December, 20, 2003 archives

have i mentioned how fantastic the los angeles downtown news is? there’s no similar local news coverage in an area like north hollywood. one way the downtown news could improve is to seperate the online publishing schedule from the once-a-week print publishing schedule.

this week, two articles caught my eye: the first is a profile of mark tarczynski. he’s excited about ralphs coming to downtown (and facilitated the deal), reportedly being convinced it could perhaps be a bigger boon to downtown residential development than the staples center. that’s a very big “duh.” living near a sports center is not exactly a residential dream: the place is empty a huge percentage of the time, and completely screws up movement in the area the other times. urban areas need a healthy mix of retail, business, and residential development, and a sports arena isn’t any of those.

i’m still frustrated at this slavish devotion to the idea that downtown needs a big-chain supermarket. i guess i’m just not excited about a large parking lot and crappy, over-priced packaged goods. i’d be excited about a trader joe’s.

i’m curious where it is at third and la brea that tarczynski does his food shopping (my guess would be whole foods), and whether he’s noticed he lives blocks from this thing called the grand central market. (in fact, they say they have 12,500 square feet of retail space available for a supermarket. that would be perfect for a trader joe's, which averages about 10,000 square feet.)

another article in the downtown news talks about how us bank acquired the rights to put their name on library tower (the tallest building on the west coast). it’s a shame they keep renaming the building to match the highest-paying tenant.

on a recent episode of tru calling, eliza dushku’s character throws a housewarming party. a character that only regularly interacts with about six people throws a party where about forty people show up. (and if i remember correctly, some of those people she regularly interacts with have complained that they never see her.) it was just one of those convenient-for-the-plot things that struck me as odd.

i should probably do the housewarming thing some day. then again, that could irreparably damage my reputation as a recluse. (or not, which would probably be an even less appealing outcome.)

this article in the los angeles times about a “legitimate” online marketing company uses scare quotes around most instances of legitimate, but never really discusses why. there have been other articles that have done a better job of describing the business that goes on in trading lists of email addresses, and all it takes is a few people operating in bad faith in that market to turn the folks that like to say (or think) they are legitimate into spamming chumps.

i do like that “alyx sachs” has a very syrup-like name for someone who claims to work in marketing. (sorry, i have too much respect for non-scare-quotes-legitimate marketing folks to put her in the same profession.)

resurfacing the ice in the rink in pershing square with a mini-zamboni. it's probably somewhere in the mid-to-high 60s. a nice day for skating, i guess.