(No) Signs of the Times

The AIG sign on one of the Warner Center Towers in Woodland Hills has been blocked out with a big, black square covering. Has the King of Rocky Finance left the building? Are they still here and making way for their (probably very expensive) re-branding as AIU Holdings, Ltd?

Gone also is the small street-level moniker of FreddieMac on Oxnard Street at the same cluster of Warner Center Towers. Where have the visible sings of local incarnations of the American taxpayers' corporate crown jewels?

I will be answering these and other salient questions in the lead ValleyNewsmakers(tm) piece in the coming April 13 issue of the San Fernando Valley Business Journal.

L.A.'s Sea of Poppers

I have noticed, and I think there's a story here, wherever I see (driveby see) a major construction project in L.A. I smell what some might know as poppers. One whiff of the air on the southbound side of the 101 in the Cahuenga Pass near Universal at about the time the time of construction completion of the newish L.A. Fitness (you know, the building with the round, purple cardio module now practically suspended over the freeway), and I'm sure of it: Poppers.

If you don't know what poppers are, they (and don't be confused by the plural...a bottle of poppers contains a very odiferous liquid--nothing that will pop out at you) a chemical sold as either "room odorizer" or "video head cleaner," which people sniff for a quick rush, usually while dancing or having sex. Poppers have an odor that is a cross between dirty sox and jet fuel.

Other spots I've smelled the very specific and distinct odor of poppers include one in Reseda, on the corner of Tampa and Victory where an expansion of the Victory-Tampa Medical Square is ongoing, as well as at the new Pavillions construction site in West Hollywood.

If a sea of poppers underlies the City of Angels, there is an opportuntiy here: Cars that run on amyl nitrate!