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 […]
Category: LA Weekly
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 […]
Dock City
From below, the Vincent Thomas Bridge is green and fresh, the paint glossy-bright on all the bolts and screws, wires and girders, all the way to the tops of its towers.I’ve looked up at many big bridges in my time; even lived under one once. But I‘ve never seen one so, well, shiny and straight-out-of-the-box-looking.The […]
Steal This Hoffman
The long-haired radical kid from the Pennsylvania backcountry had just returned from the 1968 Democratic Convention, battered and without a speck of love left in her heart for Abbie Hoffman. “He sat off someplace and let us all get beat,” she said, also implicating two other activist organizers of that event who survive. “That was […]
About That Money
As some of you may have already heard, there was a political convention in town the other week. And while it sometimes seemed unduly unruly, one thing the 2000 Democratic National Convention did not appear was poor. There was that $10 million cost of the basics, of course — the venue, and so on. That […]
The Grapes of L.A.
The broadcast media had a ball with this month‘s little story that Los Angeles County was about, once again, to allow people to make their own wine in marketable quantities. It was such a condign idea that the Board of Supervisors is expected to pass the ordinance next month, albeit past vintage for most growers.The […]
You Got Me, Babe
Bowling Alone isn’t really about bowling alone. As sociologist Robert Putnam allows on page 113, a better designation might be Bowling in Small Groups; admittedly, this wouldn‘t be the catch phrase for modern alienation his title became when it first topped a 1995 article. His key observation is that bowling leagues are losing their members. […]