The new year is upon us, snow is falling in Seattle again, and I'm listening to the hereafter on repeat.
I've done virtually nothing since I've been up here -- I've sat around, I've read books (2! And neither of them were "Pat the Bunny"!), I've slept in, and I've recharged.
And now, at 12:45 am on January 5th, 2009, I'm thinking.
There are so many people in each of our lives. All of them contribute in some way, even if the contribution is frustrating and makes you want to scream or cry or both. I'd be willing to bet, though, that most people we choose to associate with make us happy. Very happy. So happy, in fact, that occasionally, at 12:45 in the morning, all we can do is sit around and think about how lucky we are that we have such wonderful friends and family and such a tremendous support system as we get ready to move on to a brand new scary phase of our lives, where everything sucks and is too expensive and the economy is in the toilet and we have no marketable skills outside of Los Angeles County and SAG is about to strike and we're all going to be homeless and desperate for work and have to resign ourselves to taking soul-sucking jobs we never thought we'd touch with a 10-foot pole.
Or not, whatever. Maybe it's just me.
In any case, what I really mean to say is that I love you all, and thank you for taking this journey with me.
Showing posts with label l.a. living. Show all posts
Showing posts with label l.a. living. Show all posts
11.18.2008
yes, it is
Last Wednesday, the USC College Republicans sent a letter to the Daily Trojan that made me so furious I couldn't focus on anything else until I had come up with an appropriate response. So after a few minutes of thinking, I wrote a reply and fired it back to the DT.
Today, they published it. Apparently. I say "apparently", because although I've received a few scattered "nice letter"s and "good job"s, the link on the DT's website goes to a letter to the editor espousing the virtues of classical opera. Or something. I didn't read the whole thing.
So I've decided to publish it on the internet myself. The letter went something like this:
"I am deeply disappointed in the attitude expressed by the USC College Republicans in Wednesday’s Daily Trojan, which frames Proposition 8 as purely a political issue. The USC College Republicans claim that many Proposition 8 supporters “actually support gay marriage.” If this is true, those people disgust me more than those who can at least be honest about their bigotry.
If you want to vote against judicial activism, start gathering signatures to create a proposition against judicial activism. Don’t deny a minority group rights because you want to stick it to those pesky liberal judges. A vote “yes” on Proposition 8 was a vote to eliminate the rights of a minority group, and I consider this bigoted no matter the rationalization.
Civil rights are not political. They are politicized, certainly, but I was brought up with the idea that all Americans, regardless of gender, race, background, socio-economic class, political affiliation, and even sexual orientation should be treated as equals under the law.
It doesn’t matter if 52.5%, 61%, or 100% of Californians voted to ban gay marriage – it’s still a civil rights violation. It doesn’t matter if its supporters are liberal or conservative – it’s still a civil rights violation. Supporting Proposition 8 isn’t supporting anything except a state-sanctioned right to discriminate against a minority.
And telling opponents of Proposition 8 that they should stop protesting a violation of their civil rights is – frankly – un-American."
Today, they published it. Apparently. I say "apparently", because although I've received a few scattered "nice letter"s and "good job"s, the link on the DT's website goes to a letter to the editor espousing the virtues of classical opera. Or something. I didn't read the whole thing.
So I've decided to publish it on the internet myself. The letter went something like this:
"I am deeply disappointed in the attitude expressed by the USC College Republicans in Wednesday’s Daily Trojan, which frames Proposition 8 as purely a political issue. The USC College Republicans claim that many Proposition 8 supporters “actually support gay marriage.” If this is true, those people disgust me more than those who can at least be honest about their bigotry.
If you want to vote against judicial activism, start gathering signatures to create a proposition against judicial activism. Don’t deny a minority group rights because you want to stick it to those pesky liberal judges. A vote “yes” on Proposition 8 was a vote to eliminate the rights of a minority group, and I consider this bigoted no matter the rationalization.
Civil rights are not political. They are politicized, certainly, but I was brought up with the idea that all Americans, regardless of gender, race, background, socio-economic class, political affiliation, and even sexual orientation should be treated as equals under the law.
It doesn’t matter if 52.5%, 61%, or 100% of Californians voted to ban gay marriage – it’s still a civil rights violation. It doesn’t matter if its supporters are liberal or conservative – it’s still a civil rights violation. Supporting Proposition 8 isn’t supporting anything except a state-sanctioned right to discriminate against a minority.
And telling opponents of Proposition 8 that they should stop protesting a violation of their civil rights is – frankly – un-American."
4.03.2008
socio-economics lesson
I'm going to preface this with saying that I am not an expert on real estate, gentrification, community development, or the North University Park neighborhood. But something fascinating is happening around here, and I want to give my two cents because it's my blog and I can so deal with it.
This week, the good ol' Daily Trojan has been running a series of articles on USC's "Master Plan", which is a 30-year, $3 billion plan for USC's expansion. (The details from the DT can be found here, here, and here.)
Since you probably don't want to read all that, the basic principle of the master plan includes incorporating the land that is currently the University Village on to campus, razing it and replacing it with retail and higher-end shops catered to students, and narrowing Jefferson Blvd. from a 4-lane arterial to a 2-lane campus street.
While obviously the university is wildly enthusiastic about the plan, the non-university-affiliated residents of the community are not, and I find this fascinating.
Let's start from way back. In the 1960s, USC used a policy called "eminent domain" to seize areas surrounding the current campus to give us enough space for the campus we have today. I had to look up "eminent domain" on Wikipedia, but apparently it's a policy the U.S. has that allows private property to be seized for specific purposes, generally government or development related. Apparently "university purposes" qualifies as sufficient enough reason to seize land. So after USC's land-grabbing 50 years ago, the community is naturally distrustful of basically anything it does.
This time, however, there's a bit of a difference. Downtown is becoming livable once again. There are lofts, condos, restaurants open past 5 pm, supermarkets (well, okay, one), a mall... Droves of people are moving in, land prices are skyrocketing, and gentrification is in full bloom. One mile south, USC is also growing. Enrollment is at an all-time high, construction is going on like mad (between the new commons and the new cinema building, everywhere I go borders a construction site), and USC is facing tremendous pressure to start housing students with an out-of-state enrollment of around 50%. The Jefferson-Fig-Exposition-Vermont border is bulging at the seams.
Meanwhile, evil corporations like Conquest Housing are taking advantage. The housing shortage around USC is jacking up prices like mad, forcing students to grab their ankles and driving long-term residents out of the area. There is a definite problem.
USC claims their master plan will ease this issue. By focusing on residences, they believe more students will move back to campus, easing local demand and decreasing traffic in and out of the area. And frankly, I agree, but only because USC's change fits in to the broader way Los Angeles is changing.
I hope it's rapidly becoming obvious that Los Angeles, in it's current form, is an unsustainable city. The population is not decreasing. Traffic is disastrously bad, and all this Caltrans improvement shit isn't having any effect that anyone can see. The freeway-based city dreamed up in the '50s does not work with the current several-million population.
Los Angeles is changing. Not quickly, but they're working on. For the past year, the MTA has been working on expanding the already-existing but barely-useful subway line to include several stops around USC's border before making it (eventually) to Santa Monica. The East-West public transportation option is the missing link, and I applaud USC for being one of the first institutions I've heard of in Los Angeles to say, "You know what? This is broken. And the only way to fix it is to actively make it more difficult for people to drive. Fuck you all, we're forcing you to take the train, or to walk, or to ride a bike".
As for the additional neighborhood impact, I'm afraid it may be a losing battle. Of course no one wants to drive anyone out. I doubt it's USC's goal to be a fungus on the community. But these wheels have been in motion for a long time. Capitalist demons like Conquest have been driving out residents for years, both directly through their price jacks or indirectly through their offensive and demeaning 15-foot billboard ads. At least USC is trying to help. It may not be the silver bullet, but it's a strategy that makes sense. Thirty years is a long time. The neighborhood will change, whether anyone likes it or not. Let's not let people like Conquest do it for us.
This week, the good ol' Daily Trojan has been running a series of articles on USC's "Master Plan", which is a 30-year, $3 billion plan for USC's expansion. (The details from the DT can be found here, here, and here.)
Since you probably don't want to read all that, the basic principle of the master plan includes incorporating the land that is currently the University Village on to campus, razing it and replacing it with retail and higher-end shops catered to students, and narrowing Jefferson Blvd. from a 4-lane arterial to a 2-lane campus street.
While obviously the university is wildly enthusiastic about the plan, the non-university-affiliated residents of the community are not, and I find this fascinating.
Let's start from way back. In the 1960s, USC used a policy called "eminent domain" to seize areas surrounding the current campus to give us enough space for the campus we have today. I had to look up "eminent domain" on Wikipedia, but apparently it's a policy the U.S. has that allows private property to be seized for specific purposes, generally government or development related. Apparently "university purposes" qualifies as sufficient enough reason to seize land. So after USC's land-grabbing 50 years ago, the community is naturally distrustful of basically anything it does.
This time, however, there's a bit of a difference. Downtown is becoming livable once again. There are lofts, condos, restaurants open past 5 pm, supermarkets (well, okay, one), a mall... Droves of people are moving in, land prices are skyrocketing, and gentrification is in full bloom. One mile south, USC is also growing. Enrollment is at an all-time high, construction is going on like mad (between the new commons and the new cinema building, everywhere I go borders a construction site), and USC is facing tremendous pressure to start housing students with an out-of-state enrollment of around 50%. The Jefferson-Fig-Exposition-Vermont border is bulging at the seams.
Meanwhile, evil corporations like Conquest Housing are taking advantage. The housing shortage around USC is jacking up prices like mad, forcing students to grab their ankles and driving long-term residents out of the area. There is a definite problem.
USC claims their master plan will ease this issue. By focusing on residences, they believe more students will move back to campus, easing local demand and decreasing traffic in and out of the area. And frankly, I agree, but only because USC's change fits in to the broader way Los Angeles is changing.
I hope it's rapidly becoming obvious that Los Angeles, in it's current form, is an unsustainable city. The population is not decreasing. Traffic is disastrously bad, and all this Caltrans improvement shit isn't having any effect that anyone can see. The freeway-based city dreamed up in the '50s does not work with the current several-million population.
Los Angeles is changing. Not quickly, but they're working on. For the past year, the MTA has been working on expanding the already-existing but barely-useful subway line to include several stops around USC's border before making it (eventually) to Santa Monica. The East-West public transportation option is the missing link, and I applaud USC for being one of the first institutions I've heard of in Los Angeles to say, "You know what? This is broken. And the only way to fix it is to actively make it more difficult for people to drive. Fuck you all, we're forcing you to take the train, or to walk, or to ride a bike".
As for the additional neighborhood impact, I'm afraid it may be a losing battle. Of course no one wants to drive anyone out. I doubt it's USC's goal to be a fungus on the community. But these wheels have been in motion for a long time. Capitalist demons like Conquest have been driving out residents for years, both directly through their price jacks or indirectly through their offensive and demeaning 15-foot billboard ads. At least USC is trying to help. It may not be the silver bullet, but it's a strategy that makes sense. Thirty years is a long time. The neighborhood will change, whether anyone likes it or not. Let's not let people like Conquest do it for us.
1.10.2008
ocean of light
For all its artifice, the sodium-vapor glow of the Los Angeles basin that can be seen from a plane is really quite breathtaking.
My apartment welcomed me home last night by promptly dropping a glass light fixture from the ceiling as I attempted to turn on a light. It shattered on the ground. I'm also out of toilet paper.
Hollywood, I'm back!
My apartment welcomed me home last night by promptly dropping a glass light fixture from the ceiling as I attempted to turn on a light. It shattered on the ground. I'm also out of toilet paper.
Hollywood, I'm back!
12.13.2007
bring the heat (please)
Mike and I don't have a considerable amount of visitors at our apartment. There are a number of reasons for this: we're very busy, we're rarely home ourselves, our apartment is messy and unorganized, etc. etc.
But as the seasons have turned and the sun has dropped ever lower on the horizon, a new reason has emerged: our apartment is cold as balls.
See, we don't have any heat. At all. We live in a pretty old building, and so the only heating solution comes by way of natural gas heaters installed in to the walls of a few rooms.
When we moved in last summer, we noticed that one of them leaked. The gas company came once to fix it, said they fixed it, and then the next day it was still leaking. The gas company came back the next day and said they fixed it again. I trusted the second guy more than the first (at least he spoke comprehensible English), but Mike and I were still uneasy about it. The gas company guy recommended that he just shut off all the heaters, since it was summer anyway, and we could call in the winter and have them turned back on.
Great, we said. Love it. Saving the energy and money. What the gas company guy neglected to mention, however, was that when we call to have the heaters turned back on, the phone dispatcher says, "Great! A technician will be at your house some time tomorrow between 8 am and 7 pm. Make sure you're there to let him in!"
Mike and I don't even have time to do laundry, so sitting around the house for 11 hours is not a viable option. As a result, we haven't been able to get the heaters back on. And now we're both going to our respective home towns for a month, so there's no real point in doing it before the new year.
No heat, combined with no direct sunlight (we have a north-facing apartment on the bottom floor), combined with cooler-than-usual temperatures, has left our living quarters uncomfortably cold. All the time. And there's nothing we can do about it but bundle up. I now sleep in a sweatshirt, two pairs of sweatpants, and socks -- combined with 4 blankets on top of my usual comforter. I think Mike has actually started sleeping in a sleeping bag. It's kind of like camping, but without the ability to actually make a fire. And we're out of smores.
So I beg of you, anybody, please bring something that generates heat. I'm about three days from just icing over.
But as the seasons have turned and the sun has dropped ever lower on the horizon, a new reason has emerged: our apartment is cold as balls.
See, we don't have any heat. At all. We live in a pretty old building, and so the only heating solution comes by way of natural gas heaters installed in to the walls of a few rooms.
When we moved in last summer, we noticed that one of them leaked. The gas company came once to fix it, said they fixed it, and then the next day it was still leaking. The gas company came back the next day and said they fixed it again. I trusted the second guy more than the first (at least he spoke comprehensible English), but Mike and I were still uneasy about it. The gas company guy recommended that he just shut off all the heaters, since it was summer anyway, and we could call in the winter and have them turned back on.
Great, we said. Love it. Saving the energy and money. What the gas company guy neglected to mention, however, was that when we call to have the heaters turned back on, the phone dispatcher says, "Great! A technician will be at your house some time tomorrow between 8 am and 7 pm. Make sure you're there to let him in!"
Mike and I don't even have time to do laundry, so sitting around the house for 11 hours is not a viable option. As a result, we haven't been able to get the heaters back on. And now we're both going to our respective home towns for a month, so there's no real point in doing it before the new year.
No heat, combined with no direct sunlight (we have a north-facing apartment on the bottom floor), combined with cooler-than-usual temperatures, has left our living quarters uncomfortably cold. All the time. And there's nothing we can do about it but bundle up. I now sleep in a sweatshirt, two pairs of sweatpants, and socks -- combined with 4 blankets on top of my usual comforter. I think Mike has actually started sleeping in a sleeping bag. It's kind of like camping, but without the ability to actually make a fire. And we're out of smores.
So I beg of you, anybody, please bring something that generates heat. I'm about three days from just icing over.
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