One day, bitches: the future of the Los Angeles Metro

HELLZ YEAH!!

http://www.usc.edu/isd/archives/la/historic/redcars/redcar_map.jpeg

ihttp://www.knightsbridge.net/underground-map.gif

Of course, by the time it's finished, I'll probably be retired.

Ned: the Orange line goin to the Valley is supposed to be up by 2007 i think, and the Expo Line goin to Santa Monica from downtown has a projected finish date of 2009. Lets at least try to see them make it to Fairfax. I like how, in order to go to the beach I'd have to go all the way south first to culver city since even in this map nothing goes directly west into the wealthy areas - but they shouldnt get public transport!

as it is right now, with the occasionaly exception of west hollywood i'm pretty content spending most of my life EAST OF LA BREA

um, when i could drive to pasadena in 30 mins or less from hollywood, what is the point of taking the metro there when it'd take me an hour

Legally, it's West Hollywood from Fountain to Romaine. It's Greater West Hollywood from the hills north of Hollywood Blvd. down to Canter's.

k thx bye

Once the yellow line is completed, I will enroll at Pomona College

and dude there's huge yellow and bluue sign right at Fairfax that says "City of West Hollywood," but this is funny since most consider the starting line to be La Brea

i just want to know why that map doesn't have anything going from holly & high directly to santa monica & san vicente, if not robertson. how are the gays supposed to do their decadent sinning if they cant take teh tram?

that Green Line is going to be very intense, imo

w/ all the impressive ad historic churches landmarks and buildins it would be a fabulous view and the most beautiful ride in the city. esp w/ our weather is so great

I lived East of Fairfax and my address was in the City of West Hollywood.

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- No weird underground pockets of oil to avoid
- Landfill is much easier to dig through
- It's just a wee little town

Walter, find me someone who lived in West Hollywood east of Fairfax and I'll find you someone who lived between Fountain and Romaine, east of La Brea.

FROM http://artscenecal.com/Maps/WH.html

http://artscenecal.com/Maps/WH1.gif

http://www.visitwesthollywood.com/whpress/images/map.gif

a map from Whole Foods on Fairfax which proves their addy is Weho

http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/stores/westhollywood/images/map.jpg

don't you just see how all the buildings get more gay and colorful as soon as you go west of la brea? it's all WEHO. fairfax is inarguably weho

("Hold my hand honey.. this is the 'ghetto' they talk about on the news, where shootings happen.")

Nothing else matters.

Major subdistricts include Picfair Village (whose name is a tribute to Mary Pickford's and Douglas Fairbanks' estate, Pickfair), South Carthay, Carthay Circle, Carthay Square, Wilshire Vista, and Little Ethiopia, a community of relatively recent Ethiopian and Indian immigrants.

[edit]

The Neighborhood

Carthay takes its name from a now-demolished movie theater which stood on the corner of San Vicente and Crescent Heights boulevards. The neighborhood was mostly developed in the 1930s, capitalizing on the success of the Miracle Mile. Most houses are built in the Art Deco or Spanish Colonial styles popular at the time. Initially segregated and all-white, Carthay has since become fairly diverse, with many middle-class black and Latino families living within the district. Much of its white population is Jewish, with several yeshivas and synagogues found in the area.

I want to start using that now: "forget Weho, I'm gonna go hang out in CARTHAY"

TELL IT TO VIK!

walter dude, enjoy

Little Ethiopia, Los Angeles, California

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

(Redirected from Little Ethiopia)

Little Ethiopia refers to the stretch of Fairfax Avenue on the West Side of Los Angeles, California between Olympic and Pico boulevards. This area is filled with Ethiopian businesses and restaurants.

Little Ethiopia dates back to the early 1990s. Previously, this stretch of Fairfax Avenue was filled with Jewish businesses as is the case in the Fairfax District to the north.

Ethiopian businesses and restaurants have recently begun congregating on Washington Boulevard between Fairfax Avenue and National Boulevard in Culver City, less than a mile to the south of Little Ethiopia.

or "Harvard Heights" - wtf? thats explains the "Byzantine-Latino Quarter" since it used to be heavily Greek back whenever http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_Heights%2C_Los_Angeles%2C_California

I did know of Ladera Heights tho...the "black Beverly Hills" (ugh!)

People

The people of Los Angeles are known as Angelenos. L.A. can truly be described as a "world city" — that is, it has one of the largest and most diverse populations of any municipality anywhere. The Hispanic and Asian American populations are growing particularly quickly — the Asian American population is the largest of any city in the U.S. Los Angeles hosts the largest populations of Armenians, Cambodians, Filipinos, Guatemalans, Israelis, Koreans, Thais, Mexicans, Hungarians and Salvadorans outside of their respective countries. Los Angeles is also home to the largest populations of Japanese and Persians living in the U.S., and has one of the largest Native American populations in the country.

L.A. is home to people from more than 140 countries, who speak at least 224 different languages. Ethnic enclaves like Chinatown, Koreatown, Little India (Artesia), Little Armenia, Thai Town, Historic Filipinotown and Little Ethiopia give testimony to the polyglot character of Los Angeles.

I don't even use "Westlake" - its all just Koreatown / MacArthur Park imo

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westlake%2C_Los_Angeles%2C_California

Despite the rather poetic homage paid to it, the real MacArthur Park became known for being a violent place after 1985 when drug-dealing, shoot-outs and occasional drownings became somewhat common. Before the decline of the neighborhood, the park featured the traditional paddle-boats and a large fountain in the center of the lake; since the park was a popular middle-class destination for over fifty years, it is likely it can be reclaimed in the future.

fun fact: Beck gave a shout-out to Zankou in "Debra"

The Sweet Life
Business is booming at Mashti Malone's, where ice cream takes on the delicious and exotic flavors of its CO-owners' native Iran. Read Article

The store belongs to two brothers, Mashti,and Mehdi Shirvani,who grew up Mashhad, a small town in northern Iran. "We are not Malones," says Mehdi, the lively younger brother, and salesman of the joint. "Do I look like a Malone?" Read more Articles

"DO I LOOK LIKE A MALONE" ?

The Food
The ice cream is made regularly on the premises, and rosewater is the base for most flavors, enhanced with Middle Eastern ingredients such as orange blossom, saffron and cardamom in place of traditional American ones. Creamy rosewater ice cream hits the tongue meltingly smooth, while the perfume of roses wakes the taste buds. Coconut-pineapple marries two powerful flavors into a perfectly balanced mixture. The rosewater sorbet is similar to a traditional Iranian dessert, flecked with slightly crunchy rice noodles. American flavors are just as delicious: Strawberry cheesecake tastes remarkably like its namesake, and almonds stud praline's caramel sweetness.

x^n-post

weho has a funny lego like shape. it should be more priapic, somehow!

Well, if you rotate it 45 degrees it gets a scoosh more phallic, if not priapic.

But the ZIP is 90069 haw haw haw. So there's that.

actually, it tasted exactly the same. maybe if you should accidentally end up west of la brea, you can stoop to our level and check it out!

dean my anti-westside faux snobbery is just a parody of all those who usually remain "west of labarea" - i'm cool w/ the westside just wouldnt want to live there (since im p00r). but fo real...i just had a coworker from manhattan beach who rarely goes anywhere east of the 405. before i doubted whether ppl like this exist ...whatever its cool. theyre missing out on most of the city; their loss!

Only the man himself could answer.

No no, it's just that no one was listening and people started to say wacky things or correct me for things I never said!

lets all go to historic filipinotown on friday. even tho i dont know whats to do there

Spencer, I hope you're not referring to the goofy map. I was trying to find a real map, but the West Hollywood logo was all I could come up with. No smartassedness intended.

We can find out! (And respond to me back, those of you I've e-mailed, I haven't heard from anyone! Then again I haven't heard from Arthur yet, I should call him. Will try and be in LA around 6 pm, Amoeba again -- big surprise.)

oh! i didn't know that one person like this actually existed! carry on with the generalizations then!

seriously though, from my experience, the "i don't leave the eastside" people are far more vocal and obnoxious about the sentiment. in fact, i can't recall ever meeting anyone who used the "i don't leave the westside" catchphrase.

The city of South Pasadena exists for only one thing - blocking the 710 freeway extension. Their hatred is ever-lasting, ever-intense, and completely unstoppable. So intense is their fury that the city incorporated long before the 710 came into being.

Everyone else in Southern California wants to call South Pasadena NIMBYville, and I totally agree.

Of course I work there and take the Gold Line three days a week. Pave the whole damn thing over as far as I'm concerned.

Hang out in Ocean Park/Venice more often. I know folks over there who think of anything west of BUNDY as "the mainland." And at least one Main Street retailer hawking tees with the logo AWoL (Always West Of Lincoln).

Oh yes, they're out there...

Easy enough for the Eastsidaz to take the same attitude. They've got Amoeba.

the bar is great, but the roof's even better!

None received! I just felt misunderstood!

My ex-gf lives in South Pasadena, it's really nice!

Did you go to USC Vic? I took a couple of Boyd's classes which were a lot of fun. - I did indeed live through... all that. And it's never been about TS: Casper vs. Boyd for me, as MacPherson was hands down better than both

Have you folx been to the bar at Hotel Figueroa? Parking's terrible, but last time I was there was v. cool.

-- Remy (rem...), June 15th, 2005.

I think we did once! Wasn't that a Thanksgiving FAP with Brian?

-- Ned Raggett (ne...), June 15th, 2005.

No no that was at the HMS Bounty on Wilshire in Koreatown right across from the legendary Ambassador Hotel / Coconut Grove (depicted in The Aviator) - it's only gotten scene-ier since then, as apparently Ev@ Longoria or whatever she's called is a "regular." But it's still pretty chill, and getting drunk there is fun if you have any imagination coz the whole make-believing you're inside a boat thing is v easy to do.

I like the Hotel Figueroa, especially the Moroccan-themed bar / mezzanine inside, plus the ornate bathrooms downstairs, but every time i've gone there and hung out near the pool w/ a drink my friends and i have gotten a VERY weird vibe for whatever reason...as if we're surrounded by robotic USC frat-prepboys instead of real people. Which is probably true... fwiw The Fig is nice but I think the Bonaventure + the Biltmore easily pwn it hands down

seriously though, from my experience, the "i don't leave the eastside" people are far more vocal and obnoxious about the sentiment. in fact, i can't recall ever meeting anyone who used the "i don't leave the westside" catchphrase.

dude, they are everywhere, really. Just to go back to overusing Wiki:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Los_Angeles

The Westside's traffic congestion is legendary. Although once served by the Pacific Electric Railroad's streetcars, it was the first region of Los Angeles to be developed largely around the automobile, and is notorious for its lack of significant public transportation. Its residents are also noted for their NIMBY attitude toward transportation projects such as the Exposition Boulevard light rail line and the Wilshire Boulevard extension of the MTA Red Line subway, although this has begun to change as traffic continues to attenuate the region's quality of life. The almost transcendently gridlocked San Diego Freeway is the primary transportation corridor in the region, and much of the area's commercial development is along it. The proposed Pacific Coast, Beverly Hills, and Laurel Canyon freeways undoubtedly would have sped up the region's traffic flow, but went unbuilt in the face of massive community opposition; unfortunately, a great deal of high-density development took place in anticipation of these roadways' construction, resulting in significant congestion on the area's surface streets. In particular, getting to Hollywood from the West Side is notoriously difficult, with major east-west streets between the regions jammed during virtually all waking hours.

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Culture

The Westside is generally thought of as the white part of the city of Los Angeles, in contrast to Latino-dominated East Side, the Latino and Asian areas such as Pico-Union and Koreatown in and around downtown, and the black and Latino neighborhoods of South Central. Despite the two areas' relative proximity, many Westsiders rarely cross the Santa Monica Freeway into South Central, or at least they go no further east or south than the University of Southern California campus and the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. In fact, a longstanding phrase amongst Westside natives is "Life ends east of Sepulveda."

East of Sepulveda? Thats frankly appalling. They're missing 80% of "the city" - but, by choice! I just cannot comprehend this viewpoint of self-denial, but then again I didn't grow up near a beach. Just asking you directly dean, what is it that compels you to not go "East of La Brea" ? You can't really deny that most of the city's historic, architectural and cultural landmarks and institutions (LACMA @ Stanley/Fairfax is close enough to count) are on this side. Why avoid it?

If we're ever to develop and progress further as a unified, distinct city we have to get rid of any of these provincialized/localized attitudes that only foster more divisiveness, esp along racial and socio-economic lines. ALL of Los Angeles should be for ALL TEH PPL RAH

we can't develop in any way unless we truly believe we are living in a GREBT PLACE OK...& WE R

This is corny bullshit. Use your brain, Vic. Have you actually heard this in "real life"? Anyone who says this is a douchebag and you've got to be one too if you're this gullible.

Just asking you directly dean, what is it that compels you to not go "East of La Brea" ? You can't really deny that most of the city's historic, architectural and cultural landmarks and institutions (LACMA @ Stanley/Fairfax is close enough to count) are on this side. Why avoid it?

Remember your parody argument? Gee, now do you think I was serious?

And wasn't the original Zankou in Glendale?

The lack of a world class Metro is very unbelievable... and embarrassing. I mean come on, a city that had horrid "third world" traffic a decade ago replete with rickshaws and coolies - BANGKOK - even they have a citywide train now. Watching that LAPI film in a packed Egyptian Theatre screening with people clapping and cheering at all the old landmarks (some of which are no longer there...I also don't remember the black building's name...and that one rollerink that was in Xanadu) was a lot of fun, but I actually felt intensely sad when it went into the history of public transport (and Bunker Hill, etc), since one almost gets the sense that LA was egregiously swindled, and still doesn't fully realize it. Didn't the film mention that the decision to not implement a metro in the 50s was won by only two votes on the citywide council?

Echoing my last post: you dont want to see any place improve, or even care to, if you don't like it in the first place.... and if you don't like it here: leave!!

Oh yeah, she's great.

You can't really deny that most of the city's historic, architectural and cultural landmarks and institutions (LACMA @ Stanley/Fairfax is close enough to count) are on this side. Why avoid it?

Isn't that just a fancy way of saying the East side is better? The fact is most people don't often venture beyond their little neighborhood. Most people only come to the west side on a Saturday or Sunday during 3 months out of the year to go to the beach. Other than that, people might come out to go to the Getty or something. How is that much different from westsiders only venturing out occassionally to visit the MOCA or LACMA?

Until I saw the prices for Rose Bowl tickets...who got da hook up?

Hurrah! He is free! Perhaps.

-- Ned Raggett (ne...), June 15th, 2005.

Vik, you're also saying some incredibly offensive things about certain groups of Angeleno's. The comments border on hate speech as far as I'm concerned.

Also, the Bounty has survived far worse than Eva Longoria (and has more famous semi-regulars).

I'm more interested in hearing your (hopefully a bit elaborated) opinion on why there is no Metro, what lack-of-development led to it being this way. It's easy to claim offense, but why don't you add to the discussion and set it right then? I have civic proide but it's not that I have an excess of personal pride in that I won't be corrected - CORRECT ME CHOW! SET ME STR8 (good luck w/ that)

http://www.visitwesthollywood.com/whpress/images/map.gif

The black line is The City of West Hollywood. The classic definition of the Fairfax district is not within the city boundary at all. Also, Fairfax continues for many miles south going through many different neighborhoods.

It seems like you're reading the most hysterical accounts of why people vote for what and taking it at face value, or you're making sweeping generalizations based on hackneyed assumptions about a person would or wouldn't want something in their neighborhood. Even if it is a NIMBY attitude, I find it difficult to blame a person for being self-centered at a highly local level (and I don't even necessarily believe that is what's going on regarding potential Metro extensions).

I think it's fine to discuss this and I'm really happy you brought it up, but I also think that you're jumping to extreme conclusions (perhaps in jest?).

The funny thing is that nobody really talks about the eastside. Fairfax may not be the westside but you definitely don't live in East LA. It's like everybody wants to define themselves into a no-mans land. Or I guess it's just the natural instinct to assume that your neighborhood is the center of town.

Doesn't NY have a similar thing with uptown and downtown where those terms are all relative to where you live?

"totally" meaning if you cross the street you're in one of two other neighborhoods?

Kyle, tell us about your Memorial Day weekend in LA!

oh, also, the knitting factory soundguy was an ass who made all the kids who got onstage to dance get off, and cut the band off, and cussed at everyone.

Are you quoting Picard?

Kyle, I think this actually has something to do with the physical layout of the Hollywood Knitting Factory. Seriously.

"totally" meaning if you cross the street you're in one of two other neighborhoods?
-- gygax! (gygax0...), June 15th, 2005 3:43 PM.

If you cross the street, you're in Beverly Hills.

Walter: when did I say that ALL - ALL the city's transportation problems are the fault of the westside's racist white yuppies? I'm blaming them for repeatedly voting against the line travelling through their communities, but what else? Thanks for distorting everything I said on this thread.

Spencer: yesterday you were trying to argue that Fairfax is not in West Hollywood, and I proved that it was w/ that map. And now you're saying that I said that _all_ of Fairfax Avenue is in Weho, but I didn't...I was just saying refuting you when you said upthread that "Fairfax is Hollywood," - and the we figured out you were talking abt the Fairfax DISTRICT - and that was the misunderstanding there. I thought it was all settled and cleared, and I even apologized abt this yesterday, so why bring it up again today? To add to your list there to show how I'm wrong/inaccurate abt so much re: LA?

It seems like you're reading the most hysterical accounts of why people vote for what and taking it at face value, or you're making sweeping generalizations based on hackneyed assumptions about a person would or wouldn't want something in their neighborhood.

And it seems like you're trying to deny what's a very simple, clear and well-documented fact. Yes wikipedia can often be wrong, but Spencer, this is not a "hysterical account" or a "hackneyed assumption," -> people in the gated communities in West Los Angeles have continuously voted against a Metro line in their area since they'd prefer to keep people from other neighborhoods from commuting to and from near their residences and businesses. Why? Because they think this'll keep down the drugs and gangs/ crime (ironic w/ all the drug use in, say, those "gatherings" in Bel-Air). Because they think this'll keep their property values down (ironic w/ all property vales skyrocketing right now everywhere). Oftentimes, the voting fell down along racial and socio-economic lines. This is all quite well-known, and falls easily within Los Angeles' historic pattern of racial geographic marginalization (with just a few precedents being the construction of the 110 freeway to keep the African American community on one side, and the "white flight" of the 50s and 60s to the Valley, from southern and central Los Angeles).

Even if it is a NIMBY attitude, I find it difficult to blame a person for being self-centered at a highly local level (and I don't even necessarily believe that is what's going on regarding potential Metro extensions).

Then what is going on? If my conclusions are "extreme conclusions," what are your conclusions? And it really sounds like you're trying to either be an apologist for NIMBYism there - I DON'T find it difficult to blame anyone for being so self-centered that they'd vote against public transportation for any reason with the staggeringly high cost it exacts upon our city's environment and public health. The racial issue is almost a moot point here, but it only makes it embarrassingly worse.

I think you're unforunately taking offense to some of the things I may say abt the westside, and you're letting that color your responses to my thoughts on this thread.

I think it's fine to discuss this and I'm really happy you brought it up, but I also think that you're jumping to extreme conclusions (perhaps in jest?).

I'm entirely and thoroughly surprised that you're trying to make it sound like I'm taking any sort of "extreme" position here, when I'm pretty much spouting what I'd assumed is general knowledge. I'd like to be proven wrong, if you can show me anything that amounts to hard evidence as to why certain groups voted which way.

Also, I've said this before, but I still don't get the KF hate. It just seems like any old concert place to me.

Frederique Krupa
Spring 1993

Los Angeles: Buying the Concept of Security


Los Angeles's walled communities provide professionals from the real estate, entertainment and technology industries with an escape from the problems of the disenfranchised that lie beyond their well protected enclaves -- with tall gates, private security forces and 24-hour a day electronic surveillance. Los Angeles's form originated around the idealized concept of the detached single family home, made possible by the automobile. LA has become America's archetypal decentralized metropolis. Now the second largest city in the United States, LA's 3.4 million people sprawl evenly over 70 square miles, an area roughly a quarter larger than New York City with half New York City's population. Eighty two different language groups make LA in certain respects an even more cosmopolitan gateway city than New York City, which only has 55 language groups.1

In the 1980s, LA replaced New York City as the most popular point of entry for immigrants, shifting the demographics from a predominantly Anglo-Saxon population to one that is 40 percent Hispanic, 37 percent Caucasian, 13 percent African-American and 10 percent Asian and other races.2 The social polarization also shifted in the Reagan Era with affluent households (making over $50,000) nearly tripling from 9 percent to 26 percent, while the poor population (making under $15,000) increased from 30 percent to 40 percent. Correspondingly, the middle class was reduced by nearly half, from 61 percent to 32 percent.3 Protecting the lifestyles and property values of the upper and middle classes by keeping out undesirables has lead to increasing privatization -- and militarization -- of entire neighborhoods, while increasingly repressive actions by the infamous Los Angeles Police Department4 serve to keep the poor in their place.

...

Los Angeles's most dramatic growth occurred only in the last seventy years, developing with the automobile culture and the growth of the national highway system. LA resulted with today's familiar low-density amorphous developments of single family homes. But until the 1920s, LA had developed in much the same way as other cities, growing up around Henry Huntington's "Pacific Electric" mass transit system that first opened in 1901. The mass transit system, once the largest in the world, operated over 1,114 miles of tracks and carried an average of a quarter-million passengers a day.5 Though the city was decentralized from the start, downtown Los Angeles prospered enormously as a transit hub, creating a traditionally dominant urban center. Henry Huntington wisely purchased large areas of land around his tracks and prospered enormously from the suburban housing developments that he built around the lines. Other developers had to pay him subsidies to get crucial rail links that would guarantee successful developments.6

By the 1920s, the automobiles began crowding out the streetcars downtown. Commutes became unbearably long and the cost of home ownership around the streetcar lines became prohibitively expensive. Automobiles and additional street infrastructure were seen as a means of curtailing limits to the expansion of the suburbia. The paradigm of the single family house was upheld by would-be homeowners and the civic elite whose enormous wealth was largely derived from real estate speculation -- from selling each homeowner a plot of land, a house and a mortgage. The oil industry and corporations such as Firestone Rubber had strong interest in the dominance of the automobile over mass transit. With no resistance from civic leaders, a bond act was overwhelmingly approved in 1926 to build an extensive street and freeway infrastructure, and a mass transit rehabilitation proposal was easily defeated.7 By allowing the mass transit system to slowly decay, Los Angeles essentially sacrificed its downtown.

In response to the Depression in the 1930s, homeowners threatened with foreclosures on their high-interest, short-term mortgages were assisted by Roosevelt's 1933 Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC). The HOLC refinanced over a million mortgages into what has become the industry standard: the self-amortizing (paying off both the interest and the principal) thirty-year mortgage. The rationalization of mortgages was at the center of the National Housing Act of 1934, which created the Federal Housing Administration (FHA). FHA mortgages financed and insured up to 90 percent of a home's value, suddenly making homeownership accessible to over 50 percent of the population. More importantly, developers could borrow FHA funds, as well as funds from the burgeoning savings and loans, to comfortably complete entire projects, including street construction. This master-community-builder approach was a major factor of Los Angeles's enormous development after the Second World War.8 As Robert Fishman put it, "The growth of Los Angeles was not only explosively rapid; it was also virtually unhampered by previous traditions and settlements. The city was surrounded by seemingly unlimited land, supported by a massive influx of people and capital, and led by an elite wholly committed to suburban expansion."9

Unlike traditional cities, class division in Los Angeles has never depended on proximity to its urban center as much as in other cities. Instead, class divisions are based on altitude. The less fortunate live in the flatland, named the Plains of Id by Reyner Banham,10 while those more fortunate locate themselves in the hills for purer air and better vantage points. Development in the foothills west of the meandering Los Angeles River (converted to a concrete-lined storm sewer by the Army Corps of Engineers in the 1940s) began in the 1920s as affluent, planned communities. If a cliched aspect of LA's good life exists -- conjured up in the movies that originated there -- it is based on the image of these well publicized communities: Beverly Hills, Westwood, Brentwood, Bel Air, Santa Monica, Hollywood and Silver Lake. Developed by Alphonso Bell in the 1910s, Bel Air, one of the original gated communities, was so exclusive that Bell refused to sell homes to "movie people", (i.e. Jews).11 Built on the 3,300-acre Hamel and Denkel Ranch after a failed oil-finding mission, the 1913 master planned community of Beverly Hills, designed by New York architect Wilbur Cook, was incorporated as a separate city by the Rodeo Land and Water Company before any construction even took place.12 Beverly Hills became the preferred residence for those in the entertainment industry because of its proximity to the studios in seedier Hollywood.

...
When explosive growth of the decentralized metropolis threatened the very qualities that were being sold as the rights of homeownership -- secure property values and low-density unspoiled open space -- voluntary homeowners associations and later, the homeowner-led slow-growth movements coalesced. Los Angeles's homeowners associations (HAs) began in 1916 with the Los Felix Improvement Association which created the concept of deed restrictions for new planned communities. Los Angeles pioneered deed restrictions and zoning for expensive single-family homes, with racial and social exclusion clauses and minimum costs and sizes for construction of new homes.13 The creation of HAs, which Mike Davis refers to as the White Wall, put 95 percent of the available housing out of the reach of Asian and African-Americans in the 1920s.14 Although the United States Supreme Court finally ruled against racist deed restrictions in 1948, the Gary case of 1919, established by the California Supreme Court, allowed the HAs to file suits against non-white homeowners, including film stars like Hattie MacDaniel. Should "trespassing" minority homeowners attempt to defend their homes, Ku Klux Klan-type vigilantism prevailed.15

Because incorporating a small group of people as a separate city for the benefits of highly restrictive zoning was an undertaking only the most wealthy could afford, most middle class communities located themselves in county areas that were undertaxed and unincorporated. The Lakewood planned community, modeled after Levittown but twice the size, was threatened by annexation to Long Beach in the 1950s. The developers, Weingart, Boyar and Taper, devised the "Lakewood Plan" to incorporate it without the traditional vital-service costs of creating a separate city. Los Angeles County allowed Lakewood to lease its fire, police, sanitation, library and maintenance services at cut-rate prices, subsidized by the county's funds for the services. The communities retained their zoning privileges, while their services were subsidized by county taxpayers. To offset the loss of real estate taxes, the county gets money for existing infrastructure and for services that would normally have to be provided.

The 1956 Bradley-Burns Act allowed local governments to collect a one percent sales tax for their own use, so the new minimal cities with their new decentralized shopping malls were able to finance their city government without increasing property taxes. The 26 county-subsidized minimal cities that appeared between 1954 and 1960 also encouraged suburban separatism and local control - by zoning out service-intensive low-income renting populations. The resulting suburban exodus left the older parts of the city with little tax base for the predominantly poor population. The 1980 Census showed that while the county was 13 percent African-American, 53 of its 82 cities, 30 of which were Lakewood Plan incorporators, had African-American populations of one percent or less.16

If the first forty years of Los Angeles's history focused on the creation of "Bourgeois Utopias," as Robert Fishman calls racially and economically segregated suburban communities, the last thirty years have revolved around their defense. When the foothill's drawing points threatened them with overdevelopment, homeowner-led slow-growth movements entered the political arena. Unlike its counterpart in Northern California, the slow-growth movement was not rooted in environmentalism but rather the protection of property values and land-use control. If environmental concerns came into discussion at all, it was because the residents regarded the open space of their sprawling subdivision as important as Yosemite Park. Drastic real estate inflation made buying a house in the foothills just about impossible for anyone but the most well-to-do. The Federation of Hillside and Canyon Homeowners, founded in the gated colony of Bel Air in the 1950s, affiliated a dozen other communities to make sure that NIMBY development went elsewhere. When the gated community of Hidden Hills -- whose residents include Frankie Avalon, Bob Eubanks and Neil Diamond -- was threatened with a Superior Court Order to provide 48 units of senior citizen housing outside the gates, they complained that the old people would attract drugs and crime.17 The Federation has since grown to over 50 affiliations and, with its massive financial and legal powers, took on an even broader role than HAs ever could.18

In West LA, gates are erected around established neighborhoods of single-family bungalows. Depending on the HA's social class, the neighborhood fortification can vary from chain link fences and automatic gates -- prone to frequent malfunction -- for the middle class, to iron gates, masonry walls and full-time security guards for more prosperous communities. Each individual home often has a fence demarcating its property, so if an HA has a tight budget, gates can be erected between different enclosed properties to cut off the street to pedestrians and vehicles. Older gated communities have the aesthetic advantage of having developed gradually. While certain neighborhoods contain modest looking homes, many have been substantially altered and expanded, adding variety to the "public" street. The inflated land values for minuscule homes on small lots have also created more streetscape diversity by encouraging the construction of large new postmodern homes. Styles range from Santa Fe to Deconstruction. Color schemes for the older homes are more varied than the monotonous new gated communities being built by developers in the San Fernando Valley. It might even appear that style in LA is reserved for westsiders. Generally, only truly privileged members of society can afford to move into homes on the westside, much less tear one down and rebuild a new one, so the rest are forced to move farther and farther inland.

Aside from the riots of 1943, 1965 and 1992, few Westsiders really noticed the flourishing minority communities, as the pleasantly insulated affluent communities and autotopic lifestyles made entire sections of Los Angeles easily invisible. The slow, orange Regional Transit Department (RTD) buses, serving only those too old or too poor to drive, provide transportation for the immigrant workers that tend the households of the Foothills residents and serve as a reminder that the city really runs on cheap immigrant labor. The large, empty, unshaded sidewalks and precariously timed traffic signals lead David Rieff to comment, "The impression is inescapable that the advertisements you see on benches all over the Westside for Jewish funeral chapels are really a message aimed at anyone foolish enough to expect to survive as a walker in Los Angeles."19

======

In post-liberal Los Angeles, awareness of this desperate situation is such that the defense of the privileged and middle class neighborhoods has taken on a sudden urgency. The desire of the ordinary middle class to live in socially insulated communities has created a frenzy for security fencing around entire neighborhoods, emulating the luxury, fortressed "minimal" cities that developed in the 1950s and 1960s, like Hidden Hills, Bradbury, Palos Verdes Estates, Hidden Hills and Rancho Mirage. Older communities like Bradbury, with 900 residents and ten miles of private streets, are fully enclosed with guarded entry points and served by public and private security services and are impossible to enter without an invitation from a resident. The San Fernando Valley, completely open ten years ago, now has over one hundred newly gated communities. The demand for more security is nearly insatiable. Valley contractor Brian Weinstock remarked, "The demand is there on a three-to-one basis for a gated community than not living in a gated community."36 Forest City Enterprises, owners of the 1940s Park La Brea, have cut off pedestrian access and surrounded the 176-acre gentrifying development on Wilshire's Miracle Mile with security fencing.

Gated developments in the San Fernando Valley lack any of the architectural charm that the West Side has built up over time. The stringency of new HA design codes seems to discourage expansion or modification of the homes and fosters bland subdivisions such as can be found on the outskirts of any major town. Housing designs are often modern-colonial hybrids and available in the several shades of grey or beige. Anything that might deviate from the norm is considered a reselling hindrance, so everything is carefully maintained in a perpetual banality. Neighborhoods are composed of a few housing types, sometimes available in reverse plan to hopefully make homes appear more interesting. Since the San Fernando Valley is expanding farther and farther into the desert, serious environmental problems such as water shortages and smog are threatening these developments. But nothing it seems can stop the idealization of the single family home, and no price is too great, not even two-hour commutes, for peace of mind.

Needless to say, the homes of the rich are even more security centered, borrowing design ideas from foreign embassies for terrorist-proof security rooms accessed through secret doors. The concept of total residential security would not be complete without private security companies such as Westec or Bel-Air Patrol. "Armed response" signs dot the lawns of virtually all affluent subdivisions. HAs lease complete security packages, including hardware, monitoring, patrols, personal escorts and armed responses. Demand for security against the perceived threat of minority gangs has ironically provided minority males with one of the few job opportunities left to them, besides becoming prison guards. One of the fastest growing industries of the 1980s, private security guards comprised in 1990 twice the national labor average of 1970.37 In Los Angeles alone, the security workforce has tripled in the last ten years, from 24,000 to 75,000. While working for multinational conglomerates, security guards, often minority males, are paid minimal wages depending on literacy, and applicants with prison records are not automatically turned away under California's lax licensing practice. Michael Kaye, president of Westec, a subsidiary of Japan's Secom Ltd and the leading Westside security firm, revealed, "We're not a security guard company. We sell a concept of security."38

...

Whether these security measures fend off professional burglars is highly debatable, but they do work remarkably well at alienating innocent passers-by, confronting them with signs posting death threats. By establishing a siege mentality amongst middle and upper classes, the real problems are essentially ignored. The 1992 riot was triggered by the Rodney King verdict, but the pillaging carried out by the poor was really a response to desperate economic situations. The sight of people running down the street with boxes of diapers and foam mattresses illuminated the ironies of the situation. Unfortunately, the ensuing rush to buy firearms showed nothing had really been learned.39 The trend to privatize neighborhoods is not singular to Los Angeles, nor is its racial and economic polarization. Los Angeles illustrates these principles perhaps on a greater scale than cities such as Houston or Dallas, but unless these issues are confronted in a realistic manner, periodic riots, repressive police actions, increasing gang violence and environmental degradation promise to reduce the quality of life for all citizens.

Vik, why don't you show me where the proposed metro lines cross through these "gated communities" that you make sound like everyone west of La Brea lives in.

Your Larry David moments (Warning! Blandness!)

vik you can borrow my pass that'll let you use the westside streets, sidewalks and bus systems

This is why it didn't develop in the middle of the century.

Why do people keep voting against it today, and why hasn't it developed w/ any speed or urgency from 1975 onwards?

Is Fairfax considered "westside"?

-- the D Double signal (adamr...), June 14th, 2005 3:54 PM. (nordicskilla)

Fairfax is Hollywood.

-- Spencer Chow (spencercho...), June 14th, 2005 3:56 PM. (spencermfi)

no fairfax is def west hollywood

-- Vichitravirya XI (x...), June 14th, 2005 3:58 PM.

So are many fun things in LA! I actually like it when a cool spot is in a non-descript "mini-mall", that way people who frown on mini-malls avoid it!

I like how everyone here wants to completely deny ...oh fuck it.

Yeah I'm just making it all up. Excuse me as I remove myself from this thread I wish I never started

xp-Didn't Dean say he lived in a mall?

-- Spencer Chow (spencercho...), June 15th, 2005 4:15 PM. (spencermfi)

Well to quote you upthread: "It just seems like any old concert place to me." I was just pointing out how it differs from many of the venues that I've seen comparable bands in various other cities.

also: Dingleberries lives in da CC.

you said it!

dean, you wouldn't know anything abt racism would you? i hope your burrito gives you good culture

haha what?

And why on earth would I ever be on the 405? I never go east of the PCH.

The one that's a treat.

He does!

Mike Davis to thread.

V, it's true that this is a well-established meme. I think the issue is that it doesn't line up with many Westsiders' lived experience (e.g., of paying mortgage-level rents to live in nondescript-to-grotty 1beds with shitty carpets in neighborhoods where cool, strong women still feel safer driving two blocks than walking after dark).

LA's recent Jiffy-Pop style real estate bubble exaggerates the effects (incl. gentrification), but the notion of Fortress Westside does seem to lose a bit of currency when we step outside the sociology and urban planning departments onto the mean streets south of Sunset.

There are probably more "gated communities" up the 101 than there are between Sunset and Ventura. I guess what I'm saying is, those gates have always made more sense metaphorically (incl. to Thousand Oaks homebuyers) than in real life. Hence the Concept of Security, but hardly the thing itself.

NIMBYism mostly has to do with noise and inconvenience, and while it's true that wealthier communities have always had the resources to (perhaps frivolously) fight development tooth and nail, once the Beverly Hills' of the world discover a particularly effective legal blocking tactic, the Bellflowers and Gardenas are just as quick to take it up. Which is why we ain't gonna be gettin' any more freeway any time soon...

My favorite LA restaurant is Urasawa.

I am playing Pro Yakyu Spirits 2004 Climax right now, it's unbelievable.

Or, Roger completely OTM.

very true. also my first impression.

Rollin till the wheels fall off
A nigga rollin till the wheels fall off
Westside rollin till the wheels fall off
A nigga rollin till the wheels fall off

and for the record, youd have to pay me to get me to go to the 'west side'. its hard enough to get me to go to hollywood, let alone onto or past the strip. ive been to the beach one time since ive lived here (2 years). i totally prefer the lifestyle, the restaurants, the venues, the weird hole-in-the-walls, the people, the culture, and the safety of echo park/silverlake. yes, thats right...saftey.

im sure that some of you will argue, but from personal experience, i feel safer on the east side. sure, theres...well, lets call them 'riff-raff' (for lack of a better or non-PC word) on the east side, but there are far more crazies in the hollywood area (i dont know about santa monica or venice, cause i never go there). anyway, anyone ive ever encountered late at night on the east side has been relatively easy to steer clear of, get rid of, or ignore. in general they have beef with their people and wont bother ya if you dont start shit with them, ya know?

anyway, thats my nickel for the day.
oh, and hi. im new. and thats the last time ill admit that. ;)

I'd be tickled to meet y'all at a FAP anywhere from the beach to downtown, but sadly I'm booked Friday. Now Saturday...

As long as it's not in the South Bay. Don't even get me started on the South Bay... ;-)

i think the eastside-centric attitude seems a very recent development starting with the the hipster influx into east hollywood in the 90's and probably affected by hyper-inflated real estate values. i mean those same people who won't go east of western now lived (or would have lived) in miracle mile in the early 90's.

here's a useful map i found of LA city... http://www.losangelesalmanac.com/LA/lamap2.htm
note there are so many unofficial names and names post offices use or don't use. ie. if you live in northridge. you would say you live in northridge and write that as your address (even though it's LA city). if you live in silverlake you'd say you live in silverlake, but not address letters there. and places like miracle mile or larchmont are just traditionally known names not really recognized anywhere.

please no

I'D LIKE TO SEE SOMEONE DISPUTE THIS WITH FACTUAL INFORMATION WITHOUT TRYING TO TWIST MY WORDS, ACCUSE ME OF MAKING "GENERALIZTIONS," OR FUCKING CHANGE THE TOPIC AGAIN OKAY THX BYE

and im only going to fap if its on my damn balcony 4 now

"Los Angeles's walled communities provide professionals from the real estate, entertainment and technology industries with an escape from the problems of the disenfranchised that lie beyond their well protected enclaves -- with tall gates, private security forces and 24-hour a day electronic surveillance."

How many can you balcony hold?

x-post I didn't read the big article you posted upthread but I'll look at it now to see if that answers my question.

roger i posted that just to demonstrate the history of racial segragation here

whats just making me want to tear my hair out is how adamant everyone on this thread is being in completely DENYING what has already passed into history, and what is common knowledge.

its like...okay:

the encyclopedia is wrong, spencer / ile is right
the local times and alt weeklies are wrong, spencer chow / ile is right
all the pro-metro activist groups - which can be contacted online, try yahoo (im a member of that yahoo group) are wrong, spencer chow / ile is right

this is total madness and i dont know why im bother putting up with this thread. its only making my blood boil

Ah, ya punk, missing out on Friday. But fear not, Arthur the Very Good is DJing on Saturday, and I'm frankly tempted to stay in LA for that after the Friday FAP and all. We'll see!

true, the metro line is a big mess and it sucks and it's unfortunate we don't have a transportation system and traffic is becoming catastrophic. but you can't just casually say 'i hate the fucking WESTSIDE so much' (and then say 'Spencer I don't hate the Westside' to what? try to back out of irresponsible stereotyping?) and not expect some shit. i mean i like some of your ideas on other threads, but Spencer's right in saying you're all over the place on this one.

(Also I saw a guy coming out of the video store and I thought it was you, so I waved. Clearly it wasn't because he yelled something back at me in Armenian.)

Yes, I know it looks like I contradicted myself on this thread, but I've clarified that: I don't "hate" the westside per say, and I've expressed that when I said that I meant I disapprove of their anti-metro voting patterns, which I do believe deserve to be hated.

All I'm asking for is someone to refute the WELL-DOCUMENTED AND VERIFIED claim that the westside's aversion to the metro is based on racial and socio-economic NIMBY prejudices of keeping the "wrong" people away from their residences and businesses.

Can anyone do that, supplying hard facts and proof, without turning this into a 'I must defend my homeland" emotional argument?

If you're taking offense to some sort of fucked-up misunderstanding of me "attacking" your native soul WHEN I'M NOT IN THEFIRST PLACE, then that's your own fucking problem.

I don't have to "prove" that I lose Los Angeles as much as you just because I haven't lived here as long, or don't have dead ancestors buried here...there is no other city in the WORLD I'd rather live, since this is my favoite. I thought my love would be evident with the enthusiam with which I started this thread. This is a city of immigrants and it's as much mine as yours; deal with it.

I'm especially irked since 12 hours ago I told Spencer Chow that I'm open to being corrected but since then instead of showing me any evidence, all he's done is cast aspersions on my discriminatory faculties by saying I'm making "hackneyed" and "sweeping" "generalizations," without giving any counter-examples.

I've tried to be understanding and am still open to being corrected, but all you're doing is either taking my comments out of context, distorting them and arguing issues I did not directly bring up, or attributing to me viewpoints I don't possess in the first place. And I don't understand why.

I don't have to "prove" that I lose Los Angeles

*love*

okay time to turn ILX off again =)

"in-shape" ? omg did i say so un-PC on ile? i shouldn't have to say that anyway since you're all Angelenos and i'm being redundant

okay no more drinking and ilxing. g'nite

did u get it off the PUBLICLY EDITED OMG UNRELIABLE wikipedia?

i'm going to tear myself away from this thread for now to get some sleep but i dont really see the point of returning; i really wish i didnt start it. clearly none of you are as exoted abt the potential map of the metro as i am (which if you notice, still doesnt service bev hills, bel-air, or the palisades)

PS, You're still awesome, but I think you made some extreme conclusions upthread which are impossible to prove and can only ever come across as stereotyping etc.

Finally, as much as I love the LA Weekly, it's politics often border on the hysterical and while its often right, the incessant conspiracy theories and doomsday predictions sound like a boy who cried wolf if you've been reading them since you were 12.

i'd rather talk about strip mall restaurants. my favorite new one is raku on olympic and barrington. it's japanese and korean and two people can get five little dishes for under forty bucks. highly recommended.

Can anyone do that, supplying hard facts and proof, without turning this into a 'I must defend my homeland" emotional argument?

Why does anyone need to supply hard facts to refute your argument when you haven't supplied any to support it? It's not that I don't believe you but I would love to see some information about these votes you keep talking about: when were they, what exactly were they about, who voted which way, etc.

So, yeah, the Friday Fling: Let's start at Vic's balcony, then on to Mashti Malone's (I've lived in LA off and on for 12 years and never been!) and then caravan over to the Thai Elvis place. Or maybe we should do the reverse. Or we could just go to Bahooka's. And the bar at Hotel Figueroa. I don't know!

Where is Filipinotown?

Oh no, I completely forgot about the Basement Jaxx show! Don't they have the usual $1 tickets?

I don't understand the appeal of Eva Longoria at all.

also: "I don't live in Koreatown. I live in Larchmont."

Or Hancock Park adjacent. Remy, are you moving to East Hollywood/Silverlake Adjacent? Or Glendale? Or the Westside?

I really like South Pasadena (esp. I the new-ish video/DVD place on Mission, the people there are sweet) though their Gold Line protests are really ridiculous. The Southwest Museum stop is right up the block from me--I find the sound of the train sort of comforting.

I took the Gold Line to the Red Line to the Blue line to pick up my car at the Long Beach airport. Loads of fun until the final leg--I had to wait for a bus to the airport in that creepy downtown Long Beach area for 45 minutes. Apologies to anyone who lives there, but it's always seemed really depressing to me. Maybe it was thriving once.

xpost!

Except for my friend's beautiful apartment that he didn't know shakes violently whenever the subway goes underneath (at least he didn't decide to buy it).

Category 5 http://quake.wr.usgs.gov/recenteqs/Maps/117-34.html

it makes everything else on this thread moot... i havent read it since last night but still... we're all gonna die together so we might as well get along. Spencer you can have my "record" ceramic drink holder from the Bonaventure if i die first

Actually, downtown Long Beach was in really bad shape throughout the 1980s and into the mid-90s when the city finally stopped meddling with impractical and ridiculous redevelopment schemes and just let things be. Pine Ave. downtown and east 4th. St have come along nicely.

There's a fantastic bookstore on Long Beach Blvd. & 3rd St. downtown right next to the Blue Line station that you can kill time in.

I don't know what sort of "evidence" would inarguably support my side less than the voting records themselves, or something analyzing them, but I'll keep trying to dig something up.

Walter if you havent yet - and I'm assuming you're a film person if you're familiar w/ Prof Boyd - I'd really urge you to see that Los Angeles Plays Itself documentary that Jody mentioned upthread, and that Remy Arthur and I all caught recently. The guy really goes into some goog detail regarding the racial segregration issues, combining it w/ the public transportation issues without letting it seem like a rant - and ingeniously, all by using thousands of film clips! It's an analysis of the whole city through the cinematic medium, perfectly apt for an industry town such as ours.

To talk about these specific issues, he brought up a lot of films, but in particular I remember him focusing on Who Framed Roger Rabbit? which was very clearly a metaphor for the racial/transportation problems of Los Angeles. In the film, as you remember, the toons are performers but a subjugated minority, analogous to the city's minorities, and restricted in many aspects; the establishment has made deals with the "Cloverleaf Corporartion" to replace the electric cars with freeways, which would also be used to further geographically restric the Toons (and further on, some of the antagonists want to do away with Toontown altogether). In the end the bad guy dies so i'm assuming everything is saved? I havent actually Rabbit this film since it came out..

-- Remy (rem...) (webmail), June 16th, 2005 1:20 AM. (x Jeremy) (link)

Take your classmate slander back to the East Coast plzokthx.

and dean, why does your fukked-up map-comment on myspace contain TWO long beaches? with one being next to norwalk?

Haha I didn't even notice that. That's the last time I let an Eastside sweatshop make my gif maps.

-- Spencer Chow (spencercho...), June 16th, 2005.

Mr Chow, my friend Lucy whom you met at Ned's shindig also has _all_ of them, but she's involved with other ilx0rs I think. The last time I was there my date wanted a martini but I forced the kid to get a vodka in the coolest one available - the glass boot. Do you have that one too? I was pissed they were temp out of the state of Cali and the hotel one

I blame NIMBYs and a traditionally weak mayor/civic government who have been continually bought off by corporate/real estate forces. Racism and classism *has* played a major part in LA political/urban planning history going back to Chavez Ravine, Chinatown, and Bunker Hill's redevelopment so it's not surprising that folks would continue to assume that.

Poor people are politically weak when it comes to civic development. The Wilshire Bl. business association had no problem stopping the Red Line from continuing west along it's original path, but the poorer owners on Vermont and Hollywood Bl. were basically told to "suck it up".

The Airport Parking Commission (which has an unbelievable amount of clout) successfully kept the Green Line away from LAX - redirecting it to a useless area of El Segundo.

Meanwhile, the MTA had no problem using their cost overruns to build a 24-store palace downtown while the bus system (which actually serves poor people and has more ridership than the trains) was left to twist in the wind. Naturally, the people who depend on the bus system are going to think there's unspoken racism, when in reality it's a crappy MTA.

Things are hopeful w.r.t. to public transportation, but I wish there was a Robert Moses-style autocrat in power who can make that map at the top of the thread a reality.

here is problem: i am working 'til 9:30 tomm night (but its walking distance from my place / Mashti Malone's) ... sorry if that holds things up

Vic, thanks for all of the info. Like I said before, it's not that I don't believe you and I have in fact heard those same accusations of westsider interference repeated many times before. I was having trouble digging up any hard facts though which I thought was strange. I have some other theories about resistance to public transporation beyond the simple accusation of racism but I guess we've already discussed this to death.

The film you mention sounds interesting. It's funny that you mention Roger Rabbit because I seem to remember Boyd giving a pretty impassioned rant in one class, blasting Roger Rabbit for its racism.

Me too.

Yeah thats really apparent from that map, especially in west hollywood. My fantasy though, is that the parking structures that would have to be built to accomodate all this would be fantastical nouveau art deco erections in variegated colors. Or modernist faux asian structures, modeled after the random buildings you see in K-town.

Walter - what year did you graduate? ...and do u have AIM?

i feel like starting a LA pictorial thread when i come back from work...we are overdue one arent we? i keep coming across funny pics when im trying to research this issue

http://www.laspd.com/images/eventDept/speakerLASPDChief.jpg

I don't mean to reopen the box of frogs, so I'll just give Elvis a nod for being more OTM than I was when I tried to say the same thing. Find me a Southern California homeowner with a back yard, and I'll find you a NIMBY. Unfortunately, the LA transit map illustrates pretty clearly the unequal distribution of the economic power and social influence required to run a successful NIMBY campaign.

Do racially coded fears play a part? I can't imagine it doesn't. And neither the "bad guys" NOR the "good guys" display the slightest reluctance to shamelessly manipulate those fears for their own ends. LA politics is a pretty cynical game, even among the white hats.

All of which is to say:
- Elvis, Spencer, and Vic ALL OTM.
- Jeez, this thread could use a drink.
- Sorry I won't get to buy you all a round tomorrow.

and perception and attitudes is a huge part of the movements for or against transportation. people who have a history here are not necessarily more right, but have different perceptions to add and have lived through past ideas, efforts, and failures. for instance. it's common to think the red car, etc. were closed down by corporate conspiracy against everyone's will, but talking to my family (albeit a small focus group), people just weren't into it anymore (which i believe could be backed up looking at rider numbers/sales). there was a cultural fascination with cars and the future. and people really believed something like a monorail was coming, partly due to it's introduction at disneyland and the widespread belief a subway was a ridiculous idea for an earthquake-prone city. there was also MUCH less traffic then, people weren't as environmental. cars seemed win-win-win. i mean you can argue corporate efforts or advertising were behind this perception (people often act against their own best interest) and residents in retrospect might think they were wrong. but as you can gather from the state of politics, feelings and attitudes matter WAY more than facts. and they're much more random, difficult to pin down, especially if you have only past 2nd-hand records to look at.

however, things are changing. traffic and parking problems were never EVER this bad. it's affecting people's lives. people in the suburbs have excruciating commute experiences. people in the city with cars can't park and get around slower than if they rode a bike or even walked. that's what could ultimately change things.

oy vey. back to work...

So, the #1 thought in a rich westsider's mind when considering whether or not to vote for a public transportation initiative is the purely selfish fact that they will never use it! And even given the ideal map up at the start of the thread, we're still going to be driving all over the place.

I'm not saying this as an argument against public transportation but I think it's obviously a reality that has to be dealt with. I live near the PCH and every weekend there are hundreds of people out cruising, riding their motorcycles, enjoying the scenery, posing and trying to be seen with their vehicle. These people aren't going to take the subway to the beach!

When it comes to utopian transportation scenarios I'm much more optimistic about the future of electric vehicles and the trend toward working at home than the idea of totally rebuilding LA. Not that I'm opposed to an extensive metro system but I mean it's pretty obvious that we're all quite pessimistic about its future.

I will say one thing, I was gone from '91 to '01 and while parking is *much* worse in general, traffic is actually quite a bit better now. I think it has a lot to do with active intersection sensors which control traffic lights; they tend to make surface streets viable as an actual alternative.

You can KEEP blaming me for making a bad argument et al if you wish, but merely using a different adjective ("sloppy," as opposed to Spencer's "sweeping," or "extreme") in response to my very simple contention throughout this this thread - that race and socio-economic status are primary ingredients in the westside's NIMBYism - fails to sufficiently refute anything I've said on this thread, and isn't going to work. "Very simple," but not an oversimplifiction, in that I'm not blindly accusing every white westsider of being racist, a point I've repeated at least 2-3 times upthread (this makes it 3-4, right?). Claiming an issue is considered too emotional by many people to have any relevant factual realities just seems like a gigantic cop-out to me, but I sincerely hope that now you'd take this post of mine in the right tone: I'm not trying to be provocative as my comments could've been construed as being in my faux-"angry" and intentionally hyperbolic posts at the very top of the thread ("i hate the fucking westside!"), and neither am I trying to slag off the political complexities of the matter at hand. As Elvis pointed out already, the racial and socioeconomic factors have persistently been significant throughout all of LA's history of growth almost to the point of now becoming an unconscious presence, and to set up a dichotomy here by attributing the decisions of the non-development of the metro solely to capitalistic, business and monetary considerations to the exclusion of social ones is historically erroneous and moreover theoreticallly dangerous!

It's not an "either/or" issue, and I don't understand why anyone would argue that race/class and socioeconomic factors are not intrinsically tied up in economic-political ones, especially when it comes to questions about demographics, marketing, and consumer/spending culture. The automobile business flourished because the car, as domestic object of desire, meshed so well with the dream of every middle-class family owning an individuailzed house and a yard, but the marketing of this myth was never originally evenly aimed at every ethnic group or class that was present.

You're essenially saying that there are -no- facts here, only emotional attitudes, perceptions and definitions, and while normally such resolute and eh, concrete abstraction (sorry) would be agreeable with one that has been accused (esp here) of dwelling too heavily on the conjectural, the hypothetical and the incorporeal, I don't think it's appropriate in this circusmstance. Furthermore, I strongly believe that statements like this " i don't think people running things are ever that concerned about race/class/religion" are utterly and almost ridiculously inaccurate, since...just as ONE example... you yourself effectively point out the race (and class ) card(s) are oftentimes manipulated by the agit-prop movements of the Left, or co-opted by them to galvanize or even radicalize a subset of people.

To imply that politicians and political decisions regarding the urbanity and livability of this city - or any city - are unconcerned with its social and racial demographic details, particularly of a geographic nature, is extremely absurd but perhaps not entirely uncommon. To me, it seems to follow a systemic pattern of advantageous and intentional denial, and at this point in LA's history it would materialize in negating the region's still-trenchant racial tensions. The metro is just one thing. Next, in regards to hiistory, you're going to start denying, for example, that the 110 freeway was not consciously chosen in the location it is to keep economically disenfranchised blacks on one side, and with how far this thread is gone I'm somewhat surprised that one hasn't already taken this (provocative) position.

I don't mean to sound like I'm personally singling _you_ out here when I'm not, but this entire issue is so important when discussing the history and future of Los Angeles in any of its manifestations that I think it's good we're spending time on it, even if inadvertently only because some are taking offense to anything I've posted. I think the denial of the standardization of racism - of how now it's just been reduced to a background issue, something that is used to mask the "real" issue, which in your opinion there's only one, capital - is what is most dangerous, since it eases the upper and middle classes into a complacency without ever trying to find a solution. We're all guilty of this, whether we think about it or not.

And then you have one incident - like Rodney King - and it's all over.

When living in such a stratified city (often but not always in regards to geography), it's easy to forget and deny the social and economic conditions of those most alien to your own background, but the implications of such denial are staggering. And living and travelling around in your own individualized machines, without engaging or partaking in any great degree of "public space," even if would be the Metro, which in NYC's situation is at least championed to be a democratizing tool when it comes to classism...all this only accentuates the stereotyping when confrontations do occur. Otherwise, it's back to the individuaized worlds of group disassociation, along classist but most obviously racial lines. It is this subject, I believe, of an unconscious, practicallyinvisible level of pervasive racism that was attempted to be dealt with in that movie Crash, but unfortunately in only the most trite and obvious manner. One could take the recent Villaraigosan victory and wax prophetic abt the progressive consequences re: this issue here at large, but not only do I think that would be grossly insufficient with respect to the reflection of race relations overall - since what does this victory even partially signifiy when it was against such an ineffectual and unpopular politician such as Hahn? - but also, I don't think many here would even be interested since the mayoral election thread I started got no more than 20 answers, with no one displaying any enthusiasm for the act of voting in the first place. If anything, the man's triumph proves that race does indeed matter to those "running things," and if you want to keep arguing this point with me, maybe you should pick up that silly Newsweek issue with him on the cover the week he won, with the headline LATINO POWER!

Leaving all that aside and returning solely to transportation, I think you bring up a very good point that the people back in the 50s and 60s acted against their own interest in choosing the automobile, due to a perception of its efficacy and easy of use. And how those decisions went beyond the marketing of cars, to the frustration and fatigue with the PER, which was supposed to move very slowly to only certain areas. I appreciate you adding your personal familial background to this discussion, and if possible I'd like to one day perhaps make some sort of documentary abt the big red cars and those who remember them themost vividly, since their existence is entirely unknown by recent generations of new Angelenos.

However - and on a final note - while I respect your family background in supposedly generating a more complex and nuanced stance on the subject of public tansportation, based on previous flirtations with the issue, I hope you won't exclude relative newcomers like myself from extensively partaking in the ongoing discussion (I note how you moved from "how long and where have you lived here / WHAT R YOUR LA CREDENTIALS, COLLEGE BOY??" to "oh ::sigh:: okay, i GUESS you can have an opinion EVEN IF YOU'RE STILL WRONG BITCH" in two nights, quite generously and, yes, outrageously). Frankly, I think any "external" opinions of those of us who _have_ lived in other cities that _did_ feature an effective and widespread use of public transport (and I'm not saying that I did necessarily, since my city's was effective but not widespread since it didn't have to be..it wasn't a big metropolis), would be very useful here, since many Angelenos who have grown up without the use of a Metro don't understand the need for its use or the frustration of living without one. For example, okay, no I'm not going to use that example of else dean gulberry will ^%$#$ &)&*(()6

I don't know how long one has to live here to be considered an Angeleno by the native populace, but looking faintly Mexican should at least count for something.

I won't go east of PCH unless heavily enticed.

Its all too ugly with too many cars.

ok but i'm not joking

I don't understand this (and the Wilshire Bl. BA thing) at all; why would they not want public transportation to bring people to the airport/their businesses? Is it the ordeal of building out the line that they're afraid of, or the end result? WTF?

http://www.laweekly.com/ink/05/39/features-berkowitz.php

Then I look forward to it!

although, im confsued, in the article and metros website, there seems to be use of terms like light rail, rail transit, subway etc interchangeably. what exactly is this thing? the pics of the gold line etc make it look like a tram, but does it go underground? do different lines have different types of transport on?

I thought the implication was that they're not so much a genuine bus users group as an anti-public-transportation group that used divisive accusations of racism as a means to squash any subway plans.

I too was confused by the mish-mash of terminology. I think light rail generally describes above-ground trains (but small subway-like trains, not big Amtrack type trains) and subways are obviously underground. Rail transit seems like a generic term that encompasses all of the above. But it sounds like the main issue is the route from east to west (along Wilshire) which pretty much has to be a subway.

it would be awesome

Busses although a necessity, were dirty, smelly things both inside and out; belching smog and particulates into our otherwise clear ocean-cooled air. I say a necessity, because how else would the maid get to our house?? They lived in “bad” neighborhoods that we would not be caught dead entering… Literally, or so I thought, when I was 8. Bad people would shoot you on sight and take your car if you ventured to wherever the maid lived. “Those People” were all in gangs and hated white people like me and my family and friends. Everyday, The big RTD bus brought domestic help to the corner of Sunset and Kenter, where all the moms lined up in their Mercedes’ to pickup Estella and Maria to drive them up into the hills to the house to clean. It was just part of the events of the day, much like shopping, lunch at the club and picking up the kids from school.

Then when I was 9, I grew up a little. It all began when I started asking why. Why, if Those People were so horrible, untrustworthy and killers, why did we allow them into our home? I continued to question, grow up, and began to realize that tiny minded thinking keeps you in a tiny (but pretty and well appointed) box. The box is within a wrought iron fence in a neighborhood that gets smaller and smaller as the “bad element” encroaches. You can lock yourself away in fear until you disappear or you are overtaken by real life and all the nasty, ugly things that are included; and all the really amazingly wonderful things that are real life. I now call my parents “Those People”. They lived in a tiny world consumed by fear.

I also live in fear. Fear of subways in Los Angeles, CA. Why? Not because of the people who ride inside them or any havoc they may bring into my world; but because of something much more powerful. The earth itself. Our city is riddled with faults and a subway is just a BAD idea. .

Earthquake faults, natural gas pockets everywhere, bad construction, bad planning, bad materials and a sparking tube with hundreds of people in it all lead to tragedy IMO. Not a good combination. (hello?! Tar pits?! Oh, those bubbling smelly things. Exploding corner at Fairfax and 3rd? Natural Gas, gee whiz!) Beverly Hills is a wealthy place. Not just the addresses and the people who inhabit, but the real estate-underground. The city sits on vast amounts of crude that if tapped could bring down the cost of gasoline, heating, etc. in California to affordable levels. However it’s just not gonna happen for so many reasons. We just keep buying it from them guys in Middle-eastern nations and funding their terrorist activities so they can thank us for our support by building bombs to nuke us with.

Aboveground Rail? Now you’re talking. Too bad we just tore up Santa Monica Boulevard and pulled out the rail road tracks that ran down the middle… or didn’t you guys know that was why there was a big and little Santa Monica Boulevard in the first place. Short-timers I guess. It would have been so much cheaper and easier to unbury the existing tracks. Ahem... yes, they were there until about 5 years ago big parts of the tracks were paved right over the top. Just would have had to refurbish the small areas of tracks that needed it, and put some cars on the rails. Presto! an instant rail line ready to go a "people mover" to be reckoned with running from Westwood to downtown. Instead, we decided to make the street more efficient to help out the congested traffic problem and went right ahead and ripped that old ugly rail thing right out of the ground. Ripped it up by the mile and trucked it out to the scrap heap in City of Commerce to be melted into more shiny new cars! (like we did when Goodyear rubber paid the city and its officials huge amounts of money and “paved the way” to keep us chained to our cars). Hmmm. Does anybody get it? I don’t think so. It’s not just NIMBY, my friends. This fish stinks from the head down. There won’t be a Los Angeles rail Metro anytime soon, Bitches. Not one of you has looked beyond your noses. Can you say “Follow the Money”?

henry waxman is an ugly, large-nostriled fucktard now and forever for doing this - FUCK YOU!!!

OH NOES, NEGROES AND BROWNINOS!!

the westside line would be reality now if he wasn't such a prick, sorry :(

day late/dollar short doesn't really begin to describe the damage done to this great city

what's the latest on this mythical expansion of the metro???

If a line west on Wilshire happens in the next 15 years, I will be extremely surprised.

Damnit, I miss the east coast and its public transit.

from the iron horse's mouth:

http://www.metro.net/news_info/default.htm

Full Long Range Plan here -- page 27 provides a basic map.

apparently the mid-city part of the extension will be done by 2010.

http://www.metro.net/projects_programs/exposition/default.htm

Fucking hell. LA County Board of Supervisors wins again...

Metro's efforts to get a half-cent tax increase on the November ballot that could've brought in tens of billions of dollars for transit and roads, and helped fund the Subway to Sea, look mostly dead after a 3-2 vote against it by the LA County Board of Supervisors, reports the Los Angeles Times' Garrett Therolf. County Registrar Recorder Dean Logan said the MTA must now pay up to $10 million for a special second ballot on election day or ask a court to force the measure onto the existing Nov. 4 ballot. You can thank two anti-tax Republicans, Mike Antonovich and Don Knabe, and myopic Democrat Gloria Molina, for this move. Molina was convinced her Eastside district wouldn't see enough pay-off in the end. UPDATE: The LA Times' transit blogger Steve Hymon, writes the MTA is already in the process of gathering lawyers. "We are going to sue," Rick Jager, an MTA spokesman, tells Hymon. UPDATE: The subway could still be voted on in November.

or they could use that $10 million to actually help fund the subway

Jesus fucking christ

Update: Subway to Sea Still Could Go Up For November Vote
Tuesday, August 5, 2008, by Dakota
First, an aide to one of the County Supervisors tells LA Observed the LA Times "played the story wrong" regarding the board's failure today to back that proposed sales tax to fund the Subway to Sea. For those just catching up, it was reported today that the board voted not to back a sales tax that would help fund numerous transit projects, including the planned Subway to the Sea. But the aide tells LAObserved: "Voters WILL still vote on the sales tax issue. It will just be a separate ballot that voters will get during the same election." "This was all clearly explained at the meeting today." The headline and story on the home page of the Los Angeles Times remains, but another reporter, Steve Hymon, has updated his blog post to add this paragraph: "The supervisors’ failure to muster a simple majority to place the proposal on the Nov. 4 ballot does not kill the measure, but makes it more complicated and more costly. If the Legislature gives its blessing — a bill to authorize the measure goes before a key committee Thursday — county election officials would create a separate “conditional” ballot that general election voters would also consider." The office of dissenting Supervisor Gloria Molina backed that up, telling Curbed that the decision to have a second ballot is currently being hammered out. (The Daily News' story is out: "Still, the 3-2 vote won't stop it from going before voters Nov. 4 - but now the county will have to spend up to $3 million to print it on a separate ballot."

Molina's press deputy, Roxane Marquez added: "The Board did not approve of [the sales tax] being on the same ballot [as the one with the other initiatives]... The Board of Supervisors is not going to rubber stamp a decision because they feel they don't have a choice." Marquez said Molina did not approve of how the ballot initiative was put together, calling it "backroom dealings." When asked if this was political bickering, she said that "one person's bickering is another person's negotiating."

Filed under Los Angeles, County Board Of Supervisors, Subway To The Sea
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Way to go GloMo! Cost the tax payers more money and make the ballot more confusing, so you can grandstand. You are a true public servant

Comment #1, left at 08/05/08 04:48 PM.
Reply to this.
One Wag
I've said it so many times, even I am tired of hearing myself. For an economy the size and power of Los Angeles County to be run by only 5 people verges on criminal.

We should absolutely expand the LA County Board of Supervisors to at least 9 if not 15. LA CITY has 15 councilmembers, fer cryin out loud. The current concentration is a recipe for patronage, corruption and neglect. THATS something that should be on the ballot come November...and every election till it's done.

Gloria is doing this because she's still mad Zev killed her Red Line Eastside expansion. Fuck her and Antonobitch - but I expected nothing better from him or the other Republican...

...seriously, how do we get away from the influence of these egregious, narrow-minded assholes? He is always re-elected since he represents the suburbs and the valleys, and they of course are NIMBY-everything ..Antonobitch has destroyed the county for decades

He has been ruining us since 1980. I think his re-election is again this year and it's time to at least vote him out

This thing is definitely going to get killed if it's on a separate ballot. I mean how is it ever going to get the 2/3rds it needs....50% maybe, but 2/3rds... tragic

Mayor responds to today's sales tax vote

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa just released this letter he's sending to the County Board of Supervisors, who earlier today refused to put the half-cent sales tax for transit and road projects on the November ballot:

Honorable Supervisors:

I am writing to urge you to reconsider your vote today regarding the countywide
half cent transportation sales tax approved for the November 4, 2008 ballot by
the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) Board of
Directors last month. Specifically, I am urging that you place the MTA measure
on a consolidated ballot on November 4, 2008.

There is simply no legitimate basis for failing to consolidate the November ballot.
No matter how you cut it, the taxpayers and voters will be the ultimate losers if
the Board refuses to place the MTA measure on the general election ballot.

Either the taxpayers will be stuck with costly legal bills resulting from the MTA's
litigation against the County on this matter, or the taxpayers will be on the hook
for an additional $3 million required to run a confusing dual-ballot election in
November - which would create a logistical nightmare certain to disenfranchise
untold thousands of County voters.

I think we all agree that our long-term transportation needs require significant
public investment in mass transit alternatives. The MTA sales tax measure is a
down payment toward the many transit and highway improvements this County
needs to support our economy, our environment, the needs of the transit
dependent and an overall high quality of life for the people we represent.

The people of Los Angeles County should have the right to decide for
themselves whether they want to invest in their future. And the most transparent
and cost-effective way to do that is through a consolidated November 4, 2008
ballot.

I am optimistic that you will reconsider your vote and consolidate the MTA
measure with November's general election ballot.

Sincerely,

ANTONIO R. VILLARAIGOSA
Mayor

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/bott...yor-respo.html

Okay so she abstained...for what? To pout that the Eastside is getting rejected ? Cry me a river

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

In an unexpected move that was a 3-2 vote, the LA County Board of Supervisors rejected putting the sales tax increase on November's ballot. Michael Antonovich and Don Knabe voted against the measure with Gloria Molina abstaining.

"Talk about opponents shooting themselves in the foot: With no sale tax there's no Eastside extension past Atlantic for Gloria Molina, no Foothill Gold Line for John Fasana and Mike Antonovich, and no increase in operating funding for the BRU's supporters," said green blogger Darrell Clarke, who expanded his thoughts on a post, in an e-mail to LAist.

Molina, who abstained said the proposal is a "nice concocted scheme... And every single and every step of the way it has made arrangements at how they were going to get more for one side of town versus the other side." She, who represents communities around East LA, is referring to the Westside's "Subway to the Sea" and Expo Line Phase II projects.

Okay let's look at the childish reasons here.

"Little choo-choo," did she really say that?

Board of Supervisors votes against putting transit sales tax on ballot
Updated: 3:50 p.m.

Illustrating how politically difficult it is to tackle traffic in Los Angeles County, transportation officials were caught by surprise today when the Board of Supervisors failed to back a proposed sales tax increase that may raise up to $40 billion for road and transportation projects.

The supervisors’ failure to muster a simple majority to place the proposal on the Nov. 4 ballot does not kill the measure, but makes it more complicated and more costly. If the Legislature gives its blessing — a bill to authorize the measure goes before a key committee Thursday — county election officials would create a separate “conditional” ballot that general election voters would also consider.

But even the progress of that bill has been slowed by squabbling among state lawmakers who want more of the tax money to pay for work in their districts, since construction could trigger millions of dollars in jobs and development.

East Los Angeles officials want more for extending light rail lines east of downtown; west Los Angeles officials want to keep the focus on relieving congestion on the Westside and starting the so-called subway to the sea.

With gas prices soaring and mass transit ridership up, the sales tax effort has been gaining steam and last month was approved by the board of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Within minutes of the supervisors' vote today, MTA chief executive Roger Snoble said the agency would sue the Board of Supervisors to force the sales tax onto the regular ballot.

"I'm in the process of hiring outside counsel because we can't hire county counsel because they would have a conflict," Snoble said. "We have a fairly decent chance of going into court and getting that reversed."

Many politicians have hailed the sales tax as the county's best shot at getting a $30-billion to $40-billion pot of money that is controlled locally. Budget woes, the economy and the Iraq war have made it difficult to get state or federal funding of that magnitude in recent years, and sales tax backers argue that a tax hike is the surest way to secure projects such as a subway, the Expo Line to Santa Monica and an extension of the Gold Line from Pasadena deeper into the San Gabriel Valley.

The 13-member Metro board voted in July to put the sales tax on the ballot. All five supervisors sit on the Metro board, and Snoble said that his understanding of the law is that the Supervisors vote today was largely procedural.

In particular, he said, the law requires the Board of Supervisors to examine the ballot and vote against placing an item on it if there is a physical issue with the ballot -- for example, that it doesn't fit.

"I'm already looking at this thing costing a whole lot of money, and to add more money, to me, it's really hurtful," Snoble said.

The problem has been politics. Local transportation officials have said that even $40 billion is not nearly enough to build all the projects that should have been built long ago or ones needed in the future. Complicating matters, it is well known that politicians sometimes seek transit projects because of the construction jobs, development and influence they generate.

Another issue has been legislation concerning the proposed sales tax. Officials at local, state and federal levels have all been trying to get language inserted that ensures their districts not only get projects but also see them funded robustly and in a timely manner.

That, in particular, was the problem three of the supervisors had with the sales tax: They believed that the money was distributed unfairly and that the MTA came up with a poor spending plan that favored project such as the subway on the Westside over other rail lines in the county.

"But the way it was done at the MTA certainly wasn't by any way kind of a fair process of let's be fair to the voters," said Supervisor Gloria Molina, who abstained. "It was a nice concocted scheme that went on. And every single and every step of the way it has made arrangements at how they were going to get more for one side of town versus the other side."

She later added: "It's a very funny way this little choo-choo is getting on the ballot."

Supervisor Mike Antonovich said that the money should be split up on a per capita basis. He, too, complained that money for some projects -- such as $1 billion earmarked for a mass transit project along the 405 through the Sepulveda Pass -- will ultimately be diverted to pay for the costly subway.

Supervisor Don Knabe, who portrays himself as a fiscal conservative, initially said that although he would vote to put the sales tax on the ballot, he wasn't for it -- but didn't think taxpayers should foot the bill for a symbolic vote. He quickly reversed course and voted against the sales tax.

Later, in an interview, Knabe said that he expects the MTA to successfully sue to place the tax measure on the existing ballot. Still, he said the supervisors' decision would reap benefits.

"I think it got everybody's attention that there is an equity issue here," Knabe said. "It's always a real dogfight to get a fair share of the dollars east of the 110 Freeway."

Knabe was absent for the MTA board vote last month because he was attending a celebratory event for the birth of his first grandson.

Transit advocates were not pleased.

"What a fiasco of childish parochial grandstanding," wrote Dana Gabbard, of the Southern California Transit Advocates, on a Times comment board. "...We desperately need leadership in this region, and it is obvious that isn't what we are getting from the Supervisors."

The Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce also issued a statement denouncing the vote -- even though the Chamber has yet to take an official position on the sales tax.

“Nearly every workday begins with a discussion about traffic,” said Gary Toebben, the president and CEO. “Voters should be allowed to consider all potential solutions including a half-cent sales tax increase to fund transportation projects.”

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who chairs the MTA board and said that he has been working to build a coalition for the sales tax, had not commented on the supervisors' vote as of early this afternoon.

Even more surprising, the vote came after county attorneys told the board that the sales tax would still go forward -- but now on a separate ballot than the rest of the general election. That move would cost taxpayers an additional $2 million to $3 million, said county officials.

In addition, county election officials said that a separate ballot would require a separate mailing of ballots to voters and that it's likely the separate ballots would be counted well after the general election ballots.

-- Steve Hymon and Garrett Therolf

L.A. County measures Precincts reporting: 23.0 %

R: Transit sales tax Yes 65.7% No 34.3%

Holy hell, there's hope yet. (Or is there -- does it have to be a simple majority or two thirds? I actually regretted being unable to vote for that!)

it needs 2/3rds- again highlighting how backwards california is (why couldnt it need a majority and the gay ban need 66%?)

i am hopeful about this though. it would definitely work towards funding the westside extension - whether it's just the Purple Line down Wilshire, or the Red Line too which might be going down Santa Monica Blvd to meet Purple past Century City (it's kind of pending on this vote)

which is the the republicans and pandering democratic retards like county sup Gloria Molina were opposing it - on the "unfairness" principle. if anything's unfair, it's how little public t. the westside has ever gotten! (largely their own fault, but still)

*which is WHY the

Prop 1A is leading also... http://www.latimes.com/news/local/politics/cal/la-2008election-california-results,0,1293859.htmlstory?view=8&tab=0&fnum=0

I heart Alpine County and it's goofy rural Sierra ways. A high speed rail line will NEVER show up in downtown Markleeville, but they'll vote for it anyway.

Good on 1A, I was hoping for that one.

Eric Garcetti is on local nbc and talking about why Measure R will pass; sigh he's so dreamy. i can't wait until he's mayor

L.A. County measures
R: Transit sales tax Yes 66.2% No 33.8% Precincts reporting: 37.0%

Just need 0.4 more to pass!

Eric Garcetti is on local nbc and talking about why Measure R will pass; sigh he's so dreamy. i can't wait until he's mayor

^^^

measure R currently at 66.67%! we did it!

:) ;-) :P

2 out of my 3 election dreams came thru!!!

i'm so glad. it's really a comprehensive, impressive plan. all the controversy probably made it stronger.

has anyone else heard the rumor that e. garcetti is gay (closeted obviously)? a friend knows him fairly well and he told me that he has strong suspicions
(obligatory "not that there's anything wrong with that.....")

*shrug*

he's still dreamy

YES on Jody's post - an unprecedented plan on this level - and despite the budget shortfalls, at least this $ that's being allocated will directly go to the westside (Wilshire leg) expansion rather than get squandered away on that lol route to Ontario the Gold Line/SGV advocates were clamoring for... on a civic level, this seemed improbable but now that it's happened it's truly incredibly good news for the city. Assemblyman Mike Feuer really deserves credit for getting it going

if this didn't pass likely nothing would be built for 30 years and Expo Line would be stalled..
this is better than nothing, but a good first step:
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-roadsage30-2008oct30,0,5950126,full.story

So how far does $4.1 billion get the subway?

The MTA says that could be enough to extend the line from its terminus at Wilshire Boulevard and Western Avenue to Westwood. The route hasn't been decided, but a recent MTA study recommended that the subway follow Wilshire to Beverly Hills, swing south to Century City and then north to Westwood

and the most important part, considering what Sacramento did to us in 2007:
Can the Legislature raid Measure R funds?

No. The money would belong to Los Angeles County. The Legislature can, however, continue to keep gasoline sales tax money that Sacramento is supposed to send back to counties.

only reason i brought it up is because i'm hearing a lot about him re: bigger offices and just wondering if there's a "buzz" out there or if my friend is full of shit

i hope he IS gay, defeats all stupid marriage bans after wedding me, and becomes gayvernor

yea cali hsr:))))))))

and the most frustrating thing is still how the red line going from here to downtown stops at 1 AM sometimes...everything should be a) 24/7 and b) um, a bit faster than driving
― Vichitravirya XI, Tuesday, 14 June 2005 21:55 (4 years ago)

this should be opening real soon (i walked past the soon-to-be "little tokyo/arts district" station a few weeks ago and it looked great):

http://www.metro.net/projects_studies/eastside/default.htm

Go Gold Line Go!

Excellent.

There will be peace in the Middle East before the 710 freeway will be completed.

Bill restoring South Pasadena’s power to block surface 710 Fwy. extension advances

One battle in the war over the proposed extension of the Long Beach (710) Freeway may soon be over. A bill by Assemblyman Gil Cedillo (D-Los Angeles) to restore South Pasadena’s power to block a surface freeway through town has passed in the Assembly and is awaiting action in the Senate.

South Pasadena, along with Glendale, La Cañada Flintridge and other nearby communities, is opposed to an extension of the 710 Freeway from its Alhambra terminus to the Foothill (210) Freeway.

Proponents say the link is needed to speed truck traffic from the Port of Los Angeles to inland transportation hubs. Area residents are concerned about construction disruption, traffic, air pollution and costs for the long-planned but never-funded project. South Pasadena is particularly concerned, as the shortest route connecting the 710 and 210 freeways is a 4.5-mile course through the city.

Someone check the temperature in Hell please?

SOUTH PASADENA - The City Council voted Wednesday to ease its long- standing opposition to any and all extensions of the 710 Freeway.

The city will now agree to review the environmental report of alternate extension routes, such as underground or light-rail alternatives. The city has been opposed to any extension for more than 60 years.

The vote clears the way for a possible Assembly bill that would give South Pasadena negotiating power with Caltrans.

"It's a step toward working with the surrounding communities," Mayor Mike Ten said. "Now it's up to the surrounding communities to take steps towards working with us."

Officials voted to rescind Resolution 7147, which the council passed in February. The resolution strictly defined the city's stance as opposed to any and all extensions of the 710 Freeway.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81tihdzaecc

METHANE!!!!!

"Methane gas, toxic chemicals and teenagers don't mix. But this dangerous combination is on the verge of exploding at Beverly High, turning the school into a mega-disaster."

New ‘under construction’ map for Metro Rail debuts:
http://thesource.metro.net/2013/06/13/new-under-construction-map-for-metro-rail-debuts/

http://lametthesource.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/13-2011_map_gm_underconst_may13-1.jpg

Article on LA transit as it compares to other cities.

https://pedestrianobservations.com/2018/11/11/meme-weeding-los-angeles-density/?fbclid=IwAR2G5GEaKJ0ZZrmIxaDUNgRb2TFhZQQgFBD5KzL21eZqnZMZe8Rf_iEPs88

yowza!

Good news from Under The Westside: we completed excavating both tunnels for Section 2 of the Purple (D Line) Extension last week btwn Wilshire/La Cienega and Century City! In the pic are the tunneling machines for Sect 2 at Wilshire/Rodeo last year. pic.twitter.com/NMNNKcBudf

— LA Metro (@metrolosangeles) January 17, 2023

suck it Beverly Hills NIMBYs!

...ok, everyone ready? on three...
ring... ring...
Hello?
Hello, City of Vernon?
Yeah? (1 - 2 - 3)
"WE DON'T GIVE A FUCK!"

City of Vernon pumps the brakes on Union Station revamp
https://ktla.com/news/california/city-of-vernon-pumps-the-brakes-on-union-station-revamp/

"no-car" Olympics in four years?