Avril Levigne, boyfriend assaulted by five assailants

Attacked at the Roosevelt 

(Really?)

Canadian crooner, Avril Levigne and her boyfriend, The Hills star, Brody Jenner, told LAPD they were attacked outside the historic Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood last weekend.  Both are recovering from what appear to be relatively minor injuries. Levigne has a black eye.  It's unclear what the motive for the attack was, and no mention of robbery was initially made as far as RoLA has been able to ascertain.Having lived five blocks from the Roosevelt until four months ago, this reporter knows the area as being highly energized on weekends, with partiers, club-goers, movie and late-night television production audiences and youthful tourists packing Hollywood Blvd.'s traffic lanes and broad sidewalks in the tens of thousands, anything can happen.

     However, landmark properties such as the El Capitan Theatre, where Jimmy Kimmel Live is shot, the Hollywood & Highland mega-plex shopping, dining and entertainment center (which contains the Kodak Theater, home of the Oscar Awards ceremony and TV show) are all within feet of the well-lit, highly patrolled (by Los Angeles Police Dept. officers, Hollywood Safety officers, California Highway Patrol officers (rarely, but they have jurisdictions at some of the boulevard's major cross streets, such as Cahuenga Blvd.), and private security. Add to that the small army of service personnel, such as valets, doormen, etc... and something seems odd about the circumstances of this crime against celebrities.  

One million sq. ft. Renovation of Kaiser-Permanente's 50-year-old Los Angeles Med. Center Continues

Demolition at Kaiser on Sunset, seen through a 

display of mobile sculpture inside an already 

completed portion of the hospital.  

(Photo by Republic Of L.A.)

(Facility Billed as Innovative Enough to Serve Patients for Next Half Century)

According to builder Rudolph and Sletten, which is headquartered in Redwood City, once it's finished the hospital will be the first to have a built-in, electronic medical records system.  

In addition, the new Kaiser will feature nurses' stations and procedure rooms with so-called "picture archiving system," which will "effortlessly" route images to flat-panel screens, thus eliminating the need for more expensive, bulky and less envinronmentally friendly X-ray screens.  Another benefit of the "X-ray screen-free system is that mages will be instantly available to surgeons in operating rooms.  


When necessary, patients will be eased into bed by special portable chairs that will hang from the ceiling and move the length of the room on tracks, the company said in a statement to reporters.   Furthermore, the specialty construction company said, beds will be adjustable to a nearly vertical position for easy access from a standing or sitting position. 

Among other benefits of such beds, will be the fact that patients needing dialysis will not have to be moved from testing areas elswhere for treatment.  All services can be provided from one place.  

The new emergency department will be equipped with the many of the patient comfort amenities found in other parts of the hospital. Because the potential for many of the same dangers that vex us now will probably continue to exist, disaster readiness measures will include decontamination showers and a dedicated air conditioning and ventilation system. The new medical center will have 456 patient rooms, 11 labor and delivery rooms, and six cardiac surgery suites.

The hospital will feature numerous green spaces including a garden with a play area for pediatric patients, a garden courtyard on the 4th floor serving the labor and delivery unit, an outside dining patio facing the park, and a tree-lined green-belt at the corner of Sunset Boulevard and Edgemont Street. Palm trees will line the north side of the boulevard for a three-block stretch.

I Predict a Riot!

Did Kaiser Chiefs' 2004 Indie Track Foresee week of Hollywood's Hyper-tweeting DJ Debacle, Washington's Budget Battle?

Probably not.  But sometimes the corny headline gene won't rest until it's satisfied...

So much can happen in a week:  Since our last post, the Hollywood district of Los Angeles has had a "riot," while the nation's credit rating, which has stayed unblemished with "AAA" as our score ever since credit ratings have existed, even throughout the Great Depression, has come perilously close to being sacrificed voluntarily by congressional Republicans who, it appears, would be willing to see it downgraded--thereby causing what economists almost unanimously agree will be catastrophic consequences, if not a sparking a Great Depression II--in order to appease the always-angry Tea Party cult.   

I mention the Hollywood & Highland "riot" in quotes, because, in the final analysis, MUCH was overhyped in news reports.  Yes:  somewhere between five and 8 youths jumped onto a police car.  But whereas when the "melee" (if you can call hundreds of people talking loudly and yelling, but mostly texting and tweeting, a melee) first began, radio reports said police patrol cars had been lit ablaze.  Even though it appears that didn't happen (RoLA is seeking clarification regarding the reports from some Internet and braodcast reports that, patrol cars were set on fire), the impression that Crown Victorias up and down Hollywood Blvd. were burning set the stage for a lot of innacurate portrayals of the event.  Certainly, something was terribly wrong with the way things went in terms of one DJs apparently wreckless social-networking misuse, plus poor crowd control planning by event organizers, and, to some degree, the police response.  However, I do give LAPD some props for their overall handling of the un-riot.  

You can read some of the details here and/or  here.  But it's hard to argue that this was a riot when you realize that a) no one was injured; and b) three arrests were made out of a total of five people who were momentarily detained, according to the L.A. Times; c) there are countless images and many videos of people standing; people walking; people running away from police anti-riot personnel--as well as ample footage of people jumping onto police cars; yet you won't find any of police cars burning from that afternoon, as has been widely reported.   At least we haven't been able to find any such video.  

What's most interesting to me is the police-car-set-on-fire aspect of this story.  It appears that nearly all headlines and copy written about the alleged arson since the day the near-riot (as the occurence was dubbed by the L.A. Times and other well established media outlets) is cited as "according to multiple news reports."  That's what RoLA found on websites ranging from pop-politics destination, Firedoglake (lafiga.firedoglake.com) to MSNBC.com.  In fact, our Web search found no attribution of the burning squad car report that could be immediately confirmed as an original, credible source; nor could we locate any imagery.  

That doesn't mean vandal-arsonists didn't burn LAPD vehicles on Hollywood Blvd. last Thursday (28 July, 2011) didn't happen. It does mean that there is confusion about important details of the "riot."   Check back next week, after RoLA has an answer (or non-answer) from the LAPD, and/or the District Attorney's office.  Meantime, not the L.A. Times piece does not mention a police car set ablaze by "near-rioters."  

★TUESDAY CONTINUES OUR SERIES ABOUT LAUSD'S NEW SCHOOLS at the SITE OF THE FORMER AMBASSADOR HOTEL, WHERE ROBERT KENNEDY WAS ASSASINATED BY SIRHAN SIRHAN IN 1968. 

Ambassador Hotel's Gone, Poignancy of New School's Design Honors Kennedy

Los Angeles' New Ambassadors   

Six Schools on a Campus Like  no  Other

   a RoLA                          S                   e               r          i       e   s   

Reporter Surprised by Own Emotional Response to RFK Tributes at Ambassador (video)

[PART II in a multi-post, multimedia special RoLA Series.]  

We appreciate your patience in viewing video on RoLA in small snippets, which, at the moment, are the most efficient way for us to upload and for you to enjoy, in light of the currently very modest resources available to the blog.  


That said, RoLA expects to augment our capacities before the end of 2011.  If all goes as planned, you'll be visiting a much improved site in terms of content and format.  And, as a current consumer of information on Republic Of L.A., you can expect to receive special access to enhanced content on the new RoLA, as well as to some pretty cool events planned for election year, 2012.  


In the meantime, here are the first two videos in this special series about RFK Community Schools.  We've begun the series at the Robert F. Kennedy Inspiration Park and its memorial to the late brother also-assasinated John F. Kennedy.  BTW, It's okay to snicker at how strangely and unexpectedly emotional my visit there was:  

In the next video installment of this special Republic of L.A. series about RFK Learning Center at the Ambassador Campus, hear what muralized quotes were borrowed from Rosa Parks and George Bernard Shaw for the Ambassador site.  

Rob't. Kennedy's Knowing Smile Shines at the Gateway to L.A.'s Best Investment in Decades: RFK Community Schools at the Ambassador Site

   a RoLA                          S                   e               r          i       e   s   

Los Angeles' New Ambassadors   
Six Schools on a Campus Like  no  Other   

R

R

Thom Senzee, dwarfed by the shadow of RFK.

Robert Fitzgerald Kennedy, slain brother of also-assasinated Pres. John F. Kennedy, understood that government is supposed to be the common ground where human beings meet solve problems, share costs for the big things civilizations need in order to survive and thrive, and to band together against enemies as they come and go.

❝ each time a man stands for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance. 

❞

We hear so many throw-away assertions, nowadays, about how our government is the least of what makes the United States of America great and what makes this country's people so unique.  It's a very popular and, dare I say, fashionable point of view.  And so is has been for the past 30 or more years.  That's all of my adult life.  

The problem with the assumption that Americans have been and remain more free, more prosperous and more inventive than any other society in human history in spite of how we govern ourselves, is that it is absolutely wrong.  In fact, that perspective represents the epitome of missing the forest for the trees.  It is in fact our government's ability to be simultaneously run by those who decry its general "badness," 

Ask anyone from a country mired in endless civil wars, wretched poverty and hunger, sytemic corrutpion, violent oppression of women and minorities, institutional exploitation of certain classes if they believe the U.S. government with its strengths and weaknesses; its cost and size; or its very public vulnerabilities and shortcomings have anything to do with what makes ours the land toward which longing eyes point from lands with governments that are often (to borrow one of the revered business buzz phrases of all time) "lean and mean."

Business.  Business' goal is to profit.  Does anyone want a government looking to make a profit?  I didn't think so.  So, given that making money is not the reason we want our governments--federal, state and local--to exist; why do so many politicians keep acting like government should be run like a business?  The gossimer-thin considerations that lead some to the misconception that the U.S. Congress should act as savvy board members of a Fortune 500 company and that the president of the United States should behave like the CEO of the same firm must have to start lickety-split ticking of exceptions to that philosophical model of government.  

Take something as seemingly mundane as buildings for an example of what I mean:  Run the government like a Fortune 500 company, and you'd expect training campuses, i.e., public schools, to gleam be gleaming, luxurious towers, like the shimmering edifices that house their corporate counterparts.  Well?  If you want to run a successful business, you've got to look the part, right?  Can't have clients get the idea we're second rate.  Who are the government's clients by the way?  Taxpayers?  Well, no. We're the investors, I believe.  We don't want our own company selling us stuff; so, we're certainly not the customers...I digress.

Schools--public schools, that is, have mostly fallen into disrepair or at least just ugliness and bare-minimum upkeep during most of the past 25 years or so.  Meanwhile, banks, public corporations, media megalopolies and private companies have continued to be the beneficiaries of generous investment in their own infrastructures in the form of state-of-the-art technology and impressive headquarters across the nation.  

But, here in Los Angeles, there's a new story to be told about investment in public education, and perhaps surprisingly to some, the excitement among students that seems unmistakable to just about anyone who encounters students at any of the six schools of the Ambassador campus on Wilshire Blvd. , which sits on the site of, and uses some of the original construction of, the old Ambassador Hotel, where 1968 presidential candidate was shot dead.  The place is a temple to optimism and youth--just as Bobbie would have wanted it.  

Stay tuned as RoLA takes you to a the seat of public K-12 education's special new paradigm now open in the heart of the City of Angels.  

-Thom Senzee

Treespotting

Our recent post about Eccentrics and Eccentric Art in L.A. coming under greater scrutiny, and the photo of a blue-painted tree we published as an example of said eccentricities got us thinking and recalling that RoLA has snapped a you-know-what-load of weird, striking, and beautiful tree pics that were spotted across the city.  So, for some light Friday pre-carmeggedon, relaxing, blog-reading enjoyment, here are a few, including another angle of the aforementioned blue tree.  

eNJOY...  

On the streets of Los Angeles, Beauty Comes in Many Forms, Including that of of a Classic...

Pontiac Firebird

In 1968 it was another quite respectable American muscle car.Today RoLA is humbled by the opportunity to share with you this exquisitely maintained example of beautiful arrogance in the form of industrial design, as could only have been expressed by Detroit during a certain moment in time...just before the realities of domestic excess and nascent globalization were to hit home during the decade following that of this 'Bird's creation. 

(Photos by Thom Senzee)

This Firebird, with its illuminated-badge accents and chrome detailing, has conquered the barrier separating purpose from poetry;  transportation from transcendence.  Did her designers even ponder that their opus would, in another age, eclipse the drive for market share to become remarkable art that would be shared...by a stoic and contented custodian (for no one will really own her from here on), with me, a stranger with whom he sensed a common love of art on wheels...at an ARCO station in Hollywood, circa 2011. 

 ✧✧✧

As the encounter among men and machines ended, my new Nissan showed deference, waiting to activate its garish technology, which might falsely outshine the lights of the graceful, elder beauty dressed in tested sheets of turquoise metal, affording her the exit she deserved.  Yet unencumbered by navigation or Bluetooth, she required no handicapping.  The aged Pontiac glided out of the station, onto the street with an elegant precision, which bespoke a technical prowess all her own. 

 ✧✧✧

Now growling, her fleet rubber mitts grabbed the on-ramp to the Hollywood Freeway.  That's how I came to snap a precious handful of ghostly images before the Turquoise 'Bird vanished one Saturday evening last spring...in the new century...in the new millennium, when kindred souls born in the old ones crossed paths.

✦

Let's Call it a Comeback...

Republic of L.A. will be back online Tuesday, January 26. And RoLA has some new stuff coming that will be exciting to those we love and those who love us.