If you were just passing through, you might have stayed at the Sackett Hotel and Store at Hollywood & Cahuenga.

The year was 1890.

Photo from the USC Digital Archive

LAPD Police Chief Bill Bratton

Metblogs, Los Angeles: Yesterday’s Town Hall event with President Obama at the Miguel Contreras Learning Center brought out most of Los Angeles City Council, Governor Schwarzenegger, State Attorney General Jerry Brown, Mayor Villaraigosa, and a number of other local officials.

Using my swanky Metblogs issued Flipcam, I was able to snag a few soundbytes from LAPD Chief Bill Bratton and LA County Sheriff Lee Baca, and also tailed Mayor Villaraigosa as he escaped from the press to speak with a number of young demonstrators.  

Click for video and additional pics.

Remember the $700,000,000,000 bailout of the banking and financial industries?  And the $000,000,000,000 to bail out everyone else, particularly those with crushing health care, housing, and student loan debt?  That was back in September.  At the time, there were a few scattered protests over the inequities of these numbers.  Yesterday, the SEIU continued the protesting with its nationwide Take Back the Economy demonstration.  Using the AIG bonuses as a launchpad, protesters rallied against corporate greed outside of the huge AIG building in Century City.  Previously that same morning, President Obama stopped traffic and rolled on through the same area.  Timing, people.

Since I am ever so lucky enough to work in Century City and to actually see the AIG building from my office window, I ran down after a meeting to snap a few photos.  My biggest surprise was seeing Code Pink’s pinked members standing shoulder to shoulder with the purple shirts of the SEIU.

More pictures of the SEIU/Code Pink mashup after the jump.

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Years before actor Joe Morton became inextricably linked to Terminator 2‘s Miles Bennett Dyson, he gained acclaim for his role in John Sayles’ Brother From Another Planet (1984). That film, along with Sayles’ directorial debut, The Return of the Secaucus 7 (1980), screens tomorrow night at the Hammer as part of UCLA Film and Television Archive’s 14th Annual Festival of Preservation.

In Brother from Another Planet, Morton plays a mute intergalactic runaway slave, known only as “The Brother,” who crash-lands at Ellis Island and makes his way over to Harlem. Though he’s able to earn a living fixing machinery by simply touching it, his American dream is interrupted when bounty hunters from his home planet arrive on the scene.

Still not sold? Forget the cheesy trailer and the silly tagline (“Welcome to a world of crude beauty. Of danger and excitement. Of wonders, legend and imagination. Welcome to Harlem, Brother.”) and just trust that Mr. Sayles knows a thing or two about making damn good movies.

Images: Still photos from Brother From Another Planet (top) and Return of the Secaucus 7 (bottom). Courtesy of UCLA Film and Television Archive.

Mango goes everywhere his human does. Everywhere.

I liked this bird. His name is Mango.  He spent his entire time on his human’s shoulder flitting between ears and twittering about as if giving instructions as to how to unload a shopping cart.

Pick by me, grabbed with permission via the trusty cell cam.

Curren Price

Yes, another election in Los Angeles, and this time there’s a Prop 8 angle.

Next Tuesday, March 24th, is the special primary election for selecting the Democratic candidate in the coming race for CA State Senator from District 26, which covers a large area of central Los Angeles. Map here.

Curren Price is the only leading candidate who supports same-sex marriage, and who, as a State Assembly member representing Assembly District 51, co-authored a resolution to overturn Prop 8. Now, he’s running for State Senate and he needs your vote.

And surprise, hipsters and Hollywood liberal elite! Your neighbors in District 26 overwhelmingly voted YES ON PROP 8, which denied same-sex couples the right to marry.

Equality CA is operating phone banks at their Silver Lake office every day until next Tuesday in an effort to educate voters. Contact Conrado Terrazas, campaign organizer, at conrado@eqca.org, 323-661-2071 ext. 206 for more information.

Find your polling place here.

And vote! 

(Thanks, Frazgo! Also, Will Campbell weighed in recently on the growing number of LA elections vs. dwindling turnout. )

This came to my inbox.

If anyone knows who took this photo, please let me know in the comments

John Leech, the founder of the Onyx Cafe in Silverlake/Los Feliz/Echo Park and beloved patron of the arts and truth in general has passed away.

It apparently happened around Monday or Tuesday March 17th or 18th and has been confirmed by the County Coroner. He apparently has no family but he has a trust and its executors have been notified. There is a votive memorial in front of the former location of the Onyx on Vermont Avenue (now Cafe Figaro) in Los Feliz. Initial planning for a fitting memorial to John has begun. More on that soon.

John was one of the rarest things in this world: a genuine philosophical Bohemian in the very best sense of the word who created an austere unpretentious Cafe which was, by his design, a magical safe zone for artists, musicians, poets, scientists, intellectuals and outsiders of all stripes…

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Lucky Fish Anniversary Special

Today, Luckyfish in Beverly Hills celebrates its one year anniversary with massively discounted sushi. Anything that cruises by you on the sushi conveyor belt (mmm, sounds fresh!) and also an assortment of adult beverages (shochu cocktails, beers and wine) are only $1 all day today and only today. Someone please go and tell me if it’s worth the drive from Silver Lake.

Luckyfish, 338 N. Canon Dr., Beverly Hills, 310-274-9800, luckyfishsushi.com

Brace yourself, Burbankians. President Obama will be taping the Tonight Show today at NBC.

@ginayates forwarded today’s road closures in Burbank from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m.:

* Buena Vista Street between Alameda and Riverside
* Riverside Drive between Keystone and Niagara
* 134 Freeway off-ramp on Buena Vista St and Riverside Drive

The good folks at The Greek Theater and The Gibson Amphitheatre, who happen to be advertisers here (thanks guys!), have finally released their 2009 schedules. I was instantly psyched to see the return of Video Games Live (which we’ve covered several times in the last few years) at the Greek as well as Flogging Molly later in the year. But don’t get me wrong, the Judas Priest & Whitesnake show at the Gibson sounds pretty unmissable. Seriously. Last year I saw RATT and Poison there and holy moly, the crowd alone was worth the price of admission. There was a dude who sang almost every Poison song to his lady friend a few rows ahead of where I was sitting. It was very romantical as you can imagine. Anyway, point is the scheudule has been announced and you can finally plan your year around it. Also as a bonus, for a limited time only and whatnot, if you think you’ll want to attend more than a few of these you should check out the Premiere Marquee Club which is kind of like the frequent flyer program for these venues. It’s free to join, but you gotta buy a group of tickets in advance. If you go a few times a year this is actually pretty sweet because of the special concession line alone, but you also get early access to tickets and special perks of the month which we’ve been told will be “cool.” That said, hopefully we’ll have some tickets to give away at some point too, so keep your fingers crossed if you are already excited about the prospect of free tickets to an event I haven’t told you about yet. Exciting!

I got a 2fer with this find of classic caddies. I found them tucked back in the corner of a Pasadena parking structure, a 1964 Coupe Deville Convertible and a massive 1966 1967 (I think) Cadillac Fleetwood.  One was the car of the masses.  The latter was the largest mass produced car of its time, meant for the person who wanted the biggest most limo like car they could get right off a dealers lot.  

The ’64 Convertible is what stopped me in my tracks with one thought “want”.  To see more carpy cell phone pics of the two you must make the jump.

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If you like free form, modern/post-modern dance you need to stop by the Brand in Glendale this Sunday at 2PM.  Sarah Swenson, founder of the Vox Dance Theatre will be performing.  I’ve managed to catch a performance a couple of years back, nicely done, very unusual and definitely not “dancing with the stars” (that’s a good thing folks).  Of course with FREE ADMISSION this is a pretty easy one to attend and simply enjoy.

Details: 3/21/09 2PM,  Brand Library & Art Center 1601 West Mountain Street Glendale, CA 91201  818-548-2051

Giant Robot Silverlake is closing March 28th so now is the time to check out their closing sale if you haven’t done so already.

The sale began on March 10 — originally 20% off and an additional 5% on already marked down items — but Giant Robot has announced that their sale is now 30% off storewide, with an additional 10% on sale merchandise.

4017 Sunset Blvd. Los Angeles 90029
310 662 GRLA
Tue-Fri 11-7 pm
Sat-Sun 12-8 pm

Thanks to Goldenvoice, we here at LA Metblogs have nabbed not only concert tickets to Blue October’s show this Saturday, but every Metblogs winner gets in to a pre-show meet-and-greet with the band. Now, don’t embarrass us and geek out TOO much, ok? Keep it together.

Wanna go & schmooze with eyeliner-sporting rockstars? What sane person wouldn’t?! If you want to go, leave a comment below telling me, in a 5/7/5 syllable haiku, why you NEED to see this show & meet the band.

We’ll randomly pick a few winners. To win, you do not have to write a good haiku, but you must be able to be at LA Live this Saturday at 7pm; and you must be able to check your email regularly enough so that if I send you a “you win!” email, I don’t have to wait three days to hear back from you. Good? Good.

Now that President Obama  is not some Occidental kid who has to deal with traffic, his arrival in the Southland means empty streets for his motorcade and street closures for the rest of us.  I just got word from my building’s manager that Avenue of the Stars will be closed from Pico to Santa Monica from 4pm – 6pm today, and Eric Garcetti kindly posted the entire schedule of streets that will be closed during his two-day visit.  Here it is, courtesy his blog:

Wednesday, March 18,2009 (5 p.m. to 7 p.m.) and Thursday, March 19, 2009 (8 a.m. to 10 a.m.), the following streets will be closed:

• Motor Ave. between Monte Mar & Pico Blvd.
• Pico Blvd. between Overland & Century Park East
• Avenue of the Stars between Pico & Santa Monica
• Santa Monica between Beverly Glen & Wilshire Blvd. (this will continue in the City of Beverly Hills, which is handling this separately)
• Olympic between Century Park West & Century Park East

Also on Thursday, March 19, 2009 (10:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.), the following streets will be closed:

• 2nd St between Figueroa & Beverly
• Beaudry St between 4th & Beverly/1st
• Boylston St between 4th & 1st
• Bixel St between 4th St & 1st
• Southbound Edgeware at 1st
• Lucas Ave between 4th & Beverly/1st
• 3rd St between Union and Witmer