with 'los angeles' tag
know your municipal code
SEC. 41.29. HAND ORGANS ON STREETS. No person shall operate or play any hand organ or hurdy-gurdy in, upon or along any street or sidewalk.
i have a really good idea for a performance art piece for the next art walk. it involves a measure of civil disobedience....
and now for something completely different
my beautiful wife celia, our website-less brother-in-law james, and i are going to open raw materials, an arts and architectural supply store in historic downtown los angeles. (where else?)
we are also opening a gallery, called winstead adams projects, that is currently without a permanent home. but that is not getting in the way of opening three shows in june — one at 436 s. main, which is where raw materials will be located, and two at either end of the pacific electric lofts on 6th street.
this has been brewing for quite some time, but really started to come together in the last couple of weeks. the biggest step forward was signing a lease for the store, which we did last friday. we came really close on another spot a little over a month ago, but someone beat us out for that space.
i'm not quitting my day job — this is a second job for all of us. who needs sleep?
a return to elegance
this brochure for the alexandria hotel has been kicking around on my desk for a long time waiting for me to scan it. celia got it from a security guard when she first moved into the alexandria.
it is in spanish, and is dated may 1, 1975.
you can still find some signs in the alexandria that feature the “a return to elegance” tagline that this brochure uses. or at least you could a year or two ago.
i am drowning!
the benches that have been added to main street recently are a nice touch. some of the other recent streetscape additions have been misfires. many of the planters look like this one, or worse — empty, dead or dying plants, and consistently overwatered. i seem to recall there are some health risks with having lots of pools of standing water around.
busted on main
we heard a police helicopter outside, and a police officer shouting more than the usual “pull over” that we sometimes hear, and taking a look out the window revealed this scene. the man laying down next to the car (partially out of frame) and the three women on the sidewalk were all taken into custody.
the police pulled a speaker out of the back of the car, and the general sense we got from our high perch was that this was a drug bust. not surprising, given how much drug activity there is right on that little stretch of main street.
you can’t see it in this picture, but the back of the man’s baseball cap said “foolish.”
scoop: cole’s comes out from behind the barricade
there are signs of life at cole’s again — they have taken down the construction barricade that has blocked the sixth street side of the pacific electric lofts building for the last many, many months.
there is a notice of application for a liquor license in the space to the left of cole’s, and two boarded up storefronts to the right that will reportedly house another establishment in what was cole’s back rooms.
photo courtesy of rich from angelenic. yes, i just used his own picture to scoop him. sucker!
the positive side of filming
first look: aloha cafe
aloha cafe just opened today at honda plaza in little tokyo. they are serving tasty hawaiian food at very reasonable prices — at 20% off for their grand opening. they relocated to little tokyo from monterey park after losing their lease and their original chef.
ouch
the city of los angeles passed a mandatory spay/neuter law recently. we have held off getting wonton “fixed” because most everything i read seemed to suggest that it was better to wait until after six months or so, and then there was just the time crunch of the holidays. but he has his appointment for friday, and then he will no longer be firing live ammunition.
dlanc diversity and other issues
don garza speculated about the downtown los angeles neighborhood council board elections and complained about how his neighborhood is represented. no comment on the speculation, but as i have gotten more involved with the neighborhood council, i am more and more disappointed with how disengaged most of the business and social services stakeholders are. besides the planning committee, none of them are involved in any of the other board or ad-hoc committees.
i hope we can do a better job of reaching out to more business and social services stakeholders in the upcoming election, and get some people on the board who want to actually be involved. right now the executive committee can’t really take action because it has an over-representation of residential stakeholders, and the executive committee was unable to appoint members to the rules, bylaws and elections committee because that too would have been dominated by residents. (the bylaws prohibit board committees from being having a majority of any one stakeholder group.)
most of the board’s standing committees have fallen in status to ad-hoc committees because they don’t have the five appointed members necessary to constitute a standing committee.
as for the strangehold that people from the midnight mission have on the social services seats, perhaps the board should look at a bylaw amendment to restrict the number of seats that can be held by people from any one organization. even if you think the folks at the midnight mission are great, and even if they were engaged, i think it would be healthier for the board to have a more diverse composition.
downtown development scoop!
falafel express is coming to spring street, in the los angeles design center building between fourth and fifth.
this used to be a more generic cafe. celia says her favorite part about the old cafe was how the korean owner would pass on the orders to the hispanic cook in broken spanish. and then he would say “okay, one burrito,” to celia with a roll of his eyes.
overturned blossom
it looks like someone did not appreciate the planters outside of blossom.
i wonder what will happen to the places that hose off their sidewalks every day if mandatory water restrictions are enacted.
it would probably also help if the city stopped overwatering all the trees that were placed in planters along main street.
pictures without wonton!
i joined the first shootdowntown meet-up today, where a large group of us walked around downtown and took pictures. i did not take very many pictures. it will be interesting to see what everyone else came up with. they are starting to show up in the blogdowntown photo pool.
and this should quiet some of the people who are sick of puppy pictures in my flickr photostream.
on broadway, 2007
stephen friday of angelenic stepped up and took pictures of everything on broadway in downtown los angeles, something i first did in 2005, and eric of blogdowntown did last year. you can read more about this year’s effort, including some side-by-side comparisons of buildings that have been transformed in the last two years.
one of the greatest things about this collaborative effort is that it hasn’t really been collaborative at all. both stephen and eric just stepped up and took pictures when they noticed nobody else had.
donate book for project homeless connect
next thursday, project homeless connect is having an event at the midnight mission. i would link to more information about the event, but i can’t find any.
the downtown los angeles neighborhood council is having a book drive to collect books to give away at the event. again, i would link to more information about that, but i can’t find any.
all the information i know is from a flier that was handed out during the last dlanc board meeting, which says that the book drop-off is at the dlanc outreach office at 450 s. main street, between 10:00am and 1:30pm, monday-thursday.
digging into the minutes from the last dlanc education committee meeting, it looks like they will be sorting the books on december 4th, so i guess you should get your books in before that.
(unofficial) dlanc news will have more of this sort of news in the future.
blossom expands
remember when i used to blog? those were the days.
blossom, the excellent vietnamese restaurant in the ground floor of the canadian building at the corner of main and winston streets, has expanded into an adjacent space. the layout is a little goofy, with the kitchen between the two seating areas. they have also applied for a liquor license.
new voices
if downtown los angeles was the 3rd bloggiest neighborhood six months ago, things are really exploding now. walter has become frighteningly prolific at scribeskidrow. joe, of joe and ruby fame, has started a blog at big city poz. the guys at angelenic are doing a fantastic job of digging up the news on the downtown development front. white boy/white dog has all the news from 2nd and main. nearby, the lofty dog is one of the first businesses to start up a downtown blog (disclaimer: with my wife and dog’s help). bert green also has a blog as a business owner, resident and player. and dodger is another downtown dog with a blog.
that is a whole lot of new blood in the downtown blog-la-sphere. but i think my favorite part about is that i have been lucky enough to meet all of these new bloggers in person, and they are all fantastic people (and dogs!).
at a party the other night, i was talking with another of our new downtown friends (not yet a blogger) who mentioned how small-town that downtown feels. it is amazing to see how this community is growing up, and to be a part of it while it happens. and i know that the little network of people i know is just one of many such networks downtown.
startup la
startupla is a conference happening october 25-26 at ucla’s anderson school of business. there will be some keynotes, some panels, and some unconference time, and presumably will be a good place for networking. i may even be on one of the panels, unless they come to their senses.
be careful with those matches
i guess if ed is going to say i have been blogging about downtown los angeles since 2000, i should blog about downtown some more. (it has actually only been since 2003.)
celia wrote about our taste of ’gina on friday night. i really was not expecting much, but the pasta was really good, and so was the gelato. the presentation on the gelato was not great — it looked all melty in the display case — but it was tasty.
we went to see point break...live! at the alexandria hotel, and it was exactly as brilliant as you would expect. kathryn bigelow, the director of point break, the movie, was in the audience.
i am a little amazed that charlie o’s in the alexandria is being allowed to operate with such an obviously deficient sprinkler system. a drop-ceiling has been ripped out, so there are some sprinkler heads that are way too low. and there are lights hanging from some of the sprinkler system. i guess the upgrade from coke bar to hipster haven isn’t quite complete.
fixing the special conditions site
i complained about the site for collecting special conditions feedback, but here is some more specific suggestions on how to fix it:
- make it clear who will be reading the comments, and how they will be used. possible wording: “These comments from the public will be read by Russell Brown, president of DLANC, and Bert Green, co-chair of the DLANC ad-hoc filming committee, and compiled into a report to accompany the special conditions when they are sent to the Los Angeles City Council.”
- remove the restriction on identifying information. just get rid of that paragraph. i understand 100% why it is there. it is wrong. the path to hell is paved with good intentions.
- change "To Post a comment" to "To send a comment".
things i am not suggesting:
- making the comments public.
to be clear, i support the special conditions. my concern is that we remove any appearance of impropriety in how comments from the public are collected. it will be far too easy for opponents of the special conditions to dismiss them if there is the hint of an appearance that dissenting opinion is being discouraged or worse.
fumble at the goal line
the draft special conditions for downtown filming have been made available for public comment, but i have to say i am tremendously disappointed about the method in which comments are being collected. the site says:
Comments must include the commenter’s full name and phone number for verification purposes. Multiple comments may be made by the same person or organization. Comments that do not contain verifiable contact information will not be recorded.
there is a long and rather proud tradition of anonymous or pseudonymous political speech in the united states (like the federalist papers), and this is very contrary to that.
it also totally fails to say who will be doing the verification of this contact information, or how the contact information may be published along with the comments in the future.
the way this is structured, a cut-and-paste feedback operation like the parents television council would be given more weight than cogent feedback from someone with good points to make but reasons for staying anonymous.
for example, let us assume that bert green or russell brown are reviewing these comments. now what if you are an artist who hopes to one day be represented by bert and his gallery (or his many friends in the downtown gallery community) — would you be comfortable sending comments that are critical of the conditions that bert has been so instrumental in drafting? what if you were someone looking for help in starting a new business from the historic core downtown business improvement district?
the public comments should speak for themselves. identifying yourself is simply part of the speech, it should not be a prerequisite for speaking at all.
fire!
there was a small debris fire on a nearby building. i was taking wonton out on the roof to take care of his dirty, sinful business, smelled smoke, and when i looked out over the edge, saw that the los angeles fire department was cleaning up after the fire. i grabbed my camera and took a few shots. lafd says there were no injuries.
there were fire trucks parked outside the building behind us last night, and it smelled like they had put out a fire there. i wonder if there is a connection.
rosslyn signs lit!
i don’t know what it is for (probably a film shoot of some kind), but the rosslyn signs are partially lit. they look incredible. i’ve seen some workers crawling around in them, hopefully replacing bulbs. the signs are gorgeous, and we have a perfect view of them.
did you lose this dog?
as she was leaving a sparks game at the staples center last week, cabrini of the loftydog found this sweet dog running around with no owner to be found.
while cabrini kept reminding herself that she can’t take home another dog, the dog (which has been temporarily dubbed “sparky”) did not want to stray far from cabrini. when she went outside during the yappy hour, sparky was running between the windows and door trying to figure out how to get outside to join her.
wonton meets the neighbors
dog day afternoon was a wonderful event at the cathedral of los angeles for neighborhood dogs, their owners, and other downtown residents. this was the first time that wonton really got to meet a lot of other dogs (including some downtown celebrities), and he had a blast. he was totally fearless, even with dogs that were twenty times his size.
ed and don were both there taking lots of pictures (i only took a few). i’m not sure they were on the same page as to which of them was the dog.
next on wonton’s social calendar is a birthday party with the relatives (his first people party!), and then yappy hour at the lofty dog next week during the artwalk.
i didn’t know adam was back yet
this afternoon, i was puzzled by the sound of bagpipes coming from outside. but i finally spotted the mysterious piper, doing his thing over on the roof of our parking garage. the back of his t-shirt says “old guys rule.”
maybe he’s an extra for the film shoot that is taking over several nearby blocks tonight.
it’s not just film crews
our good neighbors at one wilshire decided that 7am on a saturday morning would be the perfect time to deliver large equipment to their roof. it looked like one wilshire from here, at least. i could be wrong.
it was fairly loud in our place at times, and i can’t imagine what it was like for residents of buildings like the pegasus apartments.
as far as i know, this sort of helicopter delivery is less rigidly controlled than helicopter filming.
in unrelated news, i’ve signed up for twitter. you can find my updates here.
enough already
it’s just the day for disrespectful film crews in our neighborhood. here’s the spring street side of the alexandria hotel, all lit up after 10pm for a shoot happening in one of the ballrooms.
i called the after-hours hotline at filmla to confirm the shoot information. valerie, the on-call person, didn’t have information about the shoot at hand, and took my phone number to call me back after she called the on-site representative. she didn’t have the shoot on her list of productions, because it was a two-day shoot starting yesterday. she went home to look up the information, but never called me back. they shut off the lights at 11:53pm.
based on the filming notification i could dig up, i think this was “off!” being produced by go films, inc. the permit number was F-204466. the location manager was adam baxter, 213-925-9050. the notification was for 7am-10pm.
since this isn’t shining directly into my building, i’m more just offended by the principle here. why issue film permits if they don’t mean anything? why have rules for downtown-area filming if they’re just ignored? why have an on-site film monitor if they don’t do anything when the permit is violated?
i asked for a non-smoking room
this video shoot set up in the parking lot behind our building and started making use of their smoke machine, which naturally blew up into our windows.
celia went down to have words with them, and finally got their useless filmla rep, who had never heard of the new downtown filming rules. (the notifications for today’s 6am start time went out last night, and those said it was “pending community survey”?)
i called filmla while celia was down getting the run-around from the production, and they didn’t answer their phone.
the smoke has done wonders for my cough.
the production was called “natasha”, the production company was crossroads films, and their film permit was F-205458. the location manager, who refused to talk to celia, was bruce boehner, 213-925-5379.
ray’s goes double-wide
the old bank district market deli, more commonly referred to as ray’s, has taken over the space adjacent to them, knocked out the wall, and just today were moving the shelves and merchandise into the new space. it was a big change from when i was last there just a couple of days ago.
well, we are looking for a car
giant floating lights are about nine kinds of awesome. and the tenth kind of awesome is being above the light. it almost makes up for having to listen to the crew outside our window at six in the morning.
i hope they cleaned up the 5th and hill street gang tags that were on the building behind where they are shooting.
st. patrick’s day parade
the st. patrick’s day parade in downtown los angeles is a little odd, since it is on a weekday. naturally (stereotypically?), it is sponsored by the los angeles police and fire departments.
the parade route took a turn at 5th and main this year, so that’s where celia and i headed to watch. while she cheered and got the vintage police cars to almost run into each other, i took pictures. have i mentioned how i like to shoot parades?
this time i decided to have some fun by setting my camera to its largest aperture setting (f/4 with my basic zoom lens), which helped to isolate the subjects a bit from the background, like in this shot.
living at mile 25
when the los angeles marathon happened a few weeks ago, they ran right outside our front door, which meant we had a good view of the action from our patio. but since we were at mile 25, it was a day-long flow of people, so it wasn’t that exciting to just sit and watch it go by.
we were able to keep an eye on the progress of the leaders by watching the progress of the helicopters covering the race, so i went out and snapped some pictures of the leaders when they passed by. as it turns out, that was when the eventual male winners were passing by the eventual female winner.
the wheelchair racers were actually more fun to watch cruise by, but none of my pictures of them really turned out. they were moving fast.
108th annual golden dragon parade
it’s been almost a month, but i finally found time to get through my pictures from the 108th annual golden dragon parade. taking pictures at a parade is a lot of fun — interesting subjects just keep coming to you. i have a bunch of pictures from yesterday’s st. patrick’s day parade in downtown los angeles to go through.
one reason it’s taking longer is that i’m trying to write a bit more with each picture than i have in the past, and i’m also taking more time to really pare down the photo selections to just those i’m happy with or have a good story.
i saw a hawk in l.a.
this red-tailed hawk was flying around in downtown during the los angeles marathon. while he was there, the usual assortment of flying rats made themselves scarce.
i am woefully behind in cleaning up and posting pictures from the 108th golden dragon parade (where i took almost 300 pictures) and the los angeles marathon (which ran outside our front door).
and then there’s the matter of pictures from our wedding. we’re still waiting on proofs from the official photographer, and we have an intimidating number of pictures from our unofficial photographers to wade through.
million dollar birds
there were hundreds of birds congregated on the sign of the hotel rosslyn before sunset. i have no idea why. every once in a while, a cluster of them would fly off for a few minutes, and then rejoin the rest. there were only a few birds on the other sign across fifth street.
five better names for the downtown comedy club
- downtown clowns
- formerly a coke bar
- the peach pit at night
- where’s the rave?
- giggle on the nickel
merry christmas from los angeles!
silversun pickups at the troubadour
we went to see silversun pickups on sunday. my fiancée celia’s cousin, christopher, is the drummer. this is a cameraphone shot from the “backstage” area, which is really a room up and off to the side of the stage.
the show was great, and we had a blast laughing at an overzealous fan who positioned herself in front of the keyboards and made grabs for joe’s feet while he was playing the last couple of songs. i think she managed to get up into the backstage area after the show.
i didn’t think to bring my camera with me to the show, but i like how this cameraphone shot turned out.
maybe they just needed a better map
kevin roderick reports that a fugitive profiled on america's most wanted was captured in downtown los angeles, but a quick check of the given address (street name) on google maps looks a whole lot more like inglewood to me.
it’s nice to be on top
herbalife is moving their headquarters, not to a site built using using the massive waste generated by their low-level suckers, but into la live, next to the staples center.
im at yr festival, judging yr tamales
after we picked up our wedding invitations from aardvark letterpress today, we stopped in at the 2nd annual international tamale festival, where we ran into dave, penelope, and don. everyone else had cameras, but i did not.
while we were standing around talking (and eating), one of the festival organizers came by and recruited my fiancée celia to be a judge in the best tamale contests, so she got to sample a ton of tamales. an operation called just “gourmet tamales” cleaned up, winning all but one or two categories.
the festival is going for one more day — check it out!
a sunday of exclusive events
it’s halloweentime at disneyland, and we made a quick run to disneyland on sunday to have lunch at club 33, the members-only (and guests) club that has its entrance next to the blue bayou restaurant.
disneyland itself is dressed up for halloween, including changes to the haunted mansion. we’ve actually been to disneyland twice since it started, and we’ll probably go back again next week.
we didn’t do anything else at disneyland on sunday, because we got there just before lunch and had to get back to los angeles to catch our shuttle to take in the newly-renovated griffith observatory. we scored some pre-opening passes thanks to my los angeles conservancy membership. mack reed has a great set of photos, so i’ve just shared this one of the “no smoking — the smog is bad enough!” sign that i thought was funny, and the obligatory shot of people (my fiancée celia and our friend helena) by the albert einstein statue.
apparently this was the first day that they were letting people in to see the telescope, and we talked to a couple of the operators. it was cloudy, so there was nothing to see through the telescope. they showed us how the dome can be moved around, and talked about the new telescopes that were added that included high-definition cameras so the images could be displayed down below and on a screen in the telescope room. they also have some work to do in order to figure out how things perform after the addition of the new telescopes. (all explained much more coherently than i’m explaining it here, along with a hint of bitterness about the management of the observatory.)
when we were returning home after our long day out, we noticed that the fountains at the department of water and power headquarters were running, so we stopped to take some pictures and take in the view.
you didn’t need to have any inside connections for this one, but that made it all the more exclusive. there were probably fewer people who took the time to enjoy these gorgeous fountains and the view of downtown than there were at club 33 or the griffith observatory on sunday.
(random footnote: we saw curtis “booger” armstrong going into the cafe at the end of the universe at the observatory.)
hangin’ with huell
huell howser was hanging around gallery row last night during the monthly art walk, which he featured the night before on downtown, his fun new pbs show about downtown los angeles.
we didn’t have a real camera with us, so here’s a really bad camera-phone picture of huell with my fiancée celia, doing her best impression of an aardman character.
new life, old theater
the owners of old bank dvd hosted a screening of iraq for sale: the war profiteers at the regent theater in downtown los angeles. banquette was also there with some snacks and drinks for sale, including their magic bars. (not that kind of magic.)
five word movie review: totally superficial, no narrative thread.
but the resurrection of the space is great. it is just stripped bare right now, so the acoustics were pretty bad, but i’m sure that will be addressed when they started using the space more. it would be really killer if a bar opened in one of the adjoining spaces.
haunted house downtown
the haunted alexandria hotel is what you might guess from the name: a haunted house being run in the alexandria hotel.
let’s hope someone is keeping an eye on the half-dozen registered sex offenders who reside in the alexandria.
fire!
when i was heating up some taquitos for dinner tonight, i smelled something that was definitely not my cooking. some debris (from the roofing work behind us) was on fire in the alley behind our building .
i made a quick call to 911 to let them know about the fire, and shortly afterwards the building’s fire alarm started going off. my fiancée celia had just closed all of our windows that face the alley, so we grabbed some essentials on our way out the door, and watched the firefighters put out the fire, which was really putting out an impressive amount of smoke by now.
thanks to the firefighters from station #9 (our skid row station — the captain had the shirt), some of whom are still blowing smoke out of the lower floors.
(i didn’t have the presence of mind to grab my camera, even though it was right next to my keys, so no pictures.)
finally, some drama
back when eric first posted the list of candidates for the downtown neighborhood council elections, some nitwit tried a little half-witted character assassination against russell brown. at the time, i said “come on, the stakes are really low here — i expect more drama!”
it looks like john sellars has finally delivered, because he has filed a complaint about election irregularities involving russell and the city west resident seat.
you may remember john as the guy who was booted from the area-wide seat when he stopped showing up to meetings (due to some sort of family thing) and made various legal threats.
charity, second quarter 2006
when i first started with mysql, i also started giving about 10% of my pre-tax earnings to charity. first it was three charities a month (local, national, and international) and then one charity a month (cycling between local, national, and international) and now i’m stepping back to quarterly donations — all local. i’m also a little behind schedule. between planning a wedding, moving, and everything else going on, it’s been too easy to put this off.
this first quarterly donation would have gone to the laura esguerra adams foundation, but it’s still not quite up-and-running. so i’ve given it to the library foundation of los angeles as a memorial to laura, directed towards the adult literacy program that she was involved with.
internet to the rescue
there isn’t a handy outgoing postal maildrop in our new building, and last time i went in search of one, i went as far as 6th and hill and missed the collection time (4:15pm). today i got clever and found the payphone project’s mailbox locator, which pointed me to one just down the street. much better. i have walked by it many times, but didn’t remember it.
ripped-up roof
they are ripping up the roof of the building behind us. the work is being done by some guys from chrysalis. it looks kind of cool now with pieces covering half of the roof, but i expect we’ll have a different opinion of the work if they start putting down tar.
sushi ’n sh t
for a while, i have claimed that the best burgers in downtown los angeles came from tony’s (aka burgers ’n sh t). it’s under new management now, and they have taken the burgers off the menu. the new owners have renamed it “tony’s roll & teriyaki.”
i tried the chicken breast teriyaki today, which was quite good. but i will always lament the loss of the burgers (and steak fries).
wu tang clan in the ’hood
here is wu tang clan’s redman with my fiancée celia. there some sort of x games block party happening on 4th between main and spring, and the clan is performing at 5:30pm.
i have no idea what the drink is that he’s holding.
yeah, redman is not in the wu tang clan. whatever.
movin’ on up
my fiancée celia and i weren’t really planning on finding a new place to live together until after our wedding, but sometimes opportunity knocks and you’re smart enough to answer.
our friend adam has quit his job and is about to embark on an around-the-world tour (starting in rarotonga and including a bunch of other amazing stops — and hopefully he’ll be blogging the whole thing). that meant the lease on his amazing penthouse was ripe for a friendly takeover. that’s the site of our engagement party and where celia and i first met, so this space that was already very special to us will also be home.
we’ve already been daydreaming about how we want to make use of all of the space we’ll have. but first we have to take care of a few practical needs, like a refrigerator.
one other wrinkle is that my lease in my current loft isn’t actually up until the end of october, so i may end up paying rent on two places for a couple of months unless i can find someone to take over here. if you want a view like this, let me know.
a blossoming area
sam hall kaplan writes in the downtown news that the streets of the old bank district skid row are not for strolling. while i would take some exception to that (it is much better now than it was several months ago), i know my tolerance for that sort of thing is higher than average. the corner of 5th and main can still be pretty sketchy (particularly because of the persistent drug dealing at the entrance to the rosslyn hotel).
but kaplan and architect wade killefer are going to “map, photograph and document the street's frontage” (or at least killefer’s office will). been there, done that. it’s almost time for me to go out again and take pictures of everything on the same stretches of broadway, spring, and main that i did last year. i had hoped to invest in a wide-angle lens before then, but that doesn’t look likely.
and although the hellman and san fernando are nice, it’s a stretch to call them high-end. i’d save that label for places like metro 417 or the sky lofts.
hope they don’t uninvite me
the los angeles downtown news took first place, best website (25,000 and above) from the california newspaper publishers association. second place was the palo alto weekly.
i assume this is one of those contests where you only win if you pay to enter. i have to believe there are some weeklies out there in california with websites that are actually interesting.
midway on main
the most fascinating things show up outside my window. they’ve set up bumper cars in the parking lot across the street. it’s not an exciting new addition to the neighborhood, even though it does appear to be fully functional, it’s just for a commercial shoot.
watch out for trees
we went on this year’s inaugural neon cruise, led by eric lynxwiler of wilshire boulevard: grand concourse of los angeles fame. it was la observed night on the tour, so we picked up a copy of the book and got it signed by both eric and kevin roderick.
we had time to check out the museum of neon art before the tour, and it has some great neon art as well as some other fantastic kinetic and light-based pieces. eric took us outside to point out the (clumsily and hilariously) racist mexican restaurant sign that is part of their collection.
the tour itself is a lot of fun, of course. one way we could tell how much los angeles’s neon excites eric is by how he reacted to the glimpse we caught of the picadilly neon sign, which has apparently only recently been re-lit.
the tours sell out, so you should plan ahead and make a reservation now. even with yesterday’s brutal heat, it got a little chilly on the double-decker bus towards the end of the tour.
hope for firefighters
today was the annual hope for firefighters event in downtown los angeles.
this was my only salvageable picture, because i foolishly had left the camera with a fixed shutter speed that was too slow, and i didn’t notice.
as eric said over on blogdowntown, this event was one of the reasons i decided to move downtown. and as my fiancée celia predicted, we ate our way down the street. we had carne asada tacos, a hawaiian pork plate, kansas city-style pulled pork, a firehouse sundae, and an ice cream sandwich (chocolate chip ice cream with white chocolate macadamia nut cookies). all of it was excellent.
i placed a bid for something at the silent auction, and i hope we won. but we wanted to head back instead of loitering around the silent auction tables for an hour.
right before my eyes
another great place in downtown los angeles is the fashion district, where you can pick up some snazzy sunglasses for $5.
these are a knock-off of christan dior’s overshine 2 design.
the funny thing is, i’d be happier without the (fake) dior logo.
house at the penthouse
a few months ago, they shot some scenes for house at my fiancée celia’s penthouse at the alexandria hotel. this is a screen grab from the episode (actually from the beginning of the second part of the two-episode story). part of the penthouse was made up to be a cop’s apartment. so for that setting, they shot basically everything at the penthouse except for the rooftop enclosed greenhouse where he was growing weed.
this is how it looked on television — celia has shots she took of the penthouse with all the stuff they used to make it look like a ratty cop’s apartment, and i’m sure she’ll post them once she digs out from under the project she’s currently buried underneath.
there were a couple of scenes where characters climbed out of a window to get on to the roof outside. there is a door about five feet to the left of that window.
not just for making horse noises
lax-c is one of those gems of downtown that doesn’t get enough credit. it is basically an asian costco (without the memberships), but it also has a crazy back room with giant thai elephants and buddhas and a totally insane dragon bench.
for our engagement party, we picked up a couple of five pound containers of coconut in coconut cream — it’s basically little chunks of coconut inside ice cream made from coconut milk instead of cow juice. it’s now easily one of my favorite foods on the planet. we had one container left after the party, and it did not last for very long after that.
we also picked up some jars of kaong (sugar palm fruit), macapuno (coconut sport), ube (purple yam) jam, and enough chopsticks to build a small house.
and on top of all the cool food and other stuff, the building is wrapped in a mural about the history of california.
undesirables
over at blogdowntown, eric wrote up witnessing a belligerent man getting picked up by the police, and it reminded me of something that my fiancée celia saw the other night. as we were leaving my building, we saw a guy step out from the outside seating at pete’s cafe and bar. this patron of pete’s approached a guy who was walking down the street with some flowers, and then offered him a couple of bucks for taking his picture. as the pete’s patron was taking the picture of the guy on the street, he asked him to “hold up your forty.”
you can guess which of the two of those characters i would like to drop-kick out of the neighborhood. (hint: it’s not the guy who was holding the forty.)
the most photographed city in the world
my fiancée celia and i went to go see los angeles plays itself at the egyptian theatre the other night. it’s a documentary about how los angeles has appeared in films over the years, and the writer/director is pretty critical of how the city is portrayed.
i had seen praise for the film, but i don’t think it quite lived up to the hype. a lot of the film footage is of questionable quality, the narration can be fairly tedious at times, and it’s just too long. the few film clips showing the now-gone richfield building did make my heart skip a beat.
i’d say it is still worth seeing if you can find a screening and you’re a nut about los angeles, but it’s not a must-see film if you’re more casual in your interest.
you were the prettiest one there
friends with money is like crash without all the tedious racial posturing. which means that it is a movie with the narrow westside los angeles mindset, and as the movie goes on you’ll develop the strong desire to kick every main character in the head.
we went to this when we didn’t make it into the mission: impossible iii premiere. we just ended up getting a couple of crappy t-shirts from that.
great immigrants in history
when i saw this sign about great immigrants in history, i had to rush over and get a picture. best sign i’ve seen at all the protests so far.
there has to be a story about waving the united farm workers flag and a gay rights flag.
this picture of a man’s fist and his flag of fists is one of those shots that i didn’t notice i was getting when i got it. (you have to love digital — shoot it all, sort it out later.)
immigrants rock!
i liked the simple sentiment of this sign on the back of one of the protesters out on broadway today.
they are already saying the downtown protest was smaller than the first one a few weeks ago, which sounds about right. we didn’t see nearly as many people walking towards the start point of the march as we did for that first march.
i took more pictures, but i don’t have time to sort through them now.
on our way to join the march, we stopped by my fiancée celia’s place and ran into her roommate lucas, uploading some of his first shots of the protest like this great shot of a protester from mexico waving the american flag. (watch out, that link will resize your browser window, and probably expire in a few days.)
communists on parade
i guess they realized that their usual may day march was going to get buried under the two big immigration marches on monday, so the communists were out doing their thing today. there were maybe 100 people in the march.
weekend to-do
as laist covered and i said i’d mention earlier, there is a benefit concert this sunday at mr. t’s bowl in highland park, featuring the reunion of emm’t swank and performances by other great bands.
and tonight (and tomorrow), you can see the lyric opera of los angeles perform manon lescaut at the los angeles theatre on broadway. you can get free tickets through brady westwater.
blocking out the scenery, breaking my mind
wow, i’m dumb. here we are practically on the eve of the next large protests about immigrant rights, and i just noticed that i left this write-up of the last one as a draft.
i made it out to today’s “mass student march against racist legislation” while my fiancée celia stayed home to work. going through my pictures afterward, it was another instance where a theme emerged that i hadn’t been all that conscious of while i was shooting: signs at the hr4437 student protest. not quite very shot is of a sign — i had to take the obligatory shot of a child on someone’s shoulders, holding a flag.
the most telling moment of the day for me was when this older latino gentleman and his wife turned around and started walking out, and he said to me as he passed by, “this is bullshit, this isn’t why i came.” what was on stage at the time was a couple of kids, one sporting a che guevara shirt, who were dealing with the music that were trying to rap to cutting out, and dropping a few “motherfuckers” into their overly broad take on current events.
it’s those sorts of central-casting leftists and strategic tone-deafness that makes my support of these protests wane, along with the presence of groups like fnla (a political party from el salvador with a less-than-savory past), the mexica movement, and the perpetual organizing presence of answer.
dave bullock was there and took his usual assortment of crowd shots. celia’s roommate lucas also snuck up on me, so you may see one of his pictures pop up in a newspaper somewhere.
buy great art, help a great kid
fyn stec is an almost-five-year-old who was recently diagnosed with liver cancer (hepatoblastoma), and there will be a silent auction at the cartoon networks studios to help his parents with medical expenses (and any additional funds will go to the childrens hospital los angeles). you can preview the art on the website, and submit bids online, but the final auction happens this thursday. there will also be a benefit concert in a couple of weeks — i’ll fill in the details when we’re closer to that.
smoosh got signed to a new record deal, with their new album coming out on june 20. they’ll be touring with the eels, and playing los angeles at the end of may. but it looks like those shows may already be sold out. (spotted at laist.)
rubber-stamped
the process of plopping a new police headquarters next to city hall in downtown los angeles ground a little further forward today, when the board of public works voted to approve the final environment impact report along with the waiver to go forward with unmitigated issues (like traffic).
my fiancée celia and i were there to lend our support. we tried to get one of the community members speaking to raise the example of how la gran marcha would have shut down the police headquarters at its new location, but he chose not to bring it up.
not a surprising outcome, but still a little disappointing.
(the picture is of kjell hagen, one of the founders of gallery row, addressing the board.)
my fictional neighborhood
there may be a hook in this bait, but i can’t let kevin roderick’s crack about the old bank district go unanswered it. he calls it “Tom Gilmore’s fictional creation to trick hipsters into leasing Skid Row lofts: the Old Bank District.”
but thinking about it for a day, i don’t know that he’s entirely wrong — several years ago. but where tom gilmore may have created something fictional, it is rapidly becoming real with new restaurants like blossom, the in-the-works flying tiger speakeasy-style bar (opening below pete’s), and projects like the el dorado and rowan lofts coming online soon (not to mention the nearby santa fe lofts, pacific electric lofts, and the lofts at the security building).
and it’s not skid row — it’s skid row adjacent.
go give blood now!
the blood drive is underway, the laura esguerra adams foundation has a shiny new website, and for some reason you’re sitting at a computer instead of heading down to donate blood.
i got 86’d because i’m coming down with a cold. but that’s okay, it just means i get to join the “club 86” raffle, where i could win a $100 gift certificate for patina, an alarm clock that moos, or some other fabulous prizes.
they’ll be handling blood donations until at least 8pm, and then everything shifts over to cole’s for the after-party. come on down!
charity, march 2006
it’s back to the library foundation of los angeles again, where i’m actually paying off part of a multi-year pledge.
i ♥ the library.
hope you’re not trying to go anywhere
the traffic in downtown los angeles appears to be severely screwed up, as the result of the street closures around city hall to cope with the additional protests against hr 4437.
i’ve seen some pockets of kids leaving the area, and i don’t imagine that the protests are really still going on. yet the streets are still closed….
it’s a good thing we aren’t planning on leaving downtown for dinner.
desire makes everything blossom
blossom vietnamese restaurant & teas is a new restaurant that opened recently at winston and main (near 4th and main) in downtown los angeles. my girlfriend celia and i ate there last night, and despite a small mix-up where they tried to serve our appetizer to another table, really enjoyed it. i had the shaking beef, she had the grilled pork chop, and we shared shrimp and pork spring rolls. celia also got the soda canh, which is a fresh lemonade made with perrier that was delicious.
they obviously still have some kinks to work out. there’s an unpainted wall outside the bathroom, the dining area is not really decorated, and the service was a little spotty, but they are a very welcome addition to the neighborhood. it looks like a couple of more businesses are gearing up to open in the canadian building. and with the el dorado lofts and rowan lofts under heavy construction, the old bank district is expanding out from the core at 4th and main.
¡si, se puede!
the march/rally was huge. estimates put it over 100,000 people. we didn’t head towards city hall at all, but there were people streaming down broadway, spring, and even main street (and probably hill street).
i put a few more photos up. you can also check out dave bullock’s photos of the march.
we ran into a couple (british or australian, my bet would be australian) in pershing square who had no idea what they had gotten themselves into when they decided to visit downtown today. i wonder how the los angeles conservancy’s walking tours went today.
someone needs to explain to me what the political value of waving around the flag of mexico or nicaragua is at a march like this.
give your blood on march 31
cole’s pacific electric buffet and the new laura esguerra adams foundation is sponsoring a blood drive next friday, march 31, in downtown los angeles.
there will be an after-party at cole’s featuring i see hawks in l.a., just like last year.
also, in the goodie bag for blood donators will be a free copy of love smart by dr. phil. so if you happen to have my sort of luck and meet someone really special at the blood drive, you’ll be able to learn what to do. or you can make a few bucks selling it on ebay.
(if there are businesses downtown that wanted to support a great cause, and pick up a little promotional value from reaching that precious downtown audience, they would do well to kick in some gifts for the goodie bags.)
protesting hr 4437
my girlfriend celia and i were eating breakfast when we noticed people streaming down main, spring, and broadway. once we noticed a few of the people were carrying signs that said “no to hr 4437,” we were able to do the necessary googling to find out that there is a protest against an immigration bill that starts at 10am at olympic and broadway today.
we may check out the protest and march in a little bit before heading to see some of the buildings that are open as part of the downtown living weekend, and i’ll be sure to take my camera.
chaos
ask the dust is set in los angeles in the depression, and one of the best things about the movie was the few shots of los angeles, like angels flight at its original third street location. celia thought they should have included more shots of salma hayek’s tits. (and i’m not going to argue with that.)
v for vendetta is entirely unlike ask the dust, but it was also a letdown. subtle as a box of hammers, and i thought it fell short on the action front. but there were a couple of flashy effects that were worth seeing on the big screen.
lists of four things about los angeles
my girlfriend celia tagged me with the “meme/chain letter/time suck that’s been going around.” if you read closely, you’ll notice that i have mutated it slightly.
four jobs i’ve had in my life in los angeles: programmer at mysql, programmer at homepage.com, programmer at knowledge adventure, and college (public) relations intern at harvey mudd college.
four movies about los angeles i could watch over and over: crazy/beautiful, repo man, assault on precinct 13, and collateral.
four places i’ve lived all over los angeles (with food memories from each): downtown los angeles, where i still haven’t exhausted the possibilities (but engine co. no. 28 has really won me over); north hollywood, where i discovered chinese deli t&d way too late in my stay; glendale, where i had many great lunches with my coworkers from knowledge adventure, the best at places whose names i don’t remember; and claremont, where making milkshakes at platt (the school cafeteria) probably caused my lactose intolerance.
four los angeles-themed shows i love(d) to watch: boomtown, the shield, 24 (and none of this “only the first season” weaseling — i still love it), and entourage.
four places i would vacation at in los angeles: downtown, the beach, the hills, and downtown. (i’d have added disneyland and laguna beach like celia, but that’s orange county….)
four los angeles-based websites i visit daily: 5th and spring, l.a. observed, blogdowntown, and sha in la. (but to be honest, i use blo.gs to only visit them when they’ve updated.)
four of my favorite foods found in los angeles: strawberry donut from donut man (aka foster’s) in glendora, meat loaf at engine co. no. 28 in downtown los angeles, everything at chinese deli t&d in north hollywood, and celia’s white chocolate sweet potato cake and lasagna.
four places in los angeles i would rather be right now: the central library rotunda, the city hall observation deck, the watercourt at california plaza, and wherever celia is.
four los angeles-based charities you should support: los angeles conservancy, library foundation of los angeles, childrens hospital los angeles, and the midnight mission. (i could go on.)
tagged: shannon, ask, dave (eecue), and eric.
midzt
the artist apparently named midzt painted new faces on the building at 3rd and main after the earlier “be merry” piece got painted over. i’ve noticed that he (or she) has a few other pieces around downtown — there was another face on the pacific electric lofts building. there’s also this tag on one of the storefronts near 3rd and main.
i really love these green faces. here is a whole collection of murals done by midzt.
charity, february 2006
i’m on autopilot for a few months (if not the whole year), so my monthly charity contribution this month has gone to the los angeles conservancy to renew my membership.
don’t forget the dash
they were shooting a scene for spider-man 3 at the farmers and merchants national bank last friday. i was in vegas while the actual shooting was happening, but i took some pictures of how they dressed the building. my girlfriend celia was in the neighborhood while they were shooting, and the scene involved someone zipping down on to a cab that had been flipped over. i understand that the real highlight was the little person in a spider-man costume that was hanging out around bar 107. i’m sure she’ll post those pictures soon.
update: celia posted her pictures from the shoot.
lemons at avila adobe
aftermath
celia and i ate some of the cupcakes last night, and also some of the the best lasagna ever. some generic lactaid prevented me from exploding like a cheese-eating pug.
we only made it through about half of the notebook.
as you can see, i took heed of eric’s reminder about the los angeles flower market, and also added a vase from chinatown to the mix. there were also some tulips that i snuck into her car before she left for work.
it was my best valentine’s day ever, how about you?