Category Archives: Angles

Angles

City of Tickets and Technicalities

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Of all of the angles in the City of Angels, none is more aggravating, prevalent and reliable than the parking ticket scheme.

Administered by a dedicated corps of governmentally hired hench-people called the parking enforcement bureau,  or the “vulture squad” as some recently-fined citizens refer to them, these over-priced, overly-distributed tickets are a civic curse and inescapable insult to LA’s residents and visitors alike.

While Los Angeles has yet to deal with rampant homelessness, deteriorating sidewalks and 3:00 AM helicopter traffic, it has no problem propping up the city’s coffers with a dubious ticket system that is by many accounts the most outrageous in the country.

No one can argue if they park their vehicle in a non-parking zone for the day and get penalized for it.  If someone dares to take a handicapped-space so that they can run in a 7-11 to buy their smokes, damn right they should pay a fine.  Don’t pay a meter because you forgot?  Okay that sucks, but you still accept the ticket.

But there are tickets and there are tickets.

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As this photo shows, a prominently placed parking permit sticker that would be visible to anyone with the gift of sight, it’s ironic that a dedicated member of the vulture squad apparently didn’t see it and wrote a $68 ticket to a resident in front of her own Miracle Mile house.
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Angels, Angles, In-Betweens, L.A. Images

Michael Bay Apocalyptic Film Set or Future Academy Museum?

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City of Angels and Angles today only had to walk up the street from our Miracle Mile office to take a peek at the blown-out setting for what looks like a future blockbuster.  Naturally, this being L.A., I drove.

Sorry, Mr. Bay, it’s not your back lot version of America 2125.  This site belongs to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences , and while it’s clearly not ready for its Hollywood close-up yet, the future Academy Museum promises to be a game changer when it debuts.

Game changer in both good and potentially bad ways.

Not only will it up the glitz/glamour quotient of the area, but it will change the game for traffic in and around the middle of already overcrowded Wilshire Blvd.  Such is the price to pay for bringing yet another world class showcase to the Museum Square area, joining LACMA’s  redesigned  future campus and the red-clad Petersen, Automotive Museum, which revs its engines right across the street.

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The future Academy Museum looks like it has a perfect place for a 50-foot Oscar. The Petersen is in the foreground.

Here’s what the front looks like now, the gold façade still familiar to longtime Los Angeles residents as the former May Company Department Store.  If you’re not quite that old you still might remember the building as the place that had the King Tut exhibition over a decade ago.

That cool deco front façade is sure to change into something spectacular, but nothing will match the impact of the giant glass  bubble  that will eventually replace the growing rubble pile on the other side of the enormous structure. Surely this futuristic fish bowl as theatre entertainment venue will displace  the floating rock at LACMA as the most popular sort-of-circular tourist destination in town.  The balls at MacArthur Park lake held that title in the fall but they are gone now.
Continue reading Michael Bay Apocalyptic Film Set or Future Academy Museum? →

Angels, Angles, In-Betweens, Sites

Naming Rights For A Rock

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Creative flair is everywhere in the City of Angels and Angles,          and never has a city been more worthy of the saying, “Art is in the eye of the beholder.”

Wall murals, site-specific theatre, competing orchestras, random cows statues, otherworldly art installations, roaming, slow-motion mud characters, buskers, web series, TV series, above ground art walks, underground art exhibits, open mics,  closed screenings, L.A., has it all – good, bad, memorable and forgettable.

And rarely can you get two people to agree what merits applause or a closing sign.

True, one person’s artistic pleasure is another’s pain, and even if you’re not into that kind of thing, you can understand the foolishness that comes with trying to get people to agree if something is good art or bad art or even art at all.

I generally try to stay out of art arguments because paint gets everywhere and in the end no one is ever fully right,  especially, when it comes to big bucks museum acquisitions, where, perhaps, the more appropriate saying might be “Art is in the eye of the check holder.”

But I do have a thought about how art is named. Yes, named.

Which brings me to the giant rock currently floating outside at The Los Angeles County Museum of Art –LACMA.

Floating, as the hype around it purports that if you view “Levitated Mass” at just the right angle, you’ll believe it hovers in the air.

Continue reading Naming Rights For A Rock →

Angles, In-Betweens

Survey Says: Enough is Enough.

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I don’t know how it is where you live, but L.A. is not only the capital of glitz and glamor, thanks to the prevalence of showbiz, but we’ve also become the center of all things survey.

Surveys are now a daily nuisance in our lives no matter where we go.

I understand the potential upside for taking a survey when it comes to something useful like voter rights or neighborhood improvement campaigns and other areas where there might be significant change at the end of the rainbow, but do we really need surveys every time we step up to a cash register.

At the post office I’m asked to go home and do an online survey.

At the supermarket I’m asked to rate my cashier’s performance.

At department stores, movie theatres, car washes and anywhere else that I happen to do business I’m being hammered with survey requests.

At Subway – Subway! – they’re asking me to take a one minute survey in exchange for the chance to win a cookie!  It’s madness.

Enough is enough.  I’m done with it!  Stop asking.  Don’t offer me sweet gifts, discounts or other useless perks which will only amount to another survey somewhere down the line.

What are you people going to do with all this survey info anyway?

Is the cashier at Ralph’s going to be retrained to count out my change quarters first instead of nickels first if I put that in my survey?

Will the clerk at the post office somehow manage to eliminate the forty-five minute holiday line if I put that note in the comments section?

Will the lady at Auto Suds get a pay raise if I say she was terrific in stamping my frequent flyer card?

None of this means anything, it’s a complete and utter waste of time. Yet some overpaid MBA, no doubt influenced by our rate everything society (see Yelp, Facebook, You Tube, et al.,)  came up with the scheme that is now rampant across our city’s businesses and no doubt around the world.

I’m just waiting for the company that wants me to do the survey to send me another survey asking how their customer service was?

And no, there is no survey at the end of this column, so don’t feel obligated to leave one of those nasty anonymous notes that are so common in the land of the ‘comments’ box.

 

 

 

 

 

Angles, In-Betweens

Found in Beverly Hills, er, Los Angeles

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In Los Angeles you can buy your window replacements at Beverly Hills Glass on Pico Blvd., purchase your seating at Beverly Hills Chairs on Westwood Blvd. and drive off with a fancy set of wheels from Beverly Hills Unique Sports Cars on La Brea.

All of which can be found in Los Angeles, not Beverly Hills.

Need hormone replacement therapy or perhaps some hair replacement? Make a trek to Beverly Hills Rejuvenation Center. Looking for something cuddly to hug? Call Beverly Hills Teddy Bear Company. Pipes gone bad? Call Beverly Hills Plumbing Supply. You’ll find all three of them but they won’t be in Beverly Hills. They pay taxes to the city of L.A.

Apparently the Beverly Hills name carries some serious clout, even when it has nothing to do with the actual Beverly Hills.

Okay, Beverly Hills BMW, I get. They actually started out there before relocating east to their swanky new showroom on Wilshire near Highland, which is in Los Angeles. I guess the name reads sexier than “Just West of Koreatown BMW” on license plate frames.

But what is the deal with all of these other L.A. businesses dropping Beverly Hills in their names when they’re not even located in the tiny, yet uber-wealthy, sister city of Los Angeles?

Well, it’s all about name association of course. Products just sound like they’re going to be a little spiffier, of a higher quality, and services more polished when they come with Beverly Hills attached. It’s good ol’ fashioned advertising and it works. I know firsthand because I’ve used one or two of the above.

It’s understandable for ventures right on the edge of Beverly Hills – like Beverly Hills Tanning and the Four Seasons Hotel Beverly Hills. After all, you can walk twelve feet and be in the 90210, or at least the 90211. Across the street locales aside, though, this name game angle has taken on a life of its own.

Sticking to the ever-popular hotel category, the Courtyard Marriot in Century City (that’s Los Angeles) now advertises itself as the Courtyard Marriot Century City Beverly Hills.  Huh? A family booking a stay there and hoping to spot some celebrities may be a bit surprised to see they are in visual proximity to a nice Ralph’s Supermarket but not Ralph Macchio or any other celebrity named Ralph. More upscale but employing the same tactic, is the Sofitel Los Angeles at Beverly Hills, which, as you may have guessed is not at all in Beverly Hills, but it is right across the street from the famous Beverly Center, which also isn’t in Beverly Hills.

Now, I’ll play along if the product is superb. The next time I need a taxi, you know I’m calling Beverly Hills Cab Company, which is located east of La Cienega by the 10 freeway in Los Angeles. Note: They are near Rodeo, however, that’s Road, not Drive. Wherever they are, the taxis are clean, the drivers friendly and they won’t give you a meter rip-off tour of Los Angeles when you just want a ride from mid-Wilshire to the airport.

And if you can afford the fare they’ll even take you all the way to Beverly Hills Furniture, which is located in Jersey City, New Jersey.

T.M.

Angles, In-Betweens

Night of the Copters

untitled3“First off, I’d like thank the Academy for this great honor…and Sikorsky, Boeing and McDonnell Douglas too.”

The rest of the world refers to it as the night of the Academy Awards or the night of the Oscars.

In L.A. proper, the four-million or so people who won’t be walking on a red carpet refer to it as Sunday, and, depending on where they live, oftentimes, the night of the helicopters.

News copters, police copters, ABC show copters, rich people copters, and I’m guessing this year maybe even a few gate-crashing, camera-equipped drone copters trying to get a good shot of Jennifer Lopez’s cleavage, will fill the night sky across a large section of Los Angeles, creating havoc on the populace.

This annual sky-filled show actually starts slowly the day before when late-arriving big wigs land in private jets at LAX, Santa Monica or even Van Nuys and thwup-thwup their way across town to one luxe hotel or another to pre-party and pick up their tuxes, designer gowns and complimentary Botox or spray on hair treatments.  The smart ones, of course, have been in town for the past five months to partake in an orgy of award shows, culminating in Oscar’s big night.

On the big day, as regular folk are preparing their guacamole dip and Oscar ballots, a couple thousand lucky invitees will climb into freshly polished limousines and be whisked to the Dolby Theatre.  No doubt a few of the wealthiest would prefer to be air lifted directly to the red carpet on Hollywood Blvd. but there are pesky rules about helicopter rotors being in close proximity to cell-phone-picture-taking tourists. Continue reading Night of the Copters →

Angles

L.A. Announces Extra Smart Parking Meters

They’re extra smart all right, because they’re guaranteed to increase the mismanaged coffers down at City Hall.  Not content with the less-productive regular smart meters that have become a fixture across Los Angeles and allow parkers to swipe their credit cards or use coins, L.A. is pleased to introduce the newer, extra-smart meters that take credit cards and coins too, sort of, just remember, however, even though they accept coins, coins are not allowed.

Got it?  Clear?  I didn’t think so.

In other words, this wonderful curbside angle works something like this.  You put coins in the slot marked “coins,” because the slot takes coins and will readily accept as many as you want to put in there.  It’s not like it’s been sealed or anything radical like that to dissuade you from throwing your money away.  Heck, you can burn though an entire roll of quarters if you’d like, as these “coin accepting” meters that don’t count coins as actual payment will be glad to receive your donation anyway.

Just follow the directions and put your coins in right below the “insert coins here” notice.

And then off you run to do whatever it is that over-taxed citizens do in one of the most broken sidewalked, pot-hole ridden, over-priced, under-policed cities in the country: stop into work, or buy your coffee, or drop your kid at school, or pick up the dry cleaning, anything you want, and when you return to your vehicle you’ll find a nice, crisp white ticket waiting for you under the windshield wiper.

Only then might you possibly see through the smudged, tagged or smashed screen face of the meter a few dull words that read, “no coins accepted.”

Hey, how else is L.A. going to pay the thousands of parking enforcement rats, I mean, officers, scurrying around town in their little white rat-mobiles, right?

Extra smart parking meters, just one more scheme in the City of Angles.

The Mayor Speaks

These Guys Are Actually Helping

 

 

Angles
Aside

 Variety is the Spice of Life Until it Isn’t

untitled                                                                          Los Angeles changes fast and not always for the better, and if you don’t keep up it’ll recast you faster than a temperamental Disney ingénue.

Yesterday’s white hot star can quickly become tomorrow’s has been, inexplicably replaced by a climbing upstart. In such an environment is it any surprise that facelifts  – both human and in building naming rights – are a common site to announce another stellar debut in the City of Angels?

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Here, the former Variety Building logo was removed in the dead of night and swiftly recast by a new comer – the people behind the nightclub/hotels that are making the world a better place by creating cocktails made of dry ice.