Sic transit

I ran across this old street footage of eastbound Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills on YouTube recently, complete with (original or fake?) puttering soundtrack.



I wish the film had continued down the Miracle Mile and into Mid-Wilshire, Westlake, and downtown Los Angeles. (I'll have to concoct the missing footage in my dreams—no problem for a dedicated sleeper like me!)

Note the intersection of Wilshire and Robertson (at approximately 1:46 to 1:52), where this lovely corner building, its shutters deployed against the midday sun, gracefully enhances the gently curving streetscape:



Not remembering having ever seen this building on Wilshire, I did a search of Google Earth and found that the lovely Spanish-style structure was replaced at some point by this piece of vapid, featureless junk:

Sick transit, indeed.

On the street where you live . . .

I live further north on this very street, so I was very happy that this YouTube user caught the City of Los Angeles Parking Department in their usual scams.

This has also happened to me, not with metered parking but with street cleaning, and on a street just a few blocks from this location. I arrived at my car at 7:58 a.m. (by my satellite-synched cell phone) to find a ticket already on my windshield for 8:00-10:00 a.m. street cleaning.


If this ever happens to you, I would suggest a quick and strongly worded letter to the Parking Department, with a cc: to your council person.

Very smart of this person to get the badge number of the meter "maid" but one wonders whether this kind of behavior is not encouraged at the Parking Department. The City is broke, after all.

"Cleaning," redefined

Our neighborhood association recently requested that the City of Los Angeles Bureau of Street Services (rather brashly known as BOSS) clean the hillside of Vine Street north of Franklin Avenue in Hollywood.

There is no regularly scheduled mechanical street cleaning on this block, which leads to its being used as a dumping ground, attracting vermin and creating a health and safety issue. The rampant growth of weeds both in the fenceline and in the sidewalk is also a concern.

BEFORE

Here are some "before" pictures:

After some prompting from the office of councilman Tom LaBonge, BOSS did show up to to "spot cleaning" and "motor sweep" on Thursday, August 30.

To their credit, BOSS did clean up the seed-pod debris from the tree in the photo above, but they hardly put a dent in the trash.

AFTER

Here are just a few of the "after" pictures:

 For the complete story, visit this web page.

Stop, indeed.

I was on Mount Washington today for a holiday barbecue and couldn't resist snapping this pitiable example of DIY building.

The attempts at embellishment—the staircase window and the tiny fan-light—only make it all the more wrenching.

But it's only wrenching for me. It's likely that the family or families who live here are quite happy, even amid the paucity of style and dearth of imagination. Let's hope they never read Ugly Angel.

Something beautiful . . .

I've been to Piano Bar in Hollywood nearly every Wednesday for the past 2 months years to see West Coast Get Down, featuring the unbelievable Kamasi Washington on sax and several other stellar regulars, including Ryan Porter (trombone), Cameron Graves (piano), Zane Musa (sax) and Tony "Two Fist" Austin (drums). The bassist position is a revolving door that see Miles Mosley (shown in this video), Hadrien Feraud and Carlitos del Puerto show up.



If you live in L.A. and have not ventured out to see these world-class guys (and very frequent guest appearances by stunning visiting artists such as Sheila E.), you are not taking advantage of this amazing city.

See you there.

Weapons of mass germination

I just ordered one of these puppies from Lands' End.

It's not exactly the time of year to do guerrilla planting in Los Angeles, but I'll save the device until the rainy season.

There are several barren patches around here—parkways, median strips, freeway on- and off-ramps, unsuspecting neighbors' front yards—that desperately need an explosive dose of grasses and flowers.

Stay tuned for the photo follow-up. And order your own. Makes a great gift.

PS: If you're wondering, as I was, about why the company is curiously called Lands' End instead of the more correct Land's End: "The misplaced apostrophe in the company name was a typographical error that the founder, Gary Comer, could not afford to change, as promotional materials had already been printed." Thanks, Wikipedia!