L.A. Civic Pride

[milquetoast]

Randall Simmons FuneralFirst SWAT officer killed in line of duty in unit's nearly 40 year history

[VZN]

It's amazing how L.A. Swat managed to get by the 80's and 90's without losing one officer...

[milquetoast]

Ric Francis/Associated Press
Who's the idiot who managed to move The Academy Awards out of late March and one full month deeper into L. A.'s rainy season?

[milquetoast]

William H. Macy has volunteered to be an ambassador for Los Angeles because he is sick of the city's bad reputation. Despite many stars' claims L.A. is an undesirable place to live, the
actor loves his southern California life. He says, "I love it here! I used to say I lived in Los Angeles like I was admitting to child molestation or something."

The actor and his wife Felicity Huffman live in the Hollywood Hills with their two young daughters. He said, "The great thing about living in Los Angeles is that it's not like a big city, we live up in the hills. What I've noticed is that when people get a great place in New York (City), they say, 'It's so New York!', but when people get a great place in LA they're like, 'It's not like living in LA at all!'

He added, "We have a magnificent, lovely life here. I love it and I'm tired of apologizing about it."


This news article provided by World Entertainment News Network

[Westsidelife]

^

[VZN]

Originally Posted by milquetoast

William H. Macy has volunteered to be an ambassador for Los Angeles because he is sick of the city's bad reputation. Despite many stars' claims L.A. is an undesirable place to live, the
actor loves his southern California life. He says, "I love it here! I used to say I lived in Los Angeles like I was admitting to child molestation or something."

The actor and his wife Felicity Huffman live in the Hollywood Hills with their two young daughters. He said, "The great thing about living in Los Angeles is that it's not like a big city, we live up in the hills. What I've noticed is that when people get a great place in New York (City), they say, 'It's so New York!', but when people get a great place in LA they're like, 'It's not like living in LA at all!'

He added, "We have a magnificent, lovely life here. I love it and I'm tired of apologizing about it."


This news article provided by World Entertainment News Network

Perhaps people's attitudes about the city are a reflection of where the direction the city is going...

I wonder what he meant by saying it wasn't like a big city though.

[Westsidelife]

^ He pointed out the differences between owning a home in the Hollywood Hills and renting an apartment in NYC (presumably Manhattan). There is a big difference. I wouldn't characterize the Hollywood Hills as being a place with big city living.

[CITYofDREAMS]

Originally Posted by VZN

Perhaps people's attitudes about the city are a reflection of where the direction the city is going...

I wonder what he meant by saying it wasn't like a big city though.

Actually this is what I have always found to be so fascinating about LA... here you live in a very large metropolitan area but your neighborhood may feel so secluded that it ends up making you feel that you are away from all of the hustling and bustling of the big city. Very elusive... but an attribute of LA that I like very much.

[VZN]

Ohh, ok. Got it.

[kidA]

Does anyone know how many showed up to the LAink thing that Kat Von D did? You know, how she tattooed "LA" on everyone.

[VZN]

Originally Posted by kidA

Does anyone know how many showed up to the LAink thing that Kat Von D did? You know, how she tattooed "LA" on everyone.

I'm not sure how many showed up, but apparently she tattooed 400 people.

But dammit! If I had known about it I would've shown up too.

Here's a vid about it...



Check out what Murs was saying in the beginning of the vid.

[kidA]

Amazing.

[milquetoast]

What's our sign?


Outsized and shamelessly phony, the Hollywood sign is an ideal L.A. icon, but it's not our only landmark.
By D.J. Waldie
March 2, 2008
Sentimentality for the commonplace is one of the defining characteristics of grown-up cities, which can be so heartless otherwise. When even a corner bar closes, some locals get all weepy if the bar has been around longer than they have. That some Angelenos are getting sentimental over threatened Los Angeles landmarks signals something about a maturing city, but in the crazy way this city has of layering every good intention with irony.

The Hollywood sign is the current example. It's a genuine icon -- blown up, blown away, shaken down and incinerated in a string of disaster movies dating from 1974's "Earthquake." But the sign on the slope of Mt. Lee isn't the original. Put up in 1923 to boost sales in an upscale housing development, the sign first read "Hollywoodland." The "land" part was jettisoned when ownership of the deteriorating sign was transferred to the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce in 1949. The "Hollywood" sign continued to decay until 1978, when some Hollywood stars donated $27,000 each to replace its sheet-metal letters and their telephone pole armature with a sturdier but slightly smaller replica. The sign was renovated again in 2005 by the Hollywood Sign Trust, which is now the sign's official caretaker.Protected by monitoring equipment to deter pranksters who used to re-letter the sign into such configurations as HOLLYWeeD, the reworked sign stands for ... well, what exactly?

As a facsimile of the battered original (auctioned on eBay for $450,000 in 2005), the replacement is shamelessly inauthentic. That makes it an ideal L.A. landmark -- and we needn't be embarrassed that we chose it ourselves. There are worse alternatives. In 1988, a blue-ribbon commission of architects and community activists picked "Steel Cloud" -- a proposed half-mile-long Brutalist train wreck of shops and movie theaters built on pylons down the middle of the Hollywood Freeway -- to be the West Coast's answer to the Eiffel Tower.

Unlike "Steel Cloud," the Hollywood sign may be the people's monument, but much of the sign's hillside setting is developable land owned by the Fox River Financial Resources, a Chicago investment firm. Bought in 2002 for $1.6 million and recently appraised by the city at about $6 million, the 138-acre site, which was part of the estate of Howard Hughes, is listed for sale at more than $20 million. According to the Chicago firm, the property could accommodate five residences of the sort favored by oil emirs.

Which means that Chamber of Commerce officials, historic preservationists, European tourists and other believers in the myths of Los Angeles are rallying to protect the integrity of a remake of an old real estate billboard from the developers of a new subdivision. And they should, despite the obvious incongruities. The public's regard for the Hollywood sign is such an amalgam of memories, false associations, blatant huckstering, civic history and pure love that it's impossible to unmix them. Preserving the sign's setting -- or anything else of value in this city -- saves our delight in living here in all its garbled inauthenticity. The Hollywood sign glows in the collective imagination of the world, so universal is the sign's symbolism. It sells itself.

Other significant landmarks in this city of easily edited memories aren't so lucky. The monumental Felix the Cat sign on Figueroa Street failed to earn the protection of heritage status from the City Council last year. The Cocoanut Grove nightclub at the site of the former Ambassador Hotel, demolished in 2006 to make room for a high school, was taken down last month despite agreements to incorporate it into the school. The Wyvernwood Apartments in Boyle Heights, a rare example of 1930s-era cooperative residential development in L.A., is scheduled to be torn down. The Angels Flight funicular to Bunker Hill, closed since a fatal accident in 2001, has yet to reopen. Dutton's Brentwood Books -- the epicenter of literary L.A. -- will close April 30 because there seems to be no business model that profits from the store's earnestness and quirky individuality (qualities the city once had).

We've let so much of Los Angeles slip away in the undertow, but the good news is that landmarks are everywhere, probably at the end of your street or just around the corner. Take a look at the Million Article Thompson sign above a former hardware store on Vermont Avenue at 89th Street. It's a tower of steel girders and blue and orange tin panels (and neon, once) that even in its shabby disrepair asserts more about the brazen optimism of 1920s L.A. than almost anything I know. Or the bungalow court at 1428 South Bonnie Brae Ave. designed in the Egyptian Revival style by Edwin W. Willit in 1925 and looking as if a set from "Intolerance" had been miniaturized to be rented out to the star-struck. Or drive by any one of the hundreds of Spanish-style houses on the Hollywood hillsides. They wrap up so much longing for a place in Los Angeles.

All of them -- and the Hollywood sign too -- are real places of memory even if they fail to be real in any other sense. Too few of them will survive, but some will. The mission of the Los Angeles Conservancy, the nation's largest historic preservation organization, and as many as 300 other organizations in Southern California is saving what is so easily discarded.

There are Angelenos who understand that their nostalgia preserves more than old signs or historic buildings. Their sentiment saves us, too, from having no place to call home.

D.J. Waldie, a contributing editor to The Times, is the coauthor with Diane Keaton of "California Romantica."

[milquetoast]

Newest Nobu debuts in L.A.

By Jessica Gelt
At one point during the opening party of Nobu Los Angeles, the popular sushi chain’s highly anticipated 17th restaurant, Robert De Niro, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Kenny G mugged for photos around a giant wooden barrel of sake. There may be no more unlikely collaboration in the history of raw fish.
The mayor, dressed in a smart gray suit with a bright yellow tie, oozed enthusiasm. “The food is great and there’s elegance, but the graciousness is there whether you’re in Tokyo or L.A.” De Niro nodded and stuck out his lower lip while Villaraigosa went on to tout the significance of Nobu’s new flagship restaurant being in L.A. “L.A. is the cultural and entertainment capital of the world,” he said. “He’s supposed to say that,” De Niro joked dryly. jessica.gelt@latimes.com

[milquetoast]

..yeah, let me add this, Bobby D.: Didn't you just start a film festival of your own? How come not a 'stage' festival? That's right, no one would come and no one would care

[milquetoast]

Pitching L.A. to the Chinese


As travel restrictions lift, the city touts its attractiveness as a tourist destination.
By Don Lee, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
March 8, 2008
SHANGHAI -- First in an occasional series looking at the increasingly close connections between China and California.

-- Midway through the first half of the exhibition soccer match this week, the local all-stars were advancing against David Beckham and the Los Angeles Galaxy. The crowd at Shanghai Stadium stood up and roared. In a VIP suite, Jamie Lee hardly noticed the action on the field: She was too busy schmoozing with Chinese reporters.

"One of these days, you should come to L.A. and watch a Galaxy game," Lee, chief rep of the Los Angeles Convention and Visitors Bureau in China, told a journalist from the People's Daily, angling for some publicity from the Communist Party's mouthpiece. "You want to experience the real thing."

Lee uses any chance she gets to sell Los Angeles to the Chinese. Next week she'll be in Beijing for the Dodgers -- that's the L.A. Dodgers, she says -- as the team plays the San Diego Padres in two exhibition games. In April, Lee hopes to capitalize on an Olivia Newton-John fundraiser for cancer research, called the Great Walk to Beijing.

What's the Australian pop singer got to do with Los Angeles? She makes her home in the Southland, Lee says.

If that seems a bit of a stretch, Lee has good reason. In June, China and the U.S. are expected to implement new travel rules that will allow Chinese travel agencies to book tour groups to the U.S. for the first time. And American destinations and companies will be able to advertise directly to Chinese consumers.

That's expected to bring a flood of Chinese tourists stateside -- and Los Angeles wants to grab a healthy share of them.

Some 320,000 Chinese visitors came to the U.S. in 2006 mainly on business and student visas -- and about 110,000 of those came to Los Angeles. Next year, L.A. city officials project that number to climb to at least 170,000, depending on how quickly the U.S. can handle visa applications.

Chinese tourists, with their increasing wealth, could give a boost to L.A.'s economy. But the city will be vying with San Francisco and New York, not to mention global hot spots such as Paris and Sydney, Australia, which have been marketing to Chinese tour groups for years.

That's where the 42-year-old Lee comes in.

Since the bubbly UCLA graduate took on the job nearly two years ago, she's called on many of China's 640 tour operators approved to handle overseas travel, showing them what Los Angeles has to offer -- Hollywood, beaches, great weather year-round -- and how they might design future group packages.

Fluent in Mandarin, Taiwan-born Lee pays frequent visits to Chinese government offices as well, to stay on top of policy changes and to keep L.A. out front. One of her lobbying efforts is getting a Chinese airline to start a direct flight from Shanghai to Los Angeles.

Lee has had some success. She worked with China Travel Service to package a seven-day "incentive tour" for 500 top dealers of Hyundai Motors in China. The trip in January 2007 included overnight stays in Los Angeles and Las Vegas. Two months later, Lee helped Los Angeles beat out Washington to host 600 Chinese government-sponsored street performers. The group celebrated the Lunar New Year with a parade in Hollywood.

"They must have spent a million dollars. They brought their own float," she said.

Los Angeles is the only American city with a license from China's National Tourism Administration, which allows someone like Lee to work in China and gives the city a stamp of approval on the agency's website. That's important in a country where government has a heavy hand in industry.

The popularity of California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, widely known here for his movies, has boosted L.A.'s name and image in China, as have a growing number of Southland-based companies doing business in this nation.

"Asia and China are our highest priority now," said Tim Leiweke, chief executive of AEG, the company that owns the Galaxy and is behind the L.A. Live development in downtown Los Angeles. At Wednesday's game in Shanghai, Leiweke said his company was building half a dozen stadiums in China.

Also on hand for the Galaxy event: Hundreds of Chinese direct sellers for Herbalife Ltd., the Los Angeles-based marketer of nutritional supplements.

Some L.A. businesses are gearing up big time for Chinese tourists. Noel Irwin Hentschel, CEO of AmericanTours International, has hired a dozen Mandarin speakers in Los Angeles and opened an office at Beijing's posh Oriental Plaza near Tiananmen Square, complete with a beautiful courtyard to entertain government and industry guests.

Lee's work quarters aren't so grand. They're on the 12th floor of a nondescript tower in east Beijing, down the hall from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Lee has an administrative staff of two, plus a college intern. Pictures of downtown L.A.'s skyline, Hollywood and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa decorate an otherwise plain office.

Lee's counterpart in Tokyo, Masahiro Andachi, was in Beijing last week, trading notes with her on trends in Asia-Pacific tourism and marketing Los Angeles. (Besides Japan and China, the private, nonprofit Los Angeles Convention and Visitors Bureau has an office in London.)

Andachi, an industry veteran, was ruing the news that filled the airwaves in Japan in recent days: Kazuyoshi Miura, a Japanese tourist whose wife was shot in the head in downtown Los Angeles in 1981, was arrested in Saipan, part of the U.S. Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands.

Even though Miura was eventually convicted of committing the murder, the incident for years gave Los Angeles a bad name in Japan as a place rife with heinous street crime. With Miura back in the news, it was enough to give some Japanese consumers cold feet.

"I was not happy to see this news," Andachi said, noting that Japanese tourism to Los Angeles had already been soft in recent months.

More than 516,000 Japanese visitors arrived in California in the first 11 months of 2007, the latest period for which statistics are available. That's more than from any other country, but the number marked a 2% drop from the same period in 2006. By comparison, about 139,800 nonresident Chinese entered California from January to November last year -- up 13% from a year earlier.

Lee listened to the story about Miura with a blank stare. She was a student at Downey High School in 1981 and had never heard of the notorious murder. Worries about crime in Los Angeles might deter Japanese tourists, she said, but not the average Chinese -- at least not yet.

"The perception here of L.A. is it's glitzy," Lee said. "It's Hollywood. . . . It's the city of dreams."

don.lee@latimes.com

[milquetoast]

Must I keep writing Time Magazine strongly worded letters? Time

[milquetoast]

MTV Video Music Awards coming to the Kodak Theatre?
By David Markland
Is the Kodak Theatre being considered as a venue for the 24th annual MTV Video Music Awards in early September?
pollstaronline

A listing of upcoming road closures in a neighborhood council email had the following item:

UNDER REVIEW - DETAILS ARE BEING DEVELOPED
2008 MTV Video Music Awards
Late August to early September 2008
Streets and sidewalks adjacent to the Hollywood and Highland complex
Los Angeles Metblogs

[yamota]

Originally Posted by VZN

It's amazing how L.A. Swat managed to get by the 80's and 90's without losing one officer...

not to be too technical, but LAPD SWAT officers have been killed before during training, but this is the first one in the line of duty

[VZN]

Originally Posted by milquetoast

MTV Video Music Awards coming to the Kodak Theatre?
By David Markland
Is the Kodak Theatre being considered as a venue for the 24th annual MTV Video Music Awards in early September?
pollstaronline

A listing of upcoming road closures in a neighborhood council email had the following item:

UNDER REVIEW - DETAILS ARE BEING DEVELOPED
2008 MTV Video Music Awards
Late August to early September 2008
Streets and sidewalks adjacent to the Hollywood and Highland complex
Los Angeles Metblogs

What?!

I don't know if I should say "Man, that's good news!" or "Keep that shit outta L.A.!" But either way, this will be interesting to watch...