Los Angeles Thread #11: Let's Save Vincente Minnelli's House

i'm glad a new record store still places value on good older vinyl and isn't just a wall of bins of $30 animal collective reissues or whatever.

i am also going to six organs of admittance on the 27th, the pop group on march 10th, and faith no more in april. anyone going to that sparks valentine's day show? or babes in toyland at the roxy? (i see that babes are also doing a set at pappy & harriet's; there are still tix for that and they're only $20, if anyone wants to offer up their car for a road trip.)

Would normally be at Sparks but I'm up in the Bay Area next weekend. And will have to mix Six Organs, sadly! Timing, it happens.

My sis and I will be at the Sparks V-day show.

Will definitely be at The Pop Group show on March 10th and at The Church at the El Rey on Feb 27th.

Is it possible to drive mulholland drive to Malibu? Last time she tried my sis says she ended up on a dirt road. What do we do at that point?

There's a section that's unpaved between the 405 and Topanga Canyon. Go to Topanga and catch Mulholland west from there.

WTF? The Tiki-Ti is closed indefinitely...
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Tiki-Ti/39568358564

Oh dear. Not much going on in this thread, is there?

I just noticed there was a new thread. I linked this one in the #10 thread.

haha sorry, i got self-conscious about posting stuff that no one responded to and then the thread died.

^^^ story of my life.

we're all still hung over from the pizza party

Brush fire in the Cajon Pass (with pics).

http://laist.com/2015/07/17/north_fire_cajon_pass.php

Have a feeling the burning carrier of SUVs is going to be the symbolic takeaway

http://pbs.twimg.com/media/CKJxW1KVAAAYEYe.jpg

hey so how does one find an apartment (/room) in this city

Craigslist is probably the most common way. Westside Rentals is an agency you pay that is widespread, but I've heard mixed reports about them.

yeah, definitely craiglist.

Another way is to go to the neighborhood in which you want to live and walk around, looking for "For Rent" signs. I've had luck with this approach more than once.

hey thanks folks! i'm craigslisting, i was just checking in case there was some slightly tidier route i hadn't noticed (apparently the closed facebook group los angeles apartments is pretty okay).

I was convinced this dude lived in the IE, but nope.. pacific palisades all the way.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3172296/It-s-worse-Twilight-Zone-movie-Decomposing-body-car-hidden-5M-gun-arsenal-missing-mother-two-believed-dead-man-alien-secret-agent-sent-save-human-race.html

also great url, thanks daily mail

Someone in the IE couldn't have afforded that many guns.

Just saw this posted. a 2-day free music fest at the Hammer. Artist list at the link below.

ALL THE INSTRUMENTS AGREE: an exhibition or a concert is a two-day program of back-to-back live performances by over 25 local, national, and international sound artists, music collectives, art bands, and visual artists whose practices extend into the production of sound. Conceived as an exhibition in the form of a concert, the continuous program of performances will alternate between two outdoor stages in the Hammer courtyard from noon to 10 p.m. each day.

http://hammer.ucla.edu/instruments/

^^^ Sept 26 and 27

DJ'ing at Blipsy Barcars in Koreatown tonight - starting at 10pm!

I can guarantee that $5 in quarters, cheap drinks, and a strangely bizarre jukebox is a far better return-on-investment than six months of therapy!
369 N Western Ave, Los Angeles CA 90004
http://www.yelp.com/biz/blipsy-bar-los-angeles

hammer event looks dope but what a weird line to pull out of context for the title

http://laist.com/2015/09/15/some_rich_jerks_claim_diplomatic_im.php

I drive through these neighborhoods every day and loathe everyone who lives there.. mostly because of jealousy..

in reality the only victims are other rich entitled fucks?

don't hate me, man (though not technically in a bh zip code)

i don't like these people either. i've seen race cars almost kill people, go on incoming traffic lanes, been cut off by them a handful of times, seen a totalled lamborghini on a light post, and hear their engines revving up a lot, and this is all in the course of 8 months

when I was in the airport in a mexico at some terrible bubba gump a kid working there asked me since I live in LA, do I see lamborghini's every day.. unfortunately the answer is basically yes.

haha.

funny thing is these cars are usually driving on streets with a lot of traffic so they never go more than 35 miles per hour, yet you hear this huge engine sound

i may rob some banks so i can go to Mets-Dodgers playoff games

NYT discovers Boyle Heights.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/17/arts/design/new-art-galleries-enjoy-a-los-angeles-advantage-space.html?smid=fb-share

so what's going on halloween night, la?

My gf is DJ'ing at Blipsy on Halloween
http://www.yelp.com/biz/blipsy-bar-los-angeles

Looking to move by the end of the year and I just revised my "things to look out for in a new neighborhood" to read:

- Local flooding
- Can record drums in it.
- Violent crime statistics
- Mudslides
- Close to metro train line station
- Sharks
- Nearby (not close) In-N-Out burger

need to add: poisonous sea snakes

how many of those are positives?

elvis, e.g., el segundo, hermosa beach, manhattan beach, redondo beach, and long beach. culver city seems a bit of a ways?

are you willing to wait til the "early 2016" opening of the santa monica station?

I'm actually looking at places along the new segment of the Gold Line.

nice. i'm eyeing the (south) pasadena area myself.

I work a couple days a week in S. Pasadena and commute in via Metrolink/Gold Line. I'd absolutely move there if my income could support it.

Try El Sereno or Hermon, now that Highland Park proper is also getting pricey.

I've seen a couple of new stainless steel garage door things in El Sereno. Word is out.

Forces out of my control intervened - looks like I'm bunkering through El Nino here in the OC.

In the city of South Pasadena itself, add $100K-200K to the price of any house due to the school district.

should have said "value" as opposed to "price"

Big Bowie remembrance gig at HM157 on Saturday night. Should be fun!
https://www.facebook.com/events/177258945965503/

Saw that, and am thinking of going.

Me and my family will be in town Feb. 3-10. We've got a lot of places to visit and touristy things to do on our list, but any recommendations for specific events or happenings, family-friendly or otherwise, during that time period would be appreciated.

if your kids like trains, check out the train rides at Griffith Park. I don't know how old your kids are obv but:

http://www.griffithparktrainrides.com

Also, the California Science Center down by USC is cheap and they have the Space Shuttle Endeavour there. I recommend Super Bowl Sunday (assuming you're not watching the game); we just went this past Sunday and it wasn't a big crowd, I suspect bc of the playoff games.

http://californiasciencecenter.org

I can recommend a few family friend joints to eat at too, finding places that are good with kids can be hit or miss. This ain't Chicago or Portland.

opening scene of heat, except that spot is no good. 405 is 7 minutes, and the 110 is a parking lot and 4 minutes away.

here come those santa ana winds again

And again!

Found out today that the house insurance has been cancelled. We're a mile away from the state defined Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone border (hell, we're closer to the 210 freeway than we are to the hillside) but nevertheless...

i didnt know that that could happen? jeez

Background to all this from Sept. 2021: https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2021-09-26/california-fire-insurance-moratorium-expire

A California moratorium guaranteeing insurance in wildfire-threatened areas lapsed Saturday, putting 347,000 homes in Pasadena and other Los Angeles foothills communities at the mercy of the market.

As many as 2.4 million homes are at risk of losing protection in 2021 as yearlong grace periods expire — though new disasters may extend their shields. In all, 18% of the state’s households could effectively lose protection, the largest single group since the moratorium law took effect three years ago.

“We’re going to pay the bill for climate change one way or the other, and it’s just a question of how we divvy up that cost,” said David Russell, co-director of the Center for Risk Management and Insurance at Cal State Northridge. “What California politicians are trying to do is tinker with how we do that. They’re buying time, hoping they get a break.”

Climate change has been rough on the world’s fifth-biggest economy: Wildfires torched nearly 4 million acres last year and more than 2 million so far this year; the Dixie and Caldor fires, two of the biggest, still aren’t entirely contained.

Fires in 2017 and 2018 alone wiped out more than a quarter-century of underwriting profits for the California insurance market, according to Milliman Inc., a risk assessment company. As insurers rushed to recalibrate risks, consumers were shocked by canceled policies and soaring rates.

In 2018, after the Camp fire destroyed more than 18,000 buildings, lawmakers in Sacramento prevented insurance companies from canceling homeowner policies in or adjacent to wildfire areas for 12 months after the day of an emergency declaration. The idea was to protect consumers after traumatic episodes and to give them time to make their homes more fire resistant. That, ideally, would prevent higher rates or cancellations.

“Even when these moratoriums end, they have given people time to make their homes safer,” California Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara, said in a statement to Bloomberg, an argument he has made on numerous occasions. “I expect insurance companies to take that into account.”

It’s hard to tell whether this is wishful thinking or effective policy. Even before the law was enacted, California’s highly regulated market was seeing insurers quit the state or refuse to write new policies. In 2019, the last period for which information was available, the state saw a 31% uptick in non-renewals. Over the same period there was a 36% increase in homeowners using the California FAIR Plan, the state’s bare-bones alternative for those who can’t get insurance in the traditional market.

ugh. for what it's worth, i owned an extremely difficult-to-insure LA house until a couple years ago, and i got my insurance through a small local brokerage, prodigy insurance, who were incredibly easy to work with and who went above and beyond repeatedly on my behalf, and i'd recommend them highly to anyone.

I wonder how many homes have been destroyed in California over, say, the past decade?

I suppose wildfires have been prevalent enough that a) our friend's aunt died in the Camp Fire, b) a wonderful Airbnb farm we stayed at was destroyed and all the animals lost, and c) a restaurant we went to on our honeymoon was destroyed.

Adding up the yearly statistics at https://www.fire.ca.gov/incidents/ I get 57,751 structures destroyed since 2013.

A college friend who used to live in the hills above Santa Cruz told me that instead of resolutions, he and his wife began every new year by asking themselves "is this the year our house is going to burn down and destroy everything we own?" Eventually that did happen when the CZU Complex fire not just burned down their house but most of their town too. They got out with what they could throw in their car.

Maybe move

The ironic punch line to this is that California isn't even in the top ten of most expensive states to insure a house. It's mostly all the tornado alley states + Florida.

(an acquaintance who moved to Texas for the usual "Southern California is too expensive, shitty, etc. etc." reasons arrived in Texas just in time for the 2021 deep freeze that wrecked their house's plumbing. their home insurance is four times what they were paying in SoCal and now they're having regrets from moving in the first place)

I'm presently at the edge of a fire hazard zone, so feel pretty okay about that. But I'm in a "liquefaction" zone.

Long-timers here like to bring up "every chimmney in your neighborhood collapsed after the 1991 quake" *sigh*

Long, but worthwhile read on Long Beach's attempts to redevelop and gentrify the gravesite of Acres Of Books

https://forthe.org/perspectives/gentrification-broadway-block/

w.r.t. the killings off of the 395 - I recently listened to the Dreamtown podcast. It's a long one about Adelanto and its attempts at being one of the first legal weed grow cities. In short, it's a clusterfuck... I don't feel particularly great about saying that Inland Empire corruption is an obvious background for modern noir stories because real people are involved here, but hfs

https://crooked.com/podcast-series/dreamtown-the-story-of-adelanto/

i think what a lot of people who aren't from California don't quite get is the sense of overwhelming bleakness that can be found in some parts of the state, and the sense of lawlessness.

the above murders were enough to make Borderland Beat as a news story -- they almost exclusively cover what's been occurring in Mexico w/r/t drug violence but this could have ties to a larger cartel though nothing was concrete or pinpointed.

https://www.borderlandbeat.com/2024/01/5-arrests-made-for-6-shot-dead-in.html

some authorities are blaming marijuana legalization(!) which seems like a bad area to lay blame.

The sheriff blames illicit marijuana, which seems more reasonable. Although you could blame U.S. drug policy in general.

i suppose i err on the side of law enforcement making a dumb argument, he could however be arguing that the prop was a half-measure when a full legalization would be better.

not really related, i'm a bit astonished by crime around here and how it's covered sometimes, when i witnessed a drive-by shooting near downtown L.A. i never even found out if the guy survived, nor was it ever reported by a single news source. LAPD didn't tell me a single thing when i called them up. it never even appeared on the official crime map.

a murder that occurred one block away from me a couple years before that was reported by The Eastsider LA and seemingly just buried elsewhere (all i could determine is the guy was a drug dealer.) it makes me wonder what we never ever hear about.

A week ago there was a big raid on a storefront on E Colorado that used to be an illegal weed dispensary but something was going on that warranted a dozen police cars most of whom were unmarked. Zero news anywhere other than one person on Citizen

In other news, fuck this guy
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/fred-rosen-battle-bel-air-subway-1235807662/

In mundane news, I have been visiting relatives who live in Hermosa Beach, they've been here almost 30 years. Wanted to see music tonight, but got out-voted and we went to a comedy club here. Some funny ones. May do some tourist stuff and museums in the rain tomorrow.

Everyone stay safe & dry out there

Made it up to Griffith Observatory before rain got too heavy. Had lunch at Gualaguezta , a Oaxacan Mexican restaurant touted long ago by Jonathan Gold, then saw Joni Mitchell’s old Laurel Canyon house, and the Laurel Canyon Country Store. Rain was coming down hard on our way back to Hermosa Beach. Decided to stay in tonight

I'm putting on a c00l show if u like old punks for FREE at Canters on Thursday

https://i.imgur.com/tXsY6H5.png

That looks fun but we will be down in San Diego Thursday. Some old DC punks are doing west coast shows this week- Hammered Hulls with singer Alec Mackaye.

guelaguetza is so good. sorry you’re having such a torrential visit curmudgeon!

Glad you got back to Hermosa Beach safely. I almost didn't make it up Benedict Canyon last night. In fact, I didn't make it "up"; I had to turn around, get up to Mulholland off the 405, and come down. Lots of mud, rocks, other debris. What a mess.

BREAKING: A rain gauge at UCLA has picked up 12.46 inches of rain in 24 hours.

Per NOAA statistics, that’s 1.1 inches MORE than a thousand-year rainfall event.

The odds of an place in the Los Angeles area seeing a 11.5 inch/24 hour rain event any given year is 0.1%. pic.twitter.com/s2byz4u6Cd

— Matthew Cappucci (@MatthewCappucci) February 6, 2024

Hope Diddy Riese didn't get washed out...

LA Times says El Nino and Climate change together of course have made this so bad. So we have been safely able to get around some, and went to LACMA yesterday and saw the El Chavez Ravine exhibit by Vincent Valdes and Ry Cooder about how Latino immigrants were kicked out to build Dodgers stadium and promised a new housing project that was never delivered. It uses a painted old Good Humor truck to convey what happened. We also saw multiple other exhibits there, and wandered past outdoor La Brea Tarpits enclosures by that museum. Ate at Oste for lunch and had Korean food at Jang su Jang in Torrance for dinner.

Sounds like you're having a good visit, despite the rain!

I saw sunlight for approximately 2 minutes earlier this afternoon and now we are getting hammered again

Yeah I’m usually one of those “bring on the rain” folks, but this is starting to suuuuck

Yeah, it's starting to feel a little Blade Runner out there.

Yep. My wife and had a good visit in LA & Hermosa Beach despite the rain , and despite not seeing any music. Then we went over to Joshua Tree for a bit, and now down in San Diego.

Happy to see Measure HLA pass

the windstorm on Thursday was strong enough to knock down our backyard fence and knock out power for the block, but the power surge from multiple blackouts/brownouts was strong enough to kill the electrical outlets in our kitchen, take out our microwave, and fry a half-dozen surge protectors. can't really plug anything in and still on vague power until tomorrow when a electrician diagnoses (suspect one or more circuit breakers were killed too)

This week in Grand Theft Auto

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzAt5kTZl_0

Comics and LA buds. The late great Neal Adam’s comic shop is closing tomorrow (Wednesday, 7-31) in Burbank that was still being operated by his son and family. Go grab a book and send some love if you can. (Lifted from Scott Shaw!) please RT pic.twitter.com/OcZTdTS3fw

— 🎃 Dave Scheidt 🎃 (@DaveScheidt) July 31, 2024

did Adams ever live in LA?

I have no proof, but after hearing about the Pacific Dining Car burning up on Saturday my conspiracy theory is that property redevelopers are torching buildings and putting the frame on the unhoused.

not would it be too difficult to find an unhoused person willing to do the deed for a modest fee, I imagine.

yup

One thing did stand out from this report:
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-08-03/pacific-dining-car-building-heavily-damaged-in-fire

"A tent, mattresses and charred shopping carts could be seen along the north side of the restaurant building". It'll be interesting to see if it's immediately demolished. The story stands out because a similar thing happened here in the UK - a year ago a historic pub was sold to new owners, after which it mysteriously caught fire:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cv2g2nwn3zzo

And what was left of the pub was completely demolished two days later, which was extraordinarily swift and very convenient for the new owners.

Tomorrow...

THIS SATURDAY Sep 21 | 5:30PM: Tomorrow Yesterday: Futuristic Visions from the Past, a Science/Art Film Exhibition. Short film treasures from the National Film Board of Canada & experimental filmmakers, exploring the intersection of art & science. https://t.co/gWpqhsI7wu pic.twitter.com/OSKPGNwNgI

— Mount Wilson Observatory (@MtWilsonObs) September 20, 2024