Tag Archives: Santee Alley

Two New Coffee Mugs! Neo-Hipsters And Santee Alley! Also Ethics Laws Update! Be The First In Your Facebook Friends Group To Have One!!

Well, yesterday’s post on Santee Alley, neo-hipsters, Latinos, and lobster rolls has turned out to be one of our most popular items of 2017, so I thought I’d better make a coffee mug out of it.

And while I had the old coffee mug making machine fired up I thought I would also make another one commemorating the recent revision of the LA Ethics laws to include a duty to report. This mug features a stirring selection from LAMC §48.01:

1. City government functions to serve the needs of all citizens.
2. The citizens of the City of Los Angeles have a right to know the identity of interests which attempt to influence decisions of City government, as well as the means employed by those interests.
4. Complete public disclosure of the full range of activities by and financing of lobbyists and those who employ their services is essential to the maintenance of citizen confidence in the integrity of local government.

Turn the page for links to the full resolution image files used to make the mugs.
Continue reading Two New Coffee Mugs! Neo-Hipsters And Santee Alley! Also Ethics Laws Update! Be The First In Your Facebook Friends Group To Have One!!

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$19,000 Fashion District “Repositioning” Report On Santee Alley Claims Latinos Will Be Confused By Grilled Cheese And Lobster Rolls But Will “Resonate With” Bacon Dogs, Sports On Flat-Screen TVs, Soccer Promotions, Arcade Games, And Dance Floors — Ultimate Goal Is To “Soften” Santee Alley Experience To Attract Neo-Hipster Authenticity-Seeking Urban Tourists

It seems that last year the Fashion District BID hired some outfit from Berkeley known as MJB Consulting to study the so-called “repositioning” of Santee Alley. Here’s a copy of MJB’s proposal offering to do the work for $19,000. And here is a copy of the report they produced. And what a piece of work it is, friends.

Unfortunately the sheer weirdness of this document is probably beyond my power to describe, so I’m going to end up quoting a lot of it. But the stuff in the headline is all in the report, and so much more besides. It’s 25 pages of deep crazy, centered around the socioeconomic interplay between blue-collar Latinos and an imaginary social group called “neo-hipsters.” The methodology is based on “psychographics,” which was made up by Mr. MJB himself, Mike Berne. It is, according to Mike Berne:

In contrast to demographics, which characterizes customers largely in quantitative terms (e.g. household income, home value, etc.), psychographics considers them qualitatively as well, based on their lifestyles, their sensibilities and their aspirations. A classic example is the perceived difference between those who shop at Wal-Mart and those who prefer Target (or “Tar-zhay”).

That’s social science, friends, and you can’t argue with science! And neo-hipsters? Glad you asked!

“Neo-hipster” is a term coined by MJB Consulting, referring to a specific psychographic segment. … The major data-mining outfits, like Claritas and ESRI, have developed frameworks for delineating different psychographic segments – PRIZM and Tapestry, respectively — but MJB Consulting, feeling that those schemes do not adequately reflect the nuances of urban consumers, has devised its own for such markets, in which the “neo-hipster” figures prominently.

And, with this vocabulary firmly in hand, including the prominent figuration of the “neo-hipster,” the report commences a freaking deep dive off the freaking deep end. In short, even though it’s counterintuitive, Santee Alley should continue trying to serve blue collar Latinos. Blue collar Latinos will only be confused by fancy food like grilled cheese and lobster rolls because they have high unemployment and large families and they like bacon dogs.

In some sense, I guess, it’s superficially1 heartening not to see the kind of casual anti-Latino sentiment that pervades the Hollywood BIDs, to the point of their hatred of Latino-influenced art genres and surreal anti-Peruvianism. These people want to keep their Latino customers, I guess.

On the other hand, the sheer number and variety of the stereotypes at work here are deeply disconcerting. Ultimately, it’s yet another manifestation of the cluelessness of the white supremacists who run the BIDs of Los Angeles. As you’ll see below, they only want to keep the Latinos because they can’t figure out how to get the neo-hipsters to move in.

Here are some more examples: blue collar Latinos will be happy if Santee Alley installs dance floors, soccer promotions, flat-screen TVs running sports, and so on. The ultimate goal seems to be to attract “neo-hipsters” to Santee Alley by promoting the blue collar Latinos as an authentic part of a “cultural tourism” experience, although they’re evidently a little scary so will need to be “softened.” Santee Alley as zoo, Latino customers as exhibits, neo-hipsters as patrons. Think I’m kidding? Turn the page for actual quotes.
Continue reading $19,000 Fashion District “Repositioning” Report On Santee Alley Claims Latinos Will Be Confused By Grilled Cheese And Lobster Rolls But Will “Resonate With” Bacon Dogs, Sports On Flat-Screen TVs, Soccer Promotions, Arcade Games, And Dance Floors — Ultimate Goal Is To “Soften” Santee Alley Experience To Attract Neo-Hipster Authenticity-Seeking Urban Tourists

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Some Documents from Horlings Lawsuit against Fashion District BID Available, Illuminating Contradictions of Existence of BID Security

The scene of the crime.
The scene of the crime.
Today I have a minor piece of documention, which is the initial complaint and a bunch of miscellaneous paperwork, available here, in a lawsuit known as Horlings v. City of Los Angeles. I won’t summarize the alleged facts of the case, because I find it impossible to do so without seeming to mock the plaintiffs or to condemn some of the defendants, which I really don’t want to do. The suit is based on a horrific experience, and no one deserves to be mocked for their roles in it. In very general terms the Horlings family was the victim of a crime in Santee Alley and they sued, among other parties, the Fashion District BID based on the BID’s representation that their role and mission was to keep their district safe and clean. They also sued the City of LA, Universal Protection Service, and the LAPD.
Continue reading Some Documents from Horlings Lawsuit against Fashion District BID Available, Illuminating Contradictions of Existence of BID Security

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