Los Angeles Thread #5: That fearsome excavation on Magnolia Boulevard

As JBR sayeth before, so shall it be anew: New Year, New Thread.

(JBR is currently experiencing technical difficulties with connecting to Teh Interweb, but asked that the steak be claimed re. a new thread in Los Angeles.)

What happenings in the Southland?

steak

Mmm, steak.

winter margaritas, you guys. when/where?

My vote is for winter steaks.

holy fuck a week ago I went to dinos on pico and ate half a chicken in like 15 minutes how have I only heard about this place now

carne asada + margs

xp where on pico is dino's?

a couple blocks from alvarado going away from the staples center

Sounds promising to me!

Former editor Marc Cooper with the full background on the assimilation/demise of the LA Weekly

ugh jill stewart that explains the stench. i'd take the first few years of new times l.a. over the current weekly tbh.

but hey nikki finke still gets to write for a living which is comforting in a way

jeesus, is it normally like this in january? ay! hot hot hot!

Global Warming, innit.

Definitely not going to miss tomorrow (Wednesday) night at the Hammer...

http://www.centerforvisualmusic.org/Events.htm
January 21, 2009 - CVM's new Essential Visual Music: Rare Classics program at UCLA Film and Television Archive's Billy Wilder Theatre, at The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. 35mm/16mm. 7:30 pm. Free Admission. UCLA Film & TV Archive Calendar. The theatre is at the Courtyard level of The Hammer Museum, 10899 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90024.

UCLA Film and Television Archive and the Center for Visual Music (CVM) are pleased to present this program of rarely screened films from the CVM collection. This evening features a range of works, from experiments by German film pioneers to light show psychedelia, and highlights the evolving technology and artistic sophistication of visual music and experimental animation. Several of the works in the show were designed to be used in performance contexts, light shows and other expanded forms of cinema, often with independent musical accompaniment. Accordingly, one of the themes that emerges from this program is a dialogue between structure and spontaneity in visual music. A number of the films were made in Southern California, and include early experiments in computer graphics from UCLA in the 1960s and Cal Arts in the 1970s. Many of the prints in this show represent recent preservation work by CVM. Includes films by Oskar and Hans Fischinger, Jules Engel, Charles Dockum, Mary Ellen Bute, John Stehura, David Lebrun, and Sixties Light Show films by Jud Yalkut/USCO and The Single Wing Turquoise Bird. Program presented by archivist/curator Cindy Keefer; a Q & A with filmmakers Michael Scroggins, David Lebrun and Peter Mays follows the screening.

Full program here:
http://www.centerforvisualmusic.org/VMEssenClassics.htm

i'm not expecting much but i'd like to poke my head in here sometime this weekend:

http://www.gogreenexpo.com/events/index.php?evid=3

Hi peeps - in slightly over 24 hours I will be in your town, til 5 Feb! I've got plans at the weekends already so FAPing is probably out of the question but no plans during the week, so on the off-chance any LA ILX0rs are up for meeting up midweek thought I may as well post in here...

Not liking the exchange rate at all btw!

http://la.curbed.com/archives/2009/01/metro_pushes_forward_four_projects_including_two_subways.php

just got hailed on in los feliz, kinda weird

Nowcast as of 11:25 PM PST on January 25, 2009

Now
At 1115 PM...Doppler radars indicated a line of heavy showers and thunderstorms extending from La Canada south southwestward to just east of Hollywood. This line was moving east. Pea sized hail has been reported by spotters in La Canada and Altadena...and hail was accumulating on the ground in some areas. As these showers and storms move across the San Gabriel valley and adjacent mountains...heavy downpours and small hail can be expected. Accumulating small hail could make for very slippery conditions on area roadways across the San Gabriel valley through the early morning hours. In the mountains...local snow accumulations up to three inches are possible above 3500 feet.

i always lol @ "la canada" when i see it in print

craigslist already has it covered:

Burrr, its hailing - any straight man want a warm lip on hard cock? - 29 (Hollywood)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Reply to: pers-1007902✧✧✧@craigsl✧✧✧.o✧✧ [?]
Date: 2009-01-25, 11:19PM PST

Just at home drinking and smoking some joints. Just got surprised by the hail snow storm. Any straight man want to have a nice warm wet mouth to nurse their hard cock? I am hanging out, very clean, disease free - just discreet here looking to suck and please you. I am looking for now, got great 420 here.

i don't think the hail made it to my part of the valley. which is fine, i've had enough weather excitement this weekend.

http://imgred.com/http://assets.hulu.com/shows/key_art_hot_hot_los_angeles.jpg

http://i561.photobucket.com/albums/ss51/tr_fudge/key_art_hot_hot_los_angeles.jpg

omg the robert oppenheimer docudrama on pbs

anybody see that shit

oh tavis smiley why u do dat

charlie rose: "obama seems to be both of the moment and above it, in a way..."
david axelrod: UH

for like 4 minutes. in fairness i think he forgot the question about 5 seconds in

so ok excuse me the oppenheimer thing was intense. david straitharn as him being subjected to a vicious psyops cross-examination in a hearing re: the loss of his security status. i assume it's from transcripts. maybe the most powerful courtroom scene i've ever seen. The actor who played the lawyer deserves an emmy. i wouldn't ever want to talk to that dude

ok, this is a japan post but the link is from an l.a. website:

http://la.streetsblog.org/2009/01/27/underground-bike-parking-in-japan/#more-1664

looks like it could be fairly energy intensive (and expensive to implement, esp. all the digging), but the concept is FUCKING COOL.

the poster is a futurist kraftwerkian wet dream:

http://la.streetsblog.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/01_22/1_27_09__eco_cycle.jpg

Griffith Park Designated Historic-Cultural Monument

By Joanna Lin
January 27, 2009

Griffith Park was designated a historic-cultural monument this morning, making it one of the largest landmarks in the country. The designation, approved unanimously by the Los Angeles City Council, puts major changes and developments in the park under the review of the city’s Cultural Heritage Commission.

Some newer areas of the park, including freeways, the Los Angeles Zoo and the Autry National Center, are not subject to the same commission oversight. The city’s Department of Recreation and Parks still owns and operates the 4,218-acre urban park.

Griffith Van Griffith, whose great-grandfather gave the park to the city in 1896, applied last summer for the park’s landmark status. At City Hall today with his wife, Barbara, he said he was “ecstatic.” His great-grandfather, he said, would be “doing a little jig in his mausoleum” in celebration of the designation.

The park's monument designation received widespread community support, with dozens of boosters attending every city hearing and hundreds signing petitions in favor of the landmark status. Griffith and the park’s supporters said they are hopeful the designation will provide protection for the park from commercial developments, such as those briefly proposed in a 2005 master plan commissioned by the city.

“There was never an absolute threat to the park, but this absolutely protects the park,” said Councilman Tom LaBonge, whose district includes Griffith Park. LaBonge was an early skeptic of landmark designation but strongly supported it after he said he was assured it did not negatively affect the park or the city’s stewardship of it. For many supporters, landmark designation also signals a renewed interest in the country’s largest urban park.

“The park has been repositioned in our city’s consciousness as the heart,” said Bernadette Soter, a member of the Greater Griffith Park Neighborhood Council who rallied community members to support the designation.

Though historic designation of the park passed smoothly in the City Council, the application was the subject of heated debate throughout the legislative process. Various city utility departments have expressed concern over how landmark designation would affect their operations and general maintenance of the park’s infrastructure.

City officials say those departments are working with the Office of Historic Resources, which oversees city landmarks, to iron out the logistics over the next six months. A ceremony at Griffith Park to mark the designation is being planned for the spring, LaBonge said.
___________

bunnies!

http://unhipla.blogsome.com/2009/01/24/fear-of-a-rabbit-planet/

can i just say how much i love the 110 fwy. i mean 6:30 eastbound traffic bumper to bumper seemingly impassible i love the sport of it. and i know how to fucking drive.

Totally last minute, but we're playing The Airliner tonight at 10pm. Drink up and come avoid the rain!

Hawking guest lecture at the Pasadena Convention Center, March 9:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2009/02/11/guest-post-kip-thorne-on-stephen-hawking/

I have seen him give lectures. It is bizarre but certainly worth $10.

this is tonight at redcat:

http://annenberg.usc.edu/Events/2009/090211_doesLAneeddowntown.aspx

February 11, 2009

Does Los Angeles Need a Downtown?
REDCAT at the Walt Disney Concert Hall Complex, 631 West 2nd Street, Los Angeles, 8:30 p.m.

In an age of digitally networked cities, regions, nations and international hubs, is there still value -- economic, social, political, cultural -- in central downtown districts? CalArts President Steven D. Lavine invites three of L.A.'s most influential urban thinkers to ponder this question in the first of a series of roundtable discussions on the evolving shape of urbanism in the City of Angels. The distinguished panelists are Manuel Castells, the Wallis Annenberg Chair in Communication Technology and Society and author of Society, The Information Age: Economy and Culture; Edward Soja, Distinguished Professor of Urban Planning at the UCLA School of Public Affairs and author of Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and Other Real-and-Imagined Places; and Cecilia Estolano, CEO of the Community Redevelopment Authority of the City of Los Angeles. Free admission with USC ID. Presented by CalArts and ALOUD at Central Library as part of Talking City: L.A. Today and Tomorrow.

http://www.forbes.com/2009/02/23/villaraigosa-economy-unemployment-jobs-opinions-columnists_los_angeles.html

^^good points in the column because after villaraigosa's really somewhat hope-inducing election he's just turned into a "mayor carcetti" type, but at the same time using rick caruso as a dissenting voice of reason is cringe-worthy.

^^good points in the column because after villaraigosa's really somewhat hope-inducing election he's just turned into a "mayor carcetti" type, but at the same time using rick caruso as a dissenting voice of reason is cringe-worthy.

Bear in mind that it's a Joel Kotkin editorial. He's utterly consistent in his criticism of cities and Suburbs Über Allies.

I'm shocked, SHOCKED to find gentrification reversing in Eagle Rock! Bohemian Sprawl Hits the Limits in Los Angeles

Heads up - there's a lot to be annoyed about in/with the article. Starting with:

WHEN Emily Cook, a screenwriter, bought a house four years ago in Eagle Rock, a neighborhood on the Northeast side of Los Angeles, she fantasized what the area might look like in a year or two, with cafes and boutiques replacing tattered old businesses. “It was like fantasy football,” said Ms. Cook, 38, who also sings in a band named Fonda.

A sad flower shop on the corner, she thought, could become a miniature Whole Foods. An upholstery store could be a gastropub where she and friends would grab a beer, and a neglected 1940s diner could become a retro spot for a quick meal.

But Ms. Cook has stopped fantasizing about what might be, and started worrying about what might shut down. The flower store has closed; no gourmet market is moving in. Lucy Finch, a vintage boutique, folded last month. That Yarn Store, a hangout for crochet-heads, didn’t survive a bad winter.

And what will become of the storefront that once housed Blue Heeler, which sold Australian imports?

“Please don’t make it another martial arts studio,” Ms. Cook pleaded. “What is it about Eagle Rock and martial arts?”

The deep recession, with its lost jobs and falling home values nationwide, poses another kind of threat: to the character of neighborhoods settled by the young creative class, from the Lower East Side in Manhattan to Beacon Hill in Seattle. The tide of gentrification that transformed economically depressed enclaves is receding, leaving some communities high and dry.

For long-time residents, the return to pre-boom rents may be a blessing. But it also poses a rattling question of identity: What happens to bourgeois bohemia when the bourgeois part drops out?

Over the last five to six years, Eagle Rock became the glamour girl of Northeast Los Angeles, a crescent where the asphalt jungle meets the foothills. The neighborhood of 35,000 or so has attracted screenwriters and composers, Web designers and animators, who labor on their laptops in cafes, discuss film projects at Friday night wine tastings, and let their children play with the handmade wooden toys in a Scandinavian-style coffee shop, Swork.

lol my cousin owned a martial arts studio in eagle rock until last year. yr welcome b*tch!

Read to the end of the article, Tremendoid! She's thinking about taking it up now! :-D

Besides, this is the best part:

The new residents brought prosperity and, the locals say, a little arrogance as well. “They sounded the trumpets and announced a vision of something like Silver Lake or Los Feliz,” said Bob de Velasco, who runs Commercial Printing Network, a copy shop. “But it’s not going to happen. Eagle Rock wasn’t meant to have that. Eagle Rock is an old-fashioned, atmospheric town.”

Indeed, in this downturn, Mr. de Velasco’s printing shop doesn’t seem to be hurting, nor is Tritch Hardware. The shops at risk are the ones playing the Decemberists in a continuous loop.

“Some of them tried niche things,” Mr. Tritch said, with no gloat in his voice. “That didn’t work out.”

who the fuck would think that an australian import shop would do well anywhere, let alone eagle rock

xxp it's out of my hands now but that's good to know >%-)

the womans sort of bitchy about it, but there are more auto shops and martial arts studios in eagle rock than in most hoods. all things considered tho its a pretty great little place in a pretty perfect location.

also its a weird hood to take up w/r/t discussions of gentrification due to oxy's presence

tons of really pretty houses btw

And the view South from the 134 on a clear night is one of the best in LA.

ITT The Viper Room

i think it's proof that music that matters® is back on the sunset strip

Youd also think the people who charge $20 for parking near that shithole have a vested interest in keeping it a tourist trap.

huell howser meets clementine the goat!

http://ow.ly/KnGy

Maybe we need a quiddities thread for the LA Times.

nachos complete with gooey orange cheese product ($26)

more like lol lol land

HOW DARE YOU MOCK THE PRODUCT ($341)

OG Hyde has great bones though. The bar that was there however many name-changes ago spawned BOONDOCK SAINTS.

Super exclusive!

Contact: For table reservations, call (323) 330-8018 or e-mail hydestaplestab✧✧✧@s✧✧.c✧✧; www.sbe.com/hydestaples

Hahahah okay somehow that just seems right. (xpost and that too)

Maybe we need a quiddities thread for the LA Times.

quiddities and agonies of the working class: "seven-member family gets evicted from studio apartment, is living in van. matriarch is let go from nanny job because the 761 bus to bel-air is always stuck in traffic on the sepulveda pass"

WHOOOOSHHHH! It's windy out!

my girlfriends latches on her bedroom window are weak to say the least.. bedroom windows were blown open at 7am this morning. =(

could be worse.. could live in lancaster or some other shithole where the winds are undoubtedly 100mph.

also glad Im not going north today as the 5 is closed for ice.

i just attempted to go outside and quickly realized i didn't want to be outside after all. back home now.

Ran into this guy on the walk to work...

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2731/4206082839_4cde1f2b80.jpg

could be worse.. could live in lancaster or some other shithole where the winds are undoubtedly 100mph.

MHV (Mojave airport) was reporting 30 knot winds with a temperature of 35°. I'll take a pass...

Ran into this guy on the walk to work...

There were a series of smaller ones on the 101 this morning. cars were literally swerving to miss them. I took the opportunity to plow straight through something at 75 mph.

Not even a scratch on the car!

Does anyone have a favorite Sichuan place?

Right now planning on hitting this place: http://www.yelp.com/biz/chung-king-san-gabriel

sounds like a place i would have loved in my twenties, when my body could handle that level of spice. ma po tofu sounds delicious right now.

I've been to Heng Yang Chili King in Monterey Park and liked it, but I can't compare it to Chunk King as I've never been there.

Does anyone have a favorite Sichuan place?

Right now planning on hitting this place: http://www.yelp.com/biz/chung-king-san-gabriel

I've eaten at Chung King a LOT though I slightly prefer the one on Garfield Ave. Their Chinese bacon with leeks is one of my Alltime Favorite Dishes anywhere.
Jonathan Gold's review of it is great: http://www.laweekly.com/2002-06-27/eat-drink/chile-scenes-of-summer/

Follow up on last post... Apparently, the chefs from the Garfield location have moved to the San Gabriel one.

Love Jonathan Gold. Love being back in LA.

ned, do you know if you'll be in town jan 8-11 yet?

Yup, will be around -- I thought you were arriving the week after though? No matter, I'll be here.

Cool! Let's go to Avanti one night that weekend? Friday, Saturday or Sunday are all fine right now. Will any other LA ilxors come, or should we take this to email?

[Not clicking the thread until I see it, but I assume you've already seen Avatar, which is also on my todo list for that weekeend.]

Whoops, forgot to reply -- if anyone else wants to head down next weekend, Avanti *is* worth it. If it's just us, Friday would be best; otherwise Saturday.

Cool. Will keep them both free for now.

What was the name of the Irvine area IMAX theater I should see Avatar at?

It's at a mall called the Spectrum:

http://www.fandango.com/edwardsirvinespectrum2126imax_aabtb/theaterpage

So this would be next weekend, right? I would be down.

The weekend of the 9th and 10th? I'd be down also.

Good to hear -- here's the info on Avanti:

http://www.avantinatural.com/

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=259+E.+17th+St.+Costa+Mesa,+CA+92627&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=27.22791,54.931641&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=259+E+17th+St,+Costa+Mesa,+Orange,+California+92627&z=16

Let me assure you that this is some of THE best food around, anywhere, and that you'd be crazy not to leave room for dessert. I'm on v. good terms with the owners as well and will be happy to book in a reservation -- in fact I'm swinging by there today, so how about Saturday the 9th at 5 pm? I can put us down for four people for now.

Sounds great.

It does sound great. I'm in.

I have a party to go to later that night, but if it's at 5 PM I can probably join you guys.

Good deal! Am just coming back from Avanti now and have already booked in for four; I'll give them a final number when I swing by again next Thursday so if anyone else will be joining beyond Jeff, post here. See everyone on the ninth!

sweet!

Meantime noting what get bent had said a while back, anyone up for a general record store scrounge, vinyl or otherwise? Will be up at Amoeba tomorrow around lunch but otherwise nothing specific planned.

Are we all set for tomorrow still?

Sure are, was about to revive the thread. 5 pm, set for five people at present, but if anyone else wants in let me know. Will see folks there!

I am in town!

I'm still in for Avanti.

Rock. And your timing couldn't be better, caek, given the weather.

owned:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2010/01/cyclist-sentenced.html

For great justice.

Meanwhile, Scott of Pretty Goes With Pretty called my attention to this, which sounds like a must at some point this month:

http://www.marshallastor.com/2010/01/06/lacma-has-the-best-art-thing-in-la-right-now/

toying with avatar tomorrow morning at the edwards irvine. seats aren't pre-allocated, right? let's say it's sold out (i'm planning on the 11.30am screening, so i'm not sure how likely that is). trying to figure out when to get there. what time does the room open? what time might i worry about a line forming and me ending up in shitty seets. or can i just turn up 15 mins before showtime and all will be well?

seets = seats, of course

Based on everything I was hearing from some group one table over at lunch, IMAX screenings are still selling out big time. I'd probably call their box office directly right now to be safe.

A new thread for 2010:

Los Angeles Thread #6: Bury My Heart At Forest Lawn