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.

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anarchosyn's photo used through Creative Commons license

LA Observed pointed out yesterday the sad contrast between two recent reports, one which identifies a substantial increase in the number of “high net worth individuals” in LA–people so important they have their own acronym (HNWI)–and the other that gives an overview of the growing demand on LA county food pantries. A number of reports about the economic recovery have claimed that job regrowth has mostly been in low paid and unskilled jobs, and perhaps LA is seeing the effects of that trend.

The number of people accessing food pantries has increased 73% since 2008 while the amount of funds and food supplies are not keeping pace, and in some cases are decreasing (take the LA food bank, which is receiving 800,000 pounds less a month from the USDA than it was at the start of 2011.

At the same time, the number of people whose “investable assets” exceeded one million dollars increased 8.8% over last year. Only Houston saw a higher increase. So if you’re one of the many who feel like the middle is getting squeezed right now and there are more and more people living in one extreme or the other, you may well be right. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…. And people wonder why I persist in calling myself a leftist.

Some of you have been around long enough (and are lucky enough) to have attended SUPERBALL – the crazy, eclectic, celeb-studded (but in a good way) event where damn near anything could and did happen.

Like all gigantic, out of control events, SUPERBALL kind of reached its peak and when the dudes behind it got busy with life, it went away for a while.

But nature abhors a vacuum, and out of the ashes of SUPERBALL came … TwentyWonder! A Carnival of the Mind, and a great cause too.

Plus, TwentyWonder just got featured on GoldStar. Discounted tickets are now $20 for a limited time. Jump on it, and then alert your friends!

Tickets: http://www.goldstar.com/today/los-angeles/2011/7/4

This Saturday! July 9th! From 6pm to Midnight!

21 and older with ID

VIP Tix include a souvenir medallion – very cool!

(hope this image cures the JumboTron effect – was posting from the phone)

Los Angeles Magazine June 2009

As far as I’m concerned Antonio Villaraigosa walled himself off from me way back a few months before his first election in 2005. First he started posting election signs that phonetically spelled out the pronunciation of his last name (ELECT Vee-ahh-ray-go-sah!) to help educate those who were obviously having trouble wrapping their tongues around that contrived conjunction of his and his then-wife’s last name. Shortly after that, he led me to vote for Hahn when he decided to pander to the animal activist vote and kneejerkedly blurt out his support for closing the elephant exhibit at the Los Angeles Zoo, as if that’d be the most important order of city business to get to the moment after being sworn in.

Then came all his missteps and failures and that silly affair with that TV news reporter and the divorce and more missteps and more failures, which just built the divide between him and me all that much thicker and higher.

In fairness, the wall came down a bit shortly after his re-election when I’m guessing his Hummer-lovin’ transportation deputy Jaime de la Vega had someone phonetically spell out “bicycle” (bye-sea-cull) for ‘Tonio and after practicing it diligently he actually said the word publicly for the first time. Shortly after that revelation someone got a picture of him astride a borrowed fixed-gear at a community event in Baldwin Hills, and that endeared me him a little more to him me. Then, as we all know, that high was followed by the low of him pedaling along Venice Boulevard where he took a bone-breaking tumble trying to avoid an inattentive cab driver. But from that near-disaster came his understanding that supporting bikes on the streets and cyclists’ rights to safely ride them there would be a lot easier and more positive a pet project than, say, taking over the school system or running for governor, or spending more time out of the state campaigning for a presidential candidate, or dating other local news reporters… well, scratch that last one.

And my belabored point is? Belabored more after the jump.

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The handmade sign on the front door of mobster James “Whitey” Bulger‘s former home on 3rd Street in Santa Monica reads: “Go Away. People Live Here”. That’s the message I’d like to send to mobsters in Los Angeles and across the country. But they seem to keep popping up near where I live, or vice versa.
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Hey Kids – No wait, strike that – Hey Adventurous Non-Squeamish Over-18-Year-Olds!

The inimitable Ori (aka Ashley Blue aka GIRLVERT aka Oriana Small) has written a memoir that will twist your brain better than any Terence Malick movie ever could.

And guess what? She’s reading excerpts (and doing who knows what else) tonight at Largo at the Coronet!

Not sure if scanning the doo-dah in this image will work or not but do please find a way to attend. Knowing what I know, you’ll be talking about this for a while.

Had to go down to the Central Library Friday afternoon to pick up a book I’d put a hold on. Opted to leave the bike at home and instead catch the No. 4 bus from Silver Lake to Pershing Square, where I walk along Fifth Street from Hill past the park, Olive, the Biltmore and Grand. When I leave the library with book in hand, I decide not to return the way I came and instead step on Hope south to 7th and go underground, hopping the Red Line back up to Vermonica from there to stride the rest of the way home. On impulse I veer into the parking lot to make a stop at the Rite Aid, which puts me in the direct trajectory of a young lady who steps out from behind a car wanting to know if I speak English. I successfully fight back the urge to ask “What other do you think this loaf of Wonder Bread might speak?” and instead politely confirm that I do have a passing familiarity with that language. In turn, she casts out a weary line about trying to get Pizza Hut’s finest for her kids, but her debit card was refused and could I maybe spare some—.

“Sure!” I said, cutting her off. “I’ll buy the pizzas for you. How many you need?”

As expected she hadn’t set up for the curveball I pitched and the words stumble out of her mouth wondering if it would be OK if I just gave her the cash. I told her all I had was my debit card at which she shook her head. Her “Thanks anyway,” confirmed my suspicions that the pizza story was a fiction, and for their sake hopefully the children were, too.

Out from the Rite Aid the young lady starts for me again until realizing she’d hit me already and sharply turns away as if I don’t exist. As I head east on Santa Monica Boulevard I wonder if it’ll ever dawn on her that duh, she missed an opp for free pizza that if nothing else could’ve helped fuel the drive to her next fix. Oh well.

I pass the stately Cahuenga branch of the library where I startle a homeless woman who is changing clothes in the relative privacy of the library’s locked-up lower entryway. I pass the Little Temple club, cross Virgil, and look down upon the shack that used to be the beloved Jake’s Jay’s Burgers, but now since its eviction is home to the latest in a succession of nondescript and noninteresting eateries.

Next I eye a small mural and double back to get this snap of it (after the jump; click for slight enlargification):

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Cal State Northrigde

So maybe I’m just posting this because I’ll be participating in a commencement ceremony at CSUN next week, but I never fail to get a chuckle when I pass this sign on Reseda Blvd in Northrigde Northridge. It’s been more than two years since Travis blogged about it here at blogging.la, and still no changes.

Now, while I’ve poked around on various city-related websites trying to figure out how to report the misspelling, I haven’t had any luck. Short of submitting the information on the same Burea of Street Services form used to report problems such as palm fronds in the road, I’m at a loss for what to do. Anyone have any experience with this type of thing? The City of LA websites don’t seem to have the best navigational schemas.

I’m just certain that this can’t be the only sign in Los Angeles bearing a glaring typo, so I ask you, kind readers: what sorts of odd/error-filled signage have you seen lately?

Alrighty then this semi-funny PSA would have been a lot funnier if these guys camped it up a bit more in the vein of the Village People.  Maybe even break into song to make it a bit funnier.  This video won’t embed so watch it HERE.

The message is a good one, Crimestoppers allow you to report information on crimes anywhere in metro LA anonymously if you so desire.   Maybe this might be a way for those thugs that hammered so badly on Brian Stow, the Giants Fan who is still in a coma weeks after the fact to be caught.

Hat tip to my friends on the Arcadia PD who twatted this out a bit ago.

“Hey Boss, want to buy a home theater?” That’s what the man behind the wheel of the white van parked in my local West Side shopping center asked me the other day. I smiled and said “no”, remembering the old days back in the DC area where one or more of these white vans would cruise around my local shopping center, selling speakers.  It was always a white van.

I remember the speaker guys back then saying that their products were “extra inventory”.  At the time, I had also read that, in additional to their questionable provenance, the speakers were really crappy, and would break after a bit of regular use.

Nowadays, we have online retailers competing with brick-and-mortar stores, we have Amazon, we have near-instant research ability to find a good home theater in a box for a reasonable price, possibly with no sales tax.  From our phone.

The white van, however, looks pretty much the same.

Among the reasons you don’t want to get sent home from work early on a Monday morning are that someone packed a suitcase, brought it to the back entrance of your office building, sat down on it, and proceeded to put a bullet in his head something like 50 feet from your desk.

That’s what just happened to my friend who sent me this picture from his office building in Downey. People at his work speculated that it was a disgruntled ex-employee [update: there are indications he most likely was not], but there’s no real information. [Further update: this definitely wasn't a disgruntled employee incident, and the address of the building has been redacted due to a request by the occupant.] I’m using the occasion to remind the rest of you that there are resources available should you feel desperate enough to contemplate suicide. You can call the National Suicide Prevention lifeline: 800-273-8255 or use LA Counties’ Department of Mental Health site to find a provider near you. Regardless of your insurance status, if you walk into the emergency room of any hospital and tell them that you want to kill yourself, you will get treatment. However limited our public health options may be, they are preferable to the “permanent solution to a temporary problem” that is suicide. Hang in there, people. Whatever you’re dealing with, it will eventually change, and killing yourself will break the hearts of the people who love you.

Remember all those sophisticated tunnels discovered under the border with Mexico? Just good old fashioned drug cartel shenanigans. Right?

Well… Apparently, some unfriendly militants have been setting up shop just 136 miles South of Los Angeles, in Tijuana.

Meet Hezbollah, “recognized by many experts as the “A” team of Muslim terrorist organizations.”

The group is blending into Shi’a Muslim communities in Mexico, including Tijuana. Other pockets along the U.S.-Mexico border region remain largely unidentified as U.S. intelligence agencies are focused on the drug trade.

Happy Cinco de Mayo.

It may come as little surprise to many of you that Los Angeles is one of the ten most segregated large urban areas in the United States. With a segregation level of 67.84 (where “1″ is the most integrated and “100″ is the most segregated), LA is only marginally less segregated than the City of Brotherly Love which weighs in at 68.41 or Cincinatti at 69.42.

Years ago we bought a corner hutch that has to go for a variety of reasons.  Primary is its ugly and doesn’t fit with our current style.  We’ve looked all over for a suitable cabinet, bookshelf or table to put there and have had no luck.  Putting in plant material doesn’ interest us for that corner.  We’ve been all over in furniture stores in the SGV and even went out as far as Ontario looking and found NOTHING.

I am looking for a furniture/cabinet maker that can make a simple 4 legged round table about 4 feet tall to put into the corner.  It would need to have the feel of  something like the 40′s modern look-clean lines no ornamentation.  We’d want it in a dark wood color.  It would not be big as the corner is 2 foot by 2 foot.  Does anyone have anyone they can recommend for such a job? If so leave me a note and I’ll get back to you for their contact info or have them contact me direct at frazgo at mail dot com.  Thanks in advance for your help.

Corner of Franklin and Vermont about 12:15AM, 4/29/11

Someone was Lighting a String of Trashcan Fires late Thursday Night / Early Friday Morning

I took the picture to the right myself. Firetrucks were already on the way, and in fact, already in the area, as this was at least the third trashcan fire lit.

I felt slightly guilty snapping the pic, like I should have done something more, but my Android doesn’t have a “Fire Extinguisher” App, and I really didn’t have that much water on me at the time.

“I.C.M.E.” indeed. Eyewitness account after the jump.

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