L.A.'s Overlooked Overlooks

We drive by, walk past and stumble upon some of the most spectacular vistas you could ask for each and every day in this town without ever noticing. Here's one that caught my eye recently. Photo taken from the rooftop parking lot of the Pavilions grocery store in West Hollywood last Saturday afternoon. The challenge for we Angelenos is finding a few minutes to stop and breathe in this storied land. But the payoff is nealy always worth the effort. Slow down once a day and realize how lucky we really are here.

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Prang Warns West Hollywood Residents, Beware: 'Scam' Petition would Put Billboards Everywhere

This from Councilman Jeffrey Prang:

VOTER ALERT - you may be asked by paid petition signature gathers, either at you home, or at grocery stores and other businesses, to sign a petiton alleging to lower your taxes and to impose a new tax on billboards in West Hollywood. THIS IS A SCAM. It is an initiative paid for by an aggressive billboard company in an effort to open all of West Hollywood to billboards and tall walls. Currently, West Hollywood only allows outdoor advertising on Sunset. Other advertising in the city is "grandfathered," as it was there before the laws were imposed - but new advertising is not allowed off Sunset Bl.

The proposed tax on billboards is legally questionable, moreover, the city recently adopted a new law to generate fees from billboards and tall walls. This initiative is not about taxing billboards; its about allowing even more to proliferate in our neighborhoods. I urge you, please DO NOT SIGN the petition.

Funday-Monday: Random Scenes from the Mean (and sometimes, just plain crazy) Streets of Los Angeles

An SUV Driver Took a Sharp Right--Right into an Edible Arrangements Store on Fountain Avenue & La Brea Boulevard in West Hollywood Recently

And guess who just happened to be driving by--with my camera?
(I swear I don't stage this stuff.)

Yay! Everyone's Favorite ROLA Topic: Parking in WeHo!

Typical? An electrical sign flashes a warning about construction, while taking up a precious parking stall in West Hollywood one recent weekend. At the same time, there was ample space near a driveway a few feet away that was neither parking, nor firelane. Wah-wah.

Republic of L.A. has waited two weeks for the City of West Hollywood to respond to our questions about the elimination of a few dozen parking spaces in an alley off of Melrose Avenue, and more than 100 others inside of West Hollywood park for construction and "safety reasons," and their replacement with $10 valet-only spots. The old spots were free between 6-10 p.m. Well, it turns out that Jake Stevens has gone to Washington for a new job. We wish him well.

Stevens was deputy for Councilmember Jeffrey Prang. He had been getting answers about the parking problems at West Hollywood park--an area that served as the only parking solution for many restaurant, bar, coffee house and 12-step meeting goers in the heart of the nation's most creative city--for Republic of L.A. since the issue first arised. His replacement, Mike Haibach is now looking into the issue. But, instead of making you wait any longer for the information Republic of L.A. has been promising to bring you, we've decided to keep you in the loop as we investigate. That said; here is the text of an email we sent to Haibach today. We'll let you know what the response is as soon as it comes:

Hi Mike,

It was nice speaking to you this afternoon. BTW, do you have contact information for Jake Stevens? I'd like to congratulate him on his new job.

Below are emails between Jake and I. As you can see, Jake addressed the concerns about lost parking and the dubious manner in which the changes had been executed, even offering to review the citations that may have been erroneously issued during the transition. However, he did not mention--and regrettably, I did not ask about costs--that the free (between 6 p.m. and 10 p.m.) spaces had been replaced by $10 valet-only spots.

That's a big deal. I have interviewed people for an upcoming piece who have given up on going to their A.A., Crystal Meth Anonymous and other 12-step meetings because they were so frustrated by the lack of parking that has resulted from the recent changes. Of course the truly dedicated recovering alcoholics and addicts are going to get to some meeting, somewhere, some how. But, it's probably the ones for whom just being able find or not find parking may be the difference between relapsing and not relapsing.

Additionally, I have spoken to one business owner who said business dropped by about 10 percent as soon as as the new parking regime was initiated; and it's stayed down. I have spoken to patrons of restaurants, coffee houses and bars who are also upset by the elimination of spaces they had relied upon for years. Here is a quote:


"I know ten bucks is nothing for people coming over from next door in Beverly HIlls, but there are a lot of people who live right here in WeHo, who are out of work like my boyfriend, and maybe me next week. We live east of Fairfax, and so we drive to go out for dinner at our Bossa Nova on Friday nights. It's where we met five years ago. I can't take him out for dinner and drinks and then pay ten dollars for parking. I just can't afford it."

Tim Cahill, patron at Bossa Nova on Robertson Friday, July 3 2009.



Mike, I would like to know what the city council's response is to this situation. If it's simply been an oversight and work will be done to find a solution, I'd like a timeline of how the issue will be addressed. Or, if it's going to be more complicated than than, I'd like to interview your boss. I've interviewed Jeff before, and I know the councilmember's heart is always in the right place, so I'm eager to receive a response.

Best,

Thom

Ambigous Parking Signage in WeHo Looks Like a Ticket Trap

There is an alley just north of Melrose Avenue between San Vicente Drive and Robertson Drive in West Hollywood. The alley is located behind several design showrooms and West Hollywood Park. What makes this alley special and beloved by locals (no, not that alley), is that it boasts a line of that most invaluable of Southern California's urban commodities--parking spaces.
Saturday, June 6, some friends and I drove to WeHo for an event near Robertson and Melrose. I found a single parking spot open in the Melrose-adjacent alley and parked.
But one of my passengers noticed something new. The curb had recently been painted red. There was no indication other than the brand-new, red-painted curb that anything else had changed in the alley.
Admittedly, a red curb might be enough to signal parking was no longer allowed. However, the were still dozens of signs--both signs mounted on tall poles over the alley, and smaller signs mounted on poles where there had once been meters--that indicated a four-hour time limit for parking.
Further complicating the matter was the fact that there were temporary plastic signs, many of which had fallen to the ground, that read "temporary: no parking 6/5/09." This was the 6th. The signs said "temporary no parking" for the previous day.
In addition, there were about three dozen or more cars parked in the alley without tickets.
Keep in mind, this is an area dense with restaurants, bars, a civic auditorium, a busy urban park, several community meeting facilities, and the largest design center west of the Mississippi. Needless to say, finding parking can be a nightmare.
Nevertheless, I left the parking spot and found another--four blocks south on Robertson in Beverly Hills, another city altogether--because I really don't like getting parking tickets. (I know, who does?)
It would have been a $70 ticket. I know because we saw one unfortunate driver's SUV sporting a "parking in a red zone" citation on his or her window.
Safely parked, I wanted to know if the situation was an oversight, and if informed, would the authorities do something to remedy the confusion.
I went to the Sheriff's station across the street and got a very snippy, sarcastic non-answer from a volunteer at the counter. Begrudgingly, I was given the after-hours phone number to West Hollywood Parking Enforcement. The shift supervisor on duty when I called at 6:55 p.m. listened to my description of the situation, which I delivered in much the same way via phone as I have here.
I asked if he planned to enforce the red zone on all of the drivers who had obviously been confused by the ambiguous signage, or wait to start ticketing after the incorrect signs were removed.
He said (and this is a quote): "If they're in a red zone, they will be cited."
But, I insisted, obviously there was confusion, and to penalize people who, during the Great Recession, were dining out and contributing to the local economy in other ways, and had parked in a place known to be legal for years, smacked of revenue-motivated entrapment.
I then informed him that I was no longer speaking as a concerned citizen, but now as a journalist. I asked the parking-encorcement shift supervisor if I could have his name, and if it was Parking Enforcement's intention to disregard the information I had provided about the confusing, new no-parking policy at Melrose Alley (click the play arrow at the bottom of the video image above to see what I mean about confusing signs and the red curb), and ticket everyone parked there anyway.
His answer: "I'm the shift supervisor; that's all you need to know. I'm not authorized to talk to the media." With that Mr. Supervisor hung up the phone. I called back, but my call went directly to voicemail. I left a message, but have yet to get a call back.
By my arithmetic, there were about $2500-$3000 in potential parking citations at the time I decided to move my car. If citations were being issued all night and day--all weekend in fact--the City of West Hollywood may have raked in many thousands of dollars--perhaps more than $10,000--courtesy of Parking Enforcement and their dubious citation policies.

The Red Building Cometh

Adding another 400,000 square feet to the already monumental space of the two existing buildings of the Pacific Design Center (PDC), the new "Red Building" will complete the triumvirate of edifices promised when the old, blighted rail head property was first redeveloped in 1975.

While it will have taken 35 years for the vision of the original structures' architect, Cesar Pelli, to finally be consummated when the project is completed next year, it will not look the way originally expected. In fact, as first proposed the three buildings would have had a very 1970s, post-modern totality in their exterior aesthetic, as this was the plan as I have been told:

The Blue Building (aka, the Blue Whale):
A long, blue horizontally oriented cylindrical and rectangular blue building encompassing a million square feet. It was built as expected, in spite of a lone holdout--a business called Hugo's Plating--which occupied a postage-stamp parcel of land outside the sleek grand entrance on Melrose Blvd.

The Green Building:
A green pyramid. One could argue that the Green Building is a pyrimad. But it's really pyramid-esque. It's actually more like an upside down pyramid with it's point dipping into a giant shoebox. My favorite part of the Greeen Building is the back wall of the new parking structure that came with its construction in 1988. The structure is a ultra-pale green which, with its several floors of tree-filled terraces rising over the classical WeHo cottages and bungalos, makes me feel cool just by looking at it even on a hot August day.

The Red Building, which I will attempt to give an aka to now, that being The Giant Letter Opener
However, the original plan would not have rendered so apt a nickname, because it called for the final structure at the Pacific Design Center to take the most elemental geometric shape of all time...the sphere. Yes, the red building was expected to be a big round ball 35 years ago.

FINAL THOUGHTS ON PDC:

I believe the City of Los Angeles and the City of West Hollywood; the State of California and the U.S.A are lucky to have been graced by the work and talent of Mr. Pelli, who also designed the renowned Petronis Towers Kuala Lumpur--the first structures to snatch away the from the United States the mantle of home of the tallest buildings in the world--on all three buildings.

I always think of the made-for-tv movie, lipstick, starring both Hemmingway girls, as well as a Jeep CJ-7, and the Blue Whale--all four icons of my childhood.

While the 1990s brought vastly improved landscaping and outdoor public spaces and art, as well as the MOCA cube (actually an annex of the "real" Museum of Contemporary Art, whose primary space is located downtown), it's the massive color-changing lightscapes that adorn the the Blue Building's facade.

However, it is the 1970s, 1980s, and the current decade (has anyone figured out what we're calling this decade yet?) whose stylistic signatures will forever live on in the heart of the nation's most creative cities.

Banks Hoarding Bailout Money, Won't Even Loan to Themselves

Banks across America are hording money given them (okay, loaned to them--theoretically) by the U.S. Government. The the bailout money was meant to free up stalled credit markets, i.e., give banks money to lend to businesses and consumers. The idea is to reinvigorate the economy with a little spending. But we have just learned (again) banks who got bailout money loaned less money in March than they did in February! A Wall Street Journal investigation found that the more money banks got, the less they lent.

Though not a bailed out bank, and having told me late last year for a story I wrote in the Business Journal that they have money to lend and are lending it, I posted this Union Bank of California image because of an interesting anecdotal connection to the tight-credit angle of this post: Union Bank of Calif. has had a new branch under construction on Santa Monica Blvd. in West Hollywood for almost two years now. Progress on construction has been slow to say the least. Even banks borrow money to build. Has UBOC found credit markets too tight to get on with opening the much-anticipated (the nearest location now is in the heart of Beverly Hills' worst traffic area) branch in WeHo? Stay tuned...I'll learn and let you know Wed., April 22 what's the delay.

Dedication of Hunter Allen Trail

They say only the good die young. I don't know how true that is, but I know the people who gathered at the west end of Victory Blvd. last Saturday morning for the dedication of Hunter Allen Trail at Ahmanson Ranch in the far west part of the San Fernando Valley would rather have seen Good Hunter Allen live into his thirties and beyond.
The ceremony was officiated by a Chumash Indian medicine man, who, in full-native prayer garb, dedicated the trail to Hunter's family, the American People, Native Americans, and their ancestors, who are buried on lands across the continent.
Hunter died tragically a year ago when the pain of his personal life became too much for him to bear.
However, the way Hunter lived his public life earned him the name Baby Dragon. Though somewhat diminutive in physical stature, he was a force to be wreckened (as fomer WaMu CEO Kelly Killinger learned. Killinger lost his battle with Hunter, a young West Hollyood activist, determined to save a large swath of hilly California meadowland, which the bank owned and developers salivated over. With no money and a gut full of passion, Hunter used cunning, irony, and friends to succeed in making the land part of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy--forever protecting it from the voracious appetites of California's sprawl-driven developers. Thanks to his efforts and the efforts of others, banks and developers are now looking at urban redevelopment as the wave of the future for building in Southern California.

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!