As part of the ongoing effort to find the very worst of our fair city, today we examine two more elements of Los Angeles, gang violence and the lack of respect for local history, to determine which is worse. At first glance this one might seem like a slam dunk for gang violence, at least that is what I thought when I decided to post this but the more I thought it over the less it seemed like a sure thing.

On one hand we have gang violence: According to LAPD figures, during the last five years, there were over 23,000 verified violent gang crimes in the City of Los Angeles. But wait, there’s more; that number includes over 750 homicides and 12,000 felony assaults. That’s a lot of violent crime and violent crime is never a good thing.

On the other hand there is the lack of respect for local history: Many people in Los Angeles don’t know local history and this is in large part due to the huge numbers of transplants here in LA. If you don’t have roots in a city it takes some work to learn what existed before you arrived. Over time I’ve gained a good sense of local history but often times when I bring local history up in conversation it turns into a discussion about what eatery used to be where and how all the good video stores are gone. When many of us talk about local history we often talk about places that personally mean something to us, these are interesting facts but ultimately this history is just trivia.

One of the problem with regards to history is that citizens, politicians and policy makers often don’t respect or don’t pay attention to the real history of the city including the multitudes of real estate deals and developments that built up certain parts of the city and left others to languish. Many also don’t know about the history of official and unofficial segregation of housing in our city or the questionable, borderline criminal policies when it came to policing lower income areas*. The historically unaddressed divide between the haves and the have-nots leads to disenfranchisement, resentment and anger towards the prevailing social and economic power in the city. Now I can’t speak for you but if you told me that the city I lived in would ignore a history that left me feeling alienated, I’d look for a way to build a community that could exert some authority and protect me in a way that the city had historically been unable to do; one way to do this is by joining or forming a gang.

So what’s worse, gang violence or the lack of respect for history which has indirectly led to gang violence? It’s your call, please vote below.

Which is worse:

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…poll closes Thursday evening…

*To be fair steps have been taken in recent years to improve these but the negative effects of past policies remain.

Here’s what’s wrong with LAUSD:

This is $12.12 of my son’s own savings.

He’s taking it in this morning to donate it to his own elementary school .

Budget cuts handed down by Gov. Schwarzenegger and poorly managed by LAUSD have forced our school community to go begging for $180,000 from parents and family members to continue paying the salaries of three vital staffers in charge of computer training, curriculum development and gifted education.

Public education is failing because we’re letting our leaders get away with misspending our taxes on other crap.

I guess education just doesn’t matter.

As elections inevitably approach, campaign signage becomes a garish fact of life on our streets, and clearly the grassroots effort to get corporate lawyer Bill Johnson elected to Office No. 125 of the Los Angeles Superior Court has gotten off to a quick and early start in contributing to the blight. I’ve seen these stenciled banners more and more around town. There’s several strung up along Jefferson Boulevard (such as the one at La Cienega, seen at right; click to embiggenate), and I’ve found a couple more on 2nd Street between Beaudry and the Belmont tunnel.

I’m tempted to vote for Johnson because the L.A. Times has recently endorsed his competition, Superior Court Commissioner James Bianco. I’ve got nothing against him, it’s just usually whoever the Times endorses automatically means I’ll be going the other way.

This time though, I’ll have to make an exception because it’s just too deliciously ironic that a candidate for judge would support and allow promotional signage that’s in violation of Los Angeles Municipal Code 28.04, which prohibits handbills, posters, placards, or any unauthorized advertising from being attached to fences, trees, and utility poles.

It gives new dimension to the old warning: Post No Bills.

OK, Los Angeles. Sorry that this is so late, but there was sleeping to be done, highway races to the airports, and long flights to be caught. Now that Virgin America’s new route has delivered me home safely, I’ll drop in a few last notes as Coachella fades away, Brigadoon-like, into the mists of improbable polo fields for another year.

(after the jump: the Shout Out Louds, My Morning Jacket, Roger Waters, Black Mountain, and more)

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I knew something was happening during the middle of 6th period: there were too many sirens going off in the distance. So many, in fact, that the students stopped their activity and said, “What’s with all the sirens?” My window faces north, and we all looked out, but saw nothing. We had a power surge as well, which I attributed to people running appliances during the warm weather. It was not until after school, when I was leaving to run errands that I noticed the frightening smoke on the horizon.

As I headed south on Van Ness, I could see the thick, black plumes rising into the sky, ominous on a day like this. Turning eastbound on Slauson, I encountered heavy traffic, punctuated by ambulances and fire trucks, as well as sheriffs patrols and parking enforcement redirecting traffic away from southbound Western Ave.

I tuned to KFWB and heard the details: a tire yard caught fire, spreading to a pallet yard. Some power poles and cars caught fire (hence, I believe, the power surge), but no major injuries. One firefighter was hospitalized for heat injuries.

UPDATE 4:25PM The evacuation zone has expanded again.  This time into Pasadena east of Michillinda affecting those residents on Skycrest and Park Vista Drive.  The evacuation for those streets in Sierra Madre EAST of Camarillo Street to Santa Anita Avenue in Arcadia has been lifted and those residents may return home. 

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Since my initial posts a lot has happened and there is some good news out there.  As of about an hour ago the evacuation zone has been expanded.

My friend Kate whom I mentioned in my update late Saturday did in fact wind up having her godson Phillip at her house for the night as he lacked ID to enter the voluntary evacuation area.   A few hours later his Mom Debbie and the rest of the clan wound up at Kate’s home here in Monrovia to ride out the fire. 

Kate and Debbie have been watching the fire from the Eaton Canyon Dam where they can safely observe the fire and see the helicopters refilling at Eaton Canyon Dam.  They have placed a few frantic calls to me when the fire started expanding rapidly and moving downhill around 11AM and again around 2PM.  They are able to report from their vantage point that no homes had been lost yet.

Their request…looky loos stay out of Sierra Madre so fire crews can get in and out as well as help get the newer evacuees out.  Please.

The best blog for most current first hand info is a toss up.  Foothill Cities Blog comments have a lot of first hand information going out.  Crime Scene Blog has experienced reporters keeping very current information posted as well.  Also, Sierra Madre.net has been updating information constantly for the community.

Tom Leveque with the Arcadia PD, put up a short note on the APOA Blog.  He has left comments that many of the foothill communities are lending police support to help prevent problems in the community not unlike was done in Monrovia when our gang war erupted. 

Blogger 91204 was evacuated from his home early this morning and is unble to blog further.

Does America hate Los Angeles? If you go by a poll by Travel & Leisure, the answer is yes. I don’t know when this thing was taken, but, I had to see the results for myself.

According to this “survey,” we suck in affordability, safety, public parks, architecture, and pizza. We’re dead last in public transportation, overall cityscape, friendliness, and intelligence. But, when it comes to shoes, we’re number 2.

I was gonna say something smart here. But, I too dumb. Screw you, anyway.

Photo from TimWilson’s photostream

Coachella’s done. It’s all over. And dare I say, I’m feeling a bit o’ Coachella burnout. I’m done with the seven dollar Heineken, the welded art, the glistening flesh, the punishing heat, the non-operational cell phones, the sweaty tents and the dusty walks to the car that fill my shoes with dirt. Will I be back next year? Probably. Because as much as I complain about it, I kind of like all that stuff, too.

And then there’s the music. It’s the reason I keep coming back, the reason I subject myself to the crowds and the insanity. There’s always something that stands out as the reason for it all. This year there were two somethings: Portishead (as I mentioned earlier) and Roger Waters.

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These two messages caught my eye at Saturday’s L.A. Times Festival of Books at UCLA:

1. A man with a t-shirt featuring George Bush and Dick Cheney that read: “War Criminals” and “Impeach.”  The man also wore an orange ribbon on his t-shirt.  Of the many meanings his ribbon could symbolize, I suspect his intent was to call for closing the Guantanamo Bay prison facility.

2. A bumper sticker in a car’s rear window that read: “When Jesus said ‘Love your enemies,’ I think he probably meant don’t kill them.”

I looked for but never did find the third message to complete the thought: “Who Would Jesus Impeach?”

• Sha in LA finds that other cities bitch about their Metro, too. They just don’t have as much to gripe about as we do.
• LA Can’t Drive discovers a new epidemic of dumb in the Valley. People suffering from heat exhaustion are driving around at night without their lights on. In NoHo, we call that Friday.
• Random Thoughts is approached by a homeless man Downtown, asking for money. When the askee notices that the asker is financially stable enough to be drinking a 40, the answer is no.
• M-M-M-My Pomona has her neighborhood infiltrated by missionaries who come to the door, but never knock. Perhaps they can sense that she is an SP.
• And Ginny Here And There believes in the Dodgers and their new ritual. She believes in the Hitting Gnome. Rub me here for hits.

Kitsch is bad taste elevate to an art form.  I think this unpriced bar stool for your patio found at the local Home Crdepot store fits the bill.  Much more entertaining than a garden gnome in my book.

By now, you’ve discovered a little inconsistency in the matchups of our little L.A.’s 64 Worst Things shootout.

We put up some huge contenders against each other in the early rounds (LAPD vs. L.A. Times?) that resulted in great but slightly-lesser evils being eliminated prematurely.

So now we’re left to decide head-scratchers like this: What’s worse – inconsiderate dog owners? Or the entire bloated, lazy, horrible, costly and tragically ineffectual LAUSD bureaucracy?

On the one hand, you have a relatively small number of selfish, short-sighted dolts who are fouling our streets with the products of their indifference, leaving an unsightly, unsafe, unsavory mess and degrading the quality of life for every man, woman and, especially, child in Los Angeles.

On the other hand, you have some dog owners who can’t be bothered to pick up their shit.

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A graffitied pig is now floating above the Roger Waters crowd (“fear builds walls”). A circling airplane just sprayed something above the grounds. I’ll bet this could be AWESOME if you love Pink Floyd. I’m just kind of afraid.

update: the substance being dropped from those airplanes? tens of thousands of tiny Obama flyers. [ew]

One weekend a year, Los Angeles loses a big piece one of its most valuable resources: our precious indie kids. For the past nine years, Los Angeles’ thriving belt buckle and brunch economy is abandoned for a few days while everyone heads out to the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival.

It’s up to those left behind to keep the city from collapsing.

I am one of those who stayed behind to keep the city running because the idea of a three-day outdoor music fest long ago changed from an awesome idea to proof that Sartre was right when he said hell is other people. This is not a knock on anyone who does attend the festival, I envy your fortitude and willingness to brave the heat and crowds in order to see live music. I am just old, bitter, and my feet hurt.

Today, in order to keep the local economy from collapsing, my wife and I decided to do something we rarely do. We had brunch. Wait, let me rephrase that, we went OUT for brunch; we actually have brunch at home all of the time because we know how to sleep late, how to cook and how to keep a plenty of champagne on hand. What you call brunch, we call Saturday and Sunday morning. The difference is we don’t have to wear pants.

More on brunch after the jump….

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Thousands of people braved the high-but-not-Coachella-high temperatures on Saturday to attend Day 1 of the 2008 Los Angeles Times Festival of Books.  As a first-time attendee, I was struck not only by the size of the crowd and the hundreds of exhibitor booths, but also how well-organized and (mostly) civilized everything was.
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