It was one of those rare Monday mornings when people wanted news coverage all over City Hall. The mayor‘s folk and Councilman Mike Feuer hunted media fame in the precincts of the Third Floor press room. Controller Rick Tuttle had launched his own informal presentation on the 12th Floor: all for ink and soundbites on […]
Month: July 2018
Doing the Medici
Hating downtown Los Angeles isn‘t new. My old friend Father Malcolm Boyd — who served in Hollywood’s bureaucracy before his ordination — remembers people hating it nearly 50 years ago, at least in the screen community.Back then, you had to go downtown for your income-tax refund. As the story goes, one of the sexiest stars […]
King/Drew’s Renewal
I am rebuked in this issue [see Letters page] for my recent column on Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center by an old acquaintance, Director Mark Finucane of the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services (DHS). Actually, Finucane, while defending his operations, takes issue with my accuracy on only one point, which I shall […]
Year-end Scorecard
Some historians insist that the odd thing about century changes is how few really cosmic events seem to happen in years ending in double-zeros — like 1700, 1800 or even 1900. In modern times, they say, such years are notably bereft of comets, plagues, invasions, revolutions. What with the Rampart disaster and the new city […]
Hang On
So I’m westbound on Pico at this red light somewhere past Robertson, and this dude in a vast new chromey SUV trundlebug pulls up. He blips his 300-hp engine, the street ahead is clear as far as I can see, and in an instant, nearly 40 years shred off my middle-aged frame: for the first […]
Parks in Charge
When Police Chief Bernard Parks told the City Council two weeks ago about how the aftermath of the big Lakers win became a vest-pocket riot, he showed little apparent concern. Parks and most of the council members discussed the disruption as though little more was at stake than the decor of the new police parking […]
Creary Steps Down
In December, we last looked in on Dr. Ludlow B. Creary, then one of the most senior — not to say best-paid — staffers at the county’s unquiet Martin Luther King Jr. Medical Center.The 60-ish Creary was a powerful and controversial character on the Lynwood health campus, who drove a fancy import car to work […]
Mayor of Mayors?
One thing that’s never been really popular in pop-prone Southern California is popular upheaval. At least not in local government. Remember city-charter reform? (You ought to, because it‘s just kicked in.) It finally happened — after generations of stalling — but not because people surged through the streets demanding it.It happened because the increasingly needed […]
What Reactionaries
A moderate-size demonstration of Hotel Employees & Restaurant Employees International Union members was in progress outside the Loews Santa Monica Beach Hotel last week when the Santa Monica police showed up in full protective gear — helmets, face shields and all. The SaMo HERE crowd is a noisy but nonviolent bunch who’ve been marching for […]
Free To Protest
There was one big scramble downtown last week after U.S. District Judge Gary Feess told the DNC organizers, the Secret Service and the LAPD that the First Amendment still applied to the coming Democratic National Convention.”Protecting the safety of all people present in the Staples Center area during the convention is undoubtedly a significant government […]