As I was yesterday, I'm again today doing some digging into the history of the buildings that were eventually transformed into Premiere Towers. Yesterday I found the Sep.1923, LA Times article that announced the building's opening. Today I found another article from April, 1922, announcing that the building would be constructed. The article includes a reference to the "Victoria Trask" property.

Announcements of plans for a new home for the California Bank were made yesterday for the first time. Negotiations have been completed by a group of local capitalists for the erection of a twelve-story class-A building on the Victoria Trask property, on the west side of Spring Street, between Sixth and Seventh streets.

So who or what is Victoria Trask? Apparently it's Mrs. Victoria Trask. A June, 1921, article announces "Twelve-Story Structure to Rise in New Financial District." The plans were announced by H.H. Ford, President of the Redlands National Bank, and the included drawing looks almost identical to the California Bank building announced the next year.

This property, owned by Mrs. Victoria Trask, was taken under a fifty-year lease by Mr. Ford several months ago, and tentative plans were prepared at that time for a nine-story structure to be erected on the property.

So who was Victoria Trask? She was married to Walter J Trask, or at least was until he died in 1911. Mr. Trask was a local lawyer, and his obituary says that he had been president of the Los Angeles Bar Association. They lived in a house at 1321 S. Figueroa, a location that definitely does not have housing any longer. A property Mrs. Trask owned was involved in an assessment dispute with the city in 1912, though the heart of the argument was over the city widening of Sunset, so the property involved would be different than the one that became Premiere. She was also active in real estate dealings back to 1902 (and possibly before that... I think that's about where I hit the beginning of the online Times archives).

I'm sitting in my MMORPG class right now. I don't really talk a lot about video games. Who does, really, outside of the people who make them? I mean you say, "Yeah, it's cool." and that's about the end of it.

I mentioned before that we're supposed to be playing Star Wars Galaxies, but that I don't have a machine that could play it. Well, turns out Annenberg really doesn't either at the moment. This is thanks to a number of things, large among them the fact that all Annenberg machines are remotely managed by ISD. ISD rolls out software to all machines at once, and local access is locked down pretty much completely. So even if ISD kicked the game out to machines, when run the game wouldn't even have the appropriate rights to install the patches it likes to download every week. I also doubt these machines have capable video cards, but that issue's farther down the road.

Our professor brought a machine from his office into the classroom today to show the character creation, only to find his network card getting disabled. ISD says his machine has a virus, even though the approved ISD virus protection software is indeed running. It's good to see that professors struggle with the same institutional issues you hear about students having all the time.

From a 1987 LA Times article titled, "You can walk outside. It's incredible."

The result, for example, in notorious "Crack Alley"--a trash-strewn walkway between 6th and 7th streets linking Broadway and Spring Street--is that "the selling (of narcotics in the alley) is about gone," said Ronald Rubacher, an officer on patrol there.

Hey... That's my alley. The one they're loudly power-washing as I type this.

A different article says that these drug-dealing problems are what led to the alley being fenced in. Now the only pests down there are the film crews that appear poised to be shining lights outside my window tonight.

There's not a lot online about the downtown building I call home, so I've sort of pooled the different info I have on the building together to make a page on Premiere Towers. I'll add to it as I get more material, especially material on the history of the buildings.

Right now I'm reading a really interesting piece from the April 1, 1991, LA Times. The piece, titled "Condo Pioneers Bitter as Spring Street Rebirth Fails," was written right in the midst of the dark times the Premiere conversion project went through. The CRA though there was going to be a condo market downtown, so they converted two old buildings into one condo project. Only about a quarter of the units sold and the CRA lost a lot of money in the resulting buy-back and resale.

It's interesting to look at what pricing was like back then.

Pierson, Tanasaphaisal and the other residents plunked down from $70,000 to $135,000 to buy condominiums at Premiere Towers, located at 6th and Spring streets. The 12-story, $12-million redevelopment project, which opened seven years ago, was described by the CRA as "a unique alternative for middle-income households desiring downtown living."

Look around at the current downtown condo market and you'll see lofts going for a half million dollars or more. Every unit that makes it to market is getting snapped up. But the CRA jumped the gun by a decade or two and lost its shirt on it.

Interestingly, the article mentions the Stock Exchange as being a failed nightclub.

Both the Stock Exchange nightclub, which opened in 1987 in the architecturally imposing former home of the Pacific Stock Exchange, and Irwin's, an upscale restaurant that had been aimed at the City Hall crowd, closed within the last two years.

Today the Stock Exchange is again a nightclub, and one that seems to be doing pretty well to judge by the traffic I see going in and out.

From a different Times article from 1986...

The artists who live in downtown Los Angeles' northeast industrial district have been predicting for years that as soon as word got out that something hip was happening in their reconstituted neighborhood, the yuppies would buy up all their funky lofts and spoil the fun.

You can check that one off as done.

This week's issue of the Downtown News has an article on Perry Kurtz and his attempts to launch comedy nights downtown. The piece, entitled "The Unsinkable Perry Kurtz: Local Funnyman Tries, Again, to Bring Comedy Downtown," includes this little snippet:

But even the Redwood audience beat Kurtz's next outing. A resident of Spring Street's Premiere Towers, Kurtz held his third comedy night in a community room at his condo building. Four tenants turned out. "How sad is that? People next door wouldn't walk down the hall!" he says.

Now, let's consider for a moment that three of those people were me. Well, me, Kathy, and Charlie, but you get the idea. There were a few others, bringing the count closer to double the four they list, but it was definitely still a sad turnout.

The real problem, though, is it wasn't really that funny. I don't know, maybe it was the room or the lack of crowd, but the acts just weren't all that comedic. Perry may kill at the Comedy Store, but after the night at Premiere Towers we just sort of left saying "Well, that was weird." Nothing against him, it just wasn't the kind of night set up for success. I do like his drive to get stuff going downtown, so I'd love to see the night take off. I just hope there are a few more laughs of the less nervous variety.

So I know I skipped out on the normal routine of answering the LA Blogs Friday questions. But, seriously, look at the assignment. That's not a fifteen minute project; that's a travel essay. I looked at them Friday morning, went "whoah... that might take a while", and then just never made it back to them. It's a good task, just one that I've dealt with many times before.

As you can see, I took the last couple days off here. My last post was Friday at 9am. Friday at 9pm I got a Tivo.

Coincidence?

Actually, yeah... But the Tivo has already made itself an integral part of my tv watching experience. I mentioned earlier in the month that the Toshiba SD-H400 was really tempting me, and in the end it won. I even purchased it despite missing the $199 sale, and having to pay $250 instead (before $100 mail-in rebate). The urge was still there, though, so I gave in.

I was primarily worried about how the Tivo and the Comcast digital cable box would interact. Thankfully it's better than I had feared. The cable box does have a working serial port, and the Tivo can use it to change channels. That keeps me from having to worry about any sort of an IR repeater. Channel changing is a bit sluggish, but other than that it's fine.

It's amazing how quickly it clicks that the Tivo is a very different tv watching experience. Last night Kathy and I were watching Sportscenter, and she walked into the kitchen for a minute. She returned for #2 of the week's top 10 plays. "Do you have the others?" "Sure." Hit the reverse button, back up a minute or two, and there we are at #10. That's what Tivo's automatic recording of live tv will do for you.

But you know all that; it's just me that's quite late to the Tivo party.

I went to bed last night to the faint sound and smell of a diesel generator running in the alley down below me. I don't know what they were shooting, but the street outside my apartment was packed full of production trucks and personnel. Broadway was involved, too, with a bank of lights set atop the Palace Theatre illuminating the buildings across the street. Today the generators have been replaced with trucks. A good change in my book. Some Downtown residents get very cynical about filming. I'm not at that point, I still enjoy seeing it, but I will admit that there are times you wish it would just go away.

I decided today, before even attending the first class session, to drop my improv class. It's a 2-unit class, and at some point in either this semester or the next I do need to take one of those. But I don't think that time is right now. This semester is a pretty important one in terms of reversing my long-term trend of slacking off and while it may not appear at first glance that dropping a class is the way to do that, well, I think it is. This also gives me a neat time in my schedule to add the 4 telecommuting hours I hadn't quite placed yet, so that's an added benefit. And it gives me just one more thing with which to blow up my spring schedule.

For the last few semesters I've been quite good at scheduling my life into just Tuesdays and Thursdays to fit in some full days at work, but next semester that just isn't to be. I'm pretty much resigned to the fact that I'm going to be hereon campus every day in the spring, so why not be here for 18 units instead of just 16?

So that leaves me four classes for this semester, and I'm excited about all of them, so I guess that's pretty good.

There's something about watching movies in the morning that just makes the rest of your day a little weird. Today was the first go for my speculative cinema class. It looks like it's going to be fascinating, but pretty intense. I'm one of only two non-cinema majors, and the other guy is only business because he's still trying to apply for film (a separate and much harder process). Several of the 20 students are taking this as a grad class.

This morning we watched the 1979 film Time After Time. Due to a scheduling conflict, we watched the film in the 350 or so seat Norris Theater -- all 20 of us. That was kind of weird. The movie itself was good. It just feels like you should get out of a movie and have it be night time, not 1pm.

Oh yeah, and the film had David Warner in it -- Sark from Tron. I love that movie. And he's also been in about 150 other things, but Tron's what's important.

It's funny attending something you used to be in charge of, but no longer are. I've been involved in Campus Crusade at USC since I was a Freshman, and from spring of that year through spring of last year I was running sound for their weekly meeting. Today is the first meeting of the new year, and the first time I haven't been running sound in two and a half years.

It's hard to resist that urge to hear something I dont like and want to go fix it. I hate bad sound. I think that's one of the only reasons I ever got into running it. Well that and it was "oh, you know how to work a sound board?"

The trouble for me was that I knew what I liked, but didn't really have any of the theoretical background to know the acoustic modelling behind how to EQ particular instruments.

Right now though I can tell you that an acoustic guitar doesn't need as much in the highs. Tinny acoustic is pretty rough.

Oh well, I'm a normal person now.

I've never been a fan of the Bus Riders Union. They sued the MTA ten years ago and got it to agree to a consent degree saying that it would add a lot of bus service, etc. And this may have really been important ten years ago. But today the BRU is stuck in the impossible mindset that buses are exclusively the answer. The LA Times today has an article on ongoing disputes involving the consent decree. The BRU continues to allege that Metro needs to add more buses and more service, and any time Metro starts to plan a rail line the BRU comes out opposed. In light of that background, I found the following from today's article to be pretty funny:

Bernardo Torres, 40, said Rapid buses often get so crowded that people start fighting. But he isn't sure that more buses are the answer.

"There will be more traffic and the congestion will be even worse," he said. "I think they need light rail."

Don't tell that to the BRU... They won't like you very much.

We had the semi-yearly involvement fair at USC today. Basically at the beginning of each semester all the clubs set up tables out on Trousdale to recruit new members. I was out selling the waterski team, which is always fun and tiring. For a little over three hours you stand in front of your table holding a ski, telling everyone how cool your club is and how they should definitely come out and join. Now, granted, waterski/wakeboard isn't exactly the toughest sell... It's a pretty appealing event to begin with.

Here's the thing about our involvement fair signups... Every year we probably sign up more people at the involvement fair than any other club. This time I walked out with probably eighty names and email addresses. Of those people, though, maybe 15 will ever come out and I'll probably only see 5-8 more than once. What that tells me is that the demand is there, we just aren't selling ourselves properly. Sure, some of those people sign up without having any intention of ever showing up, but I'd say out of the 80 that's probably only 20 or so people. The rest are people who are genuinely interested, and what we need to do is figure out how to get them to turn that interest into action.

Next weekend will be important. It's a football bye week, so we can plan a Saturday trip. We need to go big and get people hooked right away, before classes and other commitments start to tie them up.

As promised earlier, I went to City Hall tonight to attend the meeting about the new police headquarters. It was my fist time in City Hall, so that part of it was cool in and of itself. It really is an amazing building.

I arrived at the meeting about a half hour after it started, so I missed any remarks and presentations that opened. What I was there for, and what went on a good hour plus, was public comment. For the most part you could divide the speakers into two camps:

• Little Tokyo people glad to see the HQ out of their district and into the Civic Center, and
• Higgins Building people wanting the HQ anywhere else but where they want to put it.

A lot of people said the same things over and over, and you get a little tired of that after a while. Brady Westwater, president of the Downtown Neighborhood Council (DLANC), made what I thought was the best use of the two minutes each person was given. Basically what he said was (a bit more diplomatically, but hey, it's my paraphrasing): All of you who want the HQ to not be there: get real. It's happening. People have signed off. That debate's over. The debate now has to be how to get LAPD to use the site in a way that maximizes usable public space.

The architect had some rough shapes on hand to fit into a cool cardboard version of the surrounding blocks. Some of the designs looked like they had real possibility. There will be a long give and take process to balance LAPD's priorities against those of nearby residents, but I think this is the time where that debate can be fruitful.

Some random notes:

• I would suggest against a public speaking tactic that involves trying to show up the public figures on hand. It's not going to work, and it just makes you look bad. Show respect at all times, even when you're attacking their policy.

• Opponents of the HQ played the children card, and had two young girls come read a little speech that talked about how they wanted the chance to grow up like normal little kids and could only have that with a park.

All in all, an interesting and informative time.

You know what I can't stand? Professors who don't know when to end a class. We're done. We've learned all we're going to learn this week. And yet we're still here, and we're waiting while he finds something online that he wants us to connect to.

Come on... I'm supposed to be at City Hall in a half hour. Let's wrap this up, please.

Ok, granted the class isn't officially supposed to end until 6:45. But we're done, let's go.

So I have a class on Massively Multiplayer Online Role-playing Games this semester, which I mentioned yesterday. Today is the first class period. One of the "texts" is the game Star Wars Galaxies: An Empire Divided. We get a free copy of the game and a 3-month free subscription, which is cool and all, but the hardware requirements are pretty intense. It requires a graphics card capable of hardware texture and lighting, which my GeForce4 is, but it's in a machine with a PII 400, and oh... It's running Linux. My laptop meets all requirements except the graphics card. I guess Annenberg is going to set up some lab computers for us, though, which should make it ok.

Update: For those of you who might be interested, here's a bit of the breakdown of the people in the class:

• 6 male, 2 female
• a few real gamers, but not all
• one cinema-television PhD student

So assuming I get out of class a little early today I think I'm going to be making my way down to City Hall to sit in on the meeting on the new LAPD headquarters. The LA Times also has an article today. Now, I don't have a lot invested in the debate so I'm really going more to sit and listen than I am to push any particular agenda. I do feel like it's a bit of a shame that the headquarters can't be rebuilt on the site of the current Parker Center, but I understand the economics of trying to fit a temporary headquarters while construction occurred. I am curious to see the plans for the new space, particularly to see if they do address the neighborhood's desire for a park in anything more than a token way. I don't think the whole space needs to be made into a park: the Civic Center doesn't do all that poorly for green space right now. It would be nice, though, to see the city hold true to what the neighborhood thinks it was promised.

At the very bottom of the LA Times article you get this quote, which doesn't really make any sense to me:

Three years ago, the City Council did approve a plan to make the entire block into "open space" as part of a land swap with the state.

But Perry said Monday the city never committed to a park.

"Open space does not mean park," the councilwoman said.

Well, ok, but I'm pretty sure open space doesn't mean police headquarters either.

So in the first installment of my censorship class we watched two films: Baby Face and Belle of the Nineties. Now before today I was only vaguely familiar with Mae West. I knew who she was, and I knew a bit of her reputation. That is what it is, but here's what I couldn't get over:

Mae West is a female Rodney Dangerfield. Their acts are exactly the same. Mae West here is Rodney Dangerfield from Caddy Shack. Think about it. If you watch for it it's pretty eerie.

The LA Times today has an article on Angelus Plaza, the senior housing project right in the middle of downtown. I've wondered about how such a large project can survive in the midst of the renewed development taking place right now, and this article gets a little into its history. I had no idea that Angelus Plaza was 24 years old. The articles quotes a lady who's lived there since the project opened:

"Nothing was built here. I saw all these buildings grow," Medina said, recalling that when she arrived, workers hadn't even finished the sidewalks.

Downtown, including the skyscraper developments of the 80s, have grown around Angelus Plaza. The new development and the resurgence of downtown as a destination have happened around Angelus Plaza. Though I don't like the sprawling footprint or the somewhat blank look of the Plaza, I'm perfectly ok with having such a project downtown... how could I not be? They're people who came to downtown when no one else was coming. We came later. We can't try to drive them out, they want what we want. They want the best for the neighborhood. They want revival, they want people on the streets.

When I moved away from USC and moved downtown, I became excited about living out in the real world. What makes it the real world? A mix of ages and social classes. I don't want to live in a downtown comprised entirely of young loft-dwellers. Yes, there's a lot of downtown that needs to change, but this isn't one of those parts.

One of the things I've been meaning to do since I moved downtown is to put some effort into looking around for cool historic pictures from my neighborhood that I could get prints of to hang in the apartment. Today I noticed that USC has a Digital Archives that includes a bunch of pictures taken by AAA (or the Auto Club of Southern California, if you prefer to be technical). The collection includes some good candidates for making it to the wall.

This 1930 image was taken from almost directly in front of my building facing north. Of course my building was built until a year or two after that, so I'm not sure what was there at the time. The intersection in the image is 6th and Spring. The Hotel Hayward still has that same neon. It's amazing to note the pedestrian traffic in the area. The 1932 guide film I saw at the Natural History Museum named either Broadway and 7th or Spring and 7th (can't remember which) as the busiest pedestrian intersection in the country.

Classes start today at USC. I'm on campus to take care of a variety of little things, even though my first class isn't until 9am tomorrow. I'm actually looking forward to what I'm taking this semester, which is a good change. I've got two cinema classes, and two COMM classes, with an extra 2-unit improv theatre class thrown in for good measure.

First thing tomorrow is Censorship in Cinema, with Casper. I mentioned a few months ago that this was the class endowed by Hugh Hefner. Books for the class include Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

My second cinema class is the generically titled Film and/or Television Genres. This is a class that each year or so switches professors and genres, going from westerns to musicals to who knows what. This semester it'll be on speculative cinema, basically films that paint a picture of the future. Books include Ender's Game and The Man Who Folded Himself.

My two COMM classes are Sports, Communication, and Culture and Massive Multiplayer Online Games. Oddly enough, I'm not a gamer. I play NCAA Football on the XBox, and that's about it. Though the class sounds a little dorky, I'm interested in seeing how it addresses community building in online worlds and seeing how transferable the concepts are to other online venues. And it fit my schedule and seemed sort of easy.

So there you have my semester, minus the random improv class.

Anyone know when Adobe released Acrobat 5? 'Cause I'm pretty sure it was a while ago, and all the Kinkos around here still have 4. Now, when you try to view a file that uses 5 features in 4 (particularly alpha in the objects) you get some nice blocky non-transparent objects that look nothing at all like what your nice design did in anything recent. I know, if I was smart I would have saved my pdfs only using 4.0 features, but who would have guessed Kinkos is at least two years behind the times. I mean, come on, Acrobat 6 is out, and has been for a while.

So I'm stuck on campus this evening, not wanting to make the drive home in between being here for my multiple hour stay in the financial aid line and an event I'm recruiting waterski people at tonight. I've been passing the time pretending I knew how to use Adobe Illustrator, messing around with a signup sheet and a sign for the waterski locker.

What I've come to realize is that Illustrator is really cool. I'd used Photoshop plenty, PageMaker enough, and Premiere many times, but until today I'd never fired up Illustrator. Even non-artist me (civic title notwithstanding) was able to create something that looked pretty good.

Now I'm off to Kinkos to see if I can get these printed.

How ridiculous is this? Somehow I managed to injure myself last night while sleeping. I know it happened last night because it woke me up (and really hurts this morning). But who hurts themselves enough to draw blood while sleeping?

I don't know what time it was, but I had been in bed for a while. I must have gotten too near the left side of my bed, because all of a sudden I thought I was rolling off. Instincts sent my left foot shooting down to catch me. The left foot must have been a little tired, though, because instead of finding the ground it smacked into my bed's side-board, ripping at my toenail and cutting a nice flap of skin from the front of the toe.

It hurts.

It's part three of the weekly LA Blogs questions. This time Jonah's put together a set of questions about parts of the city.

##What city or part of Los Angeles do you live in now?

Downtown, in the "Historic Core." My building on Spring St. was built by a bank in the 1930s, and then converted to apartments in the 1980s.

##If you have lived somewhere else in the area, where was it?

For my first three years in LA I lived in the neighborhood right around USC. My first year I was in the dorms, and then for the next two I was in an apartment three blocks north of campus.

##Besides where you live now, where else would you want to live in the area?

The beach. I had this grand scheme to live in Manhattan Beach and commute to USC from there, but then I took a job in Pasadena and that whole idea sort of went out the window.

##Where would you not want to live?

Any of the non-descript areas that are in-between everything but don't have attractions of their own. I love having such interesting stuff all around me, right within walking distance.

##How often do you venture out of your area?

All the time. Downtown has a lot going for it, but it doesn't yet have enough of everything to allow you to not leave. But why would you want to limit yourself like that? LA's so big, and there are so many cool places to go do things.

##Where do you usually go when you get out?

When I get out? I don't know that I have a place that I "usually" go, but I try to make it down to Manhattan Beach once a week (if I'm lucky). For movies I probably most often go up to Pasadena.

##How far do you work/school from where you live?

Work's something like 20 miles away from downtown. School is just maybe two and a half miles. The commute to work isn't as bad as you would think, though, since the downtown -> Pasadena drive in the morning is against the commute traffic. I wouldn't want to see how long it takes the other way.

##Money is no object; Beach, the Hills, the City or Leave?

I really want to live at the beach, but I think right now I love downtown too much to say I'd leave. And if money's no object, there are some insane condos you can buy around here for a million or so.

I took a walk today at lunch. From my apartment I went up Spring to 1st, and then from there headed a block east to take some pictures of the new Caltrans Building. My opinion of this building is altered a little bit each time I see it, but I think in general I'd say it gets refined more than changed. Check out my pictures starting here to see an admittedly low-quality view of what I'm talking about.

I think the building looks a lot less ominous when you're farther away. You get a sense of perspective that you can't get when you're right down under it. The Main St. fronting courtyard should be nice. It's still fenced off while under construction, but it looks like it'll be some open space that the building really needs to not flat out overpower you.

I've mentioned before that this building really made me sit there thinking I just didn't get it -- I just didn't understand. Today was a great example of this. It wasn't until I was standing across 1st, looking at a side-view of the building, that I first understood some of the crazy angles in the bottom of that black metal mesh covering. If you look at my third picture you can see a little of how the mesh is supposed to bunch up, looking a bit wrenched from its flat shape. From the front you can't see that. It just looks like weird angles.

The rear of the building, the side facing Los Angeles St, has a much poorer street presence than does the front. Here you do get those nice blank concrete walls directly across from the New Otani. Again, it's a question of how the structure interacts with the space it's given. All the lines on this building are horizontal, and pretty much all ornamentation is above the high-side ground level. As the gentle downhill runs its course, the building stays unchanged, its lines just moving farther above the street level. Yeah, it's a parking garage down there, but at least give the wall something. I mean you sheathed everything else in metal, why not that?

As always, it's still to early to judge what everything will look like once the finishing touches are in place and the construction fences come down. And as with all architecture, it'll end up being a matter of personal preference. My preference, though, is that I like the classic old downtown buildings. What happened to stately or sleek? When did those go out of style and give way to abrupt and jarring?

So, a funny thing happened last night: I became an elected official.

I think my title is "Area-Wide Resident Artist", a position on the Downtown Los Angeles Neighborhood Council. Yeah, "Resident Artist"... Me... What does that say about art?

Here's how it went down:

• Around noon I got an email from Brady Westwater asking if I was going to be at the election [last night]. I called him back and said something to the effect of "What election?" He explained , sort of, and said the Higgins building was behind a candidate and I could just show up to vote. That's cool, I'm curious about this whole hyper-local government via neighborhood council thing, so I figure I'll show up.

• 6:30pm I show up where the voting's going to be. I then find out that the actual votings not until 7pm. No problem... I hung out and got to know the few people who were there already.

• It gets to be 7pm. The Higgins group hasn't showed. Brady's calling people. Somebody's stuck in traffic. That person says they'll call the candidate. No one else shows.

• Several of the 6 or 8 people there to vote are getting impatient. There's no one to vote for. To pass the time I ask more about what the position is. I don't get a very clear answer, other than the title and that the person attends the board meetings and is expected to be on a couple of DLANC's committees.

• A minute or two more pass, and they're telling me that web design counts as an art these days. All of a sudden I have a candidate form in front of me and I'm filling out my name.

• Paperwork done I get nominated, give a very short speech telling a little about me, how I love living downtown, and how I'm interested in pursuing ways to enable localized community via the Internet, and the voting ensues. I'm running unopposed, and everyone votes for me.

• As of 7:20 or so I'm an elected official, with a position I didn't even know existed until seven hours earlier.

This is the kind of random stuff that happens to me in LA. Cool stuff, but so random...

I'm really tempted to get a Tivo. Best Buy has the Toshiba SD-H400 for $199, and then you can get a $100 rebate for signing up for the Tivo Plus service (for $13/mon). So basically you get an 80gig Tivo + DVD player for $99, which is the price of the regular Tivo 40-gig models.

I understand that I need a Tivo. I've played with them before. I love them.

I'm a little sketchy on integrating the Tivo with a cable box, using the whole IR repeater thing. I wish I lived somewhere where I could get DirecTV and get a DirecTivo. Those are very cool.

I have to run the numbers and see if, for instance, I could buy this and still be able to eat for the rest of the month. If I can, though, this may well be something I need to get.

A friend IM'ed me the other day. He said his company had asked him to start a blog, and he was looking for advice on how to go about that. Obviously, he hadn't read my paper, "Can Blogs and Corporations Co-exist?" I told him to read that first, and then we'd talk.

Today we followed up a bit, and I asked him a few more questions. Turned out the company wasn't satisfied with their placement in google, so they were looking for something to expand their web presence. My friend's boss told him "blogging would be a good way of doing it."

Right. See, if I were using examples for how not to go about starting a corporate blog, this would be a bullseye. No direction, no vision, just the vague idea that this new-fangled "blogging" trend might bring in more eyeballs. Sorry, but it doesn't quite work that way.

Blogs need to have a voice. They need to have a vision. A personal blog is focused on the interests of that individual. A blog like google does might be focused on exposing details of a company that a whole lot of people are interested in. But it can't be something written by "the company." My friend's company does business consulting: business plans, venture capital advice, stuff like that. "The company" can't write about that kind of stuff and make it interesting. I don't trust "the company." I think it's going to sell me things. My friend can't write a blog about that; he just doesn't know enough about the subject to write authoritatively. Why do I want to go read something written by some college kid trying to bring people to the company website?

Like I do most mornings, I'm sitting here right now listening to Morning Becomes Eclectic. As the current song began I recognized a familiar voice. The song is RL Burnside's "Someday Baby" featuring Lyrics Born, off the album A Bothered Mind. The last (and only) RL album I've owned was 1998's Come On In.

I love this from the album description for Come On In:

I finally done did it. The world can finally hear my sound. I've been hollerin' and screaming to let them let me get my hands on the mixing knobs. I'm getting too old to waste my time with stuff that isn't on the cutting edge. I'm too old to be staying up all night writing songs; I got to spend my time on remixes. I always was a behind-the-scenes kind of man anyway.

You tell em, RL. The new album definitely sounds worth checking out.

Yesterday was my birthday, so I cut out of work a bit early, picked Kathy up, and we went shopping. My wardrobe still needs a good bit of help, but it's doing a little better thanks to the Banana Republic in the Beverly Center.

Now, on your normal Beverly Center trip you see a lot of very trendy people buying very trendy things. It's a fancy mall, after all. Our trip, though those people may well have been there, featured a different main event. We arrived, went straight to the food court, and got some lunch. I went to Great Steak & Potatoe; Kathy went somewhere else and got a salad. So we sit down, start eating, and what breaks out in the Beverly Center food court? A fight. Not a fake fight, where a couple girls arguing over a pair of jeans start pushing, but a real full-on punching and kicking fight between three black guys. Now, I'm not 100% who started it, but after a prolonged exchange of words I seem to recall the physical action being initiated by the little guy -- probably 5'10", 160-170 lbs. The guy he took on was not little. He was probably more along the lines of 6'2", 240 lbs. And with him was a guy probably 6'0", 180 lbs, who had a solidly early 90s flat top. Needless to say, the little guy didn't win. Tables were upturned, people moved hurriedly to get out of the way of oncoming bodies, and before you knew it the whole thing was all but over.

What surprised me was how long it took Beverly Center security to show up. Once major combat broke out it probably took 4-5 minutes before the first officer arrived. By that time the little guy was bloody and being held down against a bench.

But hey, what better way to start your shopping experience?

For dinner Kathy had made reservations at The Lobster, in Santa Monica. The food was very good. I had blackened yellowtail, with spinach and potatoes. Our waiter was very good -- very attentive to the little things. For instance, when I go to a resturant and order a coke, and they bring it out in one of those nice resturant glasses, I don't use a straw. I take the straw out, and drink from the glass. Our waiter noticed this and next time removed the straw for me. It's the little things...

Yesterday, after church, Kathy and I stopped by the Farmer's Market as we often do. I got my usual dish (bbq chicken on what looks like an oval-shaped pizza), but accompanied it with a new drink -- a mix of pomegranite juice and lemonade. The lady I ordered from recommended it, and I wasn't disappointed.

After we ate Kathy bought some fruit, commenting as usual on how cheap it was. Then we walked along the edge of the parking lot to Cost Plus World Market. Ostensibly we were going because Kathy needed mugs, but really I end up finding something I just must have every time I'm there. This time was no exception, and I walked out with a little hand-crank coffee grinder and some whole bean Columbian coffee. Alan (who of late can't be bothered to pull himself away from the wonder of Hawaii and post to his blog more than once every few weeks) had told me that if I'm going to drink coffee I really must grind it myself, so I figured hey why not. And the hand-crank grinder was cheap (under $20) and looked cool, so I reasoned that even if I didn't end up using it often it would look good on the counter.

Yesterday afternoon I gave it a test run, just to see what the process was like. This morning I did it again before work. Both times I overestimated the amount of beans needed to fill my 3-cup mug. Both times I ended up with the little grinder drawer absolutely full of coffee. And both times I made some of the blackest coffee you've ever seen. Now, I like strong coffee, so aside from being a bit of a waste this isn't that bad of a thing. It's powerful stuff, and you can tell that way before you ever drink it.

So a little fine-tuning is to be had, sure, but on the whole I'm glad -- as usual -- that I followed Alan's advice.

Time to catch up on a couple nights' worth of events...

Thursday evening we made our way over to Amboeba and were not disappointed. PJ Harvey played a short but focused set, and covered a good range of albums with her song selection. Thanks to traffic we missed the very beginning of the set, which I'm going to guess she started with The Letter, but that was the only disappointing part of the night. Sound was infinitely better than last time I saw an in-store there... I don't know what changed for that.

Friday night Kathy and I went to the Hollywood Bowl to see the the Tchaikovsky Spectacular. Now, I'm not really much for the symphony but it was cool none-the-less. I think that it's safe to say after Friday night that the new Hollywood Bowl shell is completely fireproof, as if not the fireworks (many of the spinning showers of sparks variety) would definitely have burned it down.

Last night Miggles, Kathy, and I made our way over to Hollywood and saw Collateral at the Arclight. It was only my second time seeing a movie in the dome, and I think I've come to terms with the fact that paying a little more is no excuse for seeing a movie there. It really is incredible; the sound and picture are both perfect. Collateral was cool since it was largely set downtown. A couple LA related things that I noticed:

• Why did they pretend the Gas Company building (where the attorneys' office was set) was on Spring? When Jada Pinkett Smith first gets in the car she gives Jamie Foxx an address in the 300-block of Spring, but then their actual destination is the Gas Co, with a Grand street sign easily visible. It's one of those things that doesn't matter at all, which is why it's confusing. Why not just say it's on 5th or Grand or whatever street the building officially fronts?

• When Jamie Foxx speeds up at the end he really speeds up. He's whistling through the above-ground/below-ground bit of 4th St, and then all of a sudden he's down south by Staples Center flipping his car.

• Related to that scene... It's interesting that Collateral chose to date itself a bit by keeping the big Playmakers ad on the side of Hotel Fig. That would have seemed to have been a perfect spot for a little digital painting and a product placement.

• I loved when Foxx runs by The Standard and steals the guy's cell phone. I sat there thinking, "Stupid Standard yuppy... Now he'll go complain about how unsafe downtown is."

• Of course right after Foxx runs past the Standard (6th and Flower) he runs up the parking garage at "777 Tower". The logo for 777 was really familiar, and I couldn't place it for a second. Then I realized the parking garage is the one for 7+Fig, where Kathy and I parked Wednesday night on our way to CPK.

• I'm sure the MTA wasn't all that thrilled about their placement in the film. "Call us Metro and we'll take you anywhere." Yet Cruise twice calls it the MTA. And then he dies on the Blue Line, which has enough image problems of its own without that help.

None of these really affect the movie, but I just found them interesting.

For the second edition of his Friday LA Blogs questions, Jonah's asking about food. I like food.

Where is the last place you ate out?

• Last night Kathy and I went to the CPK in 7th+Fig. I had the Carne Asada pizza. She had a salad with chicken on it. We sat down at 9:10 and made it back to my apartment in time to catch Swimming Pool at 10 on Starz.

How often do you eat out?

• If you include fast food, usually once a day. Going somewhere sit down, probably twice a week. Today Kathy's going to come downtown for lunch and we're going to go back to the Yorkshire Grill, where I ate lunch on Wednesday.

Where is the place you eat most?

• The cafeteria at JPL probably doesn't count, does it? I don't know a place I go "most". I'm going to cheat and say downtown. There's just so much here all in walking distance. I can't claim to have put even a dent in the list of places to try.

Where do you tell your friends that they "have to try"?

• We usually take friends to C&O's, over in Venice. Last trip there was one of very mixed emotions, though.

What dish do they have to order when they get there?

• Eh, whatever they want. I, on the other hand, always get the same thing: Fettucine a Limone with grilled chicken.

Where do you eat when money is not a concern?

• You go eat steak, and you go where it's the best in LA and open 24 hours, obviously. (Pacific Dining Car, for those who haven't been there). On our first trip I ordered the baseball steak, because I am above all things curious. It really was roughly the proporitions of a baseball. When I ordered, the waiter said "Ah, getting a piece of the the rock."

Where do you eat when money is tight?

• Used to be C&O's... I don't have as much of a fallback now as I did, though. If money's real tight (which, hey, it often is) I'll probably walk over to Grand Central Market and get a huge meal-sized taco for $2.

What restaraunt have you wanted to try but haven't been to yet?

• Kathy and I were just talking about this yesterday... There are so many. Ciudad, because we've got a good coupon. Cafe Pinot because of the location. Well, anything Patina Group that I haven't tried, for that matter. I could go on, but you asked for one.

It's got to be a rough time to be a Bruin. Their sports teams are second-fiddle in LA, the academic edge they once had is all but gone, and now we're stealing their faculty. From digitalcenter.org:

The staff and programs of the UCLA Center for Communication Policy have joined the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California in the newly created Center for the Digital Future at USC Annenberg.

Annenberg is my school at USC. There's a longer press release on Business Wire.

Is it odd that the New York Times is telling me about free wifi in my neighborhood? I ran across a story today, mostly fluff, talking about telco responses to people stealing wifi (mooching off neighbors). I don't really care about that part so much, but the very bottom contained the part I was interested in:

Two blocks from my apartment is the Walt Disney Concert Hall, and in it is a coffee bar where a customer can order an exceptional latte. The other day I spotted a notice there advertising free Internet access for Wi-Fi users.

I took it as a sign that since my days of Internet mooching were over, for whatever reason, maybe I just needed to start hanging out in this lovely space with my laptop. Better coffee than Starbucks, and no access charge. And no guilt, either. Life isn't so bad in the Wi-Fi age, after all.

Hmmm... Definitely worth checking out.

I'm working from home today and needed to return a DVD to the library (The Madness of King George, which Kathy and I rented and watched last night... Her pick; I hadn't heard of it, but liked it), so D4, Miggles, and I walked over there at lunch. On the way we ate ate the Yorkshire Grill, which I had seen many times but never been inside. It was very much like Canter's in menu and price. Canter's pickles are a lot better in my opinion, but I had no complaints about my sandwich. I ordered the Yorkshire Special, rye bread around layered turkey, pastrami, and cole slaw. The sandwich, a little cup of potato salad, pickles, and a coke came out to $12 with tip. Not bad at all.

Never one to leave the library empty-handed, I checked out Rosey's cd Dirty Child and the self-titled cd by Robert Bradley's Blackwater Surprise, who you might remember I saw at the Viper Room back in May.

Just noticed over at blogging.la: PJ Harvey will be doing an in-store this Thursday, 6pm, at the world's greatest music store, Amoeba Music. The gig isn't listed on the Amoeba site or PJ's site from what I can see, but that doesn't mean it isn't so. She is in town next week playing a couple gigs, so it wouldn't be at all surprising for her to show up a bit early. And if any music store could score a PJ in-store, it's Amoeba. Definitely worth a little subway ride Thursday afternoon.

Last year I went to Amoeba for an in-store by The Sounds. It's not a great venue acoustically, but really, for a free show you can't complain.

Oon account of a free magazine I had a subscriptions to I get some random email that's not quite spam, but that I usually don't read. Today, though, I happened to scan one and this caught my eye:

Brian Teasley, a percussionist in the two-dozen-plus-member band The Polyphonic Spree, caused a ruccous last week at Dallas Fort Worth-International Airport, when a custom-built microphone in his luggage shut down five gates due to terroism suspicions.

Read the whole article here at ProSoundNews. The best line:

"I told them we had just used it when we were on Craig Kilborn's show. I still had it on my TiVo, so I was like, 'Come watch it with me.' After they figured out I was telling the truth, they were pretty cool. I was talking to them about music. But thank God for TiVo."

Yesterday I got offered free food twice. I accepted once.

The first time was mid-afternoon, when I stopped at 7-Eleven for a Dr. Pepper. The ice dispenser on the fountain drink machine wasn't working, so they had a little bucket with a scoop in it. It was empty. I told the guy this, and hung out holding the scoop while he complained about how he had just filled it 10 minutes ago and went through the whole process of opening the machine up to get at the ice inside. Once he was finally finished I filled up my drink and took it up to the counter. He had a little crate of sandwiches behind the counter, and he asked me if I wanted one -- "no charge". I appreciated the offer, but I had just eaten lunch. So I thanked him, paid, and left.

Later, around 10 or so last night, Miggles and I decided to stop by the IHOP just off Wilshire/Vermont on the way to Ralphs. He ordered an omlette and pancakes, I ordered a waffle and hash browns. We waited. After 10 minutes or so they brought Miggles his food and me my hash browns. The waffle machine was acting up, they said, and they were still trying to get it to work. A couple minutes later the manager came over and told me that his waffle machine wasn't working and asked was there something else I might want. I got blueberry pancakes. The manager told our waitress not to charge me for them. I was happy.

KCRW has their twice-annual pledge drive running this week, so I'm having to explore other options for Internet radio to listen to at work. It looks like BBC's Radio1 might satisfy my needs, though I don't really have any sort of a feel for their shows or what comes on when. The only name I knew going in was Steve Lamacq, a Radio1 DJ who makes a weekly call-in appearance on Nic Harcourt's Morning Becomes Eclectic.

Busy day yesterday... I worked from home, which allowed me and Miggles to meet Kathy, her sister, Magilla, and D4 at McCormick's and Schmidt's for lunch. They were celebrating 12 years downtown by selling lobsters for $12. I'm not normally a lobster person (too much work... give me a steak any day), but $12 is a steal so that's what I got. The place was packed, as you would expect. The wait wasn't bad at all to get seated, but our waiter really wasn't on top of his game. He was slow, dropped a couple things, and brought me a pepsi after I asked for a coke (if you say, "Is a pepsi ok?", I'll say no and get something else, but I'll like you a whole lot more than if I ask for coke and you bring me a pepsi bottle). But whatever, $12 lobster.

After lunch I worked for a bit longer. The plan was to go up to Griffith Park around sunset to show Kathy's sister the view from up there. They were going to pick me up downtown and then we would head over from there. But an hour and a half or so before they were to pick me up I got it in my head that I wanted to head over to the ALDO on Melrose (right near Fairfax) and pick up a pair of shoes I was eying last time I was there. So I decided to make things fun, and to get this done without driving. It's only about 9 miles, but I would have had to deal with the 101, parking, etc, so driving over there really wasn't going to be worth it.

So I took the subway. Now, an astute reader at this point will say, "Hey, there's no subway station near there." And they'll be mostly right. The nearest station is Hollywood / Highland, about a 2 mile trip (mostly) north. But what's 2 miles among friends? I grabbed my skateboard (purely for transportation... i suck at skateboards) and headed over to the Pershing Square Red Line stop. The train came quick enough, I took a seat (it was a pretty full train, but not standing-room only), and we were off.

I got off at Hollywood/Highland, went west on Hollywood to La Brea, and then went south from there, enjoying the gentle downhill. A right on Melrose, a bit farther avoiding the pedestrians and outdoor tables jutting into the sidewalk, and I was there. I think in the end it took me a little under an hour door to door. It would have been quicker if I had biked, but the plan was to still get picked up and that would have been unwieldy.

After buying the shoes I was still running ahead of the others, so I took back off east on Melrose, figuring I'd just get as far as I could to shave distance off them picking me up. I actually ended up making it all the way to Western, which is the street we were taking up into the park, and Kathy picked me up at Western/Melrose.

Total distance covered on the skateboard was about 5 miles, I think. It was a beautiful day out and good exercise, so I was all for it.

All together now we went up to Griffith Park, got cool pictures of the sun setting next to the Hollywood sign, and then exited out the east side of the park headed for Pasadena to see a movie.

We saw Garden State at the Laemmle Playhouse. It was a great movie that really needs to play wider.

Finally we tried to get some pancakes downtown. We ended up successful, but not to the extent we had desired. The new downtown IHOP closes at 10pm, the Pantry was too busy to start serving pancakes (even though they usually do so around midnight and it was 12:45am), so the only remaining option was Dennys. Not normally my first choice, but the food was good and they were amazingly quick, so I can't complain.

Tonight we're off to the Dodger game, which will be my first this season. I'm a slacker.

Jonah is asking people a set of questions about LA this morning over at LA Blogs. I think they're interesting questions and he's been doing really cool stuff over there of late, so I figure I'll take a minute to put some answers here.

• How long have you lived in Los Angeles?

I arrived in LA on August 21, 2001.

• Were you born here?

No, I was born in Columbia, SC; home of the other USC.

• How long did you plan on staying here originally?

I came out here for college, so I guess originally would be four years. Or, at my pace, four and a half or so (though I didn't know that then).

• How long do you plan on staying here now?

No clue. Probably not forever.

• What keeps you here?

Well, school for one. But also just the idea that I live in a place that's alive with options. There's always something going on that sounds interesting. The music scene is amazing. Being able to go see any indie film I want is amazing. Being so close to the ocean, the mountains, huge parks, the desert, Vegas...

• What makes you want to leave?

I don't really see LA as a place I'd want to raise a family. It can be done, and I know plenty of native LA people who came out just fine, but I don't really know that it's the life for me. The south beckons me to return...

• What is your biggest suprise about living here?

I guess just the random people I've met outside of school. And I guess the the sense in which there really isn't a single "LA". There's downtown, the westside, the eastside... It's all "LA", but there's no way to umbrella it all together.

• What is your biggest disappointment about living here?

Not living at the beach. I want a beach house.

When my mom was here I made a one line mention of going over to the Hard Rock Cafe in the Beverly Center to see Yardley, the ever-evolving band put together by Lee Beth Kilgore. Last night Hard Rock was again the scene, but this time it was the other LA Hard Rock, the one in City Walk. Kathy and her sister had been up in SF for a few days, but they made it back into LA just in time to meet me there for the show.

I've expressed before how much I hate Citywalk. The expensive parking... The crowds... The knockoff versions of authentic LA establishments... But whatever, sometimes you do things you don't want to and what I did want to do was go see music. I took the Red Line, too, which meant I got to avoid the outrageous parking charge.

Yardley was debuting a new drummer for this show. He auditioned Saturday, learned his stuff, and played the show yesterday (Wednesday). He did his job well, and everything sounded great. The Hard Rock's really not a venue designed for music, but they did have nice equipment, and that helps immensely. Lee Beth is really hoping that this will be the line-up they can finally say "this is Yardley," and if it is I think it's a good one.

I was noticing yesterday that Lee Beth is very straight to business running a show. Very little talking, just straight to the music and little breaking between songs. She can fit a lot of songs into a little set that way, so I guess that's good.

All in all, a fun show.

Just following up on yesterday's post about stopped work on the Orange Line. The Daily News is the source of good morning reading today, with an article on one man leading the busway opposition and an editorial decrying NIMBY opposition to the construction. Both make the point that NIMBY concerns already scuttled both subway and light-rail plans in the valley, forcing Metro to go with the busway.

But Tom Rubin, the subject of the aforementioned article, doesn't just think the valley busway is a bad idea.

He said he sees faults in the MTA's other projects, the trains to the Eastside and Santa Monica, but has to pick his battles -- though he's already criticized the Santa Monica train proposal, saying it, too, should have considered the Rapid bus alternative.

Now wait just a minute... There's already Rapid bus service to Santa Monica. The 720 bus heads from downtown to the ocean along Wilshire, a street with some of the worst traffic in the country. And what happens to a bus in that traffic? Oh, right, it doesn't go very fast. And what happens when Metro tries the only thing remaining in its power and wants to make one lane on Wilshire buses only? Oh, right, people complain. Shop owners complain they'll lose valuable curbside parking that -- wait a minute -- isn't even legal in the times Metro wants the bus-only lane.

Local blogger and Trojan fan BoiFromTroy wraps up a post quoting from the Daily News editorial with this:

With a partial assist from the Daily News, Mayor James Hahn has turned Los Angeles into a BANANA Republic, where we build absolutely nothing anywhere near anybody. Expand the airport? Bah...bog it down in a convoluted "security" plan. Build solid waste storage? Why bother when we can ship it 70 miles to someone else's landfill. Fix the freeways? How come if all people will do is drive on them!?!

I spent most of my night tonight trying to figure out how to write Perl XS bindings for Edb. Partially, it was because I felt (and feel) that my knowledge of the XS black arts was (and is) lacking. Partially, though, it's because both Edb and EET are really cool libs that I could see using.

The result? I got it to where I could open the db file, set a string, get the string, and close the file. That's enough for tonight.

Metro's having a rough little run of late. First they have an appeals judge order work stopped on the valley busway, and now today's LA Times has an article talking about how South Pasadena residents hate the Gold Line and want to file a lawsuit (South Pasadena residents hate everything, but I'll get to that).

Though it shares its naming convention with Metro's rail, the Orange Line is actually a busway. The 14 mile long route runs west from the North Hollywood Red Line station, and includes only one mile of city streets. The remaining miles are dedicated lanes, built along former railroad right of way. Construction began last year, and the plan was to have the line open sometime in 2005.

But sometimes the legal system comes back to haunt you. A few years ago a group of Valley residents filed a lawsuit against Metro, alleging that the environmental report filed failed to adequately examine the possibility of just adding more Rapid buses instead of building anything dedicated. The lawsuit was thrown out. But they filed an appeal, which at the end of July the appellate judge granted. Now busway construction has to stop while the case takes its course. A Daily News article on the shutdown includes this quote:

Residents said all they wanted is for the MTA to study putting in a network of red Rapid buses as an alternative to the costly busway a study now being done by MTA.

"We truly believe more Rapid buses is a better alternative for transportation," said Valley Glen resident Diana Lipari, chairwoman of Citizens Organized for Smart Transit, the group that filed the lawsuit.

How can you say that without laughing? Now, I think Metro's Rapid bus program is cool, but let's look at what Rapid buses can and cannot do:

• Plus: Rapid buses make limited stops, cutting down on the stop-and-start that contributes to much of the running time of any sort of transit. The buses have special transmitters that can signal lights to hold green if a Rapid is coming, allowing it slightly less obstructed travel.

• Minus: They run on city streets. This is Los Angeles. City streets suck. City streets are too crowded all ready, without more buses clogging them up. If you're going nowhere in stop-and-go traffic none of the Rapid improvements are going to help you, at all.

Bottom line: Rapid buses are an improvement over normal buses in a lot of cases (they don't replace normal buses, just overlay their routes). But what they aren't is a transit plan. No person who has a choice is going to give up sitting in traffic in their car to just sit in the same traffic in a bus. And I think that's where people like Diana Lipari just don't get it. For them just adding some Rapid buses is cool, 'cause I'm sure she sees public transit as a necessary evil that exists for the mobility of those people without cars who come and work the Valley's low-income jobs. Something that people might choose because separated right-of-way makes it a better choice? Never.

South Pasadena's at it again, too, according to an article in today's LA Times titled "Residents Plan Gold Line Lawsuit." The people of South Pasadena (surely not all of them, but those that do are vocal) have been complaining for a while now. When the Gold Line first opened they had signs up along the route, demanding that the trains slow to 25mph (or was it 15?) and quiet the bells at crossing gates. Never mind the fact that Metro can only obey Caltrans rules for marking intersections and runs the line slow enough most of the way already, these South Pasadena people are really just getting annoying. From the LA Times article:

Residents who have fought the extension of the Long Beach Freeway through their town see the Gold Line as another front in the war to guard their "Mayberry" way of life. The line threatens to ruin South Pasadena's quiet atmosphere, said David Margrave, a city councilman who owns a plumbing business near the line and who promised while he was campaigning to press the MTA to reduce the noise level.

"We don't want to be L.A.," he said. "We don't want to be Pasadena. We hate the idea of Alhambra."

Dude, not to spoil your illusion or anything, but you're right in the middle of the Los Angeles metro area. You are LA, like it or not. You can't sit in the middle of the road, plug your ears, and pretend it's not there. If you want your peace and quiet, move somewhere rural. Don't keep being the guy chained to the tree. Your little town stopped the 210 from connecting to the 710, or the 110, and left that weird little spur that ends so abruptly. I know you're proud of that, but do you understand that the rest of LA doesn't like you messing up our roads? But ok, I understand that a lot of houses would be displaced by construction, etc. I'd make the utilitarian argument that it's for the greater good, but ok. But the train? It's already there. It's already had to do enough for you. Adapt, or sell your house to someone who likes living right by transit. Those people are out there, you know...

As noted today in LA Observed, last night downtown held its first premiere in decades when the Orpheum played host to Tom Cruise and Collateral. Variety had a good article run in advance talking a bit about the revitalization of cinema downtown, focusing on this premiere, the Laemmle Grande, and the Linda Lea.

I wasn't here last night to snoop around down by the Orpheum, but driving by there in the last few days it's been a scene of much activity, with the parking lot in the rear transformed into a sea of white canopies covering all manner of production details.

When visiting the Orpheum a few weekends ago on the LA Conservancy's Broadway theatre tour, the guy at the Orpheum was talking about the back and forth they were having with the premiere people, who wanted to hang a larger screen than the Orpheum's stage would support (and therefore larger than what was installed). I can't remember the exact details, but I think they wanted a 60ft screen where the Orpheum only had a 43ft one (the largest that would accomodate viewing angles from all of the seating). At that point the theatre was confident they had talked the movie people into doing the logical thing and using the house screen, but with Hollywood you never know.

The Laemmle Grande bit is an interesting read that sums up well what I'd been hearing. Where Laemmles in locales such as Santa Monica and Pasadena run almost exclusively indie films, the Grande runs mostly normal first-run fare. This always struck me as odd, until I saw a great explanation from Greg Laemmle posted to the newdowntown list. Apparently indie prints are so hard to come by that they just have a hard time getting anyone to want to show an indie downtown, a place not known to be all that great for artsy movie audiences. With the new loft crowd moving downtown, though, that could be beginning to change. The Grande is currently showing Maria Full of Grace, a film that I'm only a bit interested in seeing, but probably will go check out at the Grande just because I love the idea of a theater that's within walking distance showing indie movies.

The Linda Lea is going to be a bit more work. I bike by the building on Main, and though the outside clearly shows a theater, it shows one that needs lots of work. Hopefully the interior is better preserved than the exterior, but that's hard to believe since it last showed movies over twenty years ago and doesn't look to have even benefited from the location shooting that has kept the Broadway theaters afloat.

It's always good to see publicity for the revitalization of downtown, especially such a complimentary piece in a trade like Variety.

I just wanted to follow up my post from last week about the new Caltrans building downtown. I rode by the building again this morning and also had dinner the other night with a friend who's an architecture major at USC, so both of those events brought to light additional thoughts.

First, this morning I got a bit of a late start, so I ended up riding past the Caltrans building at about 9:30am. The light was hitting the building favorably, and it seemed less imposing. Some of the fencing was also removed along Main, allowing my first view into what will be the courtyard space. That courtyard will add a lot to a sense of balance for the building, I think. It helps to see the building connected to earth, breaking up its massive flat surface while interacting with the ground. I haven't been by the building on any of the other three sides, but I'll probably wait until the rest of the fencing is gone before I make the circuit.

Saturday night a few of us went to El Cholo for dinner. While waiting for a table I was talking to the aforementioned architecture student about the Caltrans building. He hadn't seen it in person, but we got to talking about how buildings interact with their environments. In particular we discussed the Walt Disney Concert Hall, another brand new downtown structure by a big name architect (in this case Frank Gehry). Gehry's structure is unarguably beautiful and organic, but one big complaint is how poorly it interacts with the urban landscape. Several sides of the structure face the sidewalk with blank inpenetrable walls. Matt said that a big topic of discussion in architecture classes is the choice between flattening a space and making a design that can fit into any environment, or taking the environment you're given and crafting a building to that space. Now, think what you want of Gehry and his designs, but it's clear that at times his design has come at the expense of interactions with the world around it (see the whole thing where they had to put screens over part of the building because, wait, polished shiny metal reflects light directly into people's apartments?)

Both Gehry and Mayne are doing important things right now, but it feels to me like they're designing to show off to their peers rather than worrying about the people that come into contact with their buildings.

That's just me, though, and I'm a communications major / programmer, and definitely not an architect.