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Call#: Van Pelt Library HD8081.A5 P365 2005
September 10, 2003
COLUMN ONE
Busman Stops at Nothing
* After 9/11, Kazuhiro Nakagawa's business was reduced from $10,000 luxury tours to $40 trips up and down the coast, but he doesn't give up.
By Ronald D. White, Times Staff Writer
It was almost departure time, but Kazuhiro Nakagawa's 55-seat tour bus still had that "Not in Service" look as it sat outside the Wilshire Grand Hotel in downtown Los Angeles.
Slowly, a handful of passengers assembled: two teenagers from Altadena, a frugal twentysomething couple just back from Israel and a 19-year-old German woman touring the country.
A few years ago, Japanese tourists paid Nakagawa $10,000 each for whirlwind tours of the Western United States on his luxury bus. With that market ruined by the sour Japanese economy and the lingering effects of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Nakagawa sought a new niche running a nonstop luxury bus service from Los Angeles to San Francisco, $40 one way.
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Politics & Society
Bicycle Activists Take to the Freeways in L.A.
The Bryant Park Project, June 12, 2008 · People tend to think of Los Angeles as the natural habitat of the automobile, a land where giant on ramps and multilane freeways determine the course of life.
But for three cyclists in Santa Monica, Los Angeles is a bikers' world. Morgan Strauss grew up riding bikes around L.A. Alex Cantarero grew up riding local buses, even celebrating childhood birthdays aboard, before making the move to pedal power. Rich Totheie moved from New York City a few years back, having never much used a bike for transportation.
In November, the three bicycle activists began dreaming up ways to make their point — that two-wheelers deserve a place in the transportation network. They say they'd grown tired of playing cat-and-mouse with Santa Monica police at monthly Critical Mass rides. Instead, their group, the Crimanimalz, began protests like bottling intersections with endless, lawful rounds of Crosswalk Craps.
MODERN LIFE Guerrilla gardener movement takes root in L.A. area
BRIMMING with lime-hued succulents and a lush collection of agaves, one shooting spiky leaves 10 feet into the air, it's a head-turning garden smack in the middle of Long Beach's asphalt jungle. But the gardener who designed it doesn't want you to know his last name, since his handiwork isn't exactly legit. It's on a traffic island he commandeered.
"The city wasn't doing anything with it, and I had a bunch of extra plants," says Scott, as we tour the garden, cars whooshing by on both sides of Loynes Drive.
Scott is a guerrilla gardener, a member of a burgeoning movement of green enthusiasts who plant without approval on land that's not theirs. In London, Berlin, Miami, San Francisco and Southern California, these free-range tillers are sowing a new kind of flower power. In nighttime planting parties or solo "seed bombing" runs, they aim to turn neglected public space and vacant lots into floral or food outposts.
Metrolink Tries to Censor Bloggers
A paranoid transit agency spends public money threatening critical Web sites
By MAX TAVES
Wednesday, May 21, 2008 - 7:00 pm
'Chinatown buses' make no-frills inroads in Las Vegas
By Rosemary McClure, Times Staff Writer
May 17, 2007
They were an underground hit almost from the start.
The cut-rate transportation services called "Chinatown buses" originated about a decade ago in the Northeast. At first, they were an inexpensive way for Chinese restaurant workers to commute to jobs in nearby cities. Fares as low as $10 between New York and Boston were common.
Soon Chinese students began to hop aboard, and other students followed suit. Then savvy budget travelers noticed, and suddenly Greyhound was facing a new form of competition: low-overhead bus companies that thrived on a no-frills, shoestring approach to service.
Instead of picking up passengers at terminals, Chinatown buses picked them up - and deposited them - along curbsides; instead of maintaining ticket offices, they sold space online; instead of offering numerous routes, they offered only the most popular.
The bus lines, most of which are owned by Chinese immigrants, are common in the Northeast, but similar low-cost services also can be found in the West.
The online booking service GotoBus.com launched five years ago by Cambridge, Mass., businessman Jimmy Chen, handles reservations and helped put the low-cost bus trend on the road.
GotoBus.com now accounts for 1,000 scheduled departures a day throughout the country. Besides the low-cost players it now takes reservations for major sightseeing companies, such as Gray Line.
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Riders can choose transportation alone, paying fares as low as $25 between Los Angeles and Las Vegas or $45 between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Or they can choose vacations that include accommodations, such as a two-day trip from Los Angeles to Ensenada, Mexico, for $95; or a three-day trip from L.A. to San Francisco and Yosemite for $120.
Prices and tour components fluctuate - the $99 Las Vegas-Grand Canyon itinerary described in the accompanying story, for instance, is now available from various companies for prices ranging from $114 to $127, but a different Vegas tour is available for $99 that includes two nights in Sin City.
Call#: Van Pelt Library F869.L89 N4158 2006
Schedule Information:
Scheduled Time: Thu, Oct 11 - 10:00am - 11:45am Building/Room: Philadelphia Marriott / Room 403
Title Displayed in Event Calendar: Living in the City of Angels
Session Participants:
Session Organizer: ASA Staff (ASA)
Chair: Jose Manuel Alamillo (Washington State University, Spokane (WA))
A Ban on a Noisy Existence: The Los Angeles Leaf Blower Ban, Spatialized Whiteness and the Gardeners' Struggle for Dignity
*Daniel Olmos (University of California, Santa Barbara (CA))
Gay Mexican Immigrants Arriving and Surviving in Los Angeles: Intersecting Identities and Transnational Social Networks
*James Paul Thing (University of Southern California (CA))
Photodocumenting Cultural Landscapes: The (Re)production of Latino Vending 'Street-Scapes' in Los Angeles.
*Lorena Munoz (University of Southern California (CA))
Commentator: Jose Manuel Alamillo (Washington State University, Spokane (WA))
An Orwellian "100 percent parking reduction" rule quietly wends through City Hall
By STEVEN LEIGH MORRIS
Wednesday, August 29, 2007 - 5:00 pm
AFTER WORLD WAR II, the city of Los Angeles figured it would be a swell idea to provide incentives to the local tire industry by dismantling what was then among the most comprehensive and enthusiastically used light-rail systems in the nation. What's good for business is good for the city, the tire companies said on their way to the bank, before the city paved over or shut down every passenger-train track from Mount Lowe above Pasadena, to Long Beach, to Santa Monica - wiping out the popular Red Car rail line.
While keeping the city's poky bus system, Los Angeles leaders of yore took away what planners would call "transportation alternatives."
Or so the urban legend goes, a much-told but probably untrue tale about the Orwellian strategy of using free-market lingo - "good for business" - to restrict consumer choice and shutter the Red Cars. Sy Adler, professor of urban studies at Portland State University, has since shown that the deal wasn't so Orwellian: The Red Cars were abandoned after Angelenos took to their autos with such vigor that the rails lost riders.
But now, the sort of social engineers Orwell envisioned actually are in residence at City Hall as commuters piddle to work in cars. The worst traffic is probably on the Westside, where things move at about 3 mph during rush hour, in a sector of L.A. that lacks a subway and suffers from infamously slow bus service.
Perhaps taking inspiration from the old Red Car legend, the city's Planning Department is using free-market lingo to restrict consumer choices. The bureaucrats' aim: to get Angelenos out of their cars and onto a troubled, skeletal mass-transit system that's a pale reminder of past Red Car glory.
Under this scheme, veteran city planner Thomas Rothmann is pushing to restrict parking, even at condos and apartments. He hopes to render your car so burdensome, and your life around it so miserable, that for relief you'll use the frequent and efficient buses or subways - neither of which will actually exist in most corners of L.A. for 20 to 30 years even under best-case scenarios.
The city's euphemism for all this is "pedestrian friendly."
In Rail Link, Angelenos See a Door to Prosperity
By ANA FACIO CONTRERAS
LOS ANGELES, Sept. 3 - While Carlos Sanchez, a guitarist, waits in front of Mariachi Plaza in Boyle Heights to be picked up for his next job, he likes to look at a mural behind the plaza's kiosk on First Street.
The mural, with colorful squares and spheres and scenes of local flavor, is reminiscent of the work of Mexican muralists like David Alfaro Siqueiros, but it is functional, too. It hides construction of a light-rail link that supporters in Boyle Heights and neighboring East Los Angeles say will change the face of their communities.
Boyle Heights, part of the City of Los Angeles, and East Los Angeles, an unincorporated area of Los Angeles County, have long been home to thousands of Latinos. Both communities are cut off geographically from the city's beach districts and central business areas.
The light-rail train, set to begin running in 2009, will allow passengers to get to areas throughout the county. For many low-income residents, like Mr. Sanchez, 38, who do not own cars, the train will replace bicycles, unreliable buses and costly taxis.
"I'll be using the train because it's going to be more convenient and a faster way to get to where you want to go," said Mr. Sanchez, who often car-pools to jobs with fellow musicians.
The train, named after Edward R. Roybal, who in 1949 became the first Mexican-American elected to the Los Angeles City Council, will travel six miles from the Little Tokyo/Arts District in downtown through Boyle Heights and East Los Angeles. It will link to the Los Angeles subway system on the Gold Line, which runs south from Pasadena. A one-way trip now costs $1.25.
If you can afford it. The condos cost about $700 a square foot, meaning a nice two-bedroom condo -- with windows on two sides and great views -- runs about $1 million.
A few evenings later, I found myself in the cramped living room of a single-family home in a suburb of Ventura, one of about 180 houses built a decade ago for buyers with annual incomes of about $50,000. Because the original development was federally subsidized, the homeowners can sell their house only at a restricted sales price of $300,000 to $400,000, which is 20% to 40% below the market price.
The cap on the selling price, the homeowners told me, has brought some changes to their neighborhood. It allows the working poor to afford these houses by teaming up to buy them. Realtors say four, five, even six people are listed on mortgage titles to qualify for financing. Seven, eight, nine cars are parked in the driveways and on the streets in front of the houses.
What's going on here? For a century, people in Southern California moved to the suburbs as they got richer, leaving the more "urban" parts of town to poor people. Now that pattern has reversed itself. Affluent people are leaving the suburbs to live in the city, while the working poor -- people who have jobs but don't earn enough to exceed the poverty line -- are doubling and tripling up in the suburbs to buy houses.
The migration of the affluent to the inner city has gradually increased in the last three years. According to a study by the Downtown Center Business Improvement District, the household median income of downtown residents with a least one earner was about $99,600 a year in 2006, roughly $28,000 higher than that of Beverly Hills. Nearly half of those surveyed reported annual income of $100,000 to above $250,000.
Will gridlocked L.A. heed this toll call?
While Orange County officials have built a network of toll roads to address growing traffic, L.A. officials have invested much more heavily in rail and bus service.
By Rong-Gong Lin II and Steve Hymon, Times Staff Writers
June 29, 2007
The land of the freeway is poised to become a little less free.
Los Angeles County transit leaders on Thursday agreed to develop plans for toll roads within the next three years, after decades of opposition to the concept of motorists paying tolls to use the roads.
The decision by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority board comes amid criticism that Los Angeles has not joined other metropolitan areas around the nation in experimenting with "congestion pricing," in which motorists pay to use less crowded lanes.
Last month, L.A. County lost out on a major federal grant because it did not have any congestion pricing in the works.
TIMES SPECIAL REPORT
A not-so-welcome mat
Antelope Valley neighbors are behind a crackdown on subsidized housing
By Jessica Garrison and Ted Rohrlich
Times Staff Writers
June 17, 2007
THE anonymous tip came in over a special hotline: Someone was smoking marijuana on the balcony of Rachel Baker's government-subsidized apartment.
On a recent morning, Lee D'Errico, a Los Angeles County Housing Authority investigator, bounded up the stairs of the sprawling two-story complex in Lancaster, half a dozen armed sheriff's deputies on his heels.
D'Errico rapped on the door of Baker, a 28-year-old single mother of three. She took one look at the group on her stairs, ordered her children into a bedroom and moved aside.
Then the officers, who had no warrant, searched the home. Within minutes, they discovered a half-smoked marijuana cigarette under a couch cushion - enough, D'Errico told Baker, to terminate her subsidy under the federal Section 8 program.
"What?" Baker said, sobbing. "I didn't know it was there. Otherwise, I wouldn't have let you in."
It was another fruitful investigation for the housing authority in the Antelope Valley, where officials have launched one of the most aggressive campaigns in the nation to stamp out unauthorized or illegal behavior in federally subsidized housing.
*GRASSROOTS ORGANIZING: Right to the City
Tony Roshan Samara
On January 11, 2007 at the Japanese American Cultural Community Center in Little Tokyo in downtown Los Angeles, Gihan Perera, the executive director of the Miami Workers Center, addressed an energetic crowd of over 100 community organizers, representing over 30 organizations and 8 major cities. They came to build a national urban justice movement around the concept of a Right to the City. The intention was to begin building collective capacity for local struggles to become a national movement. Perera declared, "We are leaving here with a game plan. This is a working meeting."
Call your project "smart" - even when it isn't - and get millions in public funds.
By David Zahniser
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Santa Monica real estate developer Dan Palmer faced a daunting task three years ago when he announced plans to build 5,800 homes in the Newhall Pass, a mountainous stretch that connects the northeast edge of the San Fernando Valley with the Santa Clarita Valley. After all, the project was certain to draw the ire of homeowner groups, open-space advocates and the city of Santa Clarita.
Smart growth's biggest boosters still love suburban living
By DAVID ZAHNISER
Wednesday, May 30, 2007 - 3:00 pm
So why are so many smart-growth advocates avoiding density in their own lives?
Take Henry Cisneros, a board member with Smart Growth America. The onetime head of the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development came to Los Angeles a decade ago to work for the Spanish-language channel Univision — and immediately found a home in the plush, gated community of Bel Air Crest.
Cisneros, who now runs a company that builds entry-level housing, says that when his family moved, it was thinking heavily about crime — the 1997 North Hollywood bank shootout and the slaying of Ennis Cosby, the son of actor Bill Cosby. He also insists that he was not the driving force behind the decision on where to live.
City Hall's plan for the future expects you to give up the yard, the car - and learn to love density
By DAVID ZAHNISER
Wednesday, May 30, 2007 - 3:00 pm
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Huge development projects are planned for Santa Monica Boulevard, in a district of Los Angeles known as Century City. The Related Companies recently demolished the St. Regis Hotel to build a 42-story condominium tower. Westfield, the shopping-mall giant, is planning a 42-story skyscraper that combines shopping with condos. And JMB Realty, based in Chicago, recently received the go-ahead to build two 47-story condo towers and a 12-story loft on nearby Constellation Boulevard.
The elites who control L.A. real estate have two words to describe the changes in store for Century City: smart growth. When planners talk about smart growth in Century City, they mean high-density housing in a job center. When lobbyists talk about smart growth in Century City, they mean luxury condos surrounded by walkable streets. Even Los Angeles City Councilman Jack Weiss, who does not hide his boredom with certain planning issues, rhapsodized in January that Century City will one day behave like a village, not an intimidating cluster of skyscrapers. In other words, smart growth.
In the Coachella Valley, hundreds of trailer parks house desperately poor Latino workers amid burning trash, mud, contaminated water.
By David Kelly, Times Staff Writer
March 26, 2007
THERMAL, CALIF. - Like most of their neighbors in the sprawling, ramshackle Oasis Mobile Home Park, the Aguilars have no heat, no hot water. On cold nights, the family of eight stays warm by bundling up in layers of sweaters and sleeps packed together in two tiny rooms.
Bathing is a luxury that requires using valuable propane to boil gallons of water. So the farmworker clan spends a lot of time dirty.
Area officials put on a full-court press in Sacramento after bond funding for new carpool lanes is threatened.
By Duke Helfand, Times Staff Writer
February 21, 2007
SACRAMENTO - After an intense day of lobbying in the state capital Tuesday, Los Angeles' top leaders appeared to be winning their fight to secure $730 million in bond money to widen one of the nation's most congested freeways, with one powerful legislator threatening to hold up funds for transportation projects statewide if the city and other congested areas don't get what they need.
More than a dozen Los Angeles-area elected officials - including Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, County Supervisor Gloria Molina and Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Sherman Oaks) - descended on the Capitol to voice their unhappiness with a recommendation by the California Transportation Commission staff to omit new carpool lanes for the 405 Freeway and other local projects from an initial funding list.
The Downtown Los Angeles Homeless Map takes raw data about those sleeping on the streets and transforms it into a visual tool for understanding the situation.
Always Changing:
The sequence shows a slice of the map and how population shifts over a ten week period.
Evolving Region Pushes for More Rail Lines
By John Pomfret
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 17, 2006; Page A03
LOS ANGELES -- Demeaned as a car-crazed megalopolis where people drive two blocks to valet-park at the dry cleaners, Los Angeles is on the road to fashioning one of the best public transit systems in the nation.
Villaraigosa promotes the use of public transit, but he doesn't spend much time on the city's bus and subway system.
By Duke Helfand, Times Staff Writer
November 14, 2006
From the moment he took office nearly 18 months ago, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa made traffic gridlock a cause celebre - exhorting Angelenos to help solve the problem by forsaking their cars whenever possible.
"You've got to use public transit," Villaraigosa said just last week while unveiling an automated signal system to help unclog busy intersections. "You can't keep on pointing to someone else and saying it's their responsibility."
But Villaraigosa's own travel habits don't match his public pronouncements.
The mayor rarely, if ever, takes the bus or the train to work. Instead, he rides around town in a GMC Yukon chauffeured by a Los Angeles police officer who doubles as a bodyguard.
Unlike many others in Los Angeles, Villaraigosa has easy access to public transportation.
Hollywood plots freeway coverup
Those proposing what they call Hollywood Central Park will reveal preliminary details tonight when leaders of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce and the Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency meet with local business executives in an effort to raise $120,000 for a project feasibility study.
When the study is completed, local leaders say, they will be able to seek federal funding for the estimated $209 million that the freeway retrofit and park construction could cost.Backers say other densely populated U.S. cities have undertaken similar projects to carve out hard-to-find recreation space.
On the most superficial level, this article focuses on NBC’s decision to move its hit show the Apprentice from New York City to Los Angeles. It raises issues such as branding, regional and cultural differences across the United States and the net of associations that society has about each location. The article discusses the motivations for moving the setting, although it appears that the main reason stems from a desire to keep things ‘fresh.’ The fifth season will be out this upcoming spring, and even though the show remains popular, NBC wants to make sure that it stays one of the more dynamic programs on the air.
This is the topic for my Media Theory essay wherein I will explore Adorno and Horkheimer's assertions established in "The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception." Using this chapter as a foundation for contemporary theory, I will exaine how other theorists respond to the arguments presented by the two theorists and how the theories that emerge from The Dialectic of Enlightenment chapter are manifested in Los Angeles as a urban and cultural space.