Tag Archives: Orange Drive

Department Of Deja Voodoo! Tour Bus Wars Redux! Also, How Kerry Morrison Sowed Crazy Beans Which Fell On The Fertile Ground Of What Passes For The Mind Of Tony Hoover, Delusional Founder of Red Line Tours, And Grew Into A Mighty Sequoia Of Insanity!

Crazy here, crazy there, sow some crazy everywhere!  Kerry Morrison distributing anti-tour-bus crazy beans in 2012.
Crazy here, crazy there, sow some crazy everywhere! Kerry Morrison distributing anti-tour-bus crazy beans in 2012.
The text for this morning’s sermon, brothers and sisters, is from the Gospel of Thomas:1
Listen! A sower went out to sow. He filled his hand and cast the seed. Some fell on the road; the birds came and ate the seed. Others fell on the rock, sprouted, and dried up. And others fell on the thorns, which choked them and insects ate them. And others fell on the fertile ground of freaking Tony Hoover, founder of freaking Red Line Tours, and multiplied a freaking zillionfold into a veritable magic freaking beanstalk of crazy.

Well, the disciples of Jesus also didn’t get what he was talking about, so I guess I shouldn’t feel bad about having to fill in some backstory.

See, last week, according to the Beverly Press, Councilmoppet Mitch O’Farrell announced that he and now-retired-from-his-position-as-clean-government-poster-boy-but-still-active-as-Councilmember-more’s-the-freaking-pity David Ryu of CD4 had introduced a motion in Council to put an end to what they claim to see as the desperate, wanton, willful, and ongoing destruction of what passes for the quality of life of people who actually live in Hollywood by tour bus operators on the Boulevard, mostly between Orange and Vine. It’s something about how they try to hand you flyers and ask you where you’re from even though you are obviously from Los Angeles.2

I'm just kind of tired of looking at Mitch and Kerry for now, so here's David.  Isn't it sad that a mere fourteen months ago he took office with all kinds of promises of transparency and clean government and now he is being quoted in in actual lawsuits against the City of Los Angeles as evidence for the inherent corruption and amorality of City Council?
I’m just kind of tired of looking at Mitch and Kerry for now, so here’s David. Isn’t it sad that a mere fourteen months ago he took office with all kinds of promises of transparency and clean government and now he is being quoted in in actual lawsuits against the City of Los Angeles as evidence for the inherent corruption and amorality of City Council?
Well, if you’ve been paying attention to this blog at all, you will immediately suspect that (a) neither Mitch O’Farrell nor David Ryu give the first flying fuck about tour buses on Hollywood Boulevard and (b) they are channeling the concerns of that master covert lobbyist and famously blue-nosed Mrs. Grundy whose nom de Hollywood is Ms. Kerry Morrison.3 Kerry Morrison is, as is her wont, concerned about what she calls “civility on the public right of way” and the rest of us call “killing off or at least arresting everyone who scares her or doesn’t have a lot of money.”

I have not yet had time to track down records pertaining to the current incarnation of Kerry Morrison’s obsession with tour buses.4 But the story in the paper reminded me that I had a bunch of unprocessed material from the City Attorney from 2012 on this very subject. So I put that all together and put it up on the Archive (as well as locally if you prefer), where you can read it at will. It concerns a so-called “Tour Bus Working Group,” put together by Kerry Morrison and including the usual representatives of the City and the Hollywood zillionaire elite.

It’s mostly not that interesting, although there is evidence there that Kerry Morrison has been obsessed with tour buses for the entire twenty years that she’s been the Hollywood BID-boss.5 It culminated in November 2012 with a report to Eric Garcetti and Tom LaBonge about what should be done about tour buses6 and an ordinance addressing a tiny part of her concerns, written, of course, by LaBonge and Garcetti. However, there is one shining gem of craziness, written by Tony Hoover, self-proclaimed “founder” of Red Line Tours. That, I have to discuss in detail!
Continue reading Department Of Deja Voodoo! Tour Bus Wars Redux! Also, How Kerry Morrison Sowed Crazy Beans Which Fell On The Fertile Ground Of What Passes For The Mind Of Tony Hoover, Delusional Founder of Red Line Tours, And Grew Into A Mighty Sequoia Of Insanity!

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New Chapter in Street Character Wars Begins Today as City Council Will, in Futile Attempt to Appease the Inappeasable Kerry Morrison, Set the Stage for More Huge Tax-Funded Payouts to Carol Sobel

Councilmember Mitch O'Farrell holds up copy of agreement with HPOA Executive Director Kerry Morrison announcing his willingness to cede control over the Sudetenland Hollywood and Highland to her in exchange for peace in our time.
Councilmember Mitch O’Farrell, dressed as Neville Chamberlain and performing for tips on Hollywood Blvd, holds up a copy of agreement with HPOA Executive Director Kerry Morrison announcing his willingness to cede control over the Sudetenland Hollywood and Highland to her in exchange for peace in our time.
According to an article in today’s Times by Emily Alpert Reyes and Nina Agrawal, the Los Angeles City Council is set to act today1 on Council File 15-0798, opened last June by Mitch O’Farrell and Tom LaBonge, ordering Mike Feuer’s office to write a draft ordinance regulating street characters on Hollywood Boulevard between Highland and Orange.

Of course, this is a direct response to Hollywood Property Owners Alliance ED Kerry Morrison, who’s been obsessing about this issue for decades now, even to the point of bullying City officials and entering into crazed cross-continental conspiracies. The City last cracked down on street performance at the behest of Ms. Kerry Morrison in 2010, leading to a federal lawsuit filed in August of that year by the incomparable Carol Sobel. The initial complaint was followed a mere two months later by a restraining order against the City of Los Angeles and, four months after that, a payout of $100,000 in damages and fees to the street characters and Carol Sobel, who has continued to make well-earned megabucks from the idiocy of the City of Los Angeles.
Continue reading New Chapter in Street Character Wars Begins Today as City Council Will, in Futile Attempt to Appease the Inappeasable Kerry Morrison, Set the Stage for More Huge Tax-Funded Payouts to Carol Sobel

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Retraction: Documents Attesting to More than a Decade of Tragically Futile HPOA Support for Public Toilets in Hollywood Show Conclusively that City of Los Angeles is 100% to Blame for their Lack

Screenshot of LA City Approval for a public toilet at Hollywood Blvd and Orange Drive.
Screenshot of LA City Approval for a public toilet at Hollywood Blvd and Orange Drive.
Well, long-time readers of this blog will recall a number of shrill screeds on our part about how the BID Patrol keeps arresting people for public urination but the HPOA doesn’t do anything to get public toilets installed. And aren’t we embarrassed now. We had assumed that the HPOA had so much political juice that they could get anything they wanted out of the city, so the fact that Hollywood has no public toilets, we wrongly assumed, was proof that the HPOA was opposed to them.

It turns out that we were dead wrong about that. The HPOA has been trying for over a decade to get the city to put public toilets around Hollywood without any success. Just mere moments ago our faithful correspondent received documents that demonstrate this in great detail, and we apologize for our hasty leaping at conclusions. You can browse through the documents via the new Public Toilets subdirectory of the HPOA directory in the menu structure above.
Continue reading Retraction: Documents Attesting to More than a Decade of Tragically Futile HPOA Support for Public Toilets in Hollywood Show Conclusively that City of Los Angeles is 100% to Blame for their Lack

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