Villaraigosa, you are SO FULL OF SHIT!

I was unsuccessful in an attempt to leave a comment of support or of use on his blog. I was swinging too severely between outrage and sadness. Still am. So I came here. To tell you a little something about Ed — which isn’t much, but it’s better than me cursing or crying.

Probably about five or six or so years ago we first met online here at Blogging.la. In January 2007  I posted an open invite for any and all fellow lunatics to join me in making good on a long-time resolution to walk the entire 24-mile length of Sunset Boulevard from Union Station to the sea. Ed commented that he was interested but had other plans. When the fateful day came in February I was joined by another B.la reader Don Hosek and USC grad student Lisl Walsh and off we went.

After the jump, Ed magically appears around Mile No. 23.

From my February 11, 2007 write-up of the trek:

A few more miles to the 405 Freeway at mile 17 or so is where Don opted to retire and await a ride home from his wife rather than continue on and get blisters on his blisters. So after a sentimental group hug photo Lisl and I trundled onward alongside the long and winding and rising and falling road until somewhere approaching the final mile a white Mercedes convertible came to a stop beside us and its kindly pilot asked me “Are you Will?” to which I said “Who the hell wants to know!?” “Why yes, I believe I am but a far more exhausted version of him” wherein he wanted to know where all the other walkers were and Lisl said “We’re it!” and then he introduced himself as regular B.la reader Edward Padgett and compimented us on our perseverence before saying he’d meet us at Gladstones and we said cool. After he pulled away I only half (OK, two-thirds) jokingly asked after him if he’d give us a ride, but deisel-powered Lisl who had her eyes on the prize had already gotten back into step and onward we soldiered until we kicked ass in acheiving our PCH destination at 4:13 p.m. wherein we proudly retired to Ed’s congratulations and his table inside Gladstones and he bought us a round of drinks and we talked until it was time to get back up Sunset to catch the No. 2 MTA bus that would bring us back from whence we’d come. And it did.

My point with all this is to demonstrate what an absolutely awesome guy Ed was to go out of his way to be there to celebrate us when Lisl and I put an exclamation point at the end of that 24-mile sentence. From that very moment when he drove up to us from out of nowhere I’ve been a card-carrying member of his fan club.

Looking back over the last almost-40 years of the Los Angeles Times there have been parent companies, publishers, editors, writers, and photographers who have come and gone. But in that span of ever-increasing disposability Ed Padgett has been there helping make every single paper that I’ve picked up and read. It was something I proudly acknowledged any number of mornings standing there with the day’s edition fresh in my hands.

With such a pro-Padgett bias I just can’t rationalize continuing my subscription to the product of a company so decidedly and dastardly anti-Ed. I expect when I call to cancel today, I’ll do so via representatives in Bangalore or Manila who’ll be obligated to ask the reason why I’m terminating. I’ll tell them, “They fired a friend of mine.”

After the press conference this afternoon to celebrate the completion and opening of Los Angeles’ first-ever buffered and bright green Class II bike lane running on Spring Street between Cesar Chavez Avenue and 9th Street, the cyclists in attendance then inaugurated the wonderful thing with a bike ride upon it. During my second lap my timelapsing handlebar-mounted bike cam snapped the above shot as I passed great Los Angeles photographer Gary Leonard crouched as he snapped me. Of course I yelled “Take my picture, Gary Leonard!” while rolling by.

File this under found on road alive.  A Redondo Beach man bought the car new in 1964 and had it for 20 years before he sold it. His sons went upon the quest to find the car and return it to him. The quest led across the country where they finally found the car on a lot in Canada. They bought it and returned it to him as a gift.

In the land that rust forgot what old car from your past would you like to have back?  For me its a mixed bag but the one I regret selling the most that I’d love to have back is my old ’72 Centurion which took us on many a road trip to the beach and shows all over the L.A. area.

But a Flickr contact of mine, Edhiker, did. Ed’s both an awesome hiker, prolific photographer and a whiz with a telescope, and this is how 2005 YU55 looked passing over Los Angeles via 38 separate exposures made into a 40 second movie showing the asteroid’s movement from 7:20 to 7:23 p.m., 11/8/11.

If the embed’s broken, you can view it here.

Since leaving my outgoing mail by our house’s mailbox isn’t really an option, I’ve been in the old-school habit going on the seven years I’ve lived here in Silver Lake of walking down to the mailbox at the corner of Sunset Boulevard and Parkman.

I did just that this morning. Only this time I did a WTF having found not the familiar blue USPS receptacle, but instead just the air and space that the mailbox now no longer occupies, as pictured at right.

It was a small consolation that I timed my trip just right so as to be able to hand off my mail to the postman making his delivers there, and he said this wasn’t the only box in the area to get the hook. With a smile and a shrug he said the closest box still standing (for now) was nine blocks east at Alvarado.

Sigh.

Any boxes missing in your neck of the hoods?

Screencap from LA Times' LA Now blog

Bonus points for Best Mugshot Ever and a first paragraph that cracked me up. Story here.

Above is a new YouTube clip out of Villaraigosa’s office titled “Building A 21st-Century Transportation System For Los Angeles,” which primarily features the mayor talking to various cameras and groups. He’s seen in front of  the Congress of Mayors in DC. He’s talking to another group about how important the 405 diamond lane is. And apparently in his City Hall office he’s talking to a camera and outlining what he hopes will be his legacy in getting Los Angeles moving mass transportationally in the coming years. To emphasize his dedication to that goal he valiantly proclaims that he’s ever-ready to fly to Washington at even the slightest whiff of federal funding… since there’s just so little here in town for which he’s needed.

Snark (mostly) aside, it’s a decent presentation with good ideas and information, but unfortunately the clip’s bookended by a couple head-shakingingly poor choices.

As shown above, the first thing viewers are greeted with before they press the play button is a YouTube 101 fail; a screen-still* of Villaraigosa taking a nap closed-eyed during an interview — an image that’s safe to project only if you’re a hypnotist or a sleep disorder specialist.

At the other end of the video is this closing image is shown at right, subtitled to indicate the mayor is inside that LAFD helicopter taking off on a purported survey of the work being done on the 405 (click it for slight embiggenation).

*In case Villaraigosa and/or his YouTube team has wised-up and gone back and selected a less-somnolent alternative — which is always an editing option — I’ve posted a screengrab of His Drowsiness after the jump.

Well, maybe he is in there commandeering fire department resources at taxpayer expense to head for a fly-by of the Sepulveda Pass. For all I know maybe he’s heading over to Walls ‘R Us to choose the barrier he’s so eager to build in front of the Mayor’s mansion in Hancock Park. Or hell, maybe he isn’t in there at all. But that’s not my point, which is that it’s a weak choice of images, one that plays into the perception of his mayoralings being far more caption than action. Ambiguous footage of a helicopter lifting off from City Hall East is just never going to be as dynamic as footage of Villaraigosa with his wingtips on the dirt and his head under a hardhat as he observses the demolition of the Mulholland Bridge.

Am I nitpicking the hell out of this? Damn right. But he makes it soooo easy.

Building A 21st-Century Tranzzzzzzzzzzzz…

On that first day of the anticipated/feared “Carmegeddon,” in Los Angeles , while other far fleeter pedalers were kicking ass over a jet plane in a race from Burbank to Long Beach, I was joined by four awesomely like-minded cyclists — Ann, Harold, Robert and Thaddeus — for a more casual 47-mile bike tour that began and ended in Silver Lake and included a climb up from the valley to the top of the Sepulveda Pass for a look at the ongoing demolition of the Mulholland Bridge over an entirely emptied 405 Freeway.

Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately depending on your tolerance for stopmotion videography) I can’t show you the entire ride as my camera’s memory card filled up at Mile No. 37, just as we were entering Beverly Hills on the way back to our start point.

But it was an awesome day and an awesome group with which to ride.

Route: http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=4642041