Despite appearances, Ms. Morrison evidently did not throw that pencil at anyone during this meeting.Recall that last month the Hollywood Property Owners Alliance spent a good 40 minutes yammering on about a misbegotten plan of Peter Zarcone’s and Bill Farrar’s to have their armed minions, the BID Patrol, stay out way past everyone’s bed-time in order to put the old kibosh on the herds of outta-control dark-skinned people who, at least in the BIDsies’ fantastically fretful obsessive delusional view of things, occupy the Boulevard on weekend nights. Well, Zarcone got transferred, Steve Seyler backed off the plan, and Kerry Morrison told the Central Hollywood Coalition on March 8: “Yeah…it’s not happening.” A good friend of this blog wrote to Mitch O’Farrell asking him not to pay for this nonsense, and we found out just a couple days ago that as early as February 22, O’Farrell staffers Rodriguez and Halden had concerns about the plan that they took to their boss. We can’t say for sure (yet) what drove the dispositive stake through the heart of Bill Farrar’s vampire baby, but whatever it was, evidently no one explained the full extent of the deadness to John Tronson.
Foul whisperings are abroad. Unnatural deeds Do breed unnatural troubles; infected minds To their deaf pillows will discharge their secrets. More needs she the divine than the physician. God, God, forgive us all!
It never occurred to us—Carol Massie, Lady Macbeth…hmmm…
Watch, listen, and learn as Central Hollywood Coalition BID-Boardies Brian Folb and Carol Massie misunderstand everything about everything about homelessness in Los Angeles. We suppose that one of the big drawbacks to being a zillionaire is that you end up thinking you’re the sun and the rest of the world orbits around you and then you expose your delusions in public, maybe even on camera, and then you get mocked (to witness which, if you’re wondering, is why you’ve all been summoned here today!)
Laurie Goldman and Mike Malick, attended by Lisa Schechter and a bunch of parrots and minions, look down from their haughty thrones upon Ron Groeper and some tarts.The Hollywood Media District elected its officers at yesterday’s Board of Directors meeting and you can watch the whole thing here. Mike Malick, current president and chairman of the nominating committee, presented an approved slate of candidates, chief among which were Grub-meister Laurie Goldman as president of the Board and also, possibly due to Kissinger’s law,1 Mighty Mike himself as vice-president. Then, as is not only customary but probably legally mandated, Mike asked for nominations from the floor and Bang! Off went the fireworks. Not only was there was a fascinating dispute about the corporation’s bylaws and Brown Act requirements but also, O rarest of Board meeting events! an unexpectedly contested election which installed hand-picked putative shoo-in candidate Laurie Goldman as Board President by a mere one-vote margin, setting a tense and bitter tone for the rest of the meeting, perhaps the rest of the year. Ron Groeper expressing disbelief (horror?) at yesterday’s Media District BID Board meeting.
First, and for some reason, some show folk whose names we didn’t catch chose this moment to ask about how board members are replaced and could they get their compatriot in. Mike Malick explained that candidates were recommended by the nominating committee to the board. This prompted a response from Ron Groeper about the legality of the process proposed by Mike which included a reading from the bylaws, never a feature of the meetings of an organization which is harmonious and happy. In any case, the Brown Act precludes board action on non-agendized matters, and so, says Mike Malick, on to the election! Continue reading Off With Their Heads!! Preordained Coronation of Laurie Goldman as Queen and President of Hollywood Media District BID Succeeds by Single Vote in Face of Abortive Palace Revolt Led By Ron Groeper and Friends→
PR flack Laura Mecoy of Manhattan Beach, who is currently earning her living telling tales about street vendors in the corridors of power.Long-time readers of this blog will recall that, in March 2015, we broke the story that outlaw downtown ringleader Carol Schatz’s ongoing criminal conspiracy, popularly known as the Central City Association, had hired shadowy PR flacks Rodriguez Strategies to shill for this city’s white-power-elite-zillionaire-industrial complex in order to defeat Councilmen José Huizar’s and Curren Price’s surprisingly-for-LA-politicos sane proposals regarding street vending. Rodriguez Strategies deputed its minion, evil PR-thuggette Jessica Borek, to set up a bullshit astroturf group known as “The Coalition to Save Small Business,” and off they went to lie about everything at every public hearing possible on the subject.
Well, evidently Rodriguez Strategies wasn’t doing enough damage for the CCA’s taste, because at some point the opponents of legalized street vending in Los Angeles hired yet another PR firm, Mecoy Communications, run by former reporter Laura Mecoy, pictured above. Yesterday, we obtained a bunch of emails from Laura Mecoy to Kerry Morrison, Carol Schatz, and two business owners who oppose legalized street vending about a meeting Laura’s arranged with the LA Times editorial board. And Laura is worth whatever they’re paying her. Although the Times showed some independent thought in the resulting editorial, Laura got them to take Kerry Morrison’s and Carol Schatz’s delusory and insincere arguments as if they were something more than self-interested expediencies. They’re not. This is a fascinating but all-too-rare glimpse into the interplay between money, power, and media in Los Angeles. Continue reading Inside the Anti-Street-Vending Campaign: Newly Revealed Emails Between Kerry Morrison, Carol Schatz, and PR Flack Laura Mecoy Shine Unwonted Light Into Power-Elite Media Manipulation Process→
Carol Schatz in 2009 looking, as cynics habitually have done throughout the ages, down to the gutter rather than up to the stars.Sixty percent of comatose Californians and virtually one hundred percent of the non-comatose are aware that last year’s Proposition 47 is causing massive freakouts amongst California’s cops, the zillionaire elite who rely on those cops to stave off the slavering locustoid hordes of marauding homeless people who inhabit their fevered imaginations, and the zillionaire elite’s hired flunkies, among whom are to be found the staffs of the Business Improvement Districts of Los Angeles. If you haven’t heard about this kerfluffle, the Los Angeles Times has helpfully run about nine zillion op-eds covering every sane point of view on the issue and most of the more popular less-than-sane ones. The gist of it is that in November 2014, about 20 minutes after the election results were in, the cops of California pitched a toys-out-of-pram tantrum and essentially stopped arresting anyone for anything and everyone, including all BID-associated people everywhere, started blaming the proposition for every crime committed anywhere in the state along with petty thefts and suspicious fires, broken windows, pissed-in gutters, aggressive panhandling, open bottles of cheap vodka, and probably the disappearance of freaking Amelia Earhart. Amelia Earhart, mere moments before Proposition 47 reached back in time, grabbed her right out of her airplane, and made her vanish into thin air, never to be seen again, just like it’s doing to our quality of life right here in sunny Los Angeles. Curse you, bleeding-hearted liberals!
We haven’t gone out of our way to report to any great extent on this BIDiabolical whining because there’s just so much of it, it’s so freaking repetitive, and, anyway, who has the time? However, our faithful correspondent assures us that nary an HPOA Joint Security Committee meeting he’s attended in 2015 has gone by without someone mentioning it, and the same goes for other HPOA/CHC meetings. Kerry Morrison even once admitted on camera that she’d voted for it but now she regretted it. In any case, Carol Schatz has unexpectedly provided us with such a distilled, such a quintessential, such a blatantly, screechingly, cynical example of the genre that we finally felt moved to address the subject. Everything we’re quoting here comes from this email chain, which is one of the many recently obtained for us via the California Public Records Act. And the details, as they will do, follow after the break. Continue reading You Know those Millions of Pages of Frenzied-Zillionaire-Elite-Police-Industrial-Complex-Pearl-Clutching-Hysterical-Media-Manipulation over Prop 47? Watch Carol Schatz Distill it all into 15-ish Short, Cynical Words→
