Into the Night (1985) with Jeff Goldblum, Michelle Pfeiffer and Classic LAX

Into the Night is a 1985 John Landis film that features iconic Los Angeles locations in various key sequences. My favorite is the climax / end of the movie that takes place somewhere in LAX in one of the walkway terminals with a great mosaic. Now destroyed by the tendency in Los Angeles to destroy famous landmarks.

David Bowie has a cameo as an assassin.  

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089346/

Air Pollution, Los Angeles, Climate Change, the Trump Administration

 

Its worth noting that when the Trump administration destroys a major diplomatic effort to *begin* to deal with the pollution from container ships, that they are deliberately affecting the health of everyone in Los Angeles.  Google AI informs me that:

The twin Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach are the single largest source of air pollution in Southern California, responsible for a significant portion of regional emissions. They contribute over 10% of fine particulate matter (\(PM_{2.5}\)) and nearly a third of nitrogen oxide (\(NO_{x}\)) emissions in the basin, which are major components of smog. \(NO_{x}\) emissions: The ports are responsible for approximately 10% of the region's total nitrogen oxide emissions. In 2021, spikes in pollution were observed due to congestion, with ships idling offshore.\(PM_{2.5}\) emissions: The ports contribute over 10% of the region's fine particulate matter, a pollutant linked to significant health risks. Cancer risk: Diesel exhaust from the ports accounts for more than two-thirds of the cancer risk from air pollution in the Los Angeles basin. Impact: The combined emissions from the ports rival the daily emissions from all 6 million cars in the region.

Halloween 2025

Valerio Street got at least 30 separate groups, perhaps an average of 3 per group.  I dont know how young the youngest was, but she was very cute and very, very young.

Los Angeles Fires 2025

So far I know three people who have lost their houses in the Pacific Palisades fire.  I also know people in Mandeville Canyon, Altadena and Calabasas who have not lost their houses so far.

Image by Midjourney

Cost of Housing Notes 7/21/2024

As I was moving from Santa Barbara to Los Angeles, the issue of housing costs and options came up.  There are a number of reasons for this but it all comes down to money and how you want to live your life.  And I think there was a lot of wishful thinking going on about what kind of housing assistance exists, who is eligible for it, and so forth.  So, since I need to know this stuff here are my notes so far on this topic.  All useful information is in the next paragraph.

The executive summary is as follows.  Santa Barbara is expensive perhaps, but the quality of life is very high.  California overall is very expensive and SB rents are not worse than other parts of California on the coast.  One way to get housing costs down in these areas is to do something like rent a three bedroom house and have two roommates with all the inconvenience that implies.  The Housing Authority in SB is a resource to the community but demand far exceeds supply, the process is opaque, and it is not at all clear when or if housing will be provided.  It is not a viable solution to anyone who is on a deadline.  Finally, my research says that there is acceptable single room occupancy housing in other cities in places like Providence, RI or Pittsburgh, PA or parts of Western MA in the range of $1,500 / month or about 1/2 to 1/3 of what you have to pay in California.

The rest of this post is just details.

I was looking for a single bedroom, arguably a studio with kitchen and bath. It is completely possible for this to be a shared space where each person has their own bedroom but the kitchen and bath is shared.  For me, it is better to be in a place where I can work all hours of the day and not bother other people.  It is better to be in a place where I am not constantly subjected to environmental insults (smog, car fumes, etc) and where crime is under control.  I hate to move, so some sort of stability is good.  It does not have to be a particularly big city, but it is useful to be within mass transit distance or driving distance of a fairly big city due to the need to work with specialist doctors.  

There is some belief that there are housing programs for "the poor".  My experience from Santa Barbara says that theoretically such housing exists, but in practice it does not. The SB housing authority does a terrible job of presenting a rational and responsive front to people in need, but the hard facts are that there is more demand for housing than there is supply. The housing that is available is preferentially given to certain demographics that I do not qualify for, such as being a single mother or a veteran.  The process is opaque.    There should be zero surprise that the SB Housing Authority efforts did not work out.   In fact, they would not even return my calls.  It is possible that if we had filed when I first arrived in SB that there would have been a different outcome but I am not sure.

Images courtesy of Midjourney

There is a belief that SB housing is unusually expensive.  My research says that this is not exactly true.  SB is expensive, but so is all of coastal California.  LA is very expensive and much less desirable than SB.   San Luis Obispo and San Clemente and Santa Cruz are also very expensive.  Santa Cruz may be more expensive than SB.  There are places in CA that are less expensive than SB but they are still not cheap and of course the quality of life goes down, often dramatically.  

I am surprised at how much I miss SB.  I would much rather live in SB and drive to LA to make use of its cultural resources, international airport and medical facilities.

There are cities where the rent is less than half of what it is in California.  So, one can probably rent a place for $1,300 to $1,500 in places like Providence, RI.  Multiply that out, your recommended net salary comes to $60K/year.

So what is the conclusion?  I would not expect to spend less than about $1,500 per month if you are a single person but only if you are not in California.  California is roughly 2 - 3x more expensive.  In SB, a small 1 bedroom starts at about $3,000 a month and goes up from there.  And it is not entirely clear who they will rent to if you do not have, and prove you have, a good job and excellent credit rating.  There are exceptions to this and I have benefitted from special deals more than just about anyone.  But when those special deals come to an end, and they always do, then you have to pay market rates.

Thats just the way it is.

Another image from Midjourney

The Philosophical Research Society and the Library of Esoteric Knowledge

For all the years I lived in Los Angeles, I never visited the Philosophical Research Society.  I knew it was off in Los Feliz somewhere.  

Generally speaking, back in the day, I would rarely go east of Western and only go as far as Western because that is where the AFI was located.  

But the PRS is an example of the best of old Los Angeles.  Founded in the 1930s by a self-educated mystic, Manly Hall, he eventually built a library for his 30,000 plus titles of his collections of Esoteric Knowledge and wrote many classics in the field.  Their bookstore is the best of its type since the Bodhi Tree.  The library is open Thursday & Friday from noon to six.  The bookstore is open normal business hours and in the evening during an event.

An entertaining and informative article on the PRS, Manly Hall, and their history, is here:  
https://www.laweekly.com/the-strange-history-of-los-felizs-mysterious-metaphysical-research-center/

If you can judge a place by its people, then the PRS is a very interesting place.  We should all spend more time there.

On Valerio Street, They Wait for a Customer

 
God forbid, LA or Van Nuys would do anything to help the women who hook for a living on a cold night.  Maybe a coffee shop where they can wait in warmth and have their customers vetted for VD and other issues.  No, not in LA, LA doesn't give a fuck.

Pictures courtesy of MidJourney

What Happened to the Van Nuys Air Show?

Once upon a time, long ago but as recently as 2006, the City and County of Los Angeles had a pretty wonderful air show at the Van Nuys Airport.  It attracted people from all over the city and the region.  It was cross generational and attendance was a tradition for many people and families.

Air shows are a way to see some exotic hardware and learn about the history of aviation.  Los Angeles was and is a center of aviation innovation and history. Many of the pioneers of aerospace such as Douglas Aircraft, Lockheed, TRW as well as hundreds of smaller companies were located here.    It is right and proper for the city to host an air show.  

So what happened?  Apparently the city sold out the air show because rich people and corporations wanted more space to store their jets.  The city said it did it for the money but some people believe the real reason was that they wanted to kiss the ass of their masters and show proper deference.   After all who cares about a festival beloved by the citizens of Los Angeles?  Certainly not us, the politicians thought.  

If the city had really wanted money, all it had to do was to lease the space to the rich for 11 months of the year and have the air show during the 12th month when the rich would have to fly their jets somewhere else, perhaps the Bahamas, or the South of France or Bali.  Or the rich people's jets could even be part of the show.  No problem.  But that is not what the city chose to do. 

I have heard that the government of the City and County of Los Angeles is corrupt and there is evidence for that.  But another explanation is that they are just not very good at their job and are indifferent to the lives and well-being of the people who for one reason or another have to live here. Our public servants are not pretending to be shallow and incompetent.  They are shallow and incompetent.  They are true to their values.

A visualization of private jet area of Van Nuys Airport courtesy of MidJourney.

No Response From Our Public Servants

 
Jill and I wrote a letter to our various local city and state representatives asking them if they would not mind looking at and possibly addressing a half dozen or so issues on our street. It was a very nice letter and we sent it to all possible relevant parties.

You know: maybe less prostitutes on the street, take down the overhead power lines, remove the derelict buildings, and modify Sepulveda Blvd so that it appeared that people who were expected to live here could do so with dignity and with some of the amenities that the rich white folk have in other parts of this Ciudad de Los Angeles.

We got one letter returned without forwarding address but no other response.  Not even a form letter or a robocall from a digital assistant.  How rude.  What were we thinking?  That the city of LA cares about its citizens?

Now we get to call their office and see if they even got the letter.  Yes, we know there is very little chance that anything will come of this.  But we think it is worth a little of our time to try and have our elected representatives do their job.

Politicians asleep courtesy of MidJourney

The letter:

LACMA Is Not as Bad as Expected

By all accounts the new LACMA is a train wreck.  We took a trip there and it is a mess but not quite as bad as expected.  Still, they should have done better.

There is no explanation anywhere of the work being done and when it can be expected.  Nothing that I saw.  The visitor is just exposed to a mess of construction with no guidance.  By happenstance we found a worker who would explain things to us.  

The new building is nowhere near done.  It wont be done in 2024, I doubt it will be done in 2025.   It does cross over Wilshire Blvd to make use of the space that LACMA owned across the street.  It looks interesting and contrary to what I was told it must have more exhibition space than the older buildings.  If it doesnt then that is a disaster.  Maybe it will have "better" exhibition space.   

The Bing theatre, site of so many happy memories, is gone and our guide explained there will be a new theatre in the basement of the new building.  That is nice, but no one would know this by inspecting the site.

The plaza is a wreck with no space to sit down not associated with the very pretentious but not very good restaurant.  Expensive.  What happened to the place you could sit down and get a salad or a simple hot entry?  All gone.  We ate outside because the inside smelled of grease.  The outside was subjected to jack hammers.  Not pleasant.

Two exhibition spaces were open.  One in the new building from 30 years ago, and the other in a building where the parking lot for the May Co used to be.  Of course the new old building was presentable and has some of the permanent exhibition.  We did not get to the parking lot building.

The Page Museum is still there and is entertaining for a few hours.  Lots of exhibits are out of order. The Bison is still there.  We did not go to the 3D theatre.  The internal rain forest or whatever it is seemed less interesting than I remembered but better than a stick in the eye. The shop is fun but no more Giant Sloth hand puppets.

The Japanese pavilion is closed and no one knows if it will be reopened.

The neighborhood is a wreck.  The businesses look like a tornado hit them.  The Folk and Craft Art museum is still there with a new paint job.  We did not go in.  "The Egg and Eye" is long gone.

We did not go to the Academy Museum.  After the expensive but unpleasant lunch I just wanted to get out of there.

I can see why people are upset but still it should be a suitable space when it is all done.  It did not make a great impression.

1915 City of LA Traffic Planning Report

Tom McMahon found this interesting traffic planning report / discussion for the City of Los Angeles from 1915.  

Find the full report here:

https://libraryarchives.metro.net/dpgtl/trafficplans/1915_study_of_street_traffic_conditions_in_the_city_of_la.pdf

Death by Opera at the Hollywood Bowl

We went to the Hollywood Bowl to see Verdi's Requiem as conducted by Gustav Dudamel.  For those of you not up on your classical music snobbery, Dudamel, the acclaimed conductor of the LA Philharmonic has spit on Los Angeles and is moving to NY and the NY Philharmonic.  The political and cultural issues here are mind boggling and you may as well have a subway series between the Mets and the Dodgers for all the hatred and polarization this invokes in certain circles.

As for the Opera, I was determined for once to follow along and one more time, even with English subtitles, I was thwarted.  It seems to be a tradition to give the fake text to the audience and the real text to the singers in order to hide the banality and all the repetitions. Listen, people, I get it. You are trying to spare us but don't spare us.  I could track the Latin for several seconds ("Kyrie Eleison") but that is no great feat.  Also the meaning is usually pretty clear.  

We had a lot of "Lord Have Mercy", in Latin of course, and "Raise them up from the dead, Oh Lord, raise them up from dirt, then judge them and send them to Hell for all Eternity".  Lovely sentiment, and I appreciated hearing that over and over again.  This will probably be the last time I try to endure a classical opera without a fast forward button.  Yes I know, Pearls before Swine, but who is the pearl and who is the swine?  

But it was a lovely night, the bowl is always a great place to hear music, we had box seats (courtesy of composer Jill Fraser), and great company.  The bowl has had a huge upgrade of ancillary amenities.  The gift shop sells recordings in vinyl!  Yes, that fabulous analog LP (long playing) contact technology.   Everything old is new again. 

There has been major audio engineering at the Bowl. I don't know any details but there is massive, exotic hardware above and in front of that stage.  Some of it is for lighting, no doubt, but much of it is for audio.  There are two towers and three audio arrays that can be adjusted in height.  I am sure there are some interesting stories there.

Do we really not have a "no fly" rule over the Greek Theatre and the Hollywood Bowl? I mean, pardon me, but what the fuck?

Norton Sales and Equipment from the Apollo Program

draft

In the far reaches of the San Fernando Valley is a warehouse that contains elements of the now-distant space program of the 1960s.  Remember.  There was a prophecy that going to space would capture the hearts and minds of the world and give our civilization a sense of being great.  When science mattered.  When people and nations could be better than they were.  When racism and poverty could be eliminated and we could "reach for the stars".  Belief in the possibility of peace on earth.  There was such a time.

But projects end and some of them get terminated early and that was the case with the Apollo program.  What happened to all those people and all that equipment and those dreams?   The people were discarded.  The equipment was sold when regulations allowed.  The dreams were postponed.

So in the distant past, someone by the name of Norton was able to navigate the incredibly complicated regulations around buying used government equipment.  Maybe he knew someone and he must have had some money.  So at some point trucks containing equipment of various types was moved to a warehouse in the San Fernando Valley and various people sorted, disassembled, scrapped, and repurposed equipment that once had a lofty purpose.

Today what is left of this equipment is still there, in the back of the warehouse and can be rented as props for movies, tv shows, etc.  Three very nice people and one cat work there.   They let Jill and I wander at will through their warehouse and it made this history seem more real.

 

Norton Sales, inc.

7429 Laurel Canyon Blvd

North Hollywood, CA 91605

Carlos Guzman, President

(818) 765-1087

www.nortonsalesinc.com

company email: nortonsalesm@aol.com

 

Picture from Benton Jew

draft

Many years ago, Benton Jew and Josh Pines came to town and I guess we all went to Griffith Park Observatory.  

Los Angeles and Architecture in Die Hard (1988)

Many years ago, I was driving down Santa Monica Blvd late at night and ahead of me in Century City was a new building that created a fabulous National Socialist light sculpture on top of one of the new buildings that seemed to extend the building into the sky at each corner.

The night was particularly foggy which no doubt enhanced the effect.

It looked fabulous and yet I never saw it again.

Then I heard it was for the movie Die Hard (1988) which I had never seen.

So I downloaded this seminal and important film and I still did not see what I saw that night.

Oh the building was there just fine. And there were even clearly lights on the top of the building for certain important scenes near the end. But that transcendent and inspiring architectural idea that I had seen and been so impressed by was not there. It did not exist. It was an artifact, no doubt, of shooting some of the movie at night and the atmospheric conditions and not intended by the filmmakers, or the architects, at all.

Yes, one more time, I had given Los Angeles and Hollywood, each in their own way, too much credit. This building was and is intended for studio executives, lawyers and accountants. No inspirational pillars of light needed here. No striking architectural innovation. Nothing controversial at all. Just a well-made building for rich people and former presidents.

Once again, Los Angeles is true to its values.

Die Hard (1988) on IMDB

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095016/

The Los Angeles Car Show in 2015 ... Future? What Future?

Sometimes we are called to look into the heart of Hell, the Devil's home, the place of Sin, where Righteousness is relegated to the gutter and vile Evil is outlined in chrome and worshiped.

For Los Angeles, the city of the Angels, what could symbolize Satan more than the automobile? This one invention has caused the corruption of the civic body, the destruction of neighborhood after neighborhood, the contamination of the very air with the fumes of Sulphur and other chemicals from the Infernal Regions, the people daily subjected to the insanity of traffic that sucks away their life and their hope, the parade of elite vehicles on the pothole filled streets that  provide some of the worst examples of the rich demonstrating their greed and indifference in the face of obscene poverty.

In Los Angeles we have the second largest automobile show in the world, second only to Detroit. Surely in light of the gross corruption and degradation of Los Angeles through the institution of the automobile  the annual car show must be the very Citadel of Mammon!

What will we see? The best? The worst? The future? The past?

I have always wanted to attend this show but through sheer Sloth I have never made it. But on this Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, it was easy for me to tag along with others who were going and I did.

It also provided an opportunity to drive in my first Tesla and I was impressed.

My friend, the owner of this Tesla made the point that Tesla had proven that the barriers to entry to the automobile industry in this country were no longer the gating factor. For decades it has been said that no new brands could come into existence without an enormous amount of money and maybe not even then.  But Tesla has proven otherwise.

My friend and I both believe that we are on the cusp of a tsunami of change that will whack the automotive industry the way it has deserved to be whacked for decades.  Self-parking, autonomy, and semi-autonomy, new drive trains hybrid and electric, new manufacturers in the People's Republic of China and India, we should expect that the dinosaurs of the past will be swept into the gutter where they belong and replaced by a new people and a new legion of car manufacturers.

Too bad America, you had your chance and you completely fucked it up.   This time the government wont save you.

This is the second largest car show in the country, possibly the world. I would expect the existing manufacturers to take their head out of their ass (the tragedy of rectal-cranial inversion) and present their ideas about the future to their loyal base. That is pretty much who comes to car shows I think, the loyal base of customers who care enough to spend the day and $15.00 checking out the polished and mechanical visions of the automobile manufacturers.

This is a short list of what I might expect at least from some of the exhibitors:

I would expect there to be demonstrations of some of this new technology, even if it was not ready to be deployed to the consumer. So I would expect demonstrations of self-parking cars, cars which were autonomous for long distance driving, cars that were autonomous for city driving. These demonstrations might not be using real, full-size cars. They might be short films on a large display, mini-documentaries if you will, or they might be radio controlled model cars, or even films of radio controlled model cars. I think that would have been very entertaining and would have the result of helping to associate that brand with innovation in the eyes and minds of their hard-core customer base.

I might expect expect to see a time line of the future of these technologies at the brand. What is often called a “road map”. I would expect a company that published such a road map to hedge their bets in numerous ways, but it might indicate when they thought a new drive train (e.g. hybrid, electric, solar) might be available, or when a new brand for a new technology might come into existence. Public companies have to be very careful about what they say about the future and I do not know all the rules, but still I would expect some of this road map to ba available, however hedged.

I might expect to see live demonstrations of such things as new displays for car control, or eye/head tracking so that they knew where the driver was looking.

I might expect that the different power trains already in production might be clearly marked out: what was a traditional gasoline engine, a rotary engine, a hybrid engine, an electric one, and so forth.

I might expect that the insurance industry would have some sort of presence to explain how they are working with industry and government to evolve this incredibly important aspect of driving.

I might expect some sort of discussion of the gross violation of trust that Volkswagon was guilty of, and how that is being handled for the future both by Volkswagon and other brands.

Since it is an open secret that people are reprogramming their cars to change engine and other parameters of a vehicle away from those set by the manufacturer, I might expect some sort of statement about where the car companies stood on this practice.

Since I knew that some of the car companies are performing trials with new technologies, I might expect some description of these trials and what is expected to come out of them and when.

And finally here is one more.  We are in the midst of the Paris Climate Talks. What positions are the various car companies taking with the respective governments on climate change?  Well this is a critical thing to know.  How can they not know?  How could they not tell us?  Are these the same old lying pieces of garbage car companies like the ones that destroyed mass transit in LA?   (Yes they did.  The counter rumors are just lies, they really, really did destroy mass transit in LA all those years ago).

But none of the above was visible at the car show. It was as if they expected nothing to change, no information needed to be communicated. All was well in the garden.

Total zip.

Not quite. There were, if you knew where to look, completely without any description, some cool vehicles that I happened to know were a part of tests. You had to know what they were, and what they represented and make your own guess about whether this might really ever become available but there were a few there.

There were many examples on the floor of innovative technologies, but essentially none of them were active and you had to know enough to even realize they were there. For many years now, apparently, certain high end cars have had a display that allows you to see your odometer, etc, without refocus from far to near distance. There were several, possibly even many, examples of this technology on the floor, but none of them were on, and you had to know they were there.

My friend pointed out in their defense that the show was as popular as ever, that people were buying more cars than ever before, that in some sense of the word, this show was serving the purpose that it was meant to serve, and I had to agree with him.

But for those of us who went because we thought in light of all these new technologies, changes, and violation of trust, that this car show would also present some vision of the future, we left disappointed. Perhaps we were wrong to expect such a theme at the car show.

But it seems to me in light of the tsunami of change that is coming down the road for these companies, that a vision of the future would have been a very smart thing to have on display for the attendees of this show, who were self-selected to be the most interested in the automobile in this city, the most car oriented city of the Union.

But I am happy to say that there was one redeeming exhibit: a magnificent statue of Satan, Lucifer himself, the fallen one, in the middle of all the car exhibitors laughing, laughing at the impending disaster that will wipe them off the face of the earth and straight to the hell that they so deserve.

Glamourous Fashion Shoot Observed on Expo Line

So I am on the Expo line between Culver City and downtown Los Angeles when suddenly 5 people get on. We are about to all be part of a fashion shoot.

The subjects are two oriental, probably Japanese, young women in some sort of friendly but conservative sports wear. They sit together on one of the rows of the train across from me and engage in a pseudo conversation under the direction of the photographer.

The photographer is a young woman in perhaps her early 30s. She is dressed in full hipster scruffy and directs the fashion models and takes 99 percent of the pictures over the next 10 plus minutes. She has not one but two assistants, one of whom, the lead assistant, wins the award for full-scruffy regalia. I was not close enough to tell, but from appearances we would guess he had not shaved or bathed for a solid week if not more. The other assistant was primarily a big fellow who watched over and carried the various tripods and backpacks filled with equipment that was not being used right that second.

The equipment in use seemed to be two bodies, one of them the high end Canon, and one of them a Sony, what I believe must have been a full-frame sensor mirrorless body with a Canon lens adapter on it. But it could have been any of the Sony full-frame bodies for all I could tell. There were two lenses in use, both of them Canon zooms, what I think was the 28-70 MM and the 70-200 MM zoom which was the lens most in use. Both bodies were used about equally, but with lens switches it was the 70-200 MM mostly in use.

From time to time the scruffy lead photographer, a very entertaining looking woman who shot the entire time with very dark sunglasses on (I dont actually understand how you do photography with very dark sunglasses the whole time, but thats just me) would give direction to the models, the jist of which was that they should pretend to chatter away like best friends saying absolutely nothing of consequence.

I would guess that about 500-600 photographs were taken in the 10 minutes they were on the train.  This  is a very loose estimate based on at least one photograph per second for 10 minutes.  Often it seemed the lead photographer was shooting more than 1 per second.

I would guess that the two zoom lenses were a matched set, in other words, between the two of them we had the full range of 28 mm to 200 mm, and that she needed that flexibility to compose the shots given that she could not easily change her position in the train.

As an additional accessory to this glamourous fashion shoot, having a British accent may be useful.  She certainly seemed to have one, at least as far as I could tell the few times I heard her speak.

At one point during this period, two very colorful men of color with disabilities, large and profane of speech, got on and I felt would be very entertaining backgrounds but I think she composed them out of the shoot because I did not notice anyone getting any kind of rights waiver.

After about 10 plus minutes of this, the whole crew got off on a stop and quite possibly got on the same train going the other direction. This you could repeat as long as you liked while the light was available, in other words for hours.

As always, it is entertaining to watch professionals at work. The thing that particularly stood out to me was that every time I have seen a professional of this type on location, there was at least one assistant and in this case two. Also, there was no toy equipment. Obviously everything was digital, there were no film changes but that is what we would expect. I was impressed and surprised to see the Sony body as the second body. I have heard that this was happening and obviously this is good for Sony. It perhaps makes them the third professional photography brand behind Canon and Nikon.

Earlier in the day, in Culver City, I had walked by a film shoot on location and I asked what project. The security guard said it was a commercial. So that suggests that on this Sunday we had not one but two professional commercial shoots going on in Culver City that I just happened to run into. This suggests to me that advertising production is healthy in Los Angeles, which is certainly good for the economy.

Lions and Tigers and the LAPD, Oh My

One of the great advantages of using mass transit, or at least transit, in this case Amtrak, to go back and forth between LA and Oceanside is that the process throws you in with a lot of other people, and sometimes you end up talking to them while you are waiting for your train.   But if you do that, you might learn something and that might be annoying or unfortunate depending on what it is that you learn.

So here I am minding my own business, waiting for the last train to Oceanside from Los Angeles. It is maybe 9:30 PM at night at Union Station and I am waiting on the platform with about four other people one of them a nice man under 30 or so with his son (who knows, maybe the boy is 8 years old, its really hard for me to tell).

And the nice young man is talking to his son and he says “See that building over there? Thats the big house.”

“Actually”, I say, for some reason adding my two cents worth, “If you mean the jail, I am pretty sure that it is on the other side of the tracks, around the corner. The building you are pointing to is far too nice to be the jail, and besides, it has windows”. So my new friend laughs and looks closer (this is night you understand), and says, “hmmm, you are right, it is too nice and it does have windows”.

“I am pretty sure that the jail”, I say, “ is about a block away on the right side of the train as we leave. I had been trying to figure out what building would be that big but not have any windows, just apparently slits for light, and I am guessing that is the city jail.”

So my new friend and I started talking while his son amused himself with a video game. He had his son for the weekend and was just coming back from San Luis Obispo where his son lived with his mother. And he started entertaining me with stories about life inside the jail, something he knew first hand as it turned out that he had a complicated legal history due to his tendency to drink and drive on occasion.

And in the next 30 minutes or so I learned a lot about what the difference was between jail and prison, and what life was like inside the Los Angeles City jail, run as it is by those stalwart defenders of peace and justice, the LAPD.   And what he told me was bad, really actually kind of bad.

You will notice that I am not going to be specific about what it is he told me.  I am not going to be specific here in print.   You can talk to me in person or over the phone if you want more details.

I asked my new friend whether he understood that what he had experienced was, as far as I know, completely against the law and violated his civil rights. That if his experiences were publicized in the press that there would be a brief expression of outrage, some pious promises by our politicians to “get to the bottom of the story” and maybe a scapegoat or two, but that of course nothing would change.

I also asked him, who knows about this? And he says that as far as he can tell, anyone who wants to know about it knows. All the prisoners know, all police officers know because they are required to work at the jail for their first two years on the LAPD, and he presumes that any politician who cares to know, knows. How about rights groups, I asked. He laughs, oh they are easy to fool. They come in and as they walk through the jail things are fixed up while they are there and as they move on, things revert to normal.

By the way, in case you did not know this, jail is different from prison. You can not be in jail for longer than one year or 18 months (I forget which) and therefore have to be transferred to prison. Prison is apparently nicer than jail because it is run by outside contractors and those contractors are afraid that the former prisoners will kill them if they do shit like the LAPD does in the LA jail. But the LAPD is not concerned with that because everyone knows that anyone who fucks with an LAPD officer in any way is killed.

So where is the ACLU when all this is going on?   Where are our Los Angeles political leaders?

Now here is something you might want to know that many people who are white and middle class do not know. It turns out that the LAPD has a well-known reputation for, well, bad behavior, and that reputation is long standing and non-subtle. What is odd about this reputation is that the only people who don't seem to realize this are my middle class, privileged white friends. Every black person who lives in LA has a story to tell, they are not all making these stories up. It is only my white friends, well off by the standards of most Americans, who seem to be in complete denial about the LAPD reputation.

Are the rumors true? The rumors are always true, at least as far as they go.

So whats my point? I am not in a position to do anything about what I learned.   What, are you crazy?  I have more than enough problems just trying to figure out whether or not I have a career.  I dont need to make an enemy of the LAPD.  That would be quite self-destructive.

You on the other hand, my well-off, successful friends, who laugh at the stupidity of the people who live in the south and point the finger at Kansas City or Charleston S. C., it seems to me that you are just the right person to go out there and organize and end this injustice. Why not clean up your own hometown first?

One day this will all come out in the press I think, at least I hope it will.  Hey for all I know it already has and I just didnt notice.   Trust me, when you hear the details of the bad behavior I am referring to, you will not be amused and you will not think it is subtle.

Why do we permit any of this to go on in American in 2015?  Surely we know better by now.

Of course it could be that my friend was just making all this up.

The Miracle of Light Rail to Santa Monica and Other Transit News

Watching a city build a transit system is like watching the grass grow. Not much seems to be happening on any given day but things are happening nevertheless. In the case of Los Angeles, we have a decades long process which is distinguished by world class obstructionism, stupidity, failure, self-destructive behavior and progress.

For those of you just joining us, Los Angeles has been slowly building a light rail system to various communities in the greater Los Angeles area and much more slowly and expensively building an underground heavy rail system, e.g. a subway.  The latter, the so-called Red and Purple lines, have been notable for their dysfunctional politics at the local and national level.

But its no big deal. I mean, its not really important. Why should it be important?   Los Angeles claims its a major city, but every street has potholes, except in Beverly Hills, of course. The traffic, as predicted, collapsed into a puddle of congealed shit two decades ago, and the smog caused by the automobile, the Port of Los Angeles, and the refineries results in an air quality which damages the life of everyone who lives here.

But slowly but surely things are starting to improve, and remarkably we are about to achieve a transit milestone I did not believe I would ever see. The light rail from downtown, through USC, and ending in Culver City is in the final stages of being extended to 6 th Street in Santa Monica. This extension is not sometime in the far distant future (see below) but is actually nearing completion and will be in test within 12 months.

Now 12 months is a reasonable time frame.

Expo Line extension being built out to Santa Monica

Furthermore, another extension to the Expo line will turn left at Crenshaw, pass through some of the worst parts of town, but then arrive at a new LAX combined transit center (i.e. where the shuttle buses meet the train and the rental cars).  And this is scheduled for completion in four years or about 2019.

Now four years is a little longer than we might like, but is still in the foreseeable future. And at that point we will have a light rail system that serves downtown, Pasadena, Long Beach, USC, Culver City, Santa Monica, the airport and several other communities.

But lets give credit where credit is due.  I am proud to say that all through this, citizens of Santa Monica have done everything in their power to destroy the extension of the transit system. True to their values. Pure and unspoiled.   They will fight a transit system to their last day.   Yes, they are that .... oh I don't know..... how about selfish and fucked up?

It is 2015 already.  We are 15 years into the new century.  Traffic collapsed in Los Angeles, repeat that word, collapsed, over 20 years ago.  As we all knew it would.   That means the city became unlivable, not that the city was becoming unlivable.  No.  20 years ago (or so) it became unlivable.  To oppose something as simple as light rail to Santa Monica for any reason other than something really serious, such as it destroyed an important historical monument, for example, is more than merely weird, it is insane.  Light rail could only help.  Opposing it is not just a sortof bad idea, it is nutty-boy crazy. 

So much for the positive news, now lets talk about the weird expensive heavy rail system. It stops right where it ought to stop, naturally, and sensibly at Wilshire and Western. Oh. Yes, I suppose that is a stupid place for it to stop, but hey, that was only 20 years ago. They plan to extend it all the way down to La Cienega and Wilshire!  And they will have that done in a mere 8 years, or 2023.

I can barely catch my breathe!   Those animals!  So speedy!   And then to Century City and finally all the way to Westwood in a mere 20 years or roughly 2035.

Planned Westside Extensions to the Transit System

If heavy rail is so expensive and slow, maybe they should put in light rail in the interim?  It would be no trouble installing light rail on Wilshire Blvd because you could just shut down the street while you were building it.  I mean why not?   The traffic is already fucked.

This should all have been started in 1980 and completed by 2005, a mere 25 years.  But not Los Angeles, no.   No one would describe the people and government of Los Angeles as far sighted and progressive.

In case you wondered who was paying for this, it is not the people of Los Angeles.  As far as I can tell, it is the Federal government, at least for the Purple Line extension.

Still, it is amazing that a working system from downtown to Santa Monica is nearly there .... that in and of itself is a miracle.

________________________________________________

Exposition Transit Corridor, Phase 2 to Santa Monica

http://www.metro.net/projects/expo-santa-monica/

Metro Breaks Ground on Purple Line Subway Extension
http://la.streetsblog.org/2014/11/07/metro-breaks-ground-on-purple-line-subway-extension/

Kate Mantillini Memorabilia

Many readers may wonder why anyone would care that Kate Mantillini's closed suddenly after many years of service.    Kate's became a standard for many of us who had the misfortune of living and working in Los Angeles for the last three decades.   It was close enough to the West Side and to Hollywood to make it possible to meet people there for lunch without driving all day.  It was right next door to the Academy La Peer screening room where the VFX bake off was held and became the traditional meeting place for our VFX clan to meet before or after the screenings. I must have had 100 meetings at Kate's over the years, if not more. There was almost always legal parking on side streets if you knew where to look and if all else failed there was reasonably priced valet parking.  You could tell someone to meet you at Kate Mantillini's later that night and know for certain that it would be open and that you would get a table.

But its gone.

I was able to pass by Kate Mantillini's about two weeks before it was closed and managed to take a few photographs and two (jerky) walkthrough's of the restaurant.  It seems silly, even to me, but I guess I am a sentimental guy.

In chatting with the employees there I learned that Kate's was owned by the family who runs Hamburger Hamlet, and this was, I guess, their more high-end, themed restaurant.

Many of the employees I talked to had been there for years and were then thinking about looking for new jobs in about two weeks when the restaurant closed (about June 15).

If you listen to the dialogue track at the end of the B walkthrough, you will hear me talking to the manager of the restaurant who wanted to know what I thought I was doing. I told him that I had been told that the manager had approved it.... he replied that he was the manager.

Ooops.


I apologize for the jerkiness of the two walkthroughs below.  It was all very ad hoc and spontaneous. I had my cheap digital camera with me and so I just held the camera about chest high, tried to be discreet, and walked purposefully towards the bathrooms thanking everyone I came across.  You can see me in my dissolute and degenerate form reflected in the mirror at the end of take A.   Yes, that is me whistling in the background, trying to be nonchalant.

Kate Mantillini Walkthrough A

Kate Mantillini Walkthrough B